Across This Ghost Town

Hey there Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew is spinning "Across This Ghost Town" by Cruzados off the album She's Automatic, and this one has a story that sticks with you like the dust on an old desert highway. Tony Marsico, the bassist and songwriter who has been the constant through the band's long ride, has said the tune came straight out of a dream he had about a ghost town. He pictured a stranded traveler whose engine gave out forty miles from Sutter's Mill, thumbing through the blistering sun until he stumbled into a saloon full of ghosts and gamblers left over from the gold rush boom. The locals keep asking him to stay a while until the sun goes down and the chimes ring out across that empty place. Marsico tied it to real life too, talking about driving past Venice Beach and seeing a long stretch of golf course lined with homeless encampments, the sharp difference between the palm trees and the people just trying to get by. Ron Young, who handles the vocals on this version of the band, noted how Los Angeles can feel like that same illusion, folks chasing fame in a city that sells the dream while the streets tell a harder story. It all comes together in lyrics that feel like a western yarn with a dark edge, saints and sinners striking it rich in the devil's playground, souls weighing heavy after they stripped the lives of the innocent in the name of prosperity. The music lands somewhere between a countrified California cousin to Van Morrison's "And It Stoned Me" and the classic pull of The Band's "The Weight," with shimmery rhythm guitar, tensile bass, stinging leads, a steady kick and a tambourine shake that keep the whole thing moving without rushing the ghostly mood.

Cruzados have always mixed that kind of roots grit with a rock edge, and "Across This Ghost Town" fits right into the band's return after decades away. The album She's Automatic marked the first new studio set in more than thirty years, recorded live and hot with Marsico joined by Ron Young on vocals, guitarists Loren Molinare and Mark Tremalgia, and drummer Rob Klonel. Guests dropped in from the Los Angeles scene, including John Doe, Dave Alvin, David Hidalgo and Steve Berlin, plus others who know their way around a stage. Marsico has said he never liked the way the original band went out, that they were like family even when things fell apart, and life is too short not to rock and roll while you can. The song itself gets that roadhouse feel, a traveler finishing his drink and starting to pray as the ghosts and the gamblers and the liars and the thieves all look his way. It is the kind of track the Zoo Crew likes to let breathe, letting the story settle in while the guitars lock into a spectral groove.

The path that got Cruzados here started a long way from any ghost town, back in Philadelphia where Tony Marsico grew up above the family pizza parlor. His brother Frank and his uncle Pete were jazz and bebop drummers, so Marsico figured he was meant to hold down the bass and keep the rhythm solid. A Seeburg jukebox downstairs played the hits of the day, and that low end rumbling through the floorboards was his first music lesson. He picked up an acoustic guitar as a kid, then switched to an old Epiphone bass his brother brought home. In his late teens he caught the punk and new wave scene that was boiling over in Philly, formed a power pop trio called The Impossible Years, and realized he wanted to be part of something bigger. Around 1980 he headed west to Los Angeles, connected with Tito Larriva and Charlie Quintana who were running The Plugz, one of the early Latino punk outfits in the city. Marsico stepped in on bass, and the band scored the film Repo Man, played the clubs from Al's Bar to bigger rooms, and even caught Bob Dylan's ear enough to back him for an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman.

As the punk wave started to shift, the guys in The Plugz began writing different songs and decided a name change made sense. They became Cruzados, a word that in Mexican street slang means someone who has crossed over the border, and the sound moved toward roots rock with Latin flavor, hard edges, and heart. They spent time in New York honing new material at places like CBGB, then headed back to Los Angeles where Clive Davis caught a showcase and signed them to Arista Records. The self-titled debut arrived in 1985, followed by After Dark in 1987, with tracks like "Motorcycle Girl" and "Bed of Lies" getting MTV play and chart attention. They opened for Fleetwood Mac on the Tango in the Night tour after Stevie Nicks took a liking to one of the songs, played Farm Aid, appeared in the movie Road House, and earned praise from folks like Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, and others who knew real rock when they heard it. The band was tight, more family than rivals, even if the usual pressures of the road and the business eventually pulled them apart by the early nineties. Marsico kept busy as a session and touring bassist for artists including Neil Young, Roger Daltrey, Marianne Faithfull, Matthew Sweet, and more, while also running his jazz side project the Martini Kings and writing books about the gig life.

Years later the urge came back. During the quiet stretch when the world slowed down, Marsico started writing again after hearing an old Cruzados cassette, and the new songs had that same spirit. Geography and schedules made a full original reunion tough, so he reached out to players he trusted from the Los Angeles scene, pulling in the Little Caesar guys who had stayed active. The result was She's Automatic, a full-throttle collection that honors what the band started while sounding like a band that still has plenty left to say. You can hear the Philly roots in the steady low end, the Los Angeles nights in the storytelling, and the years on the road in the way the music just rolls forward. The Zoo Crew keeps spinning records like this for the Zoo Freaks because they feel like the kind of stories you swap around a campfire or over a cold one after a long ride, the kind that remind you why rock and roll keeps going. Check out more from the band at their site thecruzados.net, follow along on Instagram and Facebook, and keep it locked here on THE ZOO where the freeform keeps rolling and the deep cuts never stop.