Inspired by the allure and adventure of the Wild West, unique creative project El Mystery Kren recently launched their iconic new album of originals The Last Train To Durango.
It’s an eclectic, high-energy and storytelling album, and we were blessed with the chance to interview the songwriter and artist behind the project, to find out more about the creative process and the journey that led to this point. Here’s the conversation in full.
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Hey – great to connect with you, and huge congrats for the brilliant new album! For those new to your journey – how did El Mystery Kren first come about, and what does the name encapsulate?
Holaaaa…muchas gracias for having me…my baby, The Mystery Kren, has been around since the beginning of 2022 , but was born offically when I appeared on Mexican television, singing songs of my own and Hank Williams in Austrian language…all alone with my accordion.
The band name is a wordplay from an Elvis song (I’ve loved Elvis since I was 12), a Jarmusch film (about searching for Elvis), train songs and an Austrian specialty, horseradish (=Kren). We Austrians love wordplays, it is part of the “Schmäh” (Austrian humor) that only Austrians understand.
“Kren” sounds like “tren/train” (Spanish/English words for train) and represents my love for train songs. Songs about traveling, missing, longing, death. And it makes it clear that something is mixed up, several universes intertwine. The home you were born into and the one you are drawn to. As I say: Austrian by birth, Mexican by Corazón. (Corazón means heart).
Who or what were your earliest creative inspirations?
Pues, there were many. I took part in the theater at the age of 5 and later wrote my own plays and recorded my own radio shows on old cassettes. My mother is a very creative person too. In terms of musically: my grandma played the violin and my grandpa Cello, but I think the biggest influence was my father. He always played the guitar and sang along in a very strange style…I always thought it was his idiosyncratic way of singing until I found out (like 20 years later) he sang like Bob Dylan, his hero.
I sang in church from an early age, later at school and in the church choir and also with my sisters and friends. I love polyphonic singing, as you can hear on the Album. I did my first casting for a musical when I was 14 with a song I wrote with a friend of mine, Margot. We performed it on the audition in two voices and then they took both of us in. But the most life chancing encounter that changed everything forever was Elvis….
What inspired the making of this project – why this title and concept?
The name “El ultimo tren a Durango/The last train to Durango” is the title of an old Western. I love Western, Whisky, Waits and el desierto (these are the lyrics from “Fahr´ma nach Durango” where she says the monotony of the Caribic is eating her up cause she is no beach girl), cowboys and Morricone! The music I wanted to make should sound like standing in the desert, with a tumbleweed flying by. Kind of a soundtrack, where every song leads in it´s own universe…so you can hear a train, birds, a horse (all of those are original recordings from Mexico)…people talking…and in Durango I found the perfect backdrop.
What I like about Durango? A lot! First of all it is really hard to get there and really hard to leave. It is in the middle of nowhere, like an island, hours away from the next city in the mexican desert. Everyone I told I was going to Durango asked me if I was crazy doing that because “noone goes to Durango”, there is even a mexican song about that “Nadie va a Durango”, (noone goes to Durango). Durango was famous in the old days, when Dylan, Kristofferson, Wayne were there to do movies (Wayne still had a rancho there). Dolores del Rio was born there, she had a love affair with Marlene Dietrich, and her portrait is on a picture frame in Diego Rivera`s studio in Mexico City.
Durango had its “time of his life”, but now these times are over. Since a few years there is a counterproposal-song existing: “No es cierto que nadie va a Durango” (It is not sure that noone goes to Durango) from a great musician from Durango, Lázaro Cristóbal Comala. In Comala`s song he takes that up when he says “dejamos de estar casados con el pasado”, we stop being married to the past. And that the hand of Bob Dylan is nearer than god`s. This huge melancholy, the search for lost time, the time capsule, finding it again and re-enacting it in today’s world, el desierto, the mountains of the Sierra Madre, Pancho Villa (like the Mexican Robin Hood), el Norteño-style, all of this fascinated me so I decided to go there.
When I was there I heard five different versions of the same story, how a young guy sitting in front of the cathedral and playing the guitar and then later introducing himself with the words: „Hi, I’m Bob Dylan.”. He even wrote “Knocking on heaven´s door” in Durango. The ghost of Bob Dylan still haunts there (like he did in my life, in a sense, I found him again in Durango), now he is haunting through the album.
The album is about searching but never finding, missing your train or even worse – when you find out that there is not even a train existing that would be able you bring you back in this special moment, the time capsule (the last song from the album is about that). When it is not the train that you missed, it is Durango, that not exists. Durango as a place for a longing that can never be reached. Therefore I liked the idea that there are even other “Durangos” existing – f.e. in the US or in Spain so that “Durango” becomes a metaphor for a place that is never reached. Not even with the last train. So it is the perfect scene for everything.
What was it about the Wild West that drew such interest and passion from you?
“When I was a little girl my grandma read a book” is one line of the Cowboy-Song. It is autobiographical. My grandma was a really important person to me, when I was a child we watched the “Peter-Alexander-Show” (Austrian comedian, singer and entertainer, the love of all grandmas) together, where these men went through the living room of my grandma, 8I, she thought she knew them all in person 🙂 J.R: from Texas, big, stately, wild, tough, with hat and chest hair.
The next Saturday it was: “With a flash, Johnny Cash!” – all of them had to sing Austrian Songs with Peter Alexander, and I thought, if this is “Kantry” or “Kauboy” (literally Austrian translation: boy that chews) I love it.
In between there was another guy lying in a bathtub with a cigar in his mouth and a cowboy hat while his full chest of hair floats in the water. He doesn’t have to sing with Peter because he was a double and on a different station. Lucky him! (that was Lee Majors, later Tom Selleck, same archetypes).
“So those always tall, some kind of attractive men wearing cowboy hats, tough guys with a soft heart, always with a smoking gun in the background, became my childhood fantasy. So these were my early influences.”
In Mexico there are real cowboys, called “vaqueros”. Here it feels like being in my own childhood-movie…
The album blends passionate vocals with Mexicana, Americana, and Austriacana – often a world-music groove backed by alluring melodies, and stories that fascinate. How did this combination of styles and traits come about, was it an instant approach or something built through artistic trial and error?
It just happened that way. Like on a trip, when you are so absorbed that you no longer know whether you were speaking English or Spanish and everything mixes together. When you can no longer remember the Spanish vocabulary, you speak English and vice versa. It’s as if you can no longer speak a language properly. This also carried over into the music.
I wrote my own songs even before I discovered Elvis. I mean I was 8, for my mother’s birthday I staged a kind of musical with my younger sister, on the piano and singing. My first boogie, just with a few keys (not that piano things have improved much to date).
Later I played in various bands, duos and ensembles, from country to “Elvis`movies songs”, 50s Rock ‘n Roll, 40s Western and Hawaiian-Swing to a cappella Andrew Sisters (as an Lindy Hop dancer I love those swingy tunes)- I always thought it was stupid to be so limited having to commit to and agree on a genre. For me, a beautiful melody is a beautiful melody, regardless of whether it comes from Molotov, Hank Williams or Mozart (Molotov did a remix of Falco´s “Amadeus”, a song about Mozart, with a really strange video about a sausage). Because I like playing with Latin American musicians, a new sound has been added. And that can now be heard on the album.
I like multiple voices and multiple cultures (but I don´t like sausage). Rather Tamales.
Why does Oaxaco Blues start the journey off?
Because it is a song about a journey that leads nowhere. It shows the surreal side of Mexico, when you were waiting for your train (a man), that never showed up, but instead of him you end up with this abuelito (grandpa) that is introducing the female protagonist in the wisdom of Mescal. They drink together and get on “another trip” (like a trip in a trip). In the end she sees the (not shown) man in the lucha libres and hears his voice in the trumpet sounds. And then she is the one that tells her story to the abuelito.
It is kind of catchy, easy to follow. It doesn’t put too much strain on the listener. But it already leads in the “universo loco”, with the trumpets, accordion and the Mezcal-thing. It’s a good preparation for what’s to come.
The album features an eclectic instrumental set-up, with trumpet, violin, pedal steel, lap steel, harp, charango, double bass, theremonium, and plenty more. What was the recording process like, and is there a potential for live shows this year?
It took us nearly 9 months to record all that – live in the studio or via internet. From the last decades of performance I knew some really good musicians that I could ask to join the album. Most of them already played the songs live with me so they knew what to do. Max f.e. is in Argentinia and so we had to send us files back and forth.
During the pandemic with my old band we had to do it that way too for a long time because we couldn’t rehearse together (that was forbidden in those days). That’s when I discovered the file-sending-thing as interesting alternative. The main work is the mastering, when you realize that you can’t leave everything in but have to decide which instrument is in the foreground, because “all” doesn’t work…
In Hamburg we did a small unofficial release party (before the release) but then I went back to Mexico, with the new album in my suitcase. At the moment and for the next few months I’m still in Mexico, there are already plans for here and also for Europe, because one thing is certain: the songs want to be played and I love performing and fiesta!
You noted Elvis as a lifelong influence, something that shows itself in the entertainment side of the album, and the vocal stylings of songs like Queen of the Rodeo. What was it about Elvis that had such impact, and are we likely to get other artists breaking the mold in such a way, or has everything been achieved once already?
It’s interesting that you say it like that, I’ve never looked at it this way before…Elvis was something like a Big Bang. I heard a song and fell head over heels in love and even started playing guitar because of it, I was really obsessed. Elvis had an unbelievable sexual charisma, was so charming and that voice, dios mio, straight into my teenage heart.
Back then, I took piano lessons from a woman who wanted to become a star pianist but then had a limitation and became a nun. She wasn’t very contagious. Elvis was a complete contagion, so I’ve been chatting to my dad about wanting a guitar. It was summer. My dad said if you can play an Elvis song by Christmas, I’ll buy you a Fender guitar – I was able to play “Always on my mind” in one day.
I read the book of Priscilla “Elvis and me” and it became my Bible. That had a huge impact. For example, when I was 13 I dyed my hair blue-black (much to the chagrin of my mother and grandmother) because Priscilla wrote that Elvis didn’t like blondes.
As an Elvis fan, I became an outsider in my class, which was hard. But that’s how I made friends – because a few people thought that was exactly what was cool. With Elvis I learned that it’s about following your own path, no matter what others say and that on this path you will meet people who can understand and love you. Over the decades I have sometimes forgotten him and was always shocked at how I could have forgotten him. I once covered Elvis songs from the movies in a trio, but not outside of this project because that would be blasphemy (as a good friend of mine once said).
Sometimes when I’m sad I listen to Elvis and it reminds me of that time when I was 12, looking out the window of my childhood bedroom and wishing for a different life. It connects me with my younger me.
And yes, of course, there are many great musicians that crossed my path since then. Elvis was the first one, but not the last (allusion to one of his songs). I always had idols, men and women that I adored, which was really important and inspiring for my musical career.
“For example Chavela Vargas. She is impressive as a woman, drinking with Jose Alfredo Jimenez in men’s clothes in order to be taken seriously as a (queer) woman, that wasn´t even born in Mexico.”
The way she sings “Paloma negra” is simply beautiful. How she plays with her voice and then makes sounds that are so full of pain. I think it’s important to have role models, a thought of “yes, exactly”, even if it’s not what suits you. But there is always something left. In her case: singing with emotion and remaining authentic.
Cowboy Song is a personal favourite from this collection. The mellow groove, the intimate performance, the details of the story. What’s your personal favourite song from the album, and why?
Oh, that changes day by day. Most of the time it is Fragmentada, because it is my first Cumbia Song ever, and I love it! It was the last song we recorded and it almost didn’t make it onto the album. I like the two-part vocals and also the message and the dilemma of this song is something that I encounter again and again. Fragmentada talks about a toxic love, a man that is breadcrumbing her, who only wants her in pieces but never everything. So that at some point she falls into pieces. No woman should allow herself to be treated like this. I also like how the song falls into pieces at the end and gets lost in space… the person I wrote this song for had an intense connection to space… I had to explain that to the sound engineer Matthias , who at first couldn’t understand why the ending should sound “like in space”…Matthias and I found a common language towards the end of the production, which Fragmentada bears witness to as the last piece.
The other song is the second to last, Ghost Town/Pueblo Fantasma. I wrote it for a specific person who then passed away in the middle of production. That threw me into a big crisis and I rewrote the song again. His ghost now haunts it forever. However, why it turned out to be an upbeat number instead of a deadly sad one may have something to do with the fact that songs sometimes develop a life of their own. But also with the fact, that death tears a big hole, but the gratitude of being able to having met such a person is what outweighs it. An impressive Mexican woman once told me that we exchange fantasmas when we meet (during sex, but possibly also when kissing). That also found its way into this song full of ghosts. In the end they all sit next to one: the good, the bad, the ugly, like in an old Western movie. El bueno, el feo, el malo.
And so that became the main message of this album: Nobody leaves this world without a trace.
While talking about it I realize that Steffi sings the second voice in both songs. Steffi and I also lost someone together (a musician, Harry, who is also on this album) – or, better said, found each other at his sickbed 2 years ago. Harry will be stuck with me in the Rodeo forever (he sings on Queen of the Rodeo, which is probably my third number one). So the circle of the dead and the living closes on this album.
What’s the main idea or theme of this project that you’d like listeners to consider when diving in?
Maybe: “You are cordially invited to this universo loco!”. Everyone has different listening habits. I think the best thing is when something emerges from the listener. I think he should decide for himself what that is. Maybe images emerge, maybe it touches him, maybe he slips into an old film, maybe he then watches a documentary about Mexico, googles “Wappler” and/or drinks Mezcal.
“Maybe people hear something in the song that I intended or even more that I did not intend. Then the song takes on a dynamic of its own and that is when the magic happens. In literature it is said that the book requires the death of the author.”
What’s your biggest ambition for the year ahead?
Staying true to my path, having some nice gigs, meeting inspiring people, collaborating with other great musicians, and always enough Mezcal.
Is there anything else we should know?
Maybe, if the Mezcal thing does not work, try it with even more Mezcal.
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Grab the Album The Last Train To Durango via Amazon CD / Download. Find El Mystery Kren on Instagram, Apple & their Website.
