Infectious young mambo project

Drenched in sweat — the result of 12 musicians crammed onto a stage the size of a carport — the group flew through nearly two hours of song in a festive throwback to the classic Cuban sounds of mambo artists such as Pérez Prado and Israel "Cachao" López.

Mendoza, sporting a brown vest and baby face, moved swiftly between his stacked Casio and Wurlitzer keyboards, his handheld melodica and his cue duties as the group's bandleader and founder.

"I usually like going from one song right into another," said Mendoza, 28. "No dead space anywhere. We need to keep the energy up."

The music poured from the stage in a mojito-mixed blaze of horns, flashy Afro-Cuban percussion and original works on par with its Prado covers from the 1940s and '50s.

The audience of nearly 300 wanted to dance, but the club was packed tighter than Times Square on New Year's Eve. Fans piled in to see and hear this fresh new Tucson project do its thing.

Sergio Mendoza Y La Orkesta didn't even exist seven months ago.

Today, the all-star roster of local talent is flourishing, turning wherever it plays into a little piece of Havana.

The group, which has opened for the likes of Ozomatli in Tucson and the Neville Brothers in Flagstaff, will again headline a show at the Rialto Theatre on Saturday.

Calexico's Joey Burns is a big fan, and so are many of the city's local promoters.

"They are phenomenal," said Club Congress booker David Slutes.

Slutes hopes to have Mendoza anchor the new Latin stage at this year's HoCo Festival in September.

"It fills a void. Here are some of Tucson's best musicians, performing well-chosen songs in a style that is really underplayed in this town."

Not a bad run so far for a band with less than a year tucked into its three-piece suit.

The group got its informal start at The Great Cover Up, an annual benefit at Club Congress featuring local bands covering past and present acts from Green Day to Nirvana to Prince.

Mendoza had been a part of The Great Cover Up for the last few years as a member of The Jons and his jazz rock project, Seven to Blue.

Last year, Mendoza came up with covering Prado, an artist he had long admired as a child growing up in Nogales, Sonora.

"My dad used to sing Pérez songs like 'El Ruletero' to us before bed when we were little," Mendoza said. "The milk you are given when you are a kid is always the best milk."

Mendoza made some calls and assembled a crackerjack crew of musicians from acts around town. They took the stage less than a week later.

"We ended up playing a little after midnight," Mendoza said. "It wasn't too packed at that point, and we were very loose. It was a lot of work to put it all together."

Fan and scenester Michelle Hotchkiss remembered the show.

The 39-year-old Congress regular is a record collector and fan of Prado's music. She went specifically to see Mendoza's set.

Hotchkiss was unfamiliar with The Jons but remembered Mendoza from his role in other bands.

"Now here he was, out of his shell, a mambo king," Hotchkiss said. "It sounded authentic, really spot on. (Mendoza) was super strikingly handsome. He plays the part well."

The Cover Up led to an opening gig with Calexico at the Rialto later that month. Burns, an old friend of Mendoza's, had attended the Congress show and enjoyed what he saw.

"I knew he was on to something," said Burns in an e-mail interview. "I dig that era of music and big bands. And (Sergio) has a great ear for arrangements and bringing out the energy in an ensemble."

The avalanche of positive feedback from The Cover Up and Calexico shows inspired Mendoza to get serious with the group. The lineup these days is much tighter, Mendoza said, and experimental to boot.

Mendoza calls what his band does "indie mambo."

It still performs elaborate shows with plenty of theatrics in the vein of classic icons like Prado. But it also features electric guitars, keyboards with delay pedals and other special effects not found in Prado's day.

"We wanted to bring things up to date a little bit," Mendoza said. "We wanted the traditional stuff, too. But that part has already been done. We wanted to take it in a new direction."

You can find the 11-piece core ensemble, plus regular guest dancers and vocalists, gathering once or twice a week to hone their skills amid the giant, surreal paintings, wooden bookshelves and exposed walls in the back room of Salvador Duran's art studio on East Toole Avenue.

Duran, a guitarist and singer and well-known Calexico cohort, writes most of the original material with Mendoza and also performs with him.

The two first met while on tour with Calexico in 2007. Duran, 59, was playing with the band, and Mendoza was filling in last-minute for Calexico's keyboard player.

"I say a word, and just that word will inspire a song from Salvador," Mendoza said. "We can create a piece in an hour if we do it right."

Filling out the horn section are trumpeters Jonathan Villa and Javier Gamez and sax player Jason Urman, three of Mendoza's oldest friends.

The four have known each other for more than a decade. They attended Nogales (Ariz.) High School together. It was in those early days that The Jons, then a band called More Luck Than Buck, began to take shape in members' basements and bars and clubs around Nogales, Sonora.

"Sergio has always had the dominant personality," said Gamez, 28, who runs the family gas station and water-bottling service in Nogales, Ariz. "He is a wonderful writer and arranges the music really well. He has had this vision of a project for a while. We went into it with him, but he took the reins from the beginning."

"We are like a musical family," Mendoza said. "We hang out, even when we aren't playing together. We'll hit Saga Sushi or go see bands play in Phoenix."

Brian Lopez, a 26-year-old guitarist, was one of Mendoza's "experimental" additions. Mendoza brought Lopez on a few months back to incorporate a psychedelic electric feel into the group's sound.

Lopez also plays guitar and sings with Mostly Bears, a popular local rock trio with national acclaim. When he isn't doing that, he works as a music publisher for Tucson's Funzalo Records. He met Mendoza at a 2007 showcase of Tucson bands at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas.

"I never pictured myself in a mambo setting," Lopez said. "But Sergio had me over to listen to some records, and I could hear where I could put some stuff and make it sound cool.

"I was kind of scared when I first showed up at rehearsals because I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I was the new guy with this new element, but it worked out well."

Mendoza says he will continue to try new things.

"Don't be surprised if we have an accordion player or a violin player at some of our future shows," he added.

The current lineup is a harmonious and professional bunch. They show up on time for rehearsals and greet each other with hugs and jokes. No one is in a rush to leave.

"There is a lot of camaraderie in rehearsals," said percussionist Jack Sterbis, 33, an international scholar adviser with the University of Arizona. "That is an important element to have in a band. Everybody listens to each other, and when we are rehearsing it is not just a job. All that positivity really makes the music better."

"I chose people based on who could be there and who had a good attitude, people who added their own sense of humor," Mendoza said. "When we are not playing, we are laughing. If the plan is to take this band on the road, you need to find people you can hang out with every day and who respect each other."

Mendoza has high hopes for his orchestra in the coming year.

The band is in talks with Rialto booker Curtis McCrary to perform monthly as part of a new Latin dance night at the theater.

The regular shows, which would feature other local Latin artists, are already being tested with quarterly performances, like the one on Saturday.

McCrary has made an effort to work with the group because of what he describes as "enormous potential."

"Their execution and unique take blew me away from the start," he said. "It's something that people instantly understand as quality."

Mendoza has already mapped out a series of potential West Coast and European tour dates for the end of the year and 2010.

He also plans to collaborate with Burns to create the band's first studio album.

"Things are happening so quickly," Mendoza said. "We are just moving along with it. The timing seems right. We seem to be playing something that people want to hear."