Los Desterrados

Los Desterrados plays every Wednesday at The Blue Fugue. The time never changes but the band lineup rotates regularly. Pictured here is the most consistent band lineup, from left, Louis Vicente, Justin Giles, Walt 'Moondog' Goodman, Chris 'Memphis' Robinson, Stephen Varner, Leo Rodriguez.

Nov. 15, 2005

A Band of Exiles

By Kyle Ahrens

A musical experiment takes place Wednesday nights in downtown Columbia: a group of musicians form a band and play for almost two hours. Though this may seem like the formula for a standard concert, one band, Los Desterrados, defies this convention. They have no real clue which musicians will even be playing that night.

Formed by flamenco guitarist Walt ‘Moondog’ Goodman, Los Desterrados was created initially in trying to facilitate ‘jam sessions’ for local musicians in the search for groove.

“I knew that I wanted to play more music, and there was some guys around town that played rumba type music,” said Goodman. “The idea was to take a band and have these guys from many other bands just get thrown together to play.”

Yet, as this idea became reality, these laid-back musicians decided to get organized. Thus, in time, their maiden voyage as an official band launched on Oct. 30, 2004, when their pirate flag flew for the first time at the Cherry Street Artisan, in downtown Columbia.

“We have a blessing and a curse with schedules for people showing up,” said Goodman. “We usually get about five people to show up, but often we have used guest musicians at the place we were playing, which gives us a different sound every time.”

Musicians thrown together with different backgrounds has given this band a very unique sound. At any given time during a show hints of blues, flamenco, rumba, and rock can be heard at once.

This concept is expressed best by their name Los Desterrados, which means the exiles or outcasts. The concept worked.

The band landed the Wednesday night gig back when The Blue Fugue was The Music Café around Feb. of 2005. The bar scheduled Cuban band Abateria to play on a Saturday night, but, as they could not attend, Los Desterrados was asked to play.

Impressed, at the end of the night the owner and manager of the bar asked if they would like to own a prestigious weekly spot. Goodman felt it arbitrary to take the Wednesday nightspot, allowing the musicians in the band to have weekends for their other events and shows.

“The Wednesday night thing has become a thing of its own,” said Goodman.
Since the group landed the Wednesday night gig many changes have occurred.  The band found a small core group of players, and continues to find new musicians.

Los Desterrados play every Wednesday night.

Besides Goodman, Chris ‘Memphis’ Robinson can be found every week for the gig, adding his own style of blues to the sound of the band. Robinson started to go to Los Desterrados shows as a member of the audience, and eventually became a pillar in the band. At first Goodman was not sure how a blues influenced artist who plays harmonica could fit into a band that mostly played rumba music, but Robinson quickly squelched those worries. Blues based songs are in regular rotation for the bands set lists.

“I like fusing genres together, taking lots of combination of influences,” said Robinson. 

Covers of pop music songs have a regular occurrence at the bands’ shows. Goodman has the self-professed talent to take any song and give it a flamenco twist. This ability has lead to one of his favorite things to do at a show.

“One of my biggest thrills is to play a Johnny Cash song after just have played a rumba song, to show that the rumba beat is essentially the same as the rockabilly beat,” said Goodman.

Robinson enjoys playing the bands original tunes the most. Their songs such as Princess Gitana and Rainy Day Song are prime examples of the fusion of musical styles that makes these musicians happy to play for free every Wednesday.

The ability for the band to meld musical genres together has lead to other crazy antics during their shows. Once the midnight hour has past, it is not out of the ordinary for the band to ask the audience what they should play next. Often, during a jam, the band will start to meld many songs together into one, asking the audience to name it at the end.

Ever changing lineups, genres, and clowning around keeps the spontaneity level high Wednesday nights on Ninth St. This spontaneous multi-cultured show has found a home at The Blue Fugue, the band’s favorite place to play in Columbia. 

“You find all stereotypes there, and everybody feels comfortable,” said Goodman. “If the graffiti in the bathrooms of bars are a representation of the collective conscience of any given bar. Then The Blue Fugue has to be by far the best bar in Columbia.”