This last spring we finished up the “Hay Te Guacho” C.D.  pronounced Ay Tay Watcho.  Hay Te Guacho Cucaracho is Mexican slang for “See you later alligator” of “After awhile crocodile”.  I wrote this song with mi amigos Ben Marines and Luis Garcia.

In September I was in Nuevo Laredo, when it was 115°, with Billy Morales, my sometimes keyboardist, movie director amigo and my two dogs. 

We spent 5 hours waiting in a line of 100 people at the car permit office.  You have to have your permit to drive in Mexico.  I normally wouldn’t write about this, but it was HOT!! CALIENTE!!  You had to be there.  Later on that same trip I was thrown out of a restaurant in Laredo, because I had my dogs in a bag.  So, we sat outside, in the heat, watching people eat in air conditioned comfort inside.  WHERE MY DOGS GO, I GO OR I DON'T GO!!   ay ay ay

Mexico Mike Nelson, a friend of mine and probably the best authority on traveling around Mexico, just wrote a book called “Stop Clutter From Stealing Your Life.”  I was featured in one chapter for being a pack rat to the extreme of extremes.  This is so true.  I just can’t throw anything away. 

I have a storage unit that you could drive a bus into that I haven’t even looked at since 1994.  It is so full.  I have clothes in it that I wore when I was 14.  Also every stage outfit, I have ever worn.  Every magazine clipping, posters, tapes and you name it.  I have it.  For awhile, I had a serious cactus collecting addiction.  I still kinda do.  Members of my band have been known to wake up with a giant cactus in bed with them.  Two years ago I brought 27 iceboxes to my house to figure out how to recycle them.  I have now stacked them like giant bricks and stuccoed over them.  When a glass breaks I save the glass, thinking I’ll  somehow use it later.  I pickup the stuff that nobody else wants.  I have stopped buying newspapers.  I just read them on the internet.  Did I say, I’ve saved every paper I’ve bought since 1982.  I guess I’ve been on the road too long.  However, I am not giving up my broken down 1965 Greyhound tour bus.  NO WAY JOSE!!

Written by Joe King Carrasco on December 7, 2011 

Tattoo Laredo and Vamos A Get Down- were  recorded  back to back--  in 1990 and 1991 in Houston and Austin, Texas.   If you check out a timeline of my recording history- you will see a gap between  Royal Loyal and Live  (1989)  and Dia De Los Muertos (1995)  This is  the music  that was fueling the live shows in that period. 

These are the tapes that were left behind and almost forgotten on the back dusty shelves of several recording studios almost twenty years ago for various reasons. 

The songs for Tattoo Laredo were recorded in Feb. 1990 in Austin Texas.  Then we took the masters down to Saturn Sounds in Houston to finish the overdubbing with Richard Cagel, who took over the engineering on this project.  Richard was a bassist and vocalist for the first real performing band  " The shades of Time" that I  played in, in the 7th grade, in Dumas, Texas.  He is pretty much responsible  for keeping this effort alive through all this time.