Joe “King” Carrasco poses during a stop on his tour of war-torn Ukraine. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Joe “King” Carrasco
Joe “King” Carrasco, known for a sound that fused party-ready Tex-Mex with garage rock and new wave, has ridden a wild 50-year career.
The Texas-bred singer-songwriter leveraged a recording with San Antonio musical legends at the city’s now-defunct Zaz Studios into rock ’n’ roll cult status, becoming a hot touring commodity and singing a duet with Michael Jackson. He even appeared in multiple movies and TV shows and relocated to Nicaragua at one point to live with the Sandinistas.
But his most recent endeavor might be his most impressive — and risky — yet.
Carrasco staged a rock ’n’ roll tour across war-torn Ukraine last year, raising money for emergency vehicles in the wake of the country’s devastating invasion by Russian forces. The life-or-death situation lent an intensity to the shows, he told the Current.
“Ukraine is like Texas, man,” Carrasco said. “It’s like Austin back in 1980 at Club Foot. It’s crazy but it’s fun. Playing there is so much fun, because they need it. They’re excited and they’re not jaded.”
Together with Hartewick Circus, a group of 20-something rockers from the UK, Carrasco embarked his Ukrainian tour last June, becoming the first foreign rock band to do road dates there since the Russians invaded in early 2022.
By night, the entourage packed in eight dates at clubs in L’viv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Ternopil’, Vinnytsia, and Kyiv. During the day, they played in hospitals and schools.
“We want people to be aware World War III is here,” Carrasco said. “The Ukrainians, they’re defending Europe. The Russians are evil, man. I’ve seen what they’ve done — been to the cemeteries, been to the funerals.”
Major publications in Europe have written about Carrasco’s tour, including an extensive feature in The Guardian, but back home, it’s largely been greeted with radio silence. In large part, Ukraine’s struggle has been pushed out of the headlines by the war in Gaza, ICE raids and President Trump’s increasingly outlandish antics.
While back in Texas, Carrasco continued raising funds for more vehicles. Since Russian drones have repeatedly targeted emergency vehicles, he’s helping the country buy mini-vans less likely to trigger a Russian attack. His tour and fundraising also helped raise money to assist homeless and injured dogs — another of Carrasco’s passions.
“Our goal is to raise money to buy vehicles for the front, cars to take the wounded back to the medics,” Carrasco said. “Each car saves 40 lives. Last tour, we brought two cars, so we saved 80 lives.”
‘I go where the energy is’
Beyond the sensation of doing good, Carrasco was buoyed by the enthusiasm of the crowds.
“It’s mostly women because the men are out on the front,” he said. “The first show, you knew you were in a war zone, because in the middle of the show, a guy auctioned off a 50-caliber machine gun belt, like Pancho Villa. You’re playing and the place is intense, but the people are dancing.”
Ukrainians are determined to party like there’s no tomorrow, Carrasco said, because they know there might not be. Tex-Mex music also was quite the novelty in a Ukrainian war zone.
“Like tequila in Mexico, they drink a lot of vodka,” he added.
Naturally, touring was difficult in a war zone.
For one, Carrasco and the band had to use burner phones, since Russian intelligence can trace normal cell signals and use them to target bombs to the area the communication is coming from.
In a world of cynical marketing and phony rebellion, it’s heartening to see a musician actually risk their life to make a difference. It’s about as punk rock as it gets.
“It’s a circuit, 10 or 15 places to play — a tour!” Carrasco said. “Folks are dancing, and it’s nice to see that energy. I’m not getting it here. It’s more subdued. Over there, it’s like back to the ’80s — it’s more intense. … I go where the energy is.”
San Antonio Connection
Like so much in Carrasco’s life, the Ukraine tour happened because he was willing to follow the energy — wherever it led. That same go-with-the-flow approach landed Carrasco at Zaz Studios on West Commerce Street in 1976 to record with the crème de la crème of San Antonio musicians.
Born Joe Teutsch in the tiny town of Dumas, Carrasco moved to San Francisco as a teen, then returned to Texas, still trying to dial in his sound as a musician and songwriter. Then, in 1973, after catching San Antonio icon Doug Sahm perform at Austin’s Soap Creek Saloon, Carrasco found his musical North Star.
Like Sahm, Carrasco was exploring a high-energy coupling of Tex-Mex with rock ’n’ roll.
“Doug was the coolest thing that ever walked into Austin,” Carrasco recalled. “There was either the Willie Nelson thing or the Rusty Weir thing, but Doug Sahm had soul. That cool San Antonio thing. That’s where I was at, because I was playing Tex-Mex.”
Carrasco was performing with Shorty y Los Corvettes at the time — Tejano icons in their own right — but he was looking to strike on his own. After teaming up with the late Speedy Sparks, Carrasco connected with a cadre of San Antonio musicians, including the drummers Richard “Eh Eh” Elizondo and Ernie Durawa.
Both Sparks and Durawa later went on to perform as backing musicians for the Texas Tornados, the supergroup that included Sahm.
“Richard was the striptease drummer of San Antonio,” Carrasco said. “He was the Penguin — he had four fingers, and he’d say, ‘Gimme four.’ And Ernie, well, he was a pro, like a rock ’n’ roll pro. And all of a sudden, it was a real band.”
At Durawa’s urging, Carrasco booked a recording date at Zaz. At the time, the studio offered a special deal: $250 to record a single and press the vinyl on a machine in the garage.
“There was a garage with a dirt floor,” Carrasco said. “All these pressers making albums, 20 or 30 of ’em, on this dirt floor … . I’d never seen how a record was made.”
After convening at Zaz and rehearsing at nearby Chano’s Dugout Restaurant, Elizondo and Durawa began calling in the best SA players, including Augie Meyers, Charlie McBurney and Rocky Morales.
“It took 27 cases of beer, a lot of weed and those guys were eating bennies, you know, benzedrine,” Carrasco said. “And we had a single!”
At Elizondo’s urging, Carrasco named the band El Molino — and a legend was was born.
“I don’t do this to get rich or be a pop star,” Carrasco said of his Ukraine tour. “I gave up on that. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Joe “King” Carrasco
The album would go on to become an essential document of San Antonio’s West Side Sound. Meyers put out the release through his Texas Re-Cord label, and it came out on Big Beat/Chiswick in England. Elvis Costello was an early supporter.
“They released it, and Elvis Costello had a radio show and started playing it,” Carrasco said. “He was starting to get big, so that’s how I got on the radar.”
If El Molino put Carrasco on the radar, it was his next band — Joe King Carrasco and the Crowns — that put him through the stratosphere — at least for a while. The band had a surprise hit with the song “Party Weekend,” and next came MTV videos, a major label record deal, worldwide touring and decades of Tex-Mex rock ’n’ roll.
Carrasco may not be packing the same venues he used to, but he’s still cranking out the Tex-Mex sound he’d captured so long ago on West Commerce Street.
Life-or-death intensity
Fast–forward nearly 50 years, and Carrasco, now in his early 70s, still thrives on an energy that’s pure rock ’n’ roll. In part, he’s getting it by playing adjacent to Ukrainian battlefields. The life-or-death intensity is exhilarating.
“I don’t do this to get rich or be a pop star,” Carrasco said. “I gave up on that. That’s what we’re doing: saving dogs and saving lives in Ukraine. Fighting Russians. It’s strange — something I never thought I’d do. But I’ve seen what the Russians do. Every night at 9 o’clock, the whole country has a moment of silence. And every morning a funeral. So intense.”
Carrasco also maintains an intensity outside his affinity for Ukraine. He maintains a busy touring schedule with frequent stops across Texas, France and Mexico. He may have fallen off the national radar, but his music is still vital and vibrant — a blast of puro SA garage-rock energy.
The performer also released a recently unearthed recording of his band at its ultimate peak: Danceteria Deluxe, a snapshot captured in New York City in 1980. It’s a timeless document of pure party music, serving up an intoxicating mix of early B-52s, the Sir Douglas Quintet and ? and the Mysterians.
As of his last correspondence with the Current, Carrasco was holed up in the mountains above Puerto Vallarta, where he owns a bar. The recent cartel violence left him without electricity, he explained in a text message:
“Hey Bill-been kinda crazy round here in Jalisco 😬😬 — 🙏🙏 no electricity yesterday — no internet — bridges blocked-burnin oxoxo stores — total lockdown everywhere — people staying inside no traffic — we are staying in the mountains — keeping our heads down🙏🙏🌵 — for now🙏🙏🙏🙏 — will keep u posted🙏🙏”
More evidence that for all his commitment to good times, Carrasco remains a fearless rock ’n’ roll legend.
Those wishing to donate to Carrasco’s campaign to buy emergency vehicles for Ukraine can do so at missionaidforukraine.co.uk or at one of his shows.
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