One of our favorite moments this year was Andrew and I getting to talk with Cleto Cordero of Flatland Cavalry ahead of their show in Lubbock, Texas at Cook’s Garage. You can read the concert recap written by Andrew Watters with photos from the both of us here. Here is the full interview:
This interview has been edited for length and clarity and was aired April 5th, 2023 on Andrew City Limits.
Andrew Watters: First and foremost, I want to say thank you for doing this. We’ve done interviews like this before, and it’s always cool, but to have a former Red Raider doing an interview with us means a little bit more.
Cleto Cordero: Thanks for the invitation and for even asking. I mean, we miss Lubbock a bunch. We’re always away from it now these days, and I don’t ever want anyone to get the notion that we said “See you later, Lubbock!” We miss it, man.
Andrew: The first thing I want to ask you is sort of along the lines of that. What does it mean to come back here and do shows as they get bigger and bigger every year?
Cleto: Well, I’m glad that we get to come back at least once a year. Since we started playing in Lubbock back in 2014, we played at the Blue Light on June 4th, 2014, and every year after that, we would play Lubbock and the crowds get a little bit bigger. Then we started to play out instead of playing in the Panhandle, we’d drive down to Austin, then it grew into a statewide, regional, but every time we’ve come back to Lubbock, it’s been a bigger crowd. It’s still a loving crowd. It’s the same kind of loving feeling that we felt when we played at Blue Light for the first time or when we sold it out for the first time. It’s exciting.
Andrew: Speaking of exciting, y’all are currently touring with Luke Combs, y’all did AT&T Stadium last weekend and you did Lucas Oil this weekend. What’s it been like to play these ginormous stadiums?
Cleto: Well, it’s been pretty bewildering just to go out there and see the stage built on the fields and how big these structures are. It’s like a childhood dream kind of realized even on so many fronts. I mean getting to hang out at an NFL stadium, to tour them, and hang out in the locker room. We got to hang out in the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders locker room. That was our green room. Just all these crazy, surreal, funny things, and then getting to know Luke and see how a band of their caliber, operation, and organization and how they do things, how they treat people, it’s been a lot of learning, but ultimately just totally new and exciting. It’s like a new season of discovering what the dream is all about.
Zachary Sorrels: Speaking of seasons, the season of Yellowstone just wrapped and your song Mountain Song played in an episode. You talk about reaching these high points in life and your song being in a huge TV show, what was that like?
Cleto: That was a very unassuming song to me. Very humbling for that song to get exalted to that kind of placement on the show. To have almost played the whole full song and get people to turn their heads up and their ears and ask “Who’s Flatland Cavalry?” For me, it was beautiful to get to experience that because I was home in Midland watching it live with my parents with them on the couch, and it was just a surreal feeling. Ultimately I’m just grateful that the song has gotten to a lot of ears. That song means a lot to different people. I’ve had people reach out to me, one of them was an elderly man in his late seventies. He came up to me and wanted to meet me after the show, and he said, long story short, his wife had passed away recently and when Mountain Song came out, it would’ve been their 40th anniversary, so he said that song brought him a lot of peace as he thought about her. Another person emailed us and told us a story of how unfortunately one of their brothers got swept into a river, and he lost his life kayaking and that the verse “River, river, take me away. Wash me clean, keep my sins at bay” expressing their gratitude for that kind of song with how it means something more to them. It’s a powerful song, and it’s a very soft song too, but I’m glad it got put on that show, for sure.
Andrew: I remember hearing a story where Shane Smith was talking when they got All I See is You on it, and he said that the process was pretty much they tell you it’s going to be there, but they don’t tell you when. Was that the same sort of thing for you?
Cleto: I don’t know how much advance was given. I don’t know if it was the week of, like the Monday of, or if it was even shorter than that like the day before. I can’t recall, but it was pretty soon which is good for them. They were able to keep their cards close to their chest.
Andrew: I’m a huge Panhandlers fan. The stuff that you do with Josh, William, and John has been incredible. Y’all put out a new album about a month ago at this point. I do want to ask, what was the process of making this one, what changed and what stayed the same from making the first one?
Cleto: Well, as William [Clark] Green says it, “We actually knew what the hell we were doing this time around. [Laughs]. We didn’t know what we were doing at all initially, like what the project was going to be or anything. We just got together and started writing songs. Us being able to put out one album and see how people felt about it and the impact it made, I think it inspired us to get back together and the process has been loose and colorful and free. I feel like I’m hanging with my older brothers when I’m with those guys and we’re creating and stuff. It’s totally just fun and lax, but also with everyone’s different cultural background, their own story, what Texas means to them, and where they’re from, I think that turns into a bunch of different kinds of style stories. It was making the album a little simpler or a little easier because we just felt comfortable. It was still the same process. We went out there to Bruce’s studio, recorded it on tape, and all that stuff. I love the way that it sounds. That’s why I really love Bruce’s studio. It’s so warm, and I feel it immortalizes those recordings for a long time.
Andrew: It’s just so cool that he does everything on tape. Super classic. Super cool. As an audio nerd, it’s kind of neat to find out.
Cleto: Yeah. I’m not sure most people hear it. There was a time in my listening that I couldn’t hear the difference between tape or I didn’t really care, but since this is what I do for a living and stuff now, you can totally see it, or at least I can see it. It’s like the first time I heard playback from tape at Bruce’s studio and they turned it up real loud. It literally sounds like someone’s right in front of you like a bigger version of yourself talking back to yourself. It didn’t get turned into ones and zeros in digital format.
Andrew: Another thing I wanted to bring about that is when you write, have you ever been in a Panhandlers session and started writing something and realized “Hey, this might be better for Flatland, or vice versa, writing for Flatland and been like, “Hey, maybe I want to put this on the back burner for the Panhandlers project.”
Cleto: Sometimes. When I really started to dive into creativity and writing as a more of a daily practice versus something that happened when inspiration would strike I started to some ideas would come to me like Panhandle Slim that my gut tells me this isn’t a Flatland song, but for the sake of creating something like let’s write it, and then I think they’ll raise their hand and tell you where they want to go. There’s a song that I wrote called Lubbock that hasn’t been released properly yet, but it’s been out there on the internet. I want to say Josh asked me about wanting to record it and I just told him that I thought about saving it for Flatland. That’s just what my heart and soul told me. At the end of the day, you got to trust that.
Zachary: I remember hearing that song live at JAB Fest two years ago when you came out for an encore, and it was just you and your guitar. That just blew me away.
Cleto: Well, thank you for listening, man. I just felt I spent a chapter of my life in Lubbock, spent seven years there all by myself, and the sense of moving away from home. Getting to experience a town like Lubbock in my early twenties, and just everything that it meant to me I think is kind of summed up in that song, and I didn’t want it too corny, cheesy, predictable or whatever.
Zachary: While you’re talking about performing, what is one of your favorite songs that you get to perform live and why?
Cleto: Every time you play Mountain Song every night, that one never gets old. People, it’s very small, like I told you, but very powerful. It means something to everybody else in a different way. I’d say that’s one I haven’t gotten tired of playing. Songs like Missing You and Stompin’ Grounds from the earlier catalogs, I still feel all that stuff like “cigarettes and adderall” when I sing Missing You. I don’t really do so much of that anymore like when I was 22. I get to kind of relive a little bit of that. To be biased, I love every song, and they all mean something to me in some kind of way. Those are a few of them that don’t seem to get old performing or people haven’t asked us to stop playing them yet.
Andrew: Another thing I’m curious about is how do you guys build setlists? Do you just try and figure out what flows best? Do you say, “Okay, we need this many songs from this album, this many songs from this thing,” or what’s y’all’s process?
Cleto: Yeah, that’s part of being a band and figuring it out, discovering, and trying different things. When we first started out, we didn’t have many songs. Come May was out and we had a bunch of Humble Folks songs under our sleeves, but nobody knows the song, so you have to entertain as well as keep people interested in your stuff. To answer your question, I feel like we just try to make our show momentous and get a lot of songs we could pick through and every night we could play a different setlist, but you gotta create moments out of all the songs. That’s what we’re aiming for and shooting for. Sometimes there’s a moment to just play a song with an acoustic guitar because we’ve done everything else. We’ve jammed out. We’ve done all the big flashy stuff, so there’s a moment for everything I believe.
Andrew: Being a part of this scene in Lubbock and growing through it, was there a certain moment whether it was a show here or maybe recording an album where you said like “Damn, we might’ve made it.”
Cleto: Yeah, I think that happens. It’s not one time but it happens over time with several instances or milestones. The first one was playing Lubbock with the first Come May CD release party in 2015, and it sold out. For us, it started like 11 months before at Blue Light and played to 13 people. For us to play for 300 people in there for the first time ever and they were singing every word, all the songs they knew, and to me, I looked at my parents and the audience, and their amazement was in their eyes.That was one of those moments that I still remember forever. I can play it back in my head like it’s a movie. This has popped up into a different thing. Now I guess we’re doing something and we just keep trying to do it.
Andrew: Humble Folks turned seven last week. I was listening back to it today and yesterday just getting somewhat prepared for this. It still has not aged a day. It still could have been just as great as it is if it came out yesterday. Just looking back and reflecting on that, how does it feel to know that it’s seven years old at this point?
Cleto: That’s a significant little phase of time. I was telling you, I kind of referred to it as a chapter of my life. Seven years is like… Let’s say you’re seven years old and then how different you are when you turn 21, it’s like you kind of evolve and mature a lot in that amount of time. I’m really grateful that there’s a timestamp of who we were at that time and the songs. I’m glad that they haven’t gotten too tarnished or tired to listen, but to me, they’re all just the kind of stories that I was collecting. They say you got your whole life to write your first album, and then you got 18 months to write another one after that. So that was the whole life’s work at the time, just summed up into 11 songs or whatever. I’m grateful that we’re still able to build from that for the last seven years. I’m truly grateful to get to come back to Lubbock, to play again, to see how it’s all grown, and to be welcomed by the community, Tech athletic, you guys, and Tech. There’s something that we don’t ever really express or preach it on stage or anything, but one of our mission statements for Flatland came to my mind one day was like “Community through music.” If you can promote community through what we’re doing through art and music, dude, that sounds like something I’d want to be part of for a lifetime, you know what I’m saying?
Andrew: When we announced this interview, we put out a thing on our Instagram just asking for a few fan questions, so I’ll ask a few of those real quick. The first one actually came from my mom. She wanted to know, I don’t know how she found this out, but she wanted to know if your first job was actually at Whataburger.
Cleto: Yes, it was. When I was 15 through 17, I was a fry cook.
Andrew: Another one I wanted to ask is from one of my best friends. She goes to A&M. She’s an Aggie through and through, and bleeds maroon. She wants to know, do you actually miss College Station or was that just a fun line you came up with?
Cleto: Every time I go back to College Station, I can truly say that I missed that place because of the weather compared to where I was born and raised in Midland, Texas. It’s like I’m in a country paradise and the people are cool. There’s cool spots to have beers at and stuff. So to me, that always has that nostalgia, and I know that might seem like I’m a traitor to the Red Raiders, but I ain’t [Laughs]
Zachary: That’s kind of a line right there, too.
Andrew: Put that on a t-shirt, that would sell like hotcakes.
Cleto: I ain’t no traitor to the Red Raiders.
Andrew: We’ll write that down for you, so you don’t forget.
Cleto: How about I put that on a maroon shirt and I wear that to an Aggies game and see how that goes.
Andrew: Next time you do Chili Fest, walk out on stage with that and see how that goes.
Cleto: But on the back, it says, I miss College Station, and they’re like “Hey, yeah, dude” and I turn around. [Laughs]
Andrew: Another one that somebody asked was what current artist are you really into or what are you into when y’all are on the bus or on the road?
Cleto: Great question, man! I’ve been really digging Leon Bridges and stuff.
Andrew: Zach’s gonna love hearing you say that.
Cleto: Yeah, I think he’s so cool. Kaitlin [Butts] and I were walking around some grocery store in Fort Worth yesterday and just saw him there shopping and I’m like “Oh!” and she’s like “Oh my God!” and “I’m like let’s go. We’re not bugging this guy. Like leave him alone. Don’t even look at him.” So, Sierra Ferrell comes to mind. I caught her set at the Ameripolitan Music Awards, and she was really cool and unique. She sang so well, and I think she’s really cool. I mean obviously [Chris] Stapleton and Tyler Childers, and we listen to a lot of classic stuff. If you asked all the Flatland guys, you’d get six different answers, man. Doobie Brothers, John Prine’s Lake Marie, Blackwater by the Doobie Brothers
Andrew: I’m a huge John Prine fan.
Cleto: Dude, he’s the guy.
Andrew: Our former music director, Dyan, she would always ask this question to bands and artists, so I figured I would carry on the tradition. If you could redo the soundtrack to any movie, what movie would it be, and why?
Cleto: Dang, dude that’s a great question. Two movies come to mind. Maybe Pure Country, it’s so badass, and Urban Cowboy. I watched that movie with Kaitlin for the first time ever. I didn’t get a chance to watch it in my childhood like everyone else did, and I was just perplexed. Like, what’s the story? What’s going on here? What’s it about? This guy’s hitting this girl and they’re riding bulls, like I don’t get it. But there’s a lot of classic music in that, and the cowboy nostalgia, all that stuff could be cool to do in your own way.
Andrew: I always see used copies of the vinyl at Ralph’s Records here. I’d always look at the back and see the tracklist, and I’m like how did they fit so many great songs onto this soundtrack?
Zachary: It’s one of the best movie soundtracks ever. In post, we’ll put a Flatland song in there and not tell anyone.
Cleto: What if my answer was August Rush?
Andrew: We did an interview with Robbie from the Goo Goo Dolls and he said The Big Lebowski. I thought about it for a second, I was like it’s a great answer, but I don’t know if that really makes sense.
Cleto: You know what? I haven’t seen that movie and I know it’s very iconic, but I need to do that.
Zachary: It’s a good one.
Cleto: Like any Coen Brothers film would be cool. No Country for Old Men or The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I’ve had ideas to write a soundtrack for movies. That’s maybe a next thing I’m gonna jump into.
Zachary: You’re in the door with Yellowstone.
Cleto: Hey, no joke, man. That’s a cool opportunity. I’ve always wanted someone to come to me like John Mayer and that song Say. It’s like a movie comes to you and it’s like “Hey, you write a song for this movie, it’s no pressure, but to have the prompt, you really think about how impactful you can make something in three minutes. It’s a fun little puzzle to make.
Zachary: That’s just the power of songwriting itself too. Think how you can put all this emotion into a three minute track.
Cleto: I know it dude. I’ve always felt like they were just emotions distilled and captured electronically.
Andrew: Thank you so much for your time, Cleto. Thank you for doing this with us.
Cleto: You guys take care.
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