Monday night at Steamboat to #30 on Billboard.
AJ, Alex and Omar Vallejo, a club residency nobody wanted, and the record deal that came out of it.
Vallejo is three brothers and a band around them: AJ on vocals and lead guitar, his twin Alex on drums, and Omar — the youngest — on bass. For a stretch in the nineties they were one of the hardest working live acts in this city, and the reason a recording studio on South Lamar has a Sixth Street marquee on its wall.
The residency
They took Steamboat’s Monday night in 1995. Monday is the slot clubs give bands they are not sure about, and the only way out of it is people turning up.
People turned up. They worked the ladder the club was built around — Monday to midweek to weekend — until the best night on Sixth Street was theirs.
A SXSW showcase on that stage got them signed. The single reached number 30 on the Billboard Alternative chart, which for an unsigned Austin band playing a Monday eighteen months earlier is a considerable distance.
The catalogue since runs to a shelf of albums — Brothers Brew, Into The New, Stereo, Beautiful Life, Shining Sun, Sins, Acousta, Black Sky, Leftovers, Thicker Than Water — and the band still records and tours.
Why this is on a studio’s website
Because it is the qualification. Omar produces records for a living now, and the thing that separates him from a very good engineer is that he has been the person on the other side of the glass at every stage of it: the Monday nobody came to, the weekend they owned, the deal, the chart, the tour, and the twenty-five years afterwards of still doing it.
When he tells a band their second verse is not earning its place, that is not a producer’s theory. More on Omar here.
The brothers still pull Danny Crooks on stage when they play. Thirty years on, that says most of what needs saying about how that room worked — and about him.
Common questions
Who is in Vallejo?
Three brothers — AJ Vallejo on vocals and lead guitar, his twin Alex on drums, and Omar on bass — with a band around them.
How high did they chart?
Number 30 on the Billboard Alternative chart.
Are they still active?
Yes. They still record and tour, and Season 19 of 512 Studios Live includes a set from them.
Does Omar still play?
Yes, which is the point. He is a working musician who produces rather than a producer who used to play.