Paddy Evans, vocalist for Dukes of Tijuana, answers our important questions!

How did Dukes of Tijuana get started?

Really Dukes of Tijuana was the brainchild of Chris, Mark and Grischa after a couple of beers. The guys have known each other for a long time and have made music together in various bands and formations.
To be fair the whole point was to get a Band going in which everybody knows what they are doing, everyone is committed to the musical output and not have egos get in the way of things. It can be incredibly hard to play in bands where you want to move forward but someone
is just a bit lazy or can’t get their rear into gear! Since them three already knew it would work amongst them, I (Paddy) came into sight
when he was substituting Grischa on Bass in another Band, and he was pretty happy to take the role as a singer and that’s how it started.

We had formed pretty much JUST as the pandemic hit, which was a weird time to start a band, but it allowed us to get accustomed to what kind of sound we’re going for. Since Mark already had a shitload of songs written, I just put some new lyrics to them, Shortly after that we hit the studio and had our first Album out and about.

Who are your favourite bands and artists?

Phoar! Good question. We all like various different Stuff. It ranges from early Blues to Gypsy Jazz, over to Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Punkrock and 60‘s Beat Stuff but the common ground for all of us is of course Rockabilly and Psychobilly.

I think if i could name ONE Band that we all love pretty much equally, it would be Motörhead. They just combine all of the above, paired with the ‘no bullshit’ attitude which is also something we identify with.

It’s been over a year since ‘Tough Love, Taboos and Tattoos’ was released…how do you feel about the album now?

A year already eh? Crikey. But yeah, time flies and we still love the Album as much as we did when it came out to be fair. The Album was well received and sold really well, it was a lot of fun to write and it was great fun to record it at Western Star Studios with Alan Wilson. Playing the songs is incredibly fun and they still feel very fresh to us.

What’s your favourite song on ‘Tough Love, Taboos and Tattoos’, if you have one?

That’s a good one. I think that is very individual and for me at least it varies massively! Sometimes it’s ‘Josephine’, sometimes ‘Personal Golgotha’ and sometimes ‘Shake Your Little Ass’. Throughout the year every song has at least once been my favourite but i think they are
all so different from each other that it’s really depending on what mood I’m in or what seems relevant at the moment.

Most fun to play live at least i think are ‘Trucker from Hell’ and ‘Washed Out’. They’re the kind of Songs that always kinda bring a smile to my face and the band just locks in. The crowd seems to always enjoy those in particular too. So on second thought, probably those two would be my favourite. People go ‘Hooray’ and if they do that, we’re happy!

I hear you’re working on your third album….what spoilers can you give us? What can we expect?

That is correct. Third Album is in the making, The rough ideas for all twelve or thirteen songs are there, they just need a final treatment in which they are dissected and stitched back together with a few bits and bobs added or stripped here and there.

To be completely honest, we had enough Songs done for an Album already but since we had a bit of time on our hands we wrote some more, which turned out to be a tad better that the previous ones. So we put the old ones on hold and the new ones will be the Album. So in theory the rough sketch for Album 4 already exists too.

Not really any spoilers yet though… You can expect a Dukes of Tijuana sounding Album, that much is certain, and it’ll be recorded at Western Star by Alan again, which we’re incredibly happy about! But as mentioned before, Chris and Grischa need to still put their 2 cents in to the songs, which really has an immense impact on the songs! Mark and I usually sketch out rough ideas and record them as demos and then when Chris and Grischa chip in, the songs really elevate to a new level. Therefore, I’m not even entirely sure how the songs will sound a few weeks from now. I’m very much looking forward to it though and so should you!

You’ve performed at Psychomania, Pineda…..do you have a favourite festival to play and why?

Not really a favourite to play per se but Santa Susanna is always great!
One week in sunny Spain, lying on a beach, getting sunburnt while munching on ‘Jamon’ flavoured Crisps and listening to Psycho-/ Rockabilly bands is really, REALLY hard to beat.

However, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a festival or a small club show. In the end, we’re just there standing on stage and doing our thing, what really makes it enjoyable are the people in front of the stage! They are the ones bringing the Party.

You played a show recently at the Ace Cafe in London….how was your London experience?

In hindsight it was a pretty funny experience. There weren’t many people there but it was fun nonetheless. We played for (I think) six people, two of which were my parents. Bruno and Andy from the Moonshine Stalkers and Djamel from The Blue Carpet Band were also there and spontaneously jumped up on stage to jam some Rockabilly Classics like ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, which was a lot of Fun and ended in total Mayhem. Which is what it’s really about anyway. The next day we got to really inspect the Ace Cafe for quite a while because Grischa’s van was knackered and he had spent about eight hours fixing it in the parking lot and we couldn’t do much because none of us know diddly squat about cars. So it was an eventful but incredibly enjoyable experience, and we really hope to be able to play there again. After all, it is a legendary Place and well worth the visit!

How do you think your sound has evolved since you formed?

Not an awful lot, I guess. The lineup hasn’t changed and we pretty much stay in our lane. We don’t do any exotic changes or try to reinvent the wheel so I’m guessing in terms of sound, we’re not really striving to change anything too drastically. On the record of course, the sound between the first two albums differs quite a lot.
‘Tough Love, Taboos and Tattoos’ is more of the sound we are going for, which is why we’re very happy that we can return to Alan for the upcoming album. He knows exactly what we’re going for and executes it without us having to really intervene, which is a massive plus.

What’s coming up next for the Dukes of Tijuana?

Our 3rd Album being recorded in March and as many gigs as we can get! Our calendar is filling up quite nicely at the moment but there’s still a few dates left. There’s a few small tours planned and hopefully some gigs across Europe and the UK. At the moment the main focus is on the Album of course but we’re just rolling with the punches and hoping to get more busy in 2026.

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Massive thanks for the interview, of course! Always a pleasure to see that people actually give a crap and are doing stuff to give bands a platform and feed the scene. We just played the Psychobilly Earthquake recently which was really crowded and that gave us a lot of hope for the future of the scene. So we’re hoping that maybe some more people will join the scene in the coming years… and if they do, don’t be an arse and tell them they’re too young or don’t know anything. Embrace it and show them the ropes
rather than telling them they don’t belong.

If you are interested in Booking Dukes of Tijuana, please get in touch with lonesome@mental-hell.de.

We’d also like to thank the people for attending Gigs, not only our Gigs, but all kinds of Gigs, festivals and Club Shows.

Let’s keep Rock’n’Roll and live music going and we’ll see you all somewhere down the road…and F*ck AI.

Kate Allvey

Buy a copy of ‘Tough Love, Taboos and Tattoos’ here