The Lisa Morales you hear on her fourth solo album, Sonora (out September 13, 2024 on Luna Records) is decades removed from the precocious niñita who was not yet in grade school, who used to sing mariachi songs with her sister Roberta at Mexican restaurants when they were growing up in Tucson, Arizona.
But measure that span between then and now by melody and memory, and the distance shrinks to a heartbeat.
The first single/video, “Hermanitas in the Rain,” a tribute to her longtime musical partner and sibling, Roberta, will be released on July 23rd. “I started writing this song three days before my sister, Roberta, passed,” recalls Morales. “I went into her room to have her help me with it, but it was hard. I had all these beautiful memories flooding back to me in that moment. I wrote it all in a matter of minutes but didn’t realize it was done, music and all until I brought it back out a year and a half later. When we were little girls in Tucson, AZ, the monsoon rains in July and August would fill the busy streets around the block. Roberta would grab me, and we would sit on the curb to get splashed by the cars driving by! I put in pieces of our culture in this song, lyrically. Mom crawled to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City to be able to have us—in the song, I refer to “Guadalupe-she watches over.”
“We sang in Spanish before we sang English,” Morales says of the Mexican music that soundtracked and informed her life “from being a toddler on up” — up, in fact, to the present day.
Lisa and Roberta sang that music not just at restaurants at their father’s behest but at every family gathering (“practically bi-weekly,” she laughs), together with their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins by the dozens. And on the rare occasions when they weren’t singing themselves, they still marinated in the music daily, from the beautiful boleros on the family turntable to endless hours of Sonoran rancheras (“Mexican country music,” as Lisa calls it) on the radio. Of course, there was plenty of non-Spanish music in that formative air, too; an older brother had a rock band, and one of her many cousins just happened to be Linda Ronstadt.
SONORA
Tracklisting
Flores (En Un Jardin)
It’s A Common Thing
En El Limbo
What Do You Want
Imposter
Adios Mi Vida
Have it All
La Paz
Hermana
On Sonora, the brunt of that grieving doesn’t come until the very end, with “Hermana” — Morales wrote the mournful ballada shortly after her sister’s death. Two years on, the heart-shattering anguish in Lisa’s voice as she sing-cries the last two lines rings even more poignant: “Puedes escucharme, Hermana? / Can you hear me, Roberta?”
As devastating as that endnote may be, though, it’s an anomaly on Sonora. True to Morales’ determination not to surrender fully to sorrow, the grief of “Hermana” is beautifully counterbalanced earlier on the album by “Hermanitas in the Rain,” a lilting, almost rhapsodic snapshot of a cherished memory from her and Roberta’s childhood.
“Hermanitas in the Rain,” “Hermana,” and “What Do You Want” are the only three songs on Sonora that Morales wrote solo. The rest were all co-writes — (“Flores (En Un Jardin)” with Tish Hinojosa; “Have It All” with JoJo Garza of Los Lonely Boys; “Impostor” with Kelsey Wilson of Austin’s Sir Woman; “La Paz” with A.J. Haynes of Louisiana’s the Seratones); “Adios Mi Vida” with Mariangela Guerra; and “En El Limbo” with Nick Diaz — aka Buenos Diaz — and Felipe Castañeda. Closest of all to her heart is “It’s a Common Thing” — a song she got to co-write with Roberta, honoring one of her sister’s last wishes.
Roberta can be heard on “It’s a Common Thing,” via the brief snippet of her original voice memo that opens the track. But she’s not the only blood relative of Lisa’s featured on Sonora. Thomas Spencer, Lisa’s 19-year-old son and latest full-time addition to her road band, makes his studio debut, playing lead or classical guitar on several tracks (alongside such esteemed industry vets as JoJo Garza, David Pulkingham, Davíd Garza, and Michael Ramos). And much to his proud mother’s delight, he sings a fair amount of background vocals, too. “I really missed the effortless family harmonies that Roberta and I always had together, so I asked him one day to try singing with me, and bam, there it was — that same unmistakable family quality.” Just call it una tradición familiar.
Sonora will be released on September 13, 2024 via Luna Records.
LISA MORALES
TOUR DATES:
Aug. 24 McGonigal’s Mucky Duck Houston, TX
Sept. 6-7 Antlers & Acorns Festival Boone, NC
Sept. 13 Waterloo Records In-store Austin, TX
Sept. 14 04 Center Austin, TX
Sept. 20 The Blue Door Oklahoma City, OK
Oct. 4 Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe Galveston, TX