Mikel Erentxun: «It is an important leap: twenty-five concerts in the United States and several in Mexico»

«This is going to be the great culmination of friends on duty»

On September 23, in Riverside (California), Erentxun will kick off an impressive tour of the United States and Mexico, hand in hand with his album friends on duty with whom he is recalling his thirty-five years of career. It is not his first time across the pond, but it is the most massive and extensive. Accompanied by the Argentine artist Miguel Mateos, with whom he has already met in the past in the days of Duncan Dhu, the man from San Sebastian talks with Javier Escorzo about the details of this adventure.

Text: JAVIER ESCORZO.
Photos: JAVIER ESCORZO (Photos 2 and 3).

The story of friends on duty is well known. In 2020, during a meal with her manager, Mikel Erentxun noticed that that year was thirty-fifth since the release of his first album with Duncan Dhu (the mini LP through Scottish lands, GASA, 1985). To celebrate the event, she wanted to hold a commemorative concert with a guest. However, due to (or thanks to) the pandemic, the project mutated and grew until it became what, finally, ended up being a double album made up of twenty songs from his entire career performed together with twenty-four colleagues (Bunbury , Calamaro, Iván Ferreiro, Ángel Stanich, Quique González, Long Live Sweden, Amaia…). Two years later, the man from San Sebastian could not be more satisfied with the experience: «The adventure of friends on duty I am finding it extremely rewarding. Everything is being very nice, from the very fact that the album exists, with that recording when we were still half confined and how all the guests got involved, to the reception of it, which has been very positive; and then the tour, which has started two years late due to the pandemic, but which is being beautiful, as in the good times».

Transoceanic and joint adventure

Now, after several months touring Spain with his band, it’s time to cross the pond: «This is going to be the great culmination of friends on duty. More than thirty concerts there, a powerful tour of the United States and several dates in Mexico. With Duncan Dhu we toured the United States in 1989, there were fifteen concerts and then it was something historic. Now there will be twenty-five, it’s like a dream. Although it is true that practically all the albums, from the nineties to today, I have presented there, they have always been tours of four, five, or at most eight concerts. Once I did an acoustic tour with Fran Iturbe that was twelve, but this time it is an important leap, because we do twenty-five».

Mikel Erentxun during the Spanish tour of “Amigos de Guardia”.

“On Duncan Dhu’s tour of the United States, with Autobiography, We went with Miguel Mateos. He was already a star over there and we were not. Now we meet again on equal terms”

Fate, which is capricious, has wanted his path to cross again with that of an Argentine artist with whom he already coincided more than thirty years ago: «Yes, it so happens that on the tour we did with Duncan Dhu in the United States, which was with Autobiography at the end of 1989 and beginning of 1990, we went with the same artist, with Miguel Mateos. He was already a star over there and we weren’t, we were just starting out. You could almost say that we opened the concerts for him. Now, thirty-odd years later, we meet again on equal terms, he is going to be very nice ». The name of Miguel Mateos is not very popular in Spain, but in America he has a long and successful career behind him: «Here he is not well known, but there he is a very powerful artist. He is celebrating his forty-year career and I am thirty-five, although in reality I am already thirty-seven, despite the fact that the whole adventure of friends on duty bears the number thirty-five in the logo. And we’re both doing a hit tour.” Despite having shared that experience three decades ago, they have rarely met since then: «After that Duncan Dhu tour, I have met him on occasion in America, at a concert with more people, like that festival with Los Enanitos Verdes, Cafeta Cuba, Miguel Mateos and Mikel Erentxun».

At the time we speak with Mikel, there are twenty-three concerts that have been announced in the United States; however, he reveals to us that they will finally be twenty-five. A country through which he has traveled many times before, although never so extensively: «When I have gone to the United States, which has been many times, I have always gone to areas with a Latin public, especially Mexican. Basically California and Texas, and then Chicago and New York. Now we go to areas that are out of that loop, like Salt Lake City, for example. And the incredible thing about all this is that the promoter is delighted and says that this is the first part of the tour, but next year he wants us to do the second part. Of course, if that finally comes out, we’ll go to everything we don’t play on this tour: Oregon, Las Vegas… Another fifteen or twenty shows. But well, first we are going to focus on these twenty-five concerts that we are starting now».

In the absence of confirming that second part by the United States, there are also plans for other countries on the American continent: «In this section, it was also planned to do Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile and Peru, but, for now, we have had to remove them. It would have been a tour of three long months, we were going until Christmas. So, for now, we now do these dates in the United States and also Mexico, and next year to see if we can go to those countries in the south and the second part of the United States.

This will be the concerts

Regarding the logistics of the tour, although they are shared dates with Miguel Mateos, each artist has proposed them as independent concerts: «There will be two different concerts, each with its sound montage. We share lights, but everything else is separate. Nor will we share musicians, each one goes with his band. It will play first one and then another. We don’t mingle, at least a priori. Maybe then something comes up, but at the moment we haven’t talked about it.

Mikel Erentxun during the Spanish tour of “Amigos de Guardia”.

«The repertoire will be the same as here, but we have added some songs like “A plena sol”, which was the song that opened the doors to the United States for me»

Although the concept of the tour is similar to the one we already know in Spain, there will be some differences in the American and Mexican sections: «I am doing this tour of Spain in a sextet format, but on the United States dates we will not all be able to go , we will be a quartet. Marina Iniesta (guitar) and Mikel Azpíroz (keyboards) are not going. We will be two guitars, bass and drums, just like in the Live at The Roxy (Warner, 2018). In Mexico we go to bigger places and there we do have the same production as in Spain, so Marina and Azpíroz will join us there. Regarding the repertoire, it is from here, but we have added some songs that had a lot of repercussion over there, for example “California”, “Let go of the reins of my heart”, “I can’t help (thinking about you)”… And “A plena sol”, which was the song that opened the doors to the United States for me. We have also removed some that are not known there, such as “Those black eyes” and “One hundred seagulls”».

The project is ambitious and it seems that it is getting a good response from the American public: «The expectations are good. In the United States we go to small rooms, from five hundred to a thousand people. There is everything from the typical Latin nightclub, like the ones in the Bunbury movie [se refiere a El viaje más largo, el documental de 2016 rodado por Alexis Morente sobre una gira de Enrique por Estados Unidos], in which he comes out saying that he doesn’t want to play in that room anymore, and there are others like House of Blues, some auditorium, some theater… There’s a bit of everything. But the capacities are more or less those. In Mexico we are already going to bigger venues, we do Arenas, places for five or ten thousand people. A third group, Elefante, is going to join there, and we play in venues such as the WiZink Center in Madrid, which can be sold out. If everything is sold, there are fifteen thousand and, if not, you could put up to five thousand people. They are much bigger venues, that’s why we can go with all the production, the sextet formation… Ticket sales are going very well. In fact, the producer is the same for the United States and Mexico and he wants to continue next year, so everything is fine ».

Waiting for how this great climax to the stage of friends on duty, and to check if the new dates are finally confirmed in 2023 for the United States and other Ibero-American countries, Mikel is already preparing his next moves. But before getting fully involved in new projects, the man from San Sebastian wants to make the most of this sweet moment he is going through, as he himself admits, with an unusual humility and naturalness within a guild in which excessive egos abound: «I am enjoying myself a lot because I am very aware that this is a parenthesis. Next year I will record my album which, by the way, I already have very advanced; and when i go out on tour with my new songs i know i’m going back again to smaller venues and smaller production, smaller everything. So now I’m enjoying this to the fullest, because I know it’s short-lived.”