El Paso band Tormenta Rey's debut album a voyage into late-night New Orleans jazz

The opening of Tormenta Rey's self-titled debut album is reminiscent of Gershwin, with soaring strings and twinkling piano, before the listener is dropped into a late-night speakeasy in New Orleans, where Leilainia Marcus' muted trumpet clears a path for the low, gravelly tone of Stephen Rey's vocals.

While it's easy to hear the heavy influence of early New Orleans jazz in all of the band's music, a myriad of styles can be heard throughout, from the gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt and the baritone voices of Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits to the plunking piano of ragtime and the moaning sousaphone of a New Orleans funeral.

The band's album is set to be released on Valentine's Day, when the band will play alongside the Detroit Cobras in San Diego before appearing in Downtown El Paso on Feb. 18 at Mona Bar.

After that, the band is headed South to play its way across Texas before hitting Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans, where they will perform at the New Orleans Jazz Museum.

Marcus and Rey live in a historic building in Sunset Heights and make up the heart of the band, with the other members appearing as needed depending on the size of the venue ‒ often, the two perform as a duo.

Marcus is an El Paso native and a graduate of El Paso High School. She moved away in 1999 and met Rey in San Diego, his hometown. The two returned to the Borderland last year.

While Rey has performed and recorded for years, his foray with Tormenta Rey represents a change of pace from upbeat songs to a slower, almost mournful sound.

"I've been trying to make a late-night record for a long time," Rey said. "I have a tendency naturally to write ballads and the dirge and just somehow things get taken into a faster context, a faster tempo. So, the idea was to keep some of these songs in their original state."

The album was recorded at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo with producer Clinton Davis, who contributes piano, banjo and mandolin to the album, but Rey said the work of putting the songs together and developing an overall sound for the record began about a year ago.

"The process was a year of planning, working, pre-production," Rey said. "I think there's a common denominator and a relationship with everything I've done in the past, but this record is different because of working with Clinton Davis. We talked about the direction and the soundscape and what shape this record would take."

"It was a year of conversations and me sending him demos and then him writing string arrangements and just really locking himself up with these songs," he continued. "It was a year of conversations and working together."

Anchored in the border

A number of local musicians were called on to contribute to the record, including Elia Esparza on backing vocals, David Rodriguez on upright bass and Japhy Ryder on electric guitar, which Marcus said was an intentional move by the band.

"Because we were recording at Sonic Ranch and we were moving here at the time, we decided to get to know the local musicians and include them and make it a little more anchored here," Marcus said.

But it's not only the musicians that anchor the band's sound to the border; it's the life experiences of Rey, the lead songwriter for the band, growing up just across the border from Mexicali.

"My grandparents had a failed business in Mexicali, so I think there's two factors there," Rey said of his early musical inspirations. "Living in a border town was influential to me, but also my grandparents, from their failed business, had two jukeboxes in their living room."

Rey recalled being a child and pushing buttons on the jukeboxes, which were stocked with Mexican folk songs and ballads, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison, and early rock 'n' roll.

"That played a huge influence on me," Rey added.

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Isolation due to pandemic was influence

While Marcus has contributed to some of Rey's earlier projects, the two said the impetus for Tormenta Rey was the isolation imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Something else kind of special developed," Rey said. "Tormenta Rey came out of the pandemic, really. We kind of learned how to exist, for economic purposes really, we really learned how to exist just the two of us. We couldn't meet with people ... it forced us to kind of hone in what we were doing."

Marcus recalled Tormenta Rey's beginnings.

"We would just play music until sunrise sometimes," she said. "Just have fun with it and play, really. That expanded my knowledge of my instrument, for sure, and our nuances together."

After deciding to return to El Paso, Marcus recalled, the two traveled for a while playing small venues and wineries before holing up in a hotel and recording demos of the songs that would make up their self-titled debut.

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And the songs themselves tell a story about the band and how they approach their work.

The song "Cavalier," Marcus said, always has a haunting, trancelike feel that seems to attract the supernatural ‒ while performing the song at a bar recently, glass began to shatter.

"Something about that song is magical," Marcus said. "It feels like it stops time."

The song "El Paso," she said, was written as Rey's response when she asked him to move back to the Sun City with her.

"For me, a lot of the songs feel like the struggle we all have with light and dark and the mental entrapments we can make for ourselves and finding that hope and love that pushes you through," Marcus said. "Just finding the hope and finding the magic of the moment."

Rey said: "I don't have one M.O. for writing. It's just a certain mechanism or feeling that comes around. So, usually, it's a mixture of a feeling ‒ could be a beautiful melody but then the juxtaposition of a lyric that might be kind of tragic. It can have the feeling of a lullaby."

Tormenta Rey's album will be available on all streaming and download services Tuesday. Physical copies of the record can be purchased at performances or via the band's website, https://elreymusic.com.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Tormenta Rey's debut album a voyage into late-night New Orleans jazz