Max Gomez was about seven or eight when he started obsessively playing his older brother’s Zach's guitar.
He developed as an instrumentalist but years went by before the Taos-born composer and recording artist started to see himself as a singer or songwriter.
It all changed when he started listening to the Man in Black.
“I'd listen to Johnny Cash records and I thought, this guy's not singing," said Gomez.
"He's just talking, he's talking while the music plays. And I thought, well, 'I can't sing, but I think I could do that.'”
So Max Gomez started singing and writing songs, and by the time he was 15 he was performing with such local legends as Michael Hearn and Jimmy Stadler and playing often at the Old Blinking Light, which was a now long-gone Taos hot spot.
Tonight he’ll be sharing the stage with the musicians in his own band, playing on Santa Fe Plaza, with the Rifters opening at 6 p.m.
Gomez said he hasn’t played the main plaza in about ten years, and any show here is made even more meaningful by his family’s deep roots in Santa Fe. For example, his grandmother worked at the Lensic Theater in the 1940s as an usherette.
In his early 20s Gomez started working with a New York producer and before long he had some tracks and then a deal to record his first album for New West Records.
Critical praise rolled in for that record, 2013's Rule the World, and soon, Gomez was opening up for heros like John Hiatt, Steve Earle, and Buddy Miller.
One song, “Make it Me,” that he recorded a few years after the debut, become something like a hit for Gomez. He and a collaborator came up with the tune in less than hour.
"I wrote it with my friend Keith Sykes. He's written a lot of classics that I will always study and look up to. . . songs with John Prine and Jimmy Buffet and Guy Clark," Gomez said. "Keith lives in Memphis, and we got together there and we wrote this song in a fell swoop. We were just hanging out playing guitar and we sat down at this little card table and this song happened."
Gomez says his owes his growth to the way both his hometown and the one down the road helped support his creative evolution.
"Everybody in Taos was always so encouraging and so positive, and still are, over the years. Same in Santa Fe, you know? And I think that artistic community that really encourages the youth—I think that really had an effect on me in a positive way.
One song he’s likely to do tonight is a wry take on his home state, inspired at least in part by an airport agent in Kansas who demanded to see his passport because apparently they didn’t know what country New Mexico was in.
Max Gomez will be busy in coming months making sure everyone knows their geography. A lot of the shows will be close to home.
He’ll play Roswell, Corrales, and an acoustic set that’s part of a Ruidoso concert series that’s just been re-started after the fires and floods forced a hiatus.
One of Gomez's upcoming closer-to-home performances will find him rafting with 25 fans and friends down the Rio Chama to an Abiquiu campsite, where he’ll play an acoustic set every evening around the campfire for waterlogged travelers.
Max Gomez and his band will play tonight on Santa Fe Plaza. The Rifters will open at 6 p.m. More information is at maxgomezmusic.com and lensic360.org.
Credits
"Make it Me" (single, 2017)
"The New Mexico Song" (single, 2024)
