The Confessions of a travelling Mustachio Brother

[Patrice Broussard]

[posted for Pancho Mustachio, Patrice's human thrall]

Its been a long time since I’ve last been to confession. But now there are a couple of things on my chest that have been bothering me, keeping me awake at night, and sad and restless during the day.

The first thing is I don’t speak any Spanish. Seriously. Well a few phrases of course, tools of the trade. Adios, te amo, vamos, hasta la vista… You get what I mean. But apart from that, nada. But don’t get me wrong, amigo. I am not some fake Mexican trying to make a living claiming something I not. No the Mustachio brothers are all born south of the border. But you don’t learn much Spanish when you are raised by foster parents in South Dakota. In school we adopted their name of Miller, it was easier that way. But when we started our career, playing guitar, singing our songs, we realized no one books two mariachi named Cisco and Pancho Miller. So it was back to the old family name. Within short time we became pretty big in North Dakota. Seriously big, believe me. We rocked every barn from Vermillion to Bison, from Edgemont to Sisseton. People loved us and our songs. Vaya Con Dios, La Paloma Blanca, Cielito Lindo, Mexican Rose. All those classics. We were getting known nationwide and started to tour all across the US of A. North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, even Wyoming and Montana. We even started to get paid for our shows and didn’t have to pass around a sombrero among the patrons anymore. We knew we were making it big, we were on the way to international fame!

Then that touring offer from Canada came in. Cisco and I were so excited! We packed our belongings into our trusty truck – or rusty truck? both work – and headed north. We started our tour in Brandon, Manitoba, heading east from there. It was winter, heavy snow, frozen roads, long drives. But we were in a great mood. We were sure those Canadians would love us as much as the Americans did. We were the up and coming stars on the international mariachi scene. What would possibly go wrong? Well a lot did. I spare you the story of that bar room brawl we got involved in at that lumberjack camp near Norway House, or those three days in the freezing cold when our truck broke down on route between Red Lake and Kenora – well we thought we were somewhere between Red Lake and Kenora, according to Cisco’s map. Even though so much went wrong I have not much to regret or confess in regards to that ill-fated tour. Nothing to regret but one thing:

I killed my brother.