Alex Cuba is doing a second duet with Ron Sexsmith, but he won't yet reveal the others he is co-performing with on his upcoming album.
The Cuban-born music superstar is now based in northern B.C. He traded in the white sands of Havana for the white snows of Smithers. But still, the biggest names in music line up to work with this chart-topping young Latino legend.
Alex Cuba is so effective from his home off the beaten track that the first run of his upcoming album is already sold out and it hasn't even been released yet. He opened a pre-sales link on the pledgemusic.com website and the online cash register started to ring.
"Last night my campaign hit 100 per cent of my goal for Phase 1," he told The Citizen this week. "It means you've covered off that first risk you take as a musician making an album, and if you get enough of those early sales you look good on the charts because all those CD sales go through right off the mark on your official release date. That can give you a big boost in your marketing, to come out with a bigger number on Day 1."
His album was most likely going to get plenty of notice anyway. Cuba's album was highly anticipated after his first four albums (five if you count his 2001 Canadian debut done under the Puentes Brothers name with his twin brother Adonis) climbed almost as high as a player can reach on the music ladder.
To recap, the Puentes Brothers album Morumba Cubana got a Juno Award nomination for Best Global Album to start off their life in Canada. Alex Cuba has, as a soloist, acquired four more Juno nominations since then - one for each album he's released - and won two of those trophies.
The accolades have spilled well beyond Canadian borders, however. Cuba has also picked up three nominations from the Latin Grammy Awards, winning two of them, and the mainstream Grammy Awards also gave him a nomination in the Best Latin Pop Album category.
He has also earned many influential friends in the music industry. One of the first to open doors for him and his brother (Adonis has also been nominated for a mainstream Grammy Award as lead singer of the Latin group Mongorama) was former Prince George musician Daniel Lapp, now based in Victoria where the Puentes boys moved in 1998. Alex Cuba has gone on to work with the likes of Nelly Furtado, Jason Mraz, Corinne Bailey Rae, Mark Pellizzer of Magic!, and Ron Sexsmith.
Collaborations have been such a key part of Cuba's musical evolution, he devoted about half the songs on his new album Healer to bilingual duets.
"It's difficult, to try to make two diff languages into one sound, but it has come together really nicely, and I think it will be seen as something fresh from me," he said.
What he would not say was whom the other voices were, save one. "Because you liked my song with Ron Sexsmith from my first album, I'll give you that hint. Ron Sexsmith is there with me again. We sent him the song with the translation and he sent us back his version in 24 hours. I thought he was a genius. He just ran away with that."
In fairness, Cuba is renowned as a songwriter. He has an international publishing deal that brings him to major cities all over North America several times a year to write with other songsmiths or present his songs to potential performance personalities.
Healer came from that process. He was able to save some of the best ones for himself.
"Healer has healed me, even though I was not damaged," he said. "I called it that because it has a 'foot on the ground' kind of vibe to it - it has an honesty, it is at a comfortable pace, I find it liberating, and also there are some songs on there that talk about unity and love that we go through in humanity. We are in a time when people would rather spend more time on Facebook than go out and meet face to face. So that's what we're dealing with as people - forces pulling us apart - so we have to respond to that."
Responding to the demands of the music industry led Cuba and his wife Sarah to form their own record label, Caracol Records (distributed by Fontana North). His efforts to nurture the music scene in Smithers, and his unique momentum as a Spanish star in an English-French nation, has magnetized others to his work. People are applying to be on his label even though he hasn't offered any openings.
"It has been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot," he said, "but that would mean hiring people and that's scary. It's just Sarah and me right now, but I'd never say no to the future possibilities."
One future date to mark on your calendar is March 31. That is the day Healer gets officially released. Until then, you can pre-order it and get in on the big launch numbers.
Cuba also hopes to make Prince George one of the first places in the world that gets to hear the new music, so watch local listings for a concert appearance sometime soon.
