Taking a trip to the Lavender Moon

When Los Lobos gathered in a rehearsal studio recently to prepare for the first full concert performances of the group’s 1992 album, “Kiko,” drummer-songwriter Louie Perez says everyone looked around and asked, “Who’s idea was this?”

It was the celebrated Los Angeles quintet’s road manager who proposed the concept as a way to spice up Lobos’ annual December shows at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium.

The notion was so enticing that the group booked four other dates to play “Kiko,” including Tuesday and Thursday at the House of Blues’ West Hollywood and Anaheim locales, respectively.

But when the musicians sat down to get to work on the project, two hurdles arose: One was the challenging music itself, the songs moving through a variety of styles, including roadhouse rock and traditional Mexican, with a distinctively surreal approach to the arrangements. The other, perhaps larger issue, was the place the album holds in the Lobos canon.

“I always said it was my favorite record of ours,” Perez says. “Everyone loved that record. Critics consider it the pinnacle of our artistic career, which is frightening. From a pinnacle, the only way is down. A lot of the songs we hadn’t played in a while, and some we never played live at all. So to look at it as a body of work and play it in sequence was a cool idea, but at the same time daunting.”

Perez, 52, is not overstating the matter. “Kiko” is just one of those albums.

The band had already earned a strong reputation for its mix of Mexican folk (its repertoire when it started in the mid-’70s) and roots-rock (which made it an L.A. favorite alongside such mainstays as X and the Blasters in the ‘80s). And with its 1987 version of “La Bamba,” recorded as the title song for the film biography of ‘50s rocker Ritchie Valens, Los Lobos had a No. 1 hit and gained international recognition.

But for “Kiko,” Perez, multi-instrumentalist David Hidalgo, guitarist Cesar Rosas, bassist Conrad Lozano and saxophone-keyboard player Steve Berlin teamed with producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake for something well beyond anything they’d done.

For his lyrics, Perez crafted a vivid dream world, drawing inspiration from sources as varied as “magic realism” author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Japanese renga and haiku. The music matched the images’ surreal impressionism at every step, enhanced by the creative arrangements and production experiments.

It’s a set of songs that cover a lot of ground yet hang together, examining a dark world of violence, displacement and even death, all with a child-like innocence. The Times named it the best album of 1992, with Rolling Stone ranking it third and later naming it one of the essential albums of the decade.

“It took on a life of its own, in front of us almost as if we were observers,” says Perez, who sounds as if he’s an observer again with the live revival of the material, based on his experiences with the Fillmore shows.

“To revisit these songs and to see the excitement at the Fillmore shows was a great thing,” he says. “Our fans have always been there 100% for us, and that day I saw 150%. I saw ear-to-ear smiles and there were explosions of joy in the room when we hit certain songs -- people who had waited forever to hear some of the songs.”

And the “Kiko” inspiration does not stop at these concerts. Perez and Hidalgo are working with the Mark Taper Forum to develop a theater production drawing from the material. The two have already worked with the Taper’s Diane Rodriguez on an in-development production based on the life and music of mentor/influence Lalo Guerrero (who died in March at age 88), as well as an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Good Woman of Setzuan.”

“It wasn’t until I sat down and dissected the songs from ‘Kiko’ that I realized there are so many people living in the Land of the Lavender Moon, as we call it,” he says.

And peak though it may be, “Kiko” was hardly the end of Los Lobos’ creativity. The band has continued making challenging albums, further expanding its musical language into soul, folk and rock realms, as well as maintaining a reputation as a stellar live act -- captured on a 2004 “Live at the Fillmore” DVD release. A new album is in process, with plans for a spring release.

The current “Kiko” experience has spurred Perez to some nostalgia about the band and the bittersweet changes since Perez, Hidalgo, Rosas and Lozano first became friends growing up in East L.A. Naturally, they don’t hang out much anymore when they’re not working, given family and other considerations (Perez has raised three kids, ages 17 to 29). And there have been tragedies, most notably in 1999 when Rosas’ wife, Sandra, was kidnapped and murdered by her half brother.

Perez also says the evidence of age is hard to miss. He cites lower back pain among the souvenirs of the active touring schedule. But he’s not complaining.

Ultimately, he says, “Kiko” takes him back even further, to the scenes he says are the original inspiration for his art.

“I go back to being on my little blue Schwinn Sting-Ray bike, riding around the neighborhood, and all the Marquez-looking characters there,” he says. “The old woman walking down the street wearing a burlap dress because she’s doing a manda -- when you ask God to help you and you do something like that in return. Or Champ, who used to be a boxer, walking down the street throwing punches in the air. And then around the corner walking into a sweatshop and all the ladies at all hours at sewing machines. I’ve never been at a loss for material within the context of my life.”

How it all came together so magically on “Kiko” is still a mystery to him, though, and one he doesn’t really want to solve.

“I wish I knew what that was,” he says. “But just like flying 35,000 feet up in a jet, I don’t want to think about what keeps it up in the air.”

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Los Lobos

Where: House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday

Price: $32.50

Contact: (323) 848-5100

Also

Where: House of Blues Anaheim, 1530 S. Disneyland Drive, Anaheim

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Price: $32.50

Contact: (714) 778-2583