Since then, the band has gone elsewhere. On Friday night, a burst of prerecorded gunfire echoed through a Memphis nightclub as the red-suited members of Los Tucanes de Tijuana launched their signature song, "El Papa de los Pollitos."
The lyrics describe a mob boss who calls himself "The daddy of the little chickens" and threatens rivals with an AK-47. "He who gets involved will die, if he doesn't make arrangements with me."
Los Tucanes, or The Toucans, are among the best-known composers of narcocorridos, Mexican ballads with a polka beat that often celebrate real-life drug lords as outlaw heroes.
The accordion-heavy songs are controversial in Mexico, where an estimated 6,587 people died in drug violence last year.
"Society sees drug ballads as nice, pleasant, inconsequential and harmless, but they are the opposite," Mexican lawmaker Oscar Martin Arce told The Associated Press. He has proposed a law to restrict music and movies that celebrate crime.
Despite the criticism, the music remains popular in Mexico and among immigrants in the U.S. Los Tucanes have held several shows in Memphis in recent years.
Like many Mexican groups that visit Memphis, they perform at venues that cater to immigrants and their shows aren't advertised in English. Their tour also includes stops in Tulsa, Okla.; Nashville; and Louisville. Hundreds of people paid as much as $60 for tickets to a recent show at Eclipse Discoteque nightclub on Getwell Road in south Shelby County.
The popularity of the music is a reminder of local links to Mexico's drug war. Most of the illegal drugs consumed here are delivered through Mexico, law enforcement officials say, and the city has long been a distribution point for drugs.
Mario Quintero, the 39-year-old lead singer and composer for Los Tucanes, says the group plays drug ballads because the audience wants them.
"We only play what the people want to hear, and since we depend on them, we can't stop pleasing them," he said.
He says it's freedom of speech and that it's not a negative influence.
Quintero, a soft-spoken man with a big mustache and a black hat, flatly denied connections to real-life drug dealers. "We don't have anything to do with drug trafficking or the traffickers. We make music."
Others have doubts.
The song that got them in trouble was about a Tijuana gangster named Raydel Lopez Uriarte, or "El Muletas," who belonged to a cartel known for beheadings and dissolving rivals' bodies in caustic soda, the AP reported.
The song, which appeared on the Internet last year, praises the criminal: "Muletas, how you have grown. The laws do nothing to you."
The song also includes a shout-out from Muletas to his friends.
Asked to explain how the message from Muletas got in the song, Quintero says people constantly approach him with requests and that he doesn't investigate what they do for a living.
"If someone says 'Hey, send a shout-out to Fulano,' I send it, because I don't believe I'm committing any crime," he said.
When the song appeared, Tijuana Police Chief Julian Leyzaola canceled a concert at the last minute. About 11,000 tickets had been sold, Quintero said.
The number of tickets sold underscores the group's popularity. The six-man band that started in the 1980s in a Tijuana bar has sold 2.2 million recordings in the U.S. alone, plus millions in other countries. Some of the band's biggest hits are dance or love songs that have nothing to do with drugs.
Songs by Los Tucanes are a staple on the three-hour Friday night radio show called "Heavy and Banned Ballads" on Memphis Spanish-language radio station WGSF-1030 AM.
The show specializes in corridos, or story songs. Host Aroldo Velasquez is quick to point out that the songs are on topics ranging from cockfighting to tragic love, not just drugs.
But some songs make clear references to drugs and drug violence. One song called "500 Shots" describes a band of ex-soldiers who carry out an assassination mission for the Mafia.
"'500 Shots' speaks of the truth," Velasquez said. "The truth that's happening in the border between Mexico and the United States."
On each show, Velasquez reads letters from local prisoners greeting friends and family. Foreigners make up only 2 percent of inmates in the local jail, 201 Poplar.
But at FCI Memphis, a federal lockup, one in five prisoners is from Mexico. The inmates were arrested around the country and serve long sentences, often for drugs.
Velasquez says prisoners are human beings who can change and that in some cases they're innocent.
"That's why I pass along the letters, because I believe they're not all guilty."
The radio station carried ads for the concert by Los Tucanes, who didn't go onstage until just before 2 a.m. Saturday.
What followed was a performance in which the skill, cheerfulness and energy of the musicians often overshadowed the menace of the words. Couples danced and women climbed onstage to kiss Quintero on the cheek. One drunken man did it too.
Between songs, Quintero read requests and shout-outs from the audience. One was for La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel.
Just before 4 a.m., there was a final request for a song called "La Pinata." The band obliged, singing about a party where people break open a pinata that's stuffed with drugs, not sweets.
"The cake wasn't made of bread, it was Colombian cake / Yes, they serve it on plates, but five or six grams at a time / If you want to make pinatas, I've got the bags right here."
-Associated Press
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