Carrie Rodriguez and The Golden Era of Mexican Music.

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Texan Carrie Rodriguez first came to most folks’ attention when she teamed up with Chip Taylor back in the early noughties, the pair recording four albums together. She then carved out a successful solo career with her debut album, 2006’s Seven Angels On A Bicycle quickly followed by another six discs leading one writer to describe her as perhaps, “The hardest-working woman in American roots music.” An appellation that’s borne out when you dig around into the background of her latest (and in the opinion of many, her best) album, Lola, released earlier this year. The album is a result of Rodriguez delving into her Mexican family roots, a project she has been considering for some time, the fact that she was more than midway through a pregnancy when she recorded the album no hindrance. Happily, she and her partner Luke Jacobs are now the proud parents of their son Cruz while Lola, their sonic offspring is also thriving.

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Lola consists of Rodriguez’s settings of classic Mexican songs; rancheras and boleros, reclaimed from the past along with several of her own songs which were inspired and informed by her listening to the crackly past. The originals are sung in Spanish, her own songs in Spanish and English. The result a collection of songs, some languid, some passionate, all delivered by her crack assemblage, The Sacred Hearts who include Jacobs, Bill Frisell and Viktor Krauss. It’s a magnificent celebration of her Mexican heritage, not dissimilar from some of Ry Cooder’s recent efforts, while it’s not afraid to address current issues that have been stirred up concerning the plight and fortunes of Mexican American citizens.

Ms. Rodriguez is coming to the UK in November offering us a chance to hear these remarkable songs in a live setting and she took some time out to talk to Blabber’n’Smoke about the album and its conception. It all started when she was given a collection of songs recorded by her great aunt, Eva Garza, back in the 1940’s. So first of all we asked her about this and why it eventually led to Lola.

Eva was my grandmother’s older sister and she got her start singing on a programme in the ’40s called Voice of America. It was a radio show that was broadcast all over the world where American troops were stationed and her first gigs were at Radio City Music Hall singing in Spanish. I didn’t really get to hear her music until my grandmother gave me a bunch of her songs taken from old scratchy recordings that had been transferred onto CD. She gave me them when I was in my early twenties and I remember I was living in New York at the time and the moment I heard them I was literally brought to tears. She has this gorgeous big alto voice and the type of music she was singing was very dramatic, ballads and boleros with very melodramatic lyrics and big orchestras behind her, strings, woodwind, trumpets. I was completely blown away that this was my relative although I never met her. She was quite a bit older than my grandmother and she died very young, just in her early forties when she passed away. She was a family legend of course but I probably thought that my grandmother had exaggerated her until I actually  heard her and I was just so moved by her music and her passion so that’s what started my journey into thinking about singing in Spanish. It’s been many years, I started singing one song in Spanish as an encore in my shows and little by little I got braver, I added some more songs in and eventually I worked up to the place where I could make this record.

So the album has been in the making in your mind for a number of years then?

Yes. Maybe for the past seven or eight years I’ve been thinking about doing this, making an album of Spanish songs but I didn’t quite feel ready. I really didn’t know what it would be, I knew I wanted to record an album and I had started to dig into some old songs and I really did think that the album would all be in Spanish. In the end however I wound up writing half of the songs because it just didn’t feel quite authentic to me to make an entire album of classic songs even though they’re adorable to me, these old ranchera songs. I thought I had to introduce more of myself into the album and so I added my songs which in the end turned out to be sort of “Spanglish.”

The album opens with Perfidia, a song that’s fairly well known as its been covered by the likes of Glenn Miller and Linda Rondstadt but the other covers are much more obscure. How did you go about selecting the songs?

Well after listening to my great aunt, I started researching into these old songs and learning more about other artists of her time. I’d listen to her singing and see who wrote the song, say, Cuco Sanchez, one of the greatest Mexican writers so I’d look up Cuco Sanchez and see who else had covered his songs. Just through listening to my great aunt I discovered so many wonderful artists that I now listen to all the time, people like Chavela Vargas, Lydia Mendoza, Javier Solis and Lola Beltran. It really was a golden era of Mexican music that went all the way through to the sixties, they called it  “Época de Oro“, the golden era and it wasn’t just the music, Mexican films were being made in Hollywood, really big productions and the music was part of that. So I dug through all of that and found my favourite songs which weren’t necessarily the most popular ones. But Perfidia is definitely the most recognisable one and the version I find most inspiring is the one by Trio Los Panchos which has the most incredible harmonies all the way through. And from the moment I knew I wanted to cover Perfidia I also knew that I wanted Raul Malo to sing with me on it.  I just thought it has to be Raul and of course he did it. I was so thrilled that he said yes.

Of course the words for these songs are in Spanish and they often tell a tale, usually fuelled by love, lust or treachery. When you’re playing them live do you explain the stories to the audience?

I do because I don’t expect everyone to be fluent in Spanish. So I explain the story and one of the interesting things that came to me over the course of doing the album was how many parallels there are between Mexican ranchera music and American country music. For example I did a song called Que Manera De Perder which means What A Way To Lose. It’s a bilingual duet on the album and the first time I heard it I couldn’t believe how much it sounded like a Merle Haggard song, one of his really sad songs like Today I Started Loving You Again. You know, the kind of song that makes you want to stay up too late and drink and cry and look at old photos. So I like explaining the songs and pointing out the similarities. I think that these days it’s really important to point out the similarities between our countries because we’re just so insanely divided right now.

There are a couple of your songs that address these issues head on. Llano Estacado is about the plight of immigrants into the USA and West Side recalls a sort of schoolyard apartheid with Mexican kids shunned by the white kids. Why did you put these songs into what is essentially an album of old love songs?

Diving into the older songs and singing them in Spanish brought about some feelings, memories and such that I really wasn’t aware were in there. Thinking about how I grew up, what it was like when I was growing up, what it felt like to be half Mexican American, half Anglo American and living on the west side which was the Anglo side of the tracks. I hadn’t thought about my school since I was a kid but as I was working on the record the memory came back and I sat down and wrote the song (West Side) in like 10 minutes. It was something that had been sitting there but hadn’t been brought to the surface until I started looking back at these old songs and it kind of got mixed in with the way things are right now. So some of the songs do have that sort of political slant and even though it’s kind of strange to have them there along with these romantic ballads I think the album is a reflection of who I am, my culture, my roots. I think it’s an authentic representation of me.

And of course Chip Taylor has just released a new song with you, Who’s Gonna Build That Wall, which addresses one of these issues head on.

That’s an amazing song. Chip just wrote that recently and we were touring Canada and decided to record it because it’s so timely. We really wanted people to hear it so I know Chip’s doing everything he can to get it out there before the election.

The album is beautifully played and sung and very evocative of the images and sounds that many of us have of Mexico. Images gleaned from Hollywood of hot cantinas and Latin passion. How long did you and the band spend on working up the arrangements?

Luke and I did a lot of the work together before the band showed up so we had the basic arrangements. Luke’s background is more rock and pop so it was a nice juxtaposition for these classic Mexican songs. I wanted to have a “mariachi” sound of sorts but I also wanted it to be something modern, kind of culturally mixed up. I didn’t want to just play the songs as they originally sounded so we started off with the arrangements Luke and I did and then the band got together for about four or five days before we went and recorded the songs live in the studio. The only overdubs were a little bit of pedal steel at the end. It was so much fun and this is the first record I’ve made where I didn’t need to fix any vocals afterwards, it’s all just live takes as I was inspired by the music and the band around me. I was also seven months pregnant and I think that also inspired me having this little life in my belly dancing around as I was singing.

The album certainly reminds me of some of Ry Cooder’s recent work, Chavez Ravine and his album with the Cuban Manuel Galbán, Mambo Sinuendo.

I have’t heard those albums but I’ve got Ry Cooder’s Talking Timbuktu which he recorded with Ali Farka Touré  and of course Buena Vista. So I don’t know too much about his work but I like the comparison. The idea of getting Bill Frisell in was too make something completely new and to take these classic songs into outer space. For example, on the instrumental take of Si No Te Vas I worked up an arrangement where I was thinking of a Phillip glass type figure in it that took it somewhere else, like we were up there with no ground to stand on and when we recorded it just exceeded my expectations of it, it does sound otherworldly to me.

We’re looking forward to hearing these songs when you tour the UK in November. Who will be playing with you on stage?

It will be Luke and me. We’ve toured as a duo in the UK many times and we’ve been playing these songs as a duo over here in the States. They come across really well and of course Luke’s got his lap steel which adds a lot of atmosphere. So it’s Luke and me and we’re bring our son, Cruz and my mom who is the granny nanny, it’s a family affair

Carrie’s UK tour starts in Birmingham on 3rd November ending in Edinburgh on 17th with a Glasgow show on the 16th November. All dates are here.

Chip Taylor. Little Brothers. Train Wreck Records

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Where do you start with Chip Taylor? Well. First off he’s one of the headliners at this week’s Glasgow Americana Festival playing Friday at the Classic Grand. Simple, go get a ticket. After that it gets weird. On one level Taylor is connected, star wise, Hollywood firmament stuff, his brother is Jon Voight, his niece Angelina Jolie, he should be larging it up in Malibu. More pertinently he’s the guy who wrote the sublime Angel Of The Morning and the classic garage punk perennial Wild Thing, yes, that Wild Thing, covered by The Troggs, Hendrix et al. In fact, he was a regular one man Brill Building back in the sixties and early seventies churning out hit songs for numerous artists. Then he packed it all in and became a professional gambler (told you this was weird) only returning to music in the late nineties. A series of albums recorded with Carrie Rodriguez were classic dusty Americana while Chip himself rolled out his discs including the immense triple CD The Little Prayers Trilogy. Across these discs Taylor delivers his songs and spoken words like a sage Walter Brennan addressing you by a campfire. Words of wisdom suffused with a humanity which is occasionally tempered by an anger at the ways of the world. The albums are a comfort and a delight and this latest release is no different.

Addressing the plight of refugees, documenting a dream about his brothers (Jon and volcanologist Barry) and offering up a self-help mantra of sorts Taylor softly spins his wisdom across the album. The songs are laid back, guitarist John Platania (renowned for his days in Van Morrison’s Caledonia Soul Orchestra) and keyboardist Goran Grini delicately supporting the slim melodies. The album opens with Taylor delivering a narrative about his brother Barry and his granddaughter driving to a golf tournament for kids then driving back. A simple tale but one invested with a sense of dignity and pride as Taylor’s homespun voice delivers the story before coming to the conclusion that, “we all need some great rides home.” Similarly a dream about Taylor and his brothers in a taxi spins into a meditation on their relationship, their shared Yonkers background and their occasional differences on the title song. As Time Goes By, dedicated to his wife, is an affecting love song that acknowledges the passage of time and the deepening bond that develops, a wonderful song.

Over the course of his albums Taylor has displayed his wry sense of humour and also his deep love of humanity and both are well displayed here. Enlighten Yourself has Taylor delivering a lecture of sorts with an occasional mantra (which is reprised at the end of the album). Sounding almost like Mr. Magoo as he stumbles through his guide to becoming enlightened he highlights the absurdity of many gurus while pointing out the simplicity of just being yourself and enjoying the simple things in life.  Refugee Children is prefaced by Taylor setting the scene as he recalls a tour in Sweden and coming across a group of refugees. The song again is simple, painting a picture of the children fishing in a brook but Taylor makes his point midway as he reads from the Human Rights Convention relating to the status of refugees. Simple but effective.

As we mentioned up above Chip Taylor is appearing this Friday as part of the Glasgow Americana festival. It’s his first appearance in Glasgow for 15 years and a rare opportunity to see one of the legends of American music.

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Unfortunately none of the videos from the album are available here in the UK but just this week Taylor released this new song he has recorded with Carrie Rodriguez.

 

 

 

 

Carrie Rodriguez + The Sacred Hearts. Lola.

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Carrie Rodriguez first came to prominence on her collaborations with Chip Taylor before delivering several solo albums, her vocals and fine fiddle playing along with some deft song writing planting her firmly into the Americana camp, Austin, Texas chapter. Lola finds Rodriguez firmly embracing her Mexican roots, abandoning dusty Texas ballads for a set of songs, some staples of the Mexican music scene and some written in that vernacular, delivered in English and Spanish, all set to a wonderful Latin infused sultriness.

Rodriguez was inspired by her great aunt, Eva Garza, a San Antonio born recording star of the 1940’s and set out to capture some of that era’s Chicana romanticism, much in the manner employed by Ry Cooder on his reimagining of Cuban ’50’s music on Mambo Sinuendo. Cooder wasn’t content to just recreate the sound of the times, imbuing his album with a modern gloss and so Rodriguez does here, her ace in the pack being the presence of Bill Frissell whose guitar playing throughout sparkles. Frissell is but one part of the band conjured up for this album and christened The Sacred Hearts (the other members being Viktor Krauss, bass; Luke Jacobs, pedal steel, guitars; David Pulkingham, guitars; Brannen temple, percussion). Raul Malo of The Mavericks sings on one song and Max Baca adds bajo sexto with Gina Chavez also adding some vocals. Throughout the album the playing is exemplary and producer Lee Townsend captures the ensemble perfectly, the melodramatic ’40’s passion balanced expertly with a modern clarity.

The die is cast from the opening swoon of Perfidia, written by Alberto Dominguez in 1939, it went on to be a big band standard when Glen Miller glossed it up. Rodriguez ditches the English translation singing in Spanish with Raul Malo in tow. The music is a sinuous (and sexy) mix of twangy guitars, languid rhythms and exotic language (at least for those of us stuck with basic Anglo Saxon grunts) and she repeats this throughout the album albeit offering some of the songs in English. The covers include Que Manura de Perder, a wonderful duet between Rodriguez and Jacobs, she is singing in Spanish, he in English, both dancing around the song. There’s the tango drama of Frio En El Alma and the deep nostalgia of Nocha De Ronda, a song that begs to have a lush video setting as Rodriguez inhabits the melodramatic posturing of the era. Written by Maria Teresa Lara, Nocha De Ronda is here given a performance that elevates it into the heights. A torch song, beautifully realised by the band, it conjures up images as disparate as Isabella Rossellini’s stained victim in Blue Velvet and the stark monochromatic vision of Mexico in Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil.

Rodriguez does well in her own writings, Llano Estacodo is a menacing stew of snarled guitars with a southern drawl while La Ultima Vez flows wonderfully. Z is a sassy slice of swampy blues and Cariocas lilts along with some tenderness and verve. She closes the album with a fine double whammy on an instrumental and then vocal take on Cuco Sanchez’ Si No Te Vas, the former stately and again reminiscent of Ry Cooder’s reclamation of this music, the latter, a wonderfully stripped down cantina type plea, Rodriguez giving it all.

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Asleep At The Wheel. Still The King. Proper Records

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Celebrating The Music of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys runs the banner under the album title and aside from that there’s precious little to say about this fabulous album; if you’re a fan of Asleep At The Wheel or Western Swing then you’ve probably already bagged this one. However there are folk out there who might not be so enamoured of the genre and who might be persuaded to dip a toe in the water, if so then this is as fine a place to start as any.

Western swing was a jazzy big band country pop phenomenon in the late thirties and forties, fiddle and pedal steel taking the place of sax solos and Bob Wills And His Texan Playboys were the kings of Western Swing. Asleep At The Wheel, led by the irrepressible Ray Benson appeared from the Austin, Texas melting pot of the early seventies, swinging with a vengeance and have been doing so ever since. Still The King is in fact their third tribute to Wills and pretty much follows the same formula, a roster of well-known country artists backed by Benson and the band. With several of the songs featured on all three albums (along with a few of the guest artists) one might wonder why Benson continues to record these. Well, Still The King features some of the younger country musicians who have come to prominence over the past decade with Old crow Medicine Show, The Avett Brothers and Pokey LaFarge all making an appearance. As Ray Benson told Rolling Stone recently “This album is just me trying to get younger and older Bob Wills aficionados together. Every time we put one of these out, I always say it’s the last one. But I shouldn’t say that because it’s not like this music ever died.”

So here we have 22 Western Swing classics, every one a winner really. The old timers are all here, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Del McCoury, George Strait, Robert Earle Keen, Lyle Lovett along with two surviving members of the original Texas Playboys, vocalist Leon Rausch, now aged 86, and sax player, the 92 year old Billy Briggs. There’s a host of others, all bringing something unique to the project but we only have space to mention a few favourites. The Avett’s have great fun with The Girl I Left Behind Me as they get back to their roots. Lyle Lovett croons as only he can on the bluesy Trouble In Mind while Brad Paisley does a great job on My Window Faces The South. Robert Earl Keen dives headfirst into the tongue twisting Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas with Benson duetting (and a special mention here for the very fine pedal steel solo, sublime!). Old Crow Medicine Show deviate somewhat from the overall sound as they basically overlay their own act over Texan swing pedal steel on their fiddletastic and frantic version of Tiger Rag. Of the youngsters Pokey LaFarge perhaps comes out tops as he really lets rip vocally towards the end of What’s The Matter With The Mill, small wonder as he’s been playing this type of music for the past decade. As for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, well, they stamp their authority on their respective numbers (Navajo Trail and Keeper Of My Heart) and both are excellent.

Sure, the songs are somewhat corny but these days corny might actually be hip and there’s no denying that throughout these 22 songs the playing is exemplary with some excellent fiddle, mandolin, piano and pedal steel all present. If you dig classic country then this is a no brainer. Buy it, get the other tributes and then seek out other Asleep At The Wheel classics and maybe some Bob Wills originals, you’ll be a satisfied soul.

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Carrie Rodriguez and Ben Kyle We still Love our Country.

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Carrie Rodriguez has slowly carved out a name for herself over the past few years in the Americana field. Originally teaming up with veteran Chip Taylor her voice and fiddle made their four albums together a delight before launching a solo career. Here she returns to a duet format in tandem with Ben Kyle from the mid west band Romantica on an album that basically does what it says on the tin, proclaiming their love of country. Kyle’s youthful vocals replace Taylor’s sepia toned veteran’s voice and the pair of them sing wonderfully together on a selection of six covers and two originals. With a fine band in the shape of Luke Jacobs on pedal steel, Hans Holzen, guitars, Kyle Kegerreis, bass and Ricky Fataar on drums the playing is sweet and tender and always sympathetic.
Kyle’s Your Lonely Heart opens the album and immediately recalls classic vocal duos such as Tammy and George or Dolly and Porter on a humbucking country jaunt with exuberant fiddle guitar and pedal steel. A fine start. The other original song, Fire Alarm, penned by Rodriguez and Kyle is a rollicking rendition of a bickering couple who find their faults but stick together. The meat of the album however is in the covers which are in the main ballads, delivered with an intensity that raises the album well above that of a covers collection. Townes Van Zandt’s If I Needed You is given a reverential treatment with a shuffling rhythm and delicate fiddle playing. Kyle’s vocals come into focus here. He’s got a fine voice, slightly worn, wispy, vulnerable, perfectly matched to Rodriguez’s voice. They repeat this feat on their version of John Prine’s lachrymose Unwed Fathers but the gem here is Chip Taylor’s Big Kiss where their voices melt into each other with an ebb and flow that is spinetingling.
Squirrelling away throughout the album is the memory of what some might call the supreme male/female team of alt country, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. It’s reinforced with the inclusion of You’re Still On My Mind, a song Parsons sang with the Byrds and which Emmylou has covered. Rodriguez and Kyle grab the bull by the horns on the last song, their version of Love Hurts, a song covered by many but within the Americana idiom owned by Emmylou and Gram via their version on Grievous Angel. Kyle acknowledges this saying “ Gram and Emmy were a deep inspiration for this project and so you can say we chose this song as an acknowledgement or a sort of homage to them.” Suffice to say that the shivers sent up the spine on listening to this proves that they can carry this off.
A short album, only 30 minutes long, it’s a miniature gem and well worth grabbing a hold of.
Rodriguez is touring the UK later this month with a date at Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire on Thursday 27th October.
Carrie Rodriguez website
Ben Kyle wbsite