The Central Music Festival Society is gearing up for a terrific show this September featuring acclaimed musicians Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez.
The gifted duo performs Sept. 15th at 8 p.m. at the Elks Lodge in Red Deer.
The two are joining for a reunion tour behind the 10th anniversary deluxe reissue of their Red Dog Tracks album.
Rodriguez, a singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas, finds beauty in the cross-pollination of diverse traditions.
A passionate performer, she effortlessly melds fiery fiddle playing, electrifying vocals and a fresh interpretation of new and classic songs with an ‘Ameri-Chicana’ attitude.
Her newest project, the Spanish/English album Lola, is both a return to her musical roots and something of a departure where she delivers her own twangy, Texas-bred twist on Mexican Ranchera songs, creating culturally blended music for a culturally blended world.
Inspired by the 1940s-era recordings of her great aunt, Chicana singing sensation Eva Garza, the CD is a mixture of new and old songs.
It features Spanish songs written by some of her favorite Mexican composers, as well as her own Ranchera-inspired original songs written in English, Spanish and ‘Spanglish.’
Produced by Lee Townsend, the album is supported by an all-star band, The Sacred Hearts, assembled especially for this project. The band features internationally acclaimed composer/guitarist Bill Frisell, Viktor Krauss on bass, Luke Jacobs on pedal steel and guitars, David Pulkingham on nylon string guitar and electric guitar and Brannen Temple on drums and percussion.
Rodriguez, an Austin native, began playing violin at age five.
Her training quickly became the passion and focus of her childhood, and by age 10, she had performed as part of a group at Carnegie Hall.
She continued the classical track in her first year at Oberlin Conservatory, then shifted gears to pursue her true love affair with the fiddle—staying true to her Texas roots—at the Berklee College of Music.
Early in her career, a collaboration with singer-songwriter Chip Taylor resulted in four highly acclaimed duet albums.
Her subsequent solo albums highlight the diversity of her musical identity, from her debut Seven Angels on a Bicycle to 2013’s Give Me All You Got, which reached number one on the Americana Music Charts.
Rodriguez has also toured, recorded and co-written songs with legendary artists such as Lucinda Williams, John Prine, Bill Frisell, Rickie Lee Jones, Mary Gauthier, Los Lobos, Alejandro Escovedo and Los Lonely Boys, among others.
She has made numerous television and radio appearances, including Austin City Limits, The Tonight Show and A Prairie Home Companion.
Currently, she lives in Austin with her partner and musical collaborator Luke Jacobs, a multi-instrumentalist/singer-songwriter from Minnesota and their son, Cruz Calvin Jacobs.
Meanwhile, Taylor has been writing and performing for nearly 60 years and shows no signs of slowing down.
With the release of Little Brothers, a charming and intimate collection of new songs, and the EP I’ll Carry For You (inspirational songs for the Rio Olympics) he continues to engage and delight music fans everywhere.
Creating distinctive music that is also enduring and influential has been Taylor’s métier over the course of what is closing in on five decades. His two best-known songs are only some of the many pop, rock, country and R&B chart hits he wrote in the 1960s (Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Frank Sinatra all recorded his songs).
Taylor was then one of the pioneers of the pivotal country-rock movement as a recording artist in the 1970s.
His 1973 album, Last Chance, remains a beloved cult classic.
But after refusing to play by the Nashville establishment rules, Taylor gave up music for full-time professional gambling in 1980.
“Chip Taylor could’ve rested on his laurels years ago and still been way ahead of everybody else today. Lucky for us he didn’t and he’s making some of the most relevant music out there,” said Buddy Miller just last year.
Since returning to music in 1996 he has enjoyed elder statesman stature within the Americana, contemporary folk and singer-songwriter scenes as an artist in his own right as well as in collaboration on albums and in performance with Rodriguez, Kendel Carson and John Platania.
In a remarkable and prolific run, Taylor has also released nearly an album a year since his return, each rising high on the Americana chart. His last album, The Little Prayers Trilogy, was among the best-reviewed album of his long career.
He has also been involved in a series of amazing projects in the last several years.
Norway’s premier folk singer, Paal Flaata, recorded a full album of Taylor songs, Wait By The Fire, and rode it to the Top 10 and a Norwegian Grammy nomination.
- Weber