Interview with Singer-Songwriter Carrie Rodriguez

Photography by Sarah Wilson


         It's often by surprise that stories come upon us. Sometimes they are errant scraps half formed and sometimes they are our best truths lying in wait. Carrie Rodriguez didn't set out to tell these stories, all she wanted to do, more than anything, was play the violin and fiddle as an instrumentalist, it's what she had prepared her whole life for, a noble calling, but there were stories brewing in the ether waiting to be told, a lot of ink in a pen that had yet to be used. And the power that would soon come spilling out of that dormant pen was no small event. Carrie first met Chip Taylor, in 2001 at SXSW and gradually fell into singing and writing, it was a calling partly in her blood, her father, David Rodriguez, a Texas troubadour, her mother, a painter and her great Aunt, Eva Garza, a Ranchera recording artist from the 40's and the inspiration to Carrie's latest project, Lola. And it is on this new record most of all that we hear something truly unique coming to life in American music. An album fearlessly reaching through divides, carrying personal histories and snapshots of cultural heritage, of a deep and abiding love for the skin one is in, the life one has and the people and places one comes from; Ameri-Chicana. This music "burns the way it burns" it reaches out to us in ways we don't expect, it connects and it stirs something up in us that has lain dormant for too long. Soul-music, spirit-blues, heart-folk, all of these apply but still fall short. That is the magic of music, we don't know what it can do to us, until it does. There is deep wisdom happening here, distilled through the elevated spaces of Carrie's songs is the appreciation of who we are, where we come from, and most of all where we're going. 



James Diaz: What has your life in music, the high and low aspects of it,  overall, been like for you, and what kinds of life lessons do you feel like you've learned through the process of making music?

Carrie Rodriguez: Well, It has been my whole life, I mean I started so young and really it's hard to compare it to anything else because it's all I know. It is another language and being able to speak it, use it, I feel like it does open your world up in ways that it wouldn't if you didn't have that in your life. And I'm really grateful for that. Certainly music has taken me to places, just in terms of geography, that I never would have imagined I would be in, and I love that part about it. I mean I love that I get to travel to small towns in rural northern Italy, or farm country Indiana, I love that I get to see places that I would never have seen other wise, and meet people from these places and learn about their lives, and just get a little glimpse of what it would be like living there. That's one of my favorite aspects of what I do, because I get to go play music and share that with people from everywhere. My next gig is in New Bedford Massachusetts, I've never been there, I know it was a big whaling center back in the day, but I know nothing more about it, and I can't wait to go walk down main street and meet the people at the local coffee shop and then get to share some stories and music with them, it's really an amazing way to connect with people. I guess that's what it is too, more than anything, it's just a way of being in community with people, getting to play for them and sharing all these intense emotions with people that you don't even know, but it's a really sacred thing to get to share that, and when I finish playing a show I always have this high and it's because of that, because I've shared these pretty intense emotions with people in a room, there's just something very sacred about that.

JD: Does the performing aspect of it come naturally to you, are you nervous at all about performing live in front of large audiences? 

CR: Not particularly. I've never been too nervous. I would say in general no, if I'm just playing music for people and I can see their faces I feel pretty calm and centered. Now certain things, like if television is involved, I remember the couple of months leading up to recording my first Austin City Limits episode I was nervous. Because it was TV and I grew up watching it, you know, but then again once I got up there, even though there were a million camera's I was still just sharing music with people in a room and I could see their faces and it was fine. A strange kind of calm comes over me.

JD: Was part of it too thinking about all the people who had been on that stage?

CR: Oh yeah, being in the dressing room, and I'm so grateful that I got to play at the original Austin City limits sound stage, cause I've played at the new one, which is gorgeous and state of the art, but the original one had the same funky dressing room that they'd had since the very beginning in the 70's, and with the same furniture, I mean the furniture hadn't changed, it was like funky 70's colors, vinyl, weird seating, and then there are photos of every one from, you know, Roy Orbison to Dolly Parton to Sheryl Crow on the walls around you, so you're doing your makeup while you're looking up at Dolly Parton [laughter] whoa, so, yeah, it's pretty special to be in those rooms.

JD: And you still live in Texas and I heard that they gave you your own day even.

CR: They did [laughter] 

JD: What's that like?

CR: That was exciting. I mean, honestly, I haven't necessarily celebrated the day again [laughter] but it was a very nice gesture, I mean going to city council and getting a special plaque or whatever, it made my grandmother very proud, I'll say that.

JD: And you come from a long line of artists in your family, do you feel, because there is so much artistic history in your family, first and foremost, do you feel primally drawn to those sorts of artistic inheritances before all else, that inspires you in your own work? Before you move on to other music, do you feel more connected to all the art and music that's in your own family?

CR: Well I am very inspired by and influenced by all of that art. I mean I grew up in a household that was full of paintings first of all. My mother was a visual artist, a painter, so there were huge oil paintings all over the house, and the smell of turpentine, which hopefully didn't kill too many brain cells. But she painted right in the living room. Sometimes there were 6 x 8 feet paintings of large naked people right in the living room [laughter] but all that color and intensity was just a part of my everyday, you know, I'm like 6 years old and eating snacks on the living room floor looking around at all this stuff, so, I don't even know what that did to me but [laughter] it definitely influenced me. Not to mention my mother used to play really intense music while she was painting, she'd be blasting opera, or Bach and Mozart just blasting through the house while she was painting, so yeah, I think that kind of intensity probably really effects just how I approach music and I tend to be a pretty intense performer, you know, people say that I really show my emotions right up front. That's probably why. And then there's the music of my father that I did listen to quite a bit growing up. He was a songwriter and I listened to his recordings. I didn't really grow up with him so much, in terms of, you know, seeing him all that often, but I did listen to his music and the music of his peers, people like Townes Van Zandt, and, you know, kind of Texas folk artists of that ilk. So yeah, I definitely feel a connection. And then there's the music of my great aunt who inspired my newest project, Lola, and I didn't start listening to her music until I was in my early 20's. But my grandmother sent me her recordings around that time, which were all copied from old vinyl. That's been an amazing part of my musical journey, finding out more about who she was and discovering other artists through her music, you know, finding out, okay who wrote that song, oh, and then what else has he written, and just sort of a chain reaction, and it's really opened up my world to a whole other genre of music and way of singing, way of writing songs, so I'm really very linked to that, especially right now, at this period of time.

JD: I heard you say, in describing Lola,  that it was sort of your musical alter ego and that you felt a different part of yourself emerge when you were inhabiting that space, could you talk more about that, and when you first got clued into that, was it sort of receiving those records that triggered that?

CR: Well I do remember specifically the first time that I listened to her music, and I was living in New York at the time, and I had all these recordings that my grandmother had given me, and I do remember that feeling of putting it on and sitting down on the couch and just having goose bumps all over my body and crying, just feeling this crazy connection with someone I had never met, my great aunt was quite a bit older than my grandmother and she died young in her late 40's. But hearing her powerful voice singing this dramatic music, and understanding that this was part of me and in my blood, it was just such a powerful, moving experience. Ever since then it's just been a very slow gradual process in terms of becoming comfortable with singing in Spanish, and finding a way to connect with that part of me and that part of my family with music, it's been a really slow process. I think partly because I didn't grow up as much with my father, you know, I saw people from his side of the family but, still, you know, I was primarily with my mother and so I had to find my way to connect on my own, which, you know, I married someone from Spain, and that's actually how I became fluent in Spanish, not because I grew up speaking it, so it's a strange round about way of connecting with who I am, through an outside person. So I had this bizarre accent in Spanish and I almost sound like I'm from Spain or sort of half Gringa, half [laughter]. So it's a strange way to connect with my Chicana roots, you know, but that's how it happened to me and I'm so grateful that I am fluent and that I can speak Spanish because it's really helped me just get in touch with who I am even more. Singing in Spanish, it is like another part of me comes out. Something about the language, I think it's part of, also, just my DNA. When I sing in Spanish there's just something a little bit different that comes out. My voice sort of has different range, I mean I don't think about it too much but when I listen back it's like at a broader range and sounds a little bit more, I don't know, raw, emotional. 

JD: As a listener I've noticed that, listening to the Lola record, I can hear something else, I mean you already have a powerful voice but I can hear that 'something else' emerging through that record.

CR: I mean I don't know if that's just something in me. A part of it is it's a passionate language and just the sound of it sort of forms itself to that. The songs I'm singing in Spanish on the record are all, you know, sort of heart breakers [laughter] So there's that.

JD: In making the Lola album, making it in Spanish, given this time that we're in, this incredibly precarious, politically muddy and crazy time, does this album at all feel politically, not motivated, but resistant in the way that politics is often personal, rather than shirking from a difference of identity, embracing it through art, which has that capacity to sort of get past people's walls a lot of times?

CR: Yeah. And when I started working on the record I was definitely responding to what was going on around me, that was a big part of it. I mean you're reading stories everyday about children coming over the border, like little bitty children, coming from desperate situations, so that's a part of your everyday experience. that definitely affected things. So it is incredible how, just from the time I started working on the record to where we are now, how much more, you know, deeper and darker we've gotten in this country, it's crazy. I wanted to make an album that really was representing who I am, which is, you know, half gringa fiddle player who sings country music, half Chicana, didn't grow up speaking the language, then came to it later in life, you know, strange relationship with my Dad, but loving that part of my family and wanting to know more, all of these things. But I wanted to make an album that represented that because I think that story is such a typical American story now. Where I live here in Texas there are so many chicanas who maybe don't speak Spanish, or speak some Spanish, but we have a connection to it and to our family and our history, but maybe we listen to country music or whatever, you know, I just wanted to make something representative of that. And I think by doing that that hopefully is helping to bridge cultures and people. One thing I was struck by when I was researching older Mexican songs to record was how similar these old Ranchera songs are to American country music. They're like the same. Sometimes I felt like I was listening to a Merle Haggard song, or Willie Nelson song, hearing some of these old Ranchera tunes. So I really wanted to emphasize those similarities on the record. Like put peddle steel which is such a typical country instrument on a Ranchera tune, you know.

JD: I've heard you say in an interview that what's coming out of Nashville confuses you, how it could even connect to people, and along those lines, Kristen Hersh said something to the effect that she didn't believe people inherently want garbage art or music, that if you put something good in front of them they'll respond to it, and I'm wondering if you feel that that's the case too, that perhaps it's a lack of choices that people are given, whether it's in Nashville with country music, whether it's how certain cultures only respond to certain music because that's what they hear and they're never given a chance to maybe explore what it is that they really like and that they really respond to?

CR: I do. I mean marketing is powerful and, you know, people have music pushed on them and they think they're supposed to like it and maybe they kinda do, but the stuff that's being pushed on them is all about making money and writing a song that's clever enough to appeal to this type of person or this type of person, it's not stuff from the heart, that's for sure. But I do think that that music is pushed on people, I think that it's truly marketed in ways that people aren't aware of. To me that's what the whole commercial country music thing is. For the most part, I mean I know there are exceptions. And every once in a while I hear something new from a young artist and say "oh, that's a good song." But oh man, I hear a lot of bad stuff. Especially, I don't know if you've heard of this whole Bro country thing?

JD: It all sounds like that to me, the newer stuff.

CR: It all sounds like that, I know , but it's really sad.

JD: Mary Chapin Carpenter is someone who, I don't know, it seemed like they slowly got pushed out of air play the moment that they got critical, like when the Dixie Chicks were critical of President Bush and there was a backlash and I don't know, I'm not even sure if the backlash was completely driven by the fans, or if it wasn't a lot of DJ's and radio promoters who saw money in kind of, I remember Mary Chapin even releasing a song that suggested that this was really driven by these radio execs counting promotional money through the event of punishing the Dixie Chicks, I'm wondering if maybe, just structurally, in the industry there's this tendency to let someone in until they become critical and then to shut them out?

CR: Yeah, and part of the problem though is just that there are fewer and fewer small radio stations that could truly just choose their music and play what they want to play. We just have these huge corporations running the radio so it's all like political and big money stuff. and they're also really just doing calculations on what is going to make the most money in advertising and all that, I mean radio DJ's these days are mostly told what to play and they have this playlist of songs that are in heavy rotation and all that stuff, I guess the only thing that's countering that is that we have a lot of internet radio now, but yeah, there's just such a lack of choice I think in general. 

JD: Do you think that we'll ever be able to return to a time in popular culture like we were in in the 90's when songwriters were more up front on our televisions and on radio, do you think that's even possible?

CR: There's certainly some that are out there right now. But I don't know how we're gonna find out about them exactly. It's just so different, you know, and there is so much noise, and just the nature of things, you know, things are like here for a second and gone. I wonder, when you think about some of the big stars, let's say just the big songwriters like back in the 60's, would it even be possible for a Bob Dylan to emerge in our day? You know what I mean, I don't know, I don't know if it's possible, there's so much noise out there, I don't know if a Bob Dylan of right now could get noticed enough and be heard over all the other bullshit, I really don't know. I mean I don't want to be negative, but I'm not sure. I guess time will tell. The people who are big stars, for the most part, so much of that music seems so sort of temporary to me, you know, like are we going to remember the songs thirty years from now, are they going to be played on oldies stations? I don't think so. 

JD: And how many of the ones that are out there now, are capable, especially in the time that we're in, of writing songs that are resistant the way Dylan's were or the way many singer-songwriters were capable of writing, not always heavy handed songs but songs of resistance, how many of them are there out there that are even willing to do that?

CR: Although, I mean, we're starting out [laughter] we're starting out a new era, you know, I do think that there's just so much outrage right now, people are going to be channeling this into art. I mean we have to. We have to. So who knows, you know, with what's coming and this next President maybe this will create a whole new genre of music and protest songs that will be heard, you know, people will definitely be writing songs. That's for sure. 

JD: Switching gears a little, I wanted to ask you about your collaborations with Chip Taylor, how they first came about and how the two of you first met, and looking back at that time what sorts of things did you take away from that collaboration that were the most meaningful to you and your own evolution as an artist?

CR: I guess at the most basic level I would have probably never tried to sing or maybe ever try to write a song if I hadn't of met Chip. It's kind of as simple as that. I was playing the violin and so focused on that and being an instrumentalist, I had done it since I was a little girl and my dream was to play fiddle or violin with somebody great like Chip Taylor. I never really saw myself as a songwriter, certainly not as a singer. I met Chip in 2001, I was playing at south by southwest, and he saw me perform and I saw him perform, and he hired me to play fiddle at a Texas show and that turned into a NY show and pretty soon he was hiring me for a European tour. At the beginning I was just playing the fiddle and he asked if I could sing harmony with him, and I think I probably lied and said "yeah, sure" [laughter] But I'd never done that before and was completely uncomfortable, so in the beginning I was just a really shy person in front of a microphone with Chip. I mean I was happy and excited to be playing fiddle with him but I was very shy. I had no confidence in my ability to sing. I'd spent my whole life working on being a violin player and I didn't think it was possible to just open your mouth and be a singer without slaving away at it somehow. But looking back I think that all the years of working on the violin did contribute to figuring out how to sing pretty quickly. Not that I'm the world's best singer, but I did have to figure it out somehow, because we were making records in the first year that I met him, and then, I think for our second record that's when he approached me and asked me if I would try writing some songs with him. Which looking back now too, what an amazing thing to write your first song with a legend like Chip. And I was pretty intimidated although he's just so, he's a very laid back, stream of consciousness kind of songwriter. I mean I learned a ton from watching him write. We would be on tour and he was the classic cock tail napkin songwriter, you know we'd be having a drink after the show and he'd grab a napkin and start writing something, or he'd get real quite in the car and be writing a song, but he just really let things sort of flow out of his subconscious, he didn't set out to write songs about certain topics, he just kind of let what was back in there come to the surface and then he would start crafting art.  

And that's what I did with him, when we first wrote a couple of songs together I think I just came in with some simple little fiddle hooks and three or four words and an idea for a chorus and we just let those songs evolve. Which is probably how I still write today even when I'm on my own. Anytime I set out to write a song about a certain thing it just never really works out for me. Like I have to just grab them, a song just has to come from it's place, like it's already in there, and it has to some to the surface and I grab onto it real quick. If I set out to write about something I'll labor and labor and I still won't like it. So I think I have learned that from Chip. And the other thing too, in the beginning, with singing, his advice to me about singing was always just to be, with every single song, be in the song a hundred percent, and be living in that moment and in that movie, and that is the only way that you can really feel it and the people who are listening can really feel it. It's no good to be thinking about how in tune you are or that note was too long,  you just have to be in the movie, and then you'll connect with people. He really impressed that upon me in the beginning. Which is an important lesson for a young musician I think. You'll never be perfect. [laughter]

JD: That may be the answer to this last question, or maybe you'll have something more to add to that. Do you have any words of advice not just for other musicians or singer-songwriters, but for anyone who is trying to create something and rooting around in themselves and maybe having self-doubt in the process, what are the kinds of things you tell yourself whenever you feel blocked or find yourself doubting what your creating?

CR: That is a good question. I mean self doubt is so powerful [laughter] it is, that's the biggest hurdle with creating, doubt. First of all you have to not take yourself too seriously. It's good to be able to laugh at yourself, so if you can do that, then you can probably get up the nerve to write down these lyrics even though you might be telling yourself "oh my God this is so cheesy, I can't believe I just wrote this. This is so corny" [laughter] I've done that a million times. And then I'll say to my partner, Luke, or another musician "I've got this song and it's so bad, I know it's so corny" but if you can sort of get over that hurdle and share it with somebody, I think that's a first step. Because often what happens is you share it and in the process of sharing it you realize "oh wait, it's not that cheesy, actually, maybe there's a little kernel of goodness there" [laughter] So I think just being able to share it, even with one person, is a good way to sort of open the gates and let creativity begin. Because if you just keep it all to yourself and you never do anything with it, there you go, you've never done anything with it.

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For more visit  www.carrierodriguez.com/


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