About: Carrie Rodriguez
At each stage of Carrie Rodriguez’s career—as a fiddler,
singer, and songwriter—the Austin, Texas, native has learned the importance of
letting go. That was certainly true when it came to recording her fifth solo
album, Give Me All You Got, her first of largely original tunes
in several years. “In the making of Love and Circumstance in 2008, I
chose to sing other people’s songs,” Rodriguez explains. “I needed to take a
step back from songwriting and think about the kinds of songs that feel
important to sing. Doing that inspired me to write again.”
On Give Me All You Got, she says, “I’m laying
out some extreme emotional highs and lows, which feels good. Take ‘Brooklyn’
[co-written with guitarist Luke Jacobs]. It’s very autobiographical, and I
remember thinking, would I really want to share this? I decided, of course, why
hold this back? It’s something that a lot of people can relate to—the
acceptance of failure in a relationship, learning from it, and moving forward.
‘Brooklyn’ is also a song about taking a pause in order to really experience
what you are feeling, something I find increasingly difficult in this modern
era of constant communication and stimulation.”
Rodriguez, who came to attention a decade ago performing
with singer-songwriter Chip Taylor, has established an impressive roster of
touring, recording, and co-writing affiliations—with Lucinda Williams, Rickie
Lee Jones, John Prine, Mary Gauthier, Alejandro Escovedo, guitarist Bill
Frisell, and others. Although she has issued three albums under her own name
and enjoyed major label support for 2008’s She Ain’t Me, the release
of Give Me All You Got marks a giant step for Rodriguez. The album was
recorded with her own band and produced by the renowned Lee Townsend, with whom
she has worked closely in the past. And the songs—which she wrote, co-wrote, or
handpicked from the repertoire of longtime collaborators—establish her musical
identity more powerfully than ever before.
While Carrie’s father, David Rodriguez, was an
accomplished songwriter, and took her on tour with him in Europe when she was a
teen, song craft, like improvising on fiddle and singing, didn’t come
automatically to Carrie. After sitting in on a sound check with her dad’s old
Houston pal Lyle Lovett, she detoured from a degree as a classical violinist at
Oberlin Conservatory and set herself on course to become a fiddler at the
Berklee College of Music. There, her teacher, Matt Glaser, and her fellow
students, including roommate Casey Driessen, helped her “find my groove and let
go of that wall I had put up as a classical player.”
Another turning point came when Rodriguez met veteran
songwriter Chip Taylor (“Wild Thing,” “Angel of the Morning”), who soon had
Rodriguez touring and recording, and encouraged her to sing and write. “I’ve
been a reluctant writer ever since I started, never quite feeling like I was
supposed to be doing it,” Rodriguez confesses. “But I’m drawn to songs that are
emotional and direct, and from working with Chip I learned that when you can
just be open and not analyze too much, that’s when the truth comes out.”
After recording four studio albums with Taylor, Rodriguez
made her solo debut in 2006 with Seven Angels on a Bicycle. “All of a
sudden I found myself in this position of being called a singer-songwriter,
which felt so strange,” she says. But she returns to that role quite
comfortably on Give Me All You Got. The album includes songs by Taylor
and Ben Kyle (with whom Rodriguez recorded the 2011 EP We Still Love Our
Country), but its emotional core resides in originals drawn from Carrie’s
personal experience. “I feel less afraid to write about what’s really
happening, both to me and to people around me,” Rodriguez says. The song “Sad
Joy,” for instance, arose from a conversation with Taylor about a loved one who
was maintaining a “bright, beautiful attitude” while dealing with Lou Gehrig’s
disease. “Chip and I were talking about how, when we are faced with those kinds
of things, as sad and difficult as they are, they can also bring about a type
of joy. The simple joy of people loving each other and holding each other up—in
times of both celebration and in mourning. We started strumming some chords,
and there it was, a song that lays out those raw emotions without being shy
about it. Celebrating them, in fact.”
Give Me All You Got deals with a few dark
themes, which is not surprising given that one of the first songwriters who
inspired Rodriguez in her early teens was Leonard Cohen. “I listened to Leonard
for a year and dwelled in the deep lowdown feelings he helped me feel,” she
recalls. The sound of the new album, however, is “a little more
infectious, rather than contemplative,” says producer Lee Townsend. “It still
addresses Carrie’s roots in Americana, but also with a bit of a pop edge. I
think it is her most mature record—every direction that is explored is
distilled to an essential kind of expression.”
Townsend, known for his work with Bill Frisell, Loudon
Wainwright III, Kelly Joe Phelps, Crooked Still, and many others, captured the
band—Carrie on fiddle, tenor guitar, and vocals; Luke Jacobs and Hans Holzen on
acoustic, electric, and lap steel guitars, mandolin, and vocals; Kyle Kegerreis
on upright and electric bass; Eric Deutsch on piano, Rhodes, and Hammond B3;
and Don Heffington on drums and percussion—essentially live in the studio. “The
live energy of the band is central to this album,” he says.
“Ever since I first met and worked with Lee at a music
festival in Germany, I have known he was the perfect producer for me,” Rodriguez
says. “His approach to making an album is almost like a composer writing a
symphony. He has the ability to group songs together and shape them so that the
story they tell is a complete one, and even greater than the individual songs
themselves. And like my favorite conductors, he manages to get the absolute
best from each musician by making us all feel at ease and appreciated.”
With the release of Give Me All You Got,
Rodriguez is ready to say the same thing about herself: “As a
singer-songwriter, I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s a
lifelong learning curve, and I hope I always stay as excited about it as I am
now.”
Carrie Rodriguez – Official Website
http://www.carrierodriguez.com/
Carrie Rodriguez - Reverbnation
http://www.reverbnation.com/carrierodriguez
Carrie Rodriguez – Last FM
http://www.last.fm/music/Carrie+Rodriguez
Carrie Rodriguez - MySpace
http://www.myspace.com/carrieLrodriguez
Carrie Rodriguez - Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/carrierodriguez
Carrie Rodriguez - Twitter
https://twitter.com/carriemusictx
Videos!
Carrie Rodriguez - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/user/CarrieRodrigueztv
Buy Music!
Carrie Rodriguez – Official Store
http://www.carrierodriguez.com/album/we-still-love-our-country
Carrie Rodriguez - iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/carrie-rodriguez/id10988517
Carrie Rodriguez - Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Carrie-Rodriguez/e/B00197HZZG/ref=ntt_mus_dp_pel
Carrie Rodriguez – Rhapsody
http://www.rhapsody.com/#artist/carrie-rodriguez?&_suid=1355344261748011905666908673223
Carrie Rodriguez – eMusic
http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/artist/carrie-rodriguez/12109073/
