Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez - Live From The Ruhr Triennale (2007) Lossless

Reared in Austin, Texas, and schooled at Boston's Berklee College of Music, the fiddle-playing singer/songwriter Carrie Rodriguez made her recording debut in 2002 by contributing to Chip Taylor's Let's Leave This Town. Taylor had first heard Rodriguez at the 2001 South by Southwest conference and subsequently invited her to tour alongside him, which she did for several years. The duo also released several collaborative albums, which allowed Rodriguez to showcase her fiddle expertise while slowly sharpening her songwriting prowess. She released her solo debut, Seven Angels on a Bicycle, in 2006. She Ain't Me followed two years later, featuring an increased emphasis on Rodriguez's vocals. Live in Louisville, recorded during her 2007 tour with Lucinda Williams, appeared in 2009. Love and Circumstance, an album of covers of classic love songs, arrived in 2010. That same year, Rodriguez released the compilation album The New Bye & Bye, featuring four new songs with Taylor. We Still Love Our Country, an album with Ben Kyle, appeared in 2011, followed by her fifth solo outing, Give Me All You Got, early in 2013.

Rodriguez shifted gears with Lola, released on her own Luz Records label in the winter of 2016. It was inspired by the recordings of her great aunt Eva Garza, a regional singing sensation in the '40s. The tunes included ranchera-inspired originals in English, Spanish, and "Spanglish," and Spanish songs written by some of her favorite Mexican composers. The set was produced by Lee Townsend and featured the Sacred Hearts, an all-star band that included guitarists Bill Frisell and David Pulkingham, bassist Viktor Krauss, Luke Jacobs on pedal steel, and Brannen Temple on drums and percussion. Vocalists Raul Malo and Gina Chavez, and Grammy Award-winning bajo sexto player Max Baca, also made appearances on the recording. ~ Jason Birchmeier