Carrie Rodriguez

If you’ve listened to Carrie Rodriquez’ new album She Ain’t Me, you know this lady can sing.  However, it might be easy to pass her off as yet another highly competent singer/songwriter that blends in with the fold.  The disc is good, but somewhat subdued.

Her live show is a completely different story.  Opening for Alejandro Escovedo, she calmly walked onto the stage to introduce herself and then exploded.  Alternating between the fiddle, electric mandolin and tenor guitar, she matched licks with guitarist Hans Holzen to offer up a powerful presentation.

The combination of such a good band with such a powerful voice was the surprise of the evening. Having listened to her CD a couple of times, I was expecting a much mellower performance but was pleasantly surprised at how well she can belt it out.  The big bonus of the evening was watching Carrie play in Alejandro Escovedo’s band too.

I truly hope her next CD lets us see more of this woman’s amazing talent.  She Ain’t Me is only telling part of the story.