Patricia Vonne & Rosie Flores

McGonigel’s Mucky Duck presents Patricia Vonne & Rosie Flores.

Latin Roots Rocker & Troubadour Patricia Vonne – “I was not prepared for the force of this singer’s new LP -” Rattle My Cage:- which represents everything good about Austin Music”,” declares Austin American Statesman of her fifth release. Simply put, the San Antonio born and reared Texas musical artist who now resides in Austin has made her fondest dreams into an impressive reality with an ever-upward artistic trajectory over the course of her career, and never yet so much as on her latest recording.

 Rattle My Cage finds singer, songwriter, bandleader and actress Vonne collaborating on songs with some of the most distinguished Texas musicians that have inspired and informed her music: the late Doyle Bramhall, Alejandro Escovedo, Rosie Flores and Johnny Reno alongside some of her other favorite musical talents. The result, raves her hometown San Antonio Express News, “is her best, edgiest and most focused album yet. The image is tougher; so is the music.”

 The 10-song collection is suffused with Vonne’s bracing passion, deep heart, and the determination that led her to make music her life, start her own label, Bandolera Records, and become a popular live attraction in not just Texas but Europe, where she recently completed her 21st tour, capped by an appearance at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival. Rattle My Cage also distills the distinctive multicultural rocking borderland roots style she has developed into its most potent and tantalizing brew to date.

The title track, co-written with Reno (who played saxophone with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s original Double Trouble & Chris Isaak), opens the set with a shimmering blast of high-octane guitar rock sparked by the sexy muscularity of the customized classic hot rods that gather annually in Austin at the  Lonestar Rod & Kustom Round Up. Similarly, her collaboration with Escovedo, “Ravage Your Heart,” is a powerhouse mid-tempo rocker in which “a lover’s kiss makes an angel sigh,” and “Tequileros” is an intoxicating Tex-Mex rave-up penned with Alex Ruiz  of Austin’s flamenco rockers Del Castillo, whose bandmate Rick Del Castillo laces the number with whip-snapping electric guitar.

 Vonne shows the range of flavors and styles that inform her music on the mesmeric Latin-tinged romantic plea of “Que Maravilla,” the classicist cafe piano/singer crooning of “Bitter Need” (co-written with Peter Kingsbery from the pop band Cock Robin), the snappy Iberian dance of “Dulce Refugio” (written about the ravages of insomnia with San Antonio rocker Michael Martin of The Infidels), and the meld of hot gypsy jazz on “Paris Trance.” One of her proudest moments on the disc is the bristling blues-tinged lament, “Dark Mile,” written with Texas legend Doyle Bramhall, known for penning such hits with Stevie Ray Vaughan as “The House Is Rockin'” and “Change It.” Vonne dips back into the 1950s on the rollicking number she wrote with her pal Rosie Flores, “This Cat’s in the Doghouse” (which Flores also recorded on her last album). And then she closes the set by showing her impressive stuff on electric and acoustic guitars on the vividly Southwestern instrumental number, “Mexicali de Chispa,” composed with her brother, famed filmmaker Robert Rodriguez.

 Vonne is backed on most tracks by her Band: longtime collaborator Robert La Roche (formerly of Virgin Records recording act The Sighs) on guitar, bassist Scott Garber (whose many credits include Giant Sand, Ronnie Lane, Escovedo, The Silos and more) and drummer Dony Wynn (who has worked with the likes of Robert Plant, Robert Palmer and Dr. John). Noted instrumental guests include such top Austin keyboard talents as Ian McLagan (of Small Faces/Faces fame), Bukka Allen and Michael Ramos plus Reno on saxophone and  Joe Reyes (of Lara and Reyes) on nylon string guitar. The album is also her fourth outing helmed by producer/engineer and musician Carl Thiel, whose time growing up in Mexico City and vast musical vocabulary have made him an ideal studio foil for Vonne’s stylistically broad sound.

 It’s only natural that Vonne has made her mark as a musical artist, as music and the arts pervaded her family home in San Antonio, where she grew up the fourth of 10 children. Her  father of Mexican descent studied music in college and played drums; her  mother of Spanish  descent played guitar and sang Latin folk songs for her brood. Saturday afternoons they’d all attend matinees together to watch classic films and MGM musicals. The music her parents loved gave Vonne a rich grounding in classic styles and forms while the wide variety of rock’n’roll in her brothers’ record collections lit a spark that took flame when she saw her first concert ever by Reno and his band the Sax Maniacs.

 Vonne moved to New York City in 1990 to pursue her artistic endeavors but most of all her desire to make music. After getting her grounding as a backing musician on bass and vocals with Mick & The Maelstroms, she began writing songs and put together her first group  with LaRoche and two Texans, lead guitarist Kirk Brewster (of the legendary Dallas rock’n’roll band The Werewolves) and drummer Konrad Meisner (who had moved to New York after playing with Austin international sensations Cotton Mather).

 Vonne and her band played the city’s premier music clubs and were courted by major and indie labels. But the decidedly Texan sound she created stoked a desire to return to the Lone Star State, where she knew her muse would blossom. After landing in Austin in 2001, Vonne released her self-titled debut disc and received a warm welcome home from the media. The Austin Chronicle hailed the album as “a bilingual tour de force [that] melds eclectic with electric and exudes an elegance seldom associated with rock,” while Texas Monthly noted how Vonne’s “confidant, tuff gal vocals, sharp musicianship and smart lyricism don’t just promise the total package, they deliver the goods from the get-go.” It was just the start of a consistent chorus of critical praise in the U.S. and abroad for every release that has followed.

 She began forging a following in Texas playing clubs and festivals and opening shows for kindred souls like Joe Ely, Escovedo, Los Lobos, Raul Malo, Chris Isaak, Buddy Guy and others. Vonne was also invited to tour Europe for the first time as a special guest star with Tito & Tarantula, and her enchanting stage presence led to her now many visits to follow with her own group.

 Vonne’s fervent and alluring performances have driven her international appeal. As Escovedo notes, “You can’t take your eyes off her when she’s onstage. The combination of the power of her performance and the romanticism of her songs creates a real mystique, a very heady concoction.” At the same time, she has honed her songwriting skills to a sweet cutting edge that won her a grand prize in the Latin category of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and a second place Latin song win in the Billboard Songwriting Contest. She also follows the album with acting roles in two films directed by her brother, Machete Kills (release date Oct 2013) and Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (coming in 2014), in which she reprises her role as Zorro Girl.

 When her thoughts and songs ideas for Rattle My Cage began percolating while on tour in Europe, Vonne had the bold notion of paying homage to some of the musicians she admires by writing songs with them. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful on this album to embrace the music of the artists that have inspired me?'” And as a result, her influences are now her peers.

 Escovedo agrees that Vonne has grown to stand head and shoulders with some of Texas’s finest. “She’s such a passionate artist and person, and all that seeps through the grooves of her new record. I think it’s her best yet.”

Girl of the Century, Working Girl with Guitar Rosie Flores  (pictured) has gone surfing, knifing her turquoise axe through some new uncharted musical waters.After a busy few years that found her nabbing a Peabody Award onstage at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City for her narration of the documentary “Whole Lotta Shakin”; producing Janis Martin’s soon to be released CD on Cow Island Records; and a multimedia Janis Martin Tribute that she created and performed at the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame this year, Rosie released Girl Of The Century (Bloodshot Records) and is half way into a brand spanking new CD, Working Girls Guitar.

The new record marks a first for Rosie as she is the only guitar player, in addition to penning some new tunes that ride some new waves. Twanging between a rock and a surf place, Rosie fires up the big chord guns on songs that tell some hard earned tales.The title track is a chiming stomper that resonates with miles of grit, grace and determination; while “Yeah, Yeah”, a tribute to her late great fellow twang master Duane Jarvis, shines with a light that glows through the tears.

Flores took flight in Southern California, and has been a major figure in the Los Angeles, Austin and Nashville music scenes – as well as in Europe and Japan. She added new pins to her world map when she played several big festivals in Australia last year (Port Ferry, Apollo Bay, Brunswick Festival) and tore it up the year before in New Zealand.Critical raves from prestigious publications such as the Los Angeles Times and Guitar Player magazine, an LA Weekly Music Award for Best Rockabilly Swing Artist, a 2007 cover story in the Austin Chronicle, and the proclamation of Rosie Flores Day in August 2006 by Austin Mayor Will Wynn was topped off by an induction into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2007.

She was recently voted as one of the “Top 75 Greatest Female Guitarists of All Time” by Venuszine.After a stint with the cult cowpunk band Screaming Sirens, who recorded an album Fiesta, with Enigma and appeared as themselves in the films The Runnin’ Kind , and had cameo roles in The Vendetta and Reform School Girls.

Signing with Warner’s Reprise subsidiary in 1987 as a solo artist was her first major break. The label hoped to light up the country charts with a female version of Dwight Yoakam, and paired Flores with Yoakam’s producer/guitarist Pete Anderson. The self-titled release spotlighted Flores as a stylish, fiery neo-traditional singer who played explosive guitar solos to match. The album yielded three singles, and “Crying Over You,” earned Flores her first Billboard chart appearance. She was also the first female Latina country artist to ever enter the Billboard country charts.

Early in her career while recording for Warner Bros. Records she was nominated for best “Horizon Artist” by the Academy of Country Music in California. She had a cameo role in River Phoenix’s final film, A Thing Called Love in 1993.Yet it was 1995’s Rockabilly Filly that received the most attention, because it reintroduced rockabilly pioneers Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin to audiences worldwide through their duets with Rosie and a successful 1995 tour with Jackson. Moreover, Flores’s self-penned “You Tear Me Up” is arguably the best performance by a contemporary female rockabilly artist.

She recorded more records including After the Farm, Once More With Feeling, Bandera Highway (HighTone), A Honky Tonk Reprise, Dance Hall Dreams (Rounder), Speed of Sound (Eminent), A Little Bit of Heartache (with Ray Campi, Watermelon), and Single Rose and Christmasville (Durango Rose Records).Rosie’s solos recordings have found homes on both the Billboard and Gavin charts and are featured in seven motion pictures. Her revved-up performances from California to New York have won legions of fans and earned appearances on such nationally broadcast television programs as “Austin City Limits” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.”

She is currently appearing in the documentaries Every Night is Saturday Night: The Story of Wanda Jackson and Sweet Lady with the Nasty Voice.Rosie toured Japan for the first time in 2007, and followed that with her 21st tour of Europe through Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, and Spain.

She headlined at The Americana Festival UK 2008, held in Nottinghamshire Newark England.Endorsed by Fender at the 2008 NAMM in Anaheim, CA, Rosie was chosen to open a special show celebrating 65 Years of Fender along with Dick Dale, Billy Gibbons, Jimmy Vaughn and Cindy Cashdollar.With a new tour, new CD under way and trails of shiny accolades around her, Rosie Flores is taking on the future one swell wave at a time.

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/patriciavonne
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/rosieflorestwee