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Stories about women struggling against adversity in male-dominated industries abound, and music is usually no different. But guitarist/singer Rosie Flores was never discouraged.
“When I was 16 and starting my first band, I’d hear, ‘Wow you’re really good for a girl.’ I would just take it as a compliment rather than, ‘What do you mean?’ ”
Now a spunky 62, she plays Evening Muse’s early show Saturday.
“I got to jam with Jeff Beck backstage when I was 21,” Flores says. “All this encouragement came from men from the age of 16 on, and I still get encouraged.”
Flores led a rockabilly and country band in Southern California in the late ’70s before heading up the all-girl punk group Screaming Sirens in the mid-1980s. She recorded several well-received solo albums while lending her six-string skills to other artists. In 1995 she pulled her female rockabilly guitar heroes, Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin, out of retirement to record duets on her album, “Rockabilly Filly.”
Despite her dexterity on a guitar, she’d never recorded an album as her band’s only guitarist – until now. “Working Girl’s Guitar” features Flores’ live trio with the petite axwoman in the spotlight.
“Wherever I play live, I’d hear, ‘I didn’t know you were the guitar player,’ even though I’ve been playing since my 16-year-old band,” she explains. “… I decided to get down to bare bones and do it like we do on the road as a trio.”
“Working Girl’s Guitar” isn’t the sole focus of Flores’ current tour though. She’s dividing her set with guest vocalist Marti Brom between her material and the work of Janis Martin, a guitarist known as the “female Elvis” during the late ‘50s and who died of cancer before the release of a comeback album – an album Flores bring to light.
“I worked on her for about 10 years and finally got her into the studio in Blanco, Texas,” recalls the San Antonio native. “It was pretty much a labor of love. I spent $6,000 of my own money and didn’t have money to finish the record properly.”
Flores took the project to Kickstarter, and it was finally released this year.
