Fresh off a 30-date tour with rock god Robert Plant, Rosie Flores is coming to Houston for an intimate show at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck. Flores, who received one of the highest honors in folk and traditional arts when she was named an NEA National Heritage Fellow in 2024, will perform with fiddle and violin player Tamineh Gueramy on Saturday, May 9.
“I will tell some stories in between, but with her there I think we’ll just make it a rocking show,” says Flores. “She’s kind of punk rock, but she’s also country at the same time. She can just play anything, really.”
As a cowpunk pioneer herself, Flores could be speaking in the first person when describing Gueramy. Flores’ own long career has encompassed a wide range of styles. The two musicians met through Welsh rocker Jon Langford of The Waco Brothers.
“I’ll be touching on all the albums that I’ve recorded, and people can expect everything from blues and country to punk rock. There’s going to be a little bit of everything. I guess the only thing I’m not doing at this point is a jazz song — but that may change,” says Flores.
At home in Austin, Flores hosts weekly jazz sessions at The Continental Gallery, a project that has been going strong for eight years. She is also planning to release a jazz album in the near future, joking that she always wanted to be a jazz singer when she “grew up.”
Flores has been rocking since she was a six-year-old playing guitar. Born in San Antonio, she relocated with her family to San Diego as a pre-teen. Her father’s support of her musical ambitions made it possible for her all-girl band, Penelope’s Children, to tour the country in a Volkswagen van while they were still teenagers.
Flores also forged a deep connection to Los Angeles’ world-famous Palomino Club. Recently, she has been involved in the making and release of a documentary —The Palomino — about the legendary venue.
She recalls first visiting the club to see Doug Kershaw perform. Soon after, she began signing up for the venue’s weekly talent nights. Winners were determined by audience applause at the end of the night, and Flores quickly realized that performers who went on too early were forgotten by the time voting came around.
“So I started going on really late with my rock-and-roll guitar and my white cowboy boots. That’s where they started calling me the ‘Rockabilly Filly,’ and I started winning. I won like seven times, and they put me in the big final of the year with all the winners — and I won that,” says Flores proudly.
The club’s owner soon recognized both her talent and her growing draw, offering her weekend gigs.
“The Palomino Club is where I met all these musicians and friends and really made a name for myself,” says Flores. “I became one of the main acts there, and next thing you know there was a line around the block to see me play.”
This past year has been especially busy for Flores, not only promoting the documentary but also celebrating her latest release, Impossible Frontiers. The album features Flores and her band, The Talismen, performing both new material and revisiting songs from her past.
Impossible Frontiers showcases Flores’ ever-evolving guitar skills and sweet vocals, especially on several love songs where her charm and hopeful optimism shine through. The album kicks off with the steady rocker “Lines.”
“It’s about a breakup in Nashville,” says Flores. “Guys can come on to you and give you these lines, but words can become wounding after a while. They can pull you in and then hurt you. Guys in your life can drag you in — hook, line, and sinker — and then something happens where they don’t want to be in a relationship anymore.”
Many of the songs on the album are rooted in real-life experiences, and Flores — a gifted storyteller both in song and conversation — approaches them all with sincerity. Impossible Frontiers also revisits her autobiographical track “Bandera Highway,” a song she began writing as a teenager and originally featured on her 1993 album Once More With Feeling.
“You go through experiences in life, and sometimes you get songs out of them,” she says. “Sometimes you just have to make it up.”
When discussing love, art, and femininity in guitar playing, Flores is aware of the masculine associations often attached to shredding guitar and the “toughness effect” it can project.
“The fact that I can shred on guitar doesn’t mean that I’m going to shred him,” she says laughing. “When you’re shredding a guitar, it gives you kind of a mean persona. You have to be kinda tough.
“I love seeing women do it because it shows there’s a whole different conversation happening on the guitar,” she says. “In a woman’s hands, it’s a different rhetoric and feeling — and it’s badass. There’s less flash and more thought behind it.”
It was likely this very quality that caught the attention of Robert Plant. Flores explains that her longtime friend Buddy Miller and his manager, Kathi Whitley, suggested her name when Plant was looking for an opening act for his tour.
“I believe at that point Robert looked me up and went down the Rosie rabbit hole,” she says, describing with heartfelt joy the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the impact it had on her career.
“If you would have told me when I was in my 40s or 50s, ‘When you’re 75 you’re going to be touring with Robert Plant,’ I would have said, ‘Yeah right! That’ll be the day!’ Well, the day came.”
Flores speaks glowingly about her experience with Plant and his crew, describing it as yet another enriching chapter in her remarkable life.
“I just feel lucky to be healthy and still look young at this age and still have a lot of energy and a love for music and rock and roll, songwriting, and singing,” she says. “I just feel very lucky. I don’t know whether to thank the Lord above or what, but I feel so blessed that I still have what I have at this age. I haven’t really lost anything. If anything, I’ve gained by getting older and having experiences.”
Rosie Flores will perform on Saturday, May 9 at 8 p.m. at The Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk. For more information, visit mcgonigels.com or rosieflores.com
