Rosie Flores Discusses the Sonic Diversity of 'Working Girl's Guitar'

BY Stephen CarlickPublished Nov 1, 2012

The release of Working Girl's Guitar marks 44 years of recording music for rockabilly-tinged country singer Rosie Flores. "I'm little, but I'm loud," she sings on the album, and it's that tenacity that's ensured Flores's continued relevance. She's recently worked with Jack White, she's currently on a cross-country American tour and, as Flores points out in an interview with Exclaim!, she's still expanding her musical palette.

"There are a lot of fun things on the record," she declares. "I've always wanted to do a surf song, I just wanted to show diversity on my guitar playing, as well as being able to sing songs that express where I'm coming from, as a musician and a woman. From 'Little But I'm Loud' to 'Love Must Have Passed Me By,' that says it all. I've lived a long time, and I started singing jazzy/pop songs when I was six. My dad would hand me the lyrics and record me.

"That's a long time, to have been living in the '50s and living through each decade. The album shows my influences and where my tastes are, as far as the kind of music I have loved through the years. Notice there's no rap on there [laughs]. It's got R&B influences there, and blues."

Working Girl's Guitar, she says, "is the first album where I have played all the guitars on it. The reason I think it sounds good to me is because it is my guitar sound. That's something a lot of people have had a hard time realizing through the years, that I've been playing lead guitar since I was back with the Screaming Sirens in 1984. People will see me live and go, 'I didn't know you played guitar. You shred!' I go, well, thanks. They're not used to seeing that. They hear the songs on the radio or on the net and they have no idea I play guitar."

Now that the album is done and released, continues Flores, "it's time for me to get on with the fun part, which is to get out there and play the music."

On tour, she'll play a mix of songs from both Working Girl's Guitar and her recent album with Janis Martin, The Blanco Sessions. Listen to Flores's cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" below and check out all her tour dates here.

Working Girl's Guitar is out now via Bloodshot Records.

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