The Carrie Experience

Fiddle player to bring mix of Latin, country sounds to CAC stage on June 3

May 19, 2023

DAVID STONE | OUR TOWN TEMPLE

Austin-native Carrie Rodriguez played Carnegie Hall before she was 10 years old, but a jam session with Lyle Lovett as a teen-ager inspired a switch from classical violin to country fiddle.

“Lyle was good friends with my dad, and he invited me to come play with his band during a soundcheck before a big concert,” Rodriguez said. “I had been dabbling in fiddle, but I was still playing classical music in school. I was so excited to play with Lyle, and I learned all of these amazing fiddle parts of his songs. I was prepared.”

“I walked in, and there was Lyle and his band,” she recalled. “We started playing That’s Right, You’re Not from Texas, and I was just terrible. It was a disaster, but I came home from that concert inspired after hearing his fiddle player tear it up all night.”

On June 3, it will be Carrie tearing up the stage at the Cultural Activities Center in Temple. The show starts at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are available for $25-$30 at cacarts.org.

Carrie, who often performs solo, will be accompanied by a five-piece band at the Temple show and will perform two very different 45-minute sets.

“We don’t do full-band shows often, but this will be a really rockin’ full-fun show,” she said. “I’ll be singing songs in English, Spanish, Spanglish and country.”

While Carrie would go on to reach great heights playing Latin and country music with her fiddle, her start in music was a bit more staunch.

“I started playing violin at age 5,” she said. “I was very fortunate to go to a public school in Austin that had a Suzuki program, and they were teaching kindergartners how to play violin. I loved it — I was a fish in water and that’s all I wanted to do. I vividly remember seeing Itzhak Perlman play when I was a young child, and that was it. I never looked back.”

Living in Austin, Carrie grew up in a world surrounded by music.

“I’m from here — I’m a unicorn,” she said with a laugh. She explained that a unicorn is a person who grew up in Austin instead of moving to the Central Texas city later in life.

Carrie’s dad, David Rodriguez, was a regular on Austin’s music-scene stage. He worked closely with another iconic Hispanic singer — Tish Hinojosa.

“I’ve always been a huge Tish fan,” she said. “My dad and Tish collaborated on several songs and they performed together. I have fond memories of her performing when I was very young.”

Carrie studied classical music through high school and into college, but with Dad’s help, she began exploring other genres as well.

“Dad used to play at Austin’s historic venues, and when I was 12, he invited me to go with him and sit in on a song or two,” she said. “One night a week, I would stay up late and jam with my dad at places like La Zona Rosa. My mom even let me go on a European tour with him. We played dives and theaters, and hopped from city to city on a train.”

After the Temple show, Carrie will get busy booking the next season of her Laboratorio series. The series takes a deep dive into Hispanic culture in the US, and features special guests who play all styles of Latin music.

“Laboratorio is a celebration of Latino life in America,” she said. “Being Hispanic in this country has a lot of different faces.”

While the Temple show won’t officially be part of the Laboratorio series, Carrie said she will borrow elements from the acclaimed programs.

Carrie has performed and worked with legendary artists such as Lucinda Williams, John Prine, Patty Griffin, Bill Frisell, Rickie Lee Jones, Mary Gauthier, Los Lobos, Alejandro Escovedo and Los Lonely Boys, among others.

She has made numerous television and radio appearances, including Austin City Limits, The Tonight Show, A Prairie Home Companion, and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts. Carrie has been profiled in many publications, including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Times of London, The New Yorker and the Washington Post.

Carrie lives in Austin with her partner and musical collaborator Luke Jacobs, a multi-instrumentalist/singer-songwriter from Minnesota, and their 4-year-old son, Cruz.