Rodriguez – Live in Wellington this Saturday

Thanks to the sometimes excellent musical taste of my father, the words and melodies of Mexican/Native American/European Detroit folk singer Sixto Díaz Rodríguez, better known as Rodríguez have rattled around inside my memories for my entire lifetime.

A poet of the inner city, as many of you will now know, thanks to the excellent documentary Searching For Sugarman, in 1970 and 1971, he recorded one excellent album, Cold Fact, and one spotty, but still memorable album Coming From Reality, before sinking into obscurity, aside from spikes of interest in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland in the late seventies and eighties and of course South Africa, a region which upon discovering his music, refused to put the torch down, eventually leading to his watershed first concerts in the country in 1998, as documented through Searching For Sugarman and it’s lesser known companion documentary from 2001, Dead Men Don’t Tour: Rodríguez in South Africa 1998.

This Saturday, Rodríguez and his band will make their New Zealand debut, performing in Wellington at the TSB Bank Arena. Now in his seventies and riding a wave of resurgent interest across the globe, despite having spent the last few years performing regularly in America and Europe, it’s easy to feel like this might be our first and only opportunity to witness the man play guitar and sing live in concert. As a result, for those who have connected with his horn assisted folk rock instrumentation and carefully written observations on day to day life in his era, this makes his performance one worth actually skipping out on the 2013 edition of Womad for.

However, if you haven’t looked into his work, or are perhaps put off by the oppressive hype associated with the award winning Searching For Sugarman documentary, let me suggest a few songs of his you can listen to on Youtube – ‘Like Janis’, ‘Hate Street Dialogue’, ‘Inner City Blues’, ‘I Wonder’ and ‘Cause’. At present, pre-sale tickets are still available for the show via Ticketek by CLICKING HERE. I hope to see some of you there for what will undoubtedly be a memorable evening. Given his age, the manner in which it will be memorable however, that is something which we cannot yet divine.