My guest today is a killer steel guitarist who has been working out of Austin, TX for years - Rose Sinclair. We had this conversation over zoom a few months ago and I’m thrilled to be bringing it to you today. Rose put out an album recently called “Wave” that I sort of stumbled across and listened to it over and over again for weeks. There was just something that really spoke to me in her tone and phrasing and the way she approached playing the tunes on the album, which are mostly swing and jazz standards. She refers to her current music as cocktail swing, which I can get with. She plays a double neck steel with no pedals, no effects, not even a volume pedal and she has just really forged a cool style of her own and a modern voice on the instrument.

Rose started out as a multi-instrumentalist, playing bass, guitar, banjo and even accordion in bands around Massachussets, where she’s from. She eventually got into the steel, as you’ll hear in our conversation, and that led to her moving to Austin to immersive herself in western swing music. Another really fascinating element to Rose’s career is that she dug deep into the roots of the style and tracked down some of the original generation of steel players and studied with them. Players like Maurice Anderson, PeeWee Whitewing and Herb Steiner, so we got to talk about her experiences with some of those players, too.

Rose is actively making records, and also has a weekly gig at Sam’s Town Point in Austin. So please check out her beautiful record Wave, and you can find out about her new projects and any touring at rosesinclairmusic.com

Listen to the accompanying playlist for this episode here, which features the artist’s own music, plus many of the songs that were discussed during the show.

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