SIX DAYS OFF THE ROAD

Liner notes to Carolyn Wonderland's 'Tempting Fate,' the first album on Alligator by a female guitarist

Two old friends were hanging out backstage in Austin when the one who is Bob Dylan asked, “Have you heard Carolyn Wonderland? She’s something else!” That day in 2003 was the first Ray Benson was aware of that musical treasure in his own backyard, but he ended up producing a trio of her albums, beginning with 2008’s Miss Understood. Word of mouth, as they say, is the most effective form of promotion. But only if the artist can back it up. 

Ms. Wonderland, who recently ended a three-year run as John Mayall’s first-ever female guitarist, has been called “a badass” so many times that it’s become a cliché.

“Like all the blues greats, Carolyn is just who she is and can’t fake being someone else,” says Dave Alvin, who produced Tempting Fate, the 2021 LP on Alligator. “She’s a truly unique force unto herself.”  

Though she’d taken lessons on piano and trumpet as a young girl in Houston, the guitar soon became her obsession at about age eight. “I wanted to play like Wes Montgomery (from her father’s jazz collection),” she says, “but I couldn’t, so I played AC/DC and Alice Cooper.” A pre-teen Carolyn got in trouble when she scratched her mother’s vintage Martin guitar by emulating Pete Townshend’s windmill chords. “My mother took away every pick in the house,” says Carolyn, whose career as a blues guitarist and singer has been plectrum-free ever since. Playing with all surfaces of her fingers gives her a variety of tones.

“That’s how I bonded with Hubert Sumlin,” says Wonderland, who met the Howlin’ Wolf guitarist at a Levon Helm “Ramble” in 2009. “He said ‘hey, you don’t use a pick either!” It’s a club, these guitarists with callouses on both hands.

Blisters and broken nails were earned the fun way during Wonderland’s time with Mayall, debuting at the New Orleans Jazz Fest in April 2018 and keeping up a brisk schedule. “I thought, ‘well he’s in his 80s, so we’ll play about 20 shows a year,” she says with a laugh. “We once did 50 shows in 19 countries in 60 days. I never played so much guitar in my life!”

It was also her first tour where she didn’t have to pay for everything. “It was so great to not have to book hotel rooms or worry about expenses,” she says. “But John also taught me how to be a better band leader by example.”

During Mayall breaks, Wonderland played gigs with her own group and built up material that screamed to be recorded. In January 2020, she made Tempting Fate with Alvin in six days. “The Blasters were one of my favorite bands when I was a teenager. We all sat up straight for Dave.”  

During the sessions, Alvin called himself “the mad rearranger,” but found the artist receptive to his ideas. “For folks like Carolyn and myself, who play a lot of barrooms, the arrangements we work up at sweaty gigs may not be always be the best arrangements for recording a song for an album,” Alvin says. An example of a live show highlight that was improved in the studio is “Texas Girl,” known as “the boots song” to many C.W. fans. “Dave said ‘this song sounds like you’re angry, so let’s take this part (a fiery riff near the end) and move it to the beginning.’ So we tried it and it worked!” Alvin also suggested changing the ending instrumental section of “Broken Hearted Blues,” which Wonderland wrote with her Mayall mates Greg Rzab and Jay Davenport. “I wanted something that was not a standard 12-bar solo, both to give Carolyn a chance to stretch out over different chords, as well as something to surprise the listener a little bit.”

“Sometimes folks think that blues music can’t be ‘arranged’,” says the producer. “Tell that to Willie Dixon.”

Photo Todd V. Wolfson

She’s been the Texas queen of blues guitar since she was a teenager in Houston, hanging at juke joints like she belonged, but Wonderland has always been eager to learn and adapt. Sometimes these lessons come the hard way, as when a 15-year-old Carolyn called Townes Van Zandt a liar to his face when he claimed “Pancho and Lefty” as an original. “I said ‘my mother’s been playing that song for years,’” recalls Carolyn, “and the bartender (at the Houston folk club) asked Townes ‘should I throw her out?’” Everybody laughed and she was embarrassed, but the encounter hipped her to the role of the songwriter. Looking at the scruffy, unassuming Townes, whom she’d never heard of before, and considering the gift he’s given the world, inspired her to write her own material. 

Wonderland’s guitar-playing got her deep in the Houston blues scene fast. Guitar greats Joe “Guitar” Hughes, Jerry Lightfoot and Clarence Holliman and singer Miss Lavelle White were among the many mentors to the eager, earnest student. She’s still close to Miss Lavelle, in her 90s, whose financial struggles late in life led to Carolyn co-founding the H.O.M.E. organization, which pays the rent and utilities for White and other blues icons in need.

“At a benefit for Johnny Copeland (circa 1995), Miss LaVelle pulled me to her lap,” Carolyn recalls a favorite memory. “She pointed to a group of guys I’d been hanging out with and said ‘Tell me which one is your boyfriend, ‘cause I’m taking the rest of ‘em home with me!”   

Carolyn’s ever-present guitar case was her “plus one,” getting her into clubs she was too young to legally enter.  She’d wait as long as it took to jam, but was understandably nervous one night when Hughes, the former Bobby “Blue” Bland sidekick and Duke Records session ace, called her up to play. Hughes took her aside and told her something she never forgot: “If you mess up, don’t worry, just keep going.” Sometimes the clams make a beautiful sauce.

In the late ‘90s, when she moved her popular band Imperial Monkeys from Houston to Austin, her close friend and guitar hero Eddy Shaver gave Carolyn other words to live by: “Get after it! You’re almost there.”

Shaver offered that encouragement when she was working out a scorching guitar solo, but it’s become the mindset on which to build a long and adventurous career. In both tough times- Wonderland lived in her van for a year and nine months in the early 2000s- and moments of triumph- a 2004 soundcheck duet with Bob Dylan on “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat,” singing new verses he asked her to write- this humble dynamo just keeps getting after it.

And even after joining the exalted lineage of ex-Mayall guitarists, starting with Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor in the ‘60s, Carolyn Wonderland continues to challenge herself. The creative mind may say “you’re almost there,” but Tempting Fate announces her arrival. 

• Michael Corcoran

Tempting Fate Producer Dave Alvin

I wanted to work with Carolyn because her guitar playing isn't imitating anyone. She is especially not imitating the imitators, like so many modern blues or blues/rock guitarists do. She developed her own effective way of playing the blues that incorporate bits of folk, country and even psychedelic riffs, plus she always surprises me with her guitar lines and melodic twists and turns. As for Carolyn's vocals, they are soulful and powerful to the point of being often spine tingling. Her ability to move from intimate, whispery gentleness to earth shaking, Saturday night bar room loudness, always impresses me both for the obvious gifts of her vocal range but also how well she uses it to advance the drama or the story of the song. I also love that Carolyn has a wonderful, mischievous sense of humor that make her performances honest and charming and keep them far away from getting too bogged down in too much serious "artiste" posturing. Carolyn is also developing into a fine songwriter, as “Crack in The Wall” ably demonstrates.