LIFTING THE VIBRATION:
Mitzi Cowell On The Musician's Life
Mitzi Cowell,
2014 inductee to the Arizona Blues Hall Of Fame, likes to push boundaries. As Tucson’s preeminent female slide guitar
player, Cowell is an integral part of the local blues scene, often appearing
with the Black Skillet Review, where she lights up the stage with good
old-fashioned, hard-rocking American roots music. Nothing pleases Cowell more than getting a
kid to put down a cell phone to look up at a stage that’s exploding with live
music.
In addition to
excelling in a genre where women are often relegated to vocals, and on an
instrument that’s still considered to be largely a male domain, Cowell pushes
at gender boundaries as well. When she
takes the stage, it is typically in jeans and boots and a button-down shirt
with the tails hanging out. She doesn’t
wear make-up, and she doesn’t show skin.
She is simply authentic. And if
you’re a music lover, when Mitzi Cowell starts to play, nothing else matters.
Cowell liked the idea of talking with me about
the musician’s life from a woman’s perspective, and she spoke candidly. Here are a few of her comments:
Do you think the music industry is more accepting of female musicians now
than when you started out?
Actually,
yeah. I think we’re less likely to get
asked stupid questions in music stores, although we still do. I used to not even want to go into music
stores because I would always have to be fighting to establish myself as a
musician. I think it’s gotten a little
better.
I’m blessed
with being in a scene, both the blues and R&B scene, where musical merit
really outweighs what you look like. I
think if I hadn’t gotten into the blues I might have had a harder time doing
music as a woman. Some of the top 40
bands I’ve played in asked me to dress a certain way, and it was just like,
nah.
I’ve always
surrounded myself with people who made music primary, and the guys I work with
take me on my musical merits. When we’re
on stage, I am my guitar playing.
My
appearing as a woman on stage (playing the electric guitar) opens things up for
every little girl and every boy who looks at me and sees “Oh! A woman can do this”, and even for older
women who are thinking “I’ve always wanted to take up the guitar”. So I feel like I’m doing good work here with
music.
How would you describe the Tucson musical community?
I
think Tucson really is the poster child for a Beloved Community.
How would you say the music scene in Tucson has changed over the last
decade?
There are
less places for the kind of music that I play. With recorded music and DJ’s,
there’s a dying off of appreciation of live music. A lot of young people don’t have any
experience of live music, and are hearing it all through their ear buds or
their computer. They’re watching live
concerts on You Tube, and they aren’t getting that full experience of hearing
musicians improvising in the moment.
Frequently these days I see young people coming out and saying “Wow, I
can’t believe how much fun live music is!”
It’s because they’ve never experienced it, you know?
Do you feel like you’re at the top of your game these days?
I’d say I’m
about there. I have all kinds of great
role models around me, because most of the people I play with are older than
me, so I get to watch what they’re going through. Everybody just gets better. You keep on playing, you get better. That’s how it is, unless you get a physical
ailment that limits you.
Another
fortunate thing about the blues scene (is) you can be a total geezer and still
be doing it. In pop music when somebody
starts to get older, people can be judgmental, but BB King’s going to be
playing until the day he dies. So I get
to do that.
Music is
something I could take to the smallest town in Texas, and make a connection
with them. Music is a universal
language. It crosses all barriers. What
I want to put across is joy, and (to) say some positive things. I really concentrate my writing on lifting
the vibration of the room I’m in.
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