Whitney Rose

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We saw Whitney Rose at the Continental Club on our last night in Austin. She's a Canadian ex-pat who now makes Austin her home. I believe her home (or at least where she grew up) is in PEI and she made a bit of a name for herself in Toronto before moving to Austin where she's been very productive releasing several albums.

There's a new album, "We Still Go to Rodeos", due out in April, 2020 and she sang some songs from that. Believe Me, Angelina, from that album, is a novel twist on cheating husbands -- it's a conversation between the two women. Her first album, self titled, was released in 2012 so she's been around a while. With all these albums under her belt she has an impressive list of tunes of her own to draw from. She does a few covers as well, but mostly it's her music.

Oddly every time we see her she has a different backing band. I didn't catch the names of the players she had tonight (two young fellows on electric guitars, a bass and drums) but they worked well together. I assume they've been playing together for a while but this is not the band we saw with her a year ago, or in years before that. Austin has a lot of great session musicians who can readily pick up and play along with others. And, I suppose, a lot country music just isn't that complicated.

Anyways I like her music a lot. It's pretty pure country music. These days there's a bit of 60's pop sound to her as well. And a bit of Roy Orbison operatics -- she has quite the strong voice and makes "You Don't Own Me" (the Leslie Gore tune) a regular feature of her shows. She works hard when she belts out some of those tunes.

This gig is a regular residency while she's in town. She does tour quite a bit in North America and Europe but was here every Tuesday during our visit to Austin.

This is a pass the hat gig where you are expected to tip. The club is quite small with seating for about 25people -- the rest of the space is for standing and dancing. If you got 100 people in there that would be a lot. While there are some dancers, mostly what happens is people stand at the front of the stage.... and block the view for everyone else.

Tuesday night is a good time to go the the Continental Club. There's the Whitney Rose early show (no cover), then James McMurtry solo in the gallery, and Mike Stinson after the Whitney Rose show. Each of these are great performers. We're not late night folks so we left after her first set -- we were heading home in the morning and needed to be to bed early.