I’ve always wondered what it would be like for siblings to travel the world together in a band. Growing up with a sister myself, I can imagine the the experience would mostly be one of comfortable familiarity, sprinkled with moments of grating annoyance.
Tuesday night at The Fitzgerald Theater was my third time seeing Rodrigo y Gabriela play live, so I’ve been lucky enough to witness their intricate, rhythmic, boisterous “flamenco with a rock and roll edge” style of guitar playing. That also means I’ve been fortunate to have an inside peek at the teasing banter, knowing smirks, and glowing appreciation they share with each other on stage.
At this show, though, I and the rest of the audience got an inside glimpse of what it must truly be like to spend months on the road with the person you grew up with. The one who knows you inside and out, quirks and all.
Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero are 52 and 53 years old, respectively, and hail from Mexico City. They’ve been playing together professionally since 2000, and are about a month into this almost 50-stop tour to promote a newly released album, OurHome, and mark the 20th anniversary of their self-titled record.
As the duo stepped onto the stage, the nearly full theater erupted in cheers. They waved, then sat down, placed their guitars around their necks, and immediately broke into their first song. No openers were needed to warm up the crowd on this chilly, drizzly evening in St. Paul.
After about four songs into the show, Sánchez picked up a microphone that had been sitting on a small bench between he and his sister.
“Are you late?” he asked a man who was shuffling sideways to his seat in the front row, more than 30 minutes after the concert had begun. He chuckled as the audience burst into laughter, then continued. “Now we’re gonna play the title track for the new album. It’s a tune we wrote after a little bit of a ‘searching for an answer,’ musically speaking.
“When that was happening, our dear, beautiful cat in our studio passed, and…do you want to tell the story?” Sánchez asked Quintero. “But don’t go crazy long because, you know, we’ve tried to do this speech every night, shorter and shorter, because a month ago when we started this tour, it was, like, a f–kin’ 10 minutes,” he explained to more laughter from the crowd. “That’s not gonna happen, I promise.”
Quintero accepted the microphone from her brother and replied, “OK, don’t promise,” to more cheers. “Well, he has spoiled the whole story already but…. So it was something that just touched us deeply. We were super sad, especially because this kitty cat, Pelusa, was a mini dictator, incredibly bossy, and…a proper queen.
“So, for us [her death] was like a wake-up call, and it’s why we named the album OurHome because it was going back to the way we started playing,” she explained. “And at that point, me and Rodrigo, we hadn’t sat like this and played acoustic guitar [because we had been] in this crazy sort of journey of experimentation. At one point, we even thought our next step was [bringing] a big band with us on the road, and—” Quintero paused as Sánchez stood up, placed his guitar on its stand, and walked off stage.
“Adios!” she called after him as the room once again roared with laughter.
“He wants me to tell the story in two seconds. It’s not a short story,” she said with a grin. “So…we did some demos, and when you [listened to them] you couldn’t hear ‘Rodrigo y Gabriela’ at all. You could only hear the drums and all of the crazy keyboards and sounds. So, imagine what kind of album was that going to be.
“And that was when Pelusa passed away. Rod came home and wrote this melody. He showed it to me the next day and I liked it, and he said, ‘This came to me when I was very sad.’ So for me it was like, there was no strategy there. It was not like, ‘How can we do this big band and all of these things.’ It came from an honest part of Rodrigo.
“So I added my chords, and in less than a day we had this little tune for Pelusa. Because for me, it was Pelusa from the beyond saying, ‘Stop the bullcrap. Do it with two acoustic guitars,’” Quintero said with a giggle. “So we want to play this tune for you tonight. We’d love to invite you to think about something good for you, for your community, for all of the things we’re fighting for today in our world, which is very hard. Sort of our way home.”
The sentiment was especially touching because their show in St. Paul happened to fall on Election Day, when political tensions were high.
“OK, bring Rodrigo back on the stage,” she called, and her brother instantly appeared to more cheers. Sánchez sat, and the two GRAMMY winners went straight into the title track, followed by songs from most of their albums, including “Simurgh,” “Monster,” “Hanuman,” and “Tamacun.”
To me, this exchange between the siblings and the origin of “OurHome” are a perfect example of how a pair of musicians—who have lived for stretches in Mexico, Ireland, Japan, and France during a career that has spanned more than two decades—have come to define “home.”
And their show at The Fitzgerald was a lovely, lively way to celebrate albums old and new, and a relationship built on love, admiration, and, yes, lots and lots of teasing.
