About Me
The borderlands of Texas and Mexico are possessed of a special romance, a romance of wide-open spaces, diverse yet mingling cultures, of hope and hopelessness, time and timelessness. And this timeless, romantic world is tangible in the harshly beautiful reality of the landscape and the speeding down a long, dark highway on a moonless night, the bright trail of a tear easing down a woman's cheek, all of these things whispering their quiet secrets to those who are listening.Bianca partakes of this special romance in a special way, whispering the mysterious secrets of the borderlands in the language of her own unique experiences, her poetic vision, and the strong voice of her music. She sings of life and love on the borderlands of life and love, of adventure and romance, and of uncertainty and danger. She sings of outlaws and lovers like she's lived it and she means it---and she has, and she does.
Growing up in South Texas, near Corpus Christi, "six miles from the stop sign between Ingleside and Aransas Pass," as a young girl her aunt taught her to smuggle tequila across the border under her petticoats, and she became familiar with the life of desperadoes and secretos obscuros. After leaving school in Houston, she was drawn to the road. As a teenager, she learned to hop freight trains and ride the blinds, living everywhere from Santa Cruz to Sonora, from Nashville to Bogotá. Dark, quiet, and observant, she began to fashion the vicissitudes of her existence into the substance of her art. She remembers making up songs as a child; later, she studied writing and classical guitar; then she hear Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" and knew what she wanted to do. She met the young, brilliant, darkly handsome Townes Van Zandt in Houston and formed a deep, lasting connection that remains central in her life, and the haunting beauty of Towne's music is deeply ingrained in her music.
What Springsteen does for the streets and swamplands of New Jersey, what Lucinda does for the bayous and back roads of the Delta country, Bianca does for the south Texas borderlands: she takes her own personal experience, her own point of view, detail, and spirit, and imbues it with the unique atmosphere and experience of the time and place, and she makes it universal. On Outlaws & Lovers, the romance of the borderlands is palpable. Bianca's voice ties it all together: a dark, silky mixture of strength and vulnerability. In her music, tragedy is always tempered with hope, or at least resilience. And the songs speak volumes, of the romance and danger of outlaws and lovers on the borderlands.
