Tin Silver

Listen to Tin Silver and you will hear the beer halls and Baptist churches of West Texas, sun-drenched California, and a little New York thump. You’ll hear soaring country soul, hill blues stomp boogie, and fiddle-centric folk music. You’ll hear a quartet with a deep understanding of roots music and the hard-won musical chops to prove it. Tin Silver serves up solos hot and often, never at the expense of the band’s diverse, smart songwriting.The band writes collaboratively, with guitar/banjo/dobro player Alan Bowen bringing the bulk of the raw material, as well as the fluent bluegrass licks and blues solos he learned over years of dedicated study.Drummer Matthew Higgins, one half of Tin Silver’s Texas contingent, contributes the tight, bright, intricate groove he developed while cutting his teeth on Bob Wills country-swing standards. Paired with Paul Prato’s bottomy electric and upright bass sound and punk-bred attack, Tin Silver’s rhythm section has uncommon fire and dynamic range.Tricia Rojas, the band’s other Lonestar State ex-pat, brings sweet violin and the aching, rafter-rattling vocals she developed singing in church choirs during her childhood.Tin Silver is taking root in Portland, with a self-titled EP on the way in fall of 2007, and plenty of live shows on the books. The bandmates are old friends and have been playing together in various incarnations for years. If the easy rapport they have with audiences and each other, the raw power of their live shows, and the obvious joy they share for singing and playing are any indication, Tin Silver will be making great music for a long while.