Patricia Vonne with Rick Del Castillo plus The Infidels

"Austin-based (San Antonio native) Patricia Vonne has released five albums that dance across the border, showing her to be a tough Texas alt-rocker with influences from her Mexican and Spanish heritage. On Viva Bandolera, she has compiled 17 of her Spanish-language songs. The sister of director Robert Rodriguez, Vonne has had roles in several of his movies, including the memorable bad-guy-butt-kicking Zorro Girl in his film Sin City.

With a powerful and versatile voice, Vonne adopts a Zorro Girl-like macha persona: the female bandit, a bandolera, or a torero, female bullfighter, as much as a Texan kick-ass rocker. Alt-Latino fans will immediately hear in her sexy lower register a striking similarity to the voice of Andrea Echeverri of the Colombian group Aterciopelados.

Vonne mixes acoustic guitar with a rock lineup including a stinging lead guitar. She also plays castanets on several tunes, adding their distinctive clacking percussion to this very evocative, lively sound.

The vibe here is often spaghetti western drama and romance, conjuring up big skies, epic tales and the lure of adventure. "La Huerta de San Vicente" sounds like a slow, dramatic dance in a hot Southwestern desert barroom, even if the underlying rhythm is Argentinian tango.

Vonne's seamless and effortless mix of musical tradition is a reminder how intertwined the countries are and that they enrich each other. Here's hoping Vonne's music and this other Chicano hybrids can introduce more Americans to a part of their own culture"
Growing up in San Antonio, Vonne and her siblings were encouraged to forge their own creative paths. Her father, a native from Rio Grande Valley, came to San Antonio on a music scholarship and her mother, of Spanish descent, played guitar and sang Old World folksongs for her kids. The memories of Vonne’s mother giving her and her siblings exposure to these historical songs and styles has stuck with her throughout her life, and she expertly melds this influence with her own affection for rock ‘n’ roll. She counts Forth Worth rocker Johnny Reno and his band, the Sax Maniacs, as her first exposure to the decidedly American genre.

“Growing up as a Tejana, I listened to the diverse music of San Antonio—country, rock, jazz, pop, conjunto and Tejano styles,” she recalled. “When I started writing my own music, which is also a hybrid mix of sound and flavors, I felt a need to preserve and honor the rich cultural heritage of my upbringing.”

In 2001, Vonne relocated back to Texas from her temporary home of New York, settled in Austin and quickly became a standout attraction in a city of earnest singer-songwriters, indie upstarts and quirky iconoclasts. Vonne’s bilingual lyrics, flamenco dance moves and stage prowess left an undeniable impression on the Austin music fans and solidified her role in the live music scene. Vonne has garnered various accolades from the local music community, such as the Best Female Vocalist title in 2014. She also took an award home from the same ceremony that praised her dexterity with her signature instrument, the castanets. The statuesque singer has also collaborated with numerous Texas musical heavyweights such as Charlie Sexton, Rosie Flores, Flaco Jimenez, Alejandro Escovedo, Joe Ely and Doyle Bramhall. The Austin Chronicle has many times over praised Vonne’s musical output and notes that “The caliente combination of Latino rhythm and American rock & roll has been well explored by everyone from Doug Sahm to the Cruzados, yet Patricia Vonne's...is more stylized, a feminine, sensual rendering. Romance and rock & roll rarely sound so good.”

Viva Bandolera represents both a labor of love and a completion. Sung entirely in Spanish, it is a summation in sorts of the distance Vonne has traveled on her singular path. Weaved throughout the tracks are several connoisseurs of the genre including Alex Ruiz, Tito Larriva, Michael Ramos, Rick del Castillo, Joe Reyes, and her brother.

“This album is special to me because I wanted it to capture my Latina heritage on one disk,” Vonne says. “It's a big part of my identity and I feel I've accomplished what I set out to do. With this album I feel I've come full circle as an artist.”