'Pati's Mexican Kitchen'; a music bazaar; The Secret Sisters

 I really wanted to bring something very authentic and soulful. When I started, ten years ago, I felt that there was no Mexican doing Mexican cooking, from my perspective — which was a Mexican who has moved to the U.S. and is insanely nostalgic for Mexico, and is growing roots in America but continues to strengthen her roots to her home country. And I felt like I could open a window to the true Mexico that I knew, that nurtured me, that welcomed my grandparents — this fascinating place which is very misunderstood in the United States. I thought I could open a window into it and at the same time show how Mexicans and immigrants can enrich the American table.

I dove into Mexican cuisine once I was in the U.S., and because I was applying for the green card I couldn't leave the U.S. for about a year-and-a-half. So it was that nostalgia and that taint of romanticism [for] the tomatillo and the avocado. And that romantic view about my own home country made me appreciate the things I took for granted. I also have benefited from being the granddaughter of immigrants who were incredibly grateful to be accepted into Mexico when they weren't allowed into the U.S. for various reasons. And my grandmothers, who were amazing cooks— one Austrian and the other Polish — [were] from peasant lands that cooked just fish and potatoes. The cooking became so enriched and blessed with Mexican ingredients and techniques. They really were masters in intermarrying what they came with and the things they came from and what they found in the new soil. And they did it beautifully in the kitchen. I am doing the same thing. 

I'm completely unscripted. And my role has been executive producer, talent, writer, interpreter, translator, friend, neighbor. I feel like I talk to my audience like I talk to you — to a friend. I'm very honest and I'm very blunt. But I'm very true to being true. That is why I wanted to tape the show in my home kitchen. I'm a really bad liar. When I lie my ears turn really hot and my face turns really red and I start to sweat. So if I was on a set I wouldn't be able to stop laughing because I respect the authenticity of art, and I think there's a risk in showing your true self. And the rewards are that, if what you're doing is liked, then you can continue to walk on the right path. During my career, I was asked to dye my hair, I was asked to take classes to remove my accent, I was asked to not do Mexican food because it's too "ethnic." I was asked to get a dog. At every turn I said, No, no, no, no, no.

Because it's real, because it's a home kitchen. And because I'm sharing the evolution of a Mexican in the U.S. as she shares her Mexican culture and food. And as she adapts to the U.S. and learns too. I have to tell you that the more that I do this, the humbler I become and the more that I realize how little I know about Mexican cuisine and culture. And how much I need to learn. 

We've been here the last four years in a row, so it gets better every year. The goal is to make the instrument famous. The only thing is, it's only used for playing Greek music. But you never know who will take it and play something else, something different! And become a hit.

My company name is California Luthier Supplies. I've been selling lumber and guitar woods. We import and export it. NAAM is a platform for a large experience like big buyers and factories that want to come down and look at what we have. And we also want to know what they use. They look at it, they take a sample, they make a guitar and show their customers or dealers.

I think in the early, early stages … with the first record cycle … a lot of choices were made that maybe had good intentions, but not a lot of longevity. But then, of course, when everything fell apart and we found ourselves completely alone with no label and no management — our entire team had just disintegrated — that was when we really started saying, You know, if we’re going to rebuild this and do it again we're doing it our way — we're wearing what we want to wear, we're playing our songs that we want to play.



The beauty of this new record is that we were not signed at the time that we made it. We crowdfunded the whole record. There was no label standing there [saying], You need a radio single, you need a hit song that you need to put on a TV show … We just allowed the music to be what it was.

[The crowdfunding campaign] was so integral to everything we did. Brandi was actually very helpful in helping us do that. We did two shows with her — opening for her — in Seattle, I think it was late 2015. That's when we started having conversations about making a record together. Even when we weren't touring with her, she would call and check on us and give us advice. And then when we went through the bad part — we went through bankruptcy and weren't really feeling creative — she was the one who checked on us and told us that we had to continue.



That's really when she put the idea in our heads to look at crowdfunding. And we were very intimidated by that for a long time. We were afraid we wouldn't raise the money in time or it would make us look weak in some way. But our fans just came together and it established a really true connection. And I am so thankful that we did it because it was crowdfunded within two weeks or so.

LYDIA: It didn't really influence us that much when we were really young. We actually grew up around a lot of bluegrass music and gospel music. We were always going to a lot of bluegrass festivals with our dad and spending a lot of weekends doing that. I think when we were very, very young we weren't even aware of the legacy that Muscle Shoals left. But when we got older we realized that it had a huge impact on music. And we're still finding out things about it that we never knew.



LAURA: It's a really interesting place geographically because it's kind of right in the center of a lot of different styles of American roots music. You have country music coming down from Nashville, you've got Appalachian music coming down from the mountains, you've got blues up in Memphis, you've got Cajun style next door in New Orleans. So I feel like there's just this really cool music that just kind of mixes together all in the state of Alabama ... We're always cautious about trying not to imitate anyone and to try to forge our own way, but also keep in the influences there that are kind of hard to resist.

[Church music] was absolutely critical. It was really all of our influence growing up. We grew up in a church that didn't use any musical instruments whatsoever. And so when we would sing together, there wasn't a choir, there wasn't one person singing. We were all singing as a congregation. And so we would get out our songbooks and learn how to harmonize that way, without realizing that we were learning how to sing. And we can really attribute all of our sound to that.

LAURA: The things that were inspiring the record — the bankruptcy and getting dropped from our record deal and finding ourselves in a lawsuit — those are not things that your average music consumer is going to be able to identify with ... In writing the songs, we knew that we, for our own sake, had to express the emotions behind what we had endured. But we also realized that the music had to have a space for our listeners to find themselves.



["Tennessee River Runs Low"] was actually the very first song we wrote with the hope of making a third record. I think that river — the river that runs through our home town — is just mythical in so many ways and so it felt right to write about it, especially after all the tumultuous rough current that we found ourselves in.

LYDIA: Yeah, a lot of those emotions we tried to personify them in a lot of ways — whether it was through a lover or from the perspective of a river. So I think in that way we were able to make it more relatable.