Bio

Tucson native Mitzi Cowell is a singer, songwriter, bandleader, session and performing lead guitarist for various bands, producer, recordist, multi-instrumentalist, visionary, visual artist, writer, gardener, and contemplative.

Mitzi’s music is thoughtful, revealing, imaginative, playful, and spiritually uplifting with a rhythmic and aesthetic grounding in blues and American roots music, and the high-bar musicianship of a session player. Imagine Lyle Lovett on mushrooms, or Jane Siberry if she were born in Clarksdale, Mississippi and hired the Meters as a rhythm section. She would be flattered to be compared to Taj Mahal.

Mitzi originally learned folk-blues fingerpicking as an adolescent from master Ken Tucker, and honed her electric chops gigging and recording with numerous blues, R&B, classic rock, funk, variety, and original projects. She learned New Orleans-style sensibilities and groove through immersion, gigging and recording in the Crescent City in 1989-90, and brought all it back to the desert to create a style of her own.

Influences? Imagine a blonde-haired, sun-bronzed little girl laying on her back beneath the family’s stereophonic Grundig console taking in a steady aural diet heavy with Big Band swing and Joni Mitchell, and going to sleep at night with an FM transistor radio by her pillow playing 60s and 70s album-oriented rock. Mitzi’s favorite album as a small child was Johnnie Cash’s Live From San Quentin. She’s studied Western music theory and structure intensively, and still prioritizes groove, soul, and spirit.