Carolyn Wonderland

Carolyn Wonderland, active as vocalist, composer, guitarist, and player of assorted instruments, has upheld Texas blues traditions since turning fifteen. Following a five-year stretch fronting Imperial Monkeys that yielded several recordings, she stepped out alone in 2001 with Alcohol and Salvation, displaying assured guitar work and a robust vocal style fluent in rural blues, roadhouse approaches, jump blues, and New Orleans R&B. Hook-driven original material fused blues, R&B, and roots rock on the 2003 album Bloodless Revolution. The boisterous Miss Understood, issued in 2008, initiated a run of four projects overseen by Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. Twelve tracks on 2011’s Peace Meal mixed interpretations and new songs drawn from Elmore James, Bob Dylan, and Janis Joplin. Eight polished singer-songwriter originals plus two covers comprised 2017’s Moon Goes Missing. She joined the Alligator roster for the Dave Alvin-produced Tempting Fate in 2021.

Carolyn Bradford entered the world in Houston in 1972. Her childhood surroundings contained numerous recordings, printed scores, and instruments. Guitar study commenced at age six on her mother’s vintage Martin; barred from using a pick, she eventually marred its finish while copying Pete Townshend’s windmill motion, yet that constraint fostered her hallmark, physically vigorous and singular finger-picking technique. Formative influences encompassed her mother, Houston guitar figures Albert Collins, Jerry Lightfoot, and Joe “Guitar” Hughes, plus blues and soul singer Lavelle White. Local group Little Screamin’ Kenny & the Sideliners at Fitzgerald’s in Houston first prompted her to perform publicly. Vocal work came instinctively; her lucid, throaty contralto suits blues and soul equally, and though comparisons to Janis Joplin have arisen, her delivery remains smoother and more understated. She handles multiple instruments capably, among them piano, trumpet, mandolin, and accordion in addition to guitar and lap steel.

She left high school at fifteen to begin solo appearances. In 1990 she established Imperial Monkeys and commenced touring. Though rooted in blues-rock, the ensemble drew from country, rockabilly, zydeco, second-line R&B, surf, Mexican cumbia, boogie-woogie, and swing. A sequence of albums appeared between 1993’s Groove Milk and 1997’s Bursting with Flavor. The band shared bills with B.B. King, Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy, the Allman Brothers, Delbert McClinton, and Buddy Miles.

Houston media outlets bestowed multiple honors, among them best female vocalist seven times across eight consecutive years. Her first solo outing, Play with Matches, emerged on the independent Big Mo imprint in 1995; she kept touring nationally, guiding Imperial Monkeys through varied lineups until disbanding the group upon relocating to Austin in 1999. After forfeiting her apartment she lived and worked from her van for an extended period.

Once settled in the Austin circuit she put out two 2001 albums: the collaborative Drink the Rain with singer-songwriter Rebecca Cole and her own Alcohol & Salvation on the small local Mix-O-Rama label. She appeared on the star-studded Loose Affiliation of Saints and Sinners in 2002 alongside Papa Mali, Gurf Morlix, Guy Forsyth, Sarah Brown, and “Scrappy” Jud Newcomb, and captured Sessions from the Hotel San Jose, Rm. 50 live inside a hotel room with the tape machine rolling.

Bloodless Revolution, released in 2003 on Ray Benson’s Bismeaux Productions imprint, earned praise and airplay; the collection paired two songs by Texas singer-songwriter Terri Hendrix with her own pieces “I Found the Lions” and “Throw My Love.” Later that year Benson lunched with Bob Dylan, who voiced admiration for Wonderland’s work and requested an introduction. Benson contacted her in Houston; she drove the 165 miles to Austin immediately. She and Dylan jammed that same night. They have since encountered one another repeatedly as friends. Also in 2003, Wonderland and her trio, after performing at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally for the prior decade, opened the event by performing the National Anthem.

Following five years of heavy touring, club residencies, and session work on recordings by Guy Forsyth (Love Songs, For & Against) and Jesse Dayton (Country Soul Brother and South Austin Sessions), among others, she issued the Benson-produced Miss Understood on Bismeaux in 2008; she likewise performed on Austin City Limits that year, and her music appeared in episodes of NBC’s Homicide and Fox’s Time of Your Life.

After further U.S. and European touring she and Forsyth joined forces on the holiday collection Fireside Songs for the Soul, issued by Bismeaux in 2010. In March 2011 she wed writer-comedian A. Whitney Brown in a ceremony conducted by Michael Nesmith. October brought Peace Meal. Assembling several producers that included Benson, Nesmith, and former Dylan guitarist Larry Campbell, the album featured Campbell, steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar, and bassist Glen Fukanaga together with her trio on a program of originals and covers that encompassed Elmore James’ “Dust My Broom,” Muddy Waters’ “Two Trains,” and Dylan’s “Meet Me in the Morning.” She contributed to Pinetop Perkins’ How Long in 2012 and sang with Amy Helm and Shelley King on Marcia Ball’s “Human Kindness” from the pianist’s The Tattooed Lady and the Alligator Man in 2014. A 7-inch single cover of Iggy Pop’s “Open Up & Bleed” with ex-Stooges guitarist James Williamson also appeared.

Live Texas Trio, her last release for Bismeaux Productions, arrived in 2015. Captured at Antone’s in Austin and the Kessler Theater in Dallas, the set featured Wonderland with her trio, Forsyth, and two trumpeters on selected tracks. Moon Goes Missing emerged on her own Home Records label in 2017. She produced the eleven-song album performed by a sextet comprising keyboardist Cole El-Saleh, bassist Bobby Perkins, Forsyth, drummer Kevin Lance, and trumpeter Oliver Steck. Seven originals—including “Come Together” co-written with Ruthie Foster—plus three covers, among them Blind Willie Johnson’s “Can’t Nobody Hide from God” and George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone,” filled the program.

After extensive touring across the U.S., Europe, and Asia she returned home only to receive an invitation from John Mayall to serve as lead guitarist in the Bluesbreakers. She remains the sole woman to occupy that chair during the band’s sixty-five-year history, whose earlier members included Peter Green, Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Coco Montoya, and Walter Trout. Worldwide touring with the indefatigable Mayall included a stretch of fifty shows across sixty days in nineteen countries; she departed when Mayall, then eighty-five, elected to retire from the road.

She signed with North America’s leading blues imprint Alligator Records for 2021’s Tempting Fate. Produced by Dave Alvin, the ten-track set rested on her own rhythm section. She invited Ball to contribute piano to the original “Texas Girl and Her Boots.” Cashdollar added lap steel to two selections, including a duet reading of Bob Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” with Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Alvin supplied guitar on several numbers and took a solo on a version of the Grateful Dead’s “Loser.” Additional covers comprised Mayall’s pro-legalization statement “The Laws Must Change” and Billy Joe Shaver’s “Honey Bee.”