Singles are not the usual fare on Musically Speaking, but when you get two remarkable and quite different songs from two remarkable New Mexican artists, you need to share. Dust City Opera’s “Stars” ventures into dark territory, and Rooster Blackspur’s “Big Dipper” takes place in the dark of night.

Dust City Opera
“Stars” (indie)
A review
“Violence and sadness and humor—wherever they intersect,” says Paul Hunton, front man and songwriter for Dust City Opera, explaining his songwriting interests. On the new single “Stars,” the first release from an eponymous upcoming EP (available on Spotify), the first two are easy to find. The third is there, too, though more subtly.

Against a dark and fevered instrumental backdrop, Hunton’s vocal lays blame and adoration at the feet of a lover no longer on the scene—along with a desire for revenge that he seems not quite ready to acknowledge. There is, of course, blood-letting involved, and it appears to be his own:

Glass cuts deep and brings me back to you
Why shouldn’t there be blood if our love is true

It’s probably the darkest line in the song, but if you’re familiar with Hunton’s gleeful engagement with all things dark, this perfectly and poetically deranged sentiment can raise a smile as well as a shiver.

Hunton has assembled a top-flight group of musicians behind him. The track includes Jared Putnam (lead guitar), Travis Rourk (trombone), Clara Byom (clarinet), Scott Brewer (bass), and Greg Williams (drums). The band’s unusual instrumentation and Hunton’s wide-ranging musical interests—from classical guitar to heavy metal to rowdygrass—give him a rich sonic palette to draw from, and in “Stars,” you can hear some of those influences married together in the distinctive sound that is Dust City Opera’s alone. The viscous guitar, baleful trombone, and seasick clarinet create a densely layered atmosphere of disorientation and instability, and Hunton’s anguished vocal, fortified by both vocal and dramatic training, gets to the tormented heart of the matter.

In the wake of the single, the upcoming Stars EP “will complete my project of collecting unrecorded songs and giving them a home with Dust City Opera,” says Hunton. “The title track is, itself, eight years old and is a nod to the early influence Chris Cornell [Soundgarden] had on me. It explores themes of estrangement and alienation . . . and the psychic origins of a scar on my right hand.” (So it was his own blood.)

If you find yourself tapping your foot to a song about, say, a global environmental cataclysm—as listeners to the band’s first album, Heaven, did (it earned him the moniker “the Cole Porter of the Apocalypse”)—Hunton will have succeeded at luring you into his dark, dangerous, and funny world, and you’ll thank him for it.

Rooster Blackspur
“Big Dipper” (indie)
A review
When we first met her, she was Naomi Sparrow, a member, along with her musical partner Rob Stroup, of the duo Moody Little Sister, whose album Great Big Mama Sunshine (reviewed here) won Best Country CD at the New Mexico Music Awards, against some pretty stiff competition. The album, though, was the duo’s swan song, the two agreeing that Moody Little Sister’s time was just done, she says.

So a little more than a year ago, this singer/songwriter set about rebranding herself as a solo act, an expensive and difficult proposition in the best of times, but this wasn’t the best of times, what with a global pandemic shutting down her touring schedule and confining her to T or C, New Mexico. But growing up in the Alaskan wilderness, brought up by parents who settled there knowing next to nothing about how to survive there but did, she knew how to “adapt, improvise, overcome” (her mother’s mantra).

She rebranded herself as Rooster Blackspur—“a foot-stomping, cactus-wrangling, unholy messenger of love,” as she puts it—and set up a Patreon page. “I’ve been a voracious creator for 2020 because it gave me accountability because my Patreon supporters are loyal, and they’re eager to hear what you create,” she says. She’s done 25 or so videos for those supporters, who have been able to observe the process of a song from its “First Performance” to a finished product, and she’s released a few to her YouTube page. When a fan complained that people were allowed to go to church during the pandemic but not concerts, which are her church, Rooster got herself ordained as a minister so she could hold gatherings of her congregation. “I come from desperation. You figure shit out,” she says.

Rooster has just made her first public release with the original tune “Big Dipper.” You can find the song on Spotify, and you can catch the charming video produced by Rooster (see below). It’s a beaut of a lullaby, sung to a lover who is far away but who can look up at the same night sky and connect. Rooster delivers the song with a deep simplicity, accompanied only by her guitar. Her soulful voice—free of emotional artifice, and full of genuine feeling—delivers a soothing and comforting declaration of love. It’s personal, as is all her music, and her fans have cast her as a personal friend. She reaches out to them directly in “Unholy Saints,” a Patreon “First Performance” video that made it to YouTube:

Carry on, all you wayward people
Carry on, black sheep, sing your song
Carry on, those who have no steeple
Sing low, and carry on

Rooster started writing songs as a youngster as a safe place to experience her emotions, never intending to share them. “Songs are always a part of my life,” she says. “They’re constantly coming to me. I describe them as visitors, or butterflies that land on you if you’re still.” It wasn’t until she was a teenager that it occurred to her that maybe others who were feeling the same things might need to hear her songs. Now, she has a congregation to minister to, and she’s happy to cock-a-doodle-do.

Her new name comes from a Moody Little Sister song, “Rooster,” about a cantankerous animal from her childhood who evaded her mother’s chopping block not once, but twice. The rooster became a metaphor for the grit and determination that can get you through life’s difficulties. “I started telling that story, saying, Hey, to the rooster in everybody, it’s not the time to give up,” she says. “People started shouting ‘Hey, Rooster’ at me because of that song. There was just something about that that felt right. I’ve never liked my name, even as a tiny kid. Rooster just stuck, and it felt right.”

The solo road feels right, too, despite the difficulties. Both Rooster and Rob Stroup feel they’re doing their best work these days. Stroup fronts Berto and the Blame and is running his Taproot Studio in T or C. Rooster’s working on two albums with producer John Wall of Wall of Sound Studio in Albuquerque, with the hope that she can get one of them done by year’s end. Meanwhile, as long as she is prevented from touring, you can find her at her restaurant, the Giddy Up Cafe, in T or C, open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and also available for private dinner/concert bookings (email rooster@roosterblackspur.com for details).

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© 2021 Mel Minter