Alynda Segarra was just a teenager when she decided to leave the Bronx, hitchhike around the states for a while, and then settle down in New Orleans where she first got her start in music. It’s also where she picked up her first banjo, after new friends she’d been playing with told her what an impressive singer she was. So, influenced by the music scene in NOLA, and by poetry and her Puerto Rican background, Segarra used it all to infuse her folky, bluesy-Americana sound, and that’s how Hurray for the Riff Raff emerged.
Her music is all-consuming, wistful and romantic. And sometimes you can’t decide if you want to drive cross-country with her music on repeat or sit in a lonely, dark bar with a cup of whiskey and just let yourself feel everything. Her most passionate, heart-aching tracks are the acoustic ones, of course—just her and her guitar, maybe a little piano and some harmonica—which all evoke a similar kind of beautiful longing. But she has a zestier side, too—songs you could perfectly imagine her singing on the streets entertaining a crowd, as heard in songs like “Little Black Star” and “Blue Ridge Mountain.”
Her three albums were consecutively released from 2012-14, and now her fourth, The Navigator, is due out on March 10 on ATO Records.
Bowery Ballroom
4/20
w/ Ron Gallo
9 p.m.
$20
Ticketfly.com
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