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Gypsy minstrel Tara Linda will perform at Persimmons Garden Gallery & Wine Tasting Saturday, Nov. 28, from 6 to 9 p.m. Equipped with a smoky voice, bass, and the button accordion, Tara Linda is a torch vocalist who writes jazzy blues, 1930’s Latin torch, and playful circus waltzes. A poet at heart, her songs tell lyric tales of girls on trapeze, blue fur monkeys, and Wild West goddesses.

Tara Linda wrote her first song at age 5, after discovering the rhythm of her tricycle wheels on sidewalk seams. Staying true to rhythm, she played drums in rock and punk bands for 15 years in Austin and Sacramento.

After a shoulder injury sidelined her drumming, she began to sing. With a voice described as “mesmerizing” and “soulful” Tara Linda performed in live musical theater. It was while mending from her injury that she began to teach herself the button accordion. “When I started singing with the accordion, I couldn’t believe the emotional effect on audiences,” she notes. Responding to this, she wrote new waltzes, train songs, and desert cabaret.

”Studying the accordion has been a trip around the world;” Tara says, “from ancient Sephardic tunes, through French cafés, to the Tex-Mex border and the women of South Texas Conjunto.”

Tara Linda skirts easily through global genres yet seamlessly blends them into a style uniquely her own. In her newest project, Tara Linda connects the worlds of rhythm, spacious deserts and borderlands into “Tortilla Western” - where film noir meets the Wild West.

photo: Tara Linda