Making a record is like building a ship in a bottle. Playing live music is like being in a rowboat in the ocean.” – Jerry Garcia
Within the early notes of a Maggie Rose concert, audience members will understand that she is in total control of the rowboat and the ocean. It also becomes obvious why Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir recruited Maggie Rose to be an opener on his Wolf Bros. tour.
Like Weir, the stage and road is a safe harbor for this Rock n’ Soul singer. In Maggie Rose’s early years, the writing was in the sand about how she would become known for her live shows: She got her “water-wings” in a Bruce Springsteen tribute band – The B Street Band.
Like many skillful sailors, such as Weir and Springsteen, who dominate at live shows, Maggie struggled with the studio and the precision of constructing a ship in the bottle. She was signed to a record contract with a label’s idea of her becoming a pop star with viral music videos. The opposite happened. Most of her YouTube views came from audience members at her live shows. The performer on stage wasn’t the same as the singer in the studio. She was dropped from the label but her fire and passion didn’t drown in a musical abyss.
Her current band which is as funky and powerful as Rose’s voice, Them Vibes, are the perfect combination. Like a Ken Kesey Further road trip, this half traveling circus and half rock n’ roll caravan is following the same GPS coordinates as other musical pioneers. Her latest project includes a stop at Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. That’s an odd place for an artist who prefers the stage rather than the studio but the engineers and producers agree that Maggie’s studio work has overcome rough waters. She talks about recording at the legendary recording venue and how she learned to ‘go with the flow’ in the studio. It really shouldn’t be a surprise. Her album: Change The Whole Thing was recorded in the studio “live.”