Mitzi Cowell

Trying to describe Mitzi Cowell’s music is like trying to describe “American music.” It’s New Orleans swamp funk, lush western-style guitar, gospel chants and chain-gang hollers, international scales and rhythms, introspective art-rock, and whatever other flavors she chooses to throw in at the time, all slow-cooked in a rich stock of the blues.

A native of Tucson, Arizona, Mitzi began studying traditional fingerpicking as a teenager. Quickly moving on to the electric guitar, her favorite 70’s rock bands led her back to the old masters of the essential sound she wanted to create – the blues – with an emphasis on the transcendentally earthy music of the Mississippi Delta. Delta blues is the rhythmic, harmonic, and emotional basis from which she’s never strayed far, even when she’s tried.

For over 20 years Mitzi has played and recorded with numerous blues, R&B, rock, funk, and original projects. After a brief tenure in the New Orleans blues and R&B scene in the late 1980’s, she returned to the desert with a more sophisticated rhythmic sense and a new musical vision, and began to focus on her own compositions. Mitzi combines smokey vocals and masterful, passionate guitar playing with intimate soul-searching lyrics and relentless grooves.
What sets Mitzi apart? Well, she's a woman who shreds on the electric guitar, but she's never leaned on this as a gimmick. Wanting only to be recognized for her integrity as an artist, Mitzi hopes to inspire through the honesty, passion and spiritual magic of her music.