Singer, songwriter, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist Carolyn Wonderland has been a torchbearer for the Texas blues since she was 15. After five years leading the Imperial Monkeys and issuing a handful of albums, Wonderland went solo with 2001's Alcohol and Salvation, revealing herself as a consummate guitarist and full-throated singer well-versed in the vocabularies of rural, roadhouse, jump blues, and New Orleans R&B. 2003's Bloodless Revolution melded blues, R&B, and roots rock in hooky originals. 2008's rowdy Miss Understood was the first of four albums produced by Asleep at the Wheel's Ray Benson. 2011's Peace Meal balanced covers and originals across its 12 tracks including tunes by Elmore James, Bob Dylan, and Janis Joplin. 2017's Moon Goes Missing offered eight sophisticated singer/songwriter originals and two covers. Wonderland signed to Alligator for 2021's Dave Alvin-produced Tempting Fate. Wonderland was born Carolyn Bradford in Houston in 1972. Her childhood home was full of recordings, sheet music, and instruments. She began playing guitar at age six on her mother’s vintage Martin guitar. Forbidden from using a pick, she eventually scratched its surface by imitating Pete Townshend's famous windmill pose. That said, because of that restriction, she developed a signature, physically assertive, distinctive finger-picking guitar attack. Her early influences include her mom, Houston guitar legends Albert Collins, Jerry Lightfoot, and Joe "Guitar" Hughes, as well as blues and soul vocalist Lavelle White. Wonderland was initially inspired to get on the stage after seeing local outfit Little Screamin' Kenny & the Sideliners at the Houston club Fitzgerald's. Singing came naturally to Wonderland. Her clear, throaty contralto is a seamless fit for both blues and soul; while her singing has been compared to Janis Joplin's, her approach is at once smoother and more subtle. Wonderland plays several musical instruments well. In addition to the guitar and lap steel, she plays piano, trumpet, mandolin, and accordion. Wonderland dropped out of high school at 15 and began performing solo. In 1990 she founded the Imperial Monkeys and hit the road. While firmly entrenched in blues-rock, the band reflected a diverse range of influences, from country and rockabilly to zydeco and second-line R&B, from surf and Mexican-styled cumbia to boogie woogie and even swing. They recorded a handful of albums bookended by 1993's Groove Milk and 1997's Bursting with Flavor. They toured with B.B. King, Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy, the Allman Brothers, Delbert McClinton, and Buddy Miles. Wonderland picked up a slew of awards in the Houston press, including best female vocalist seven out of eight years running. She released her debut, Play with Matches, on the independent Big Mo label in 1995, and continued to tour the U.S., leading the Imperial Monkeys through several incarnations before dissolving them when she moved to Austin in 1999. After losing her apartment she decided to live and work out of her van and did so for years. After establishing herself on the Austin scene, she issued a pair of albums in 2001: Drink the Rain in collaboration with singer/songwriter Rebecca Cole, and her own Alcohol & Salvation on the tiny local independent Mix-O-Rama. In 2002 she was included in the star-studded Loose Affiliation of Saints and Sinners (with Papa Mali, Gurf Morlix, Guy Forsyth, Sarah Brown, and "Scrappy" Jud Newcomb, and recorded Sessions from the Hotel San Jose, Rm. 50 live in a hotel room with the tape recorder running. Wonderland released 2003's Bloodless Revolution for producer Ray Benson's Bismeaux Productions label to acclaim and airplay. The set found her covering two songs by Texas singer/songwriter Terri Hendrix with her originals, "I Found the Lions" and "Throw My Love." Later that year, Benson was having lunch with Bob Dylan, who expressed his admiration for Wonderland's music and wanted to meet her. Benson called her in Houston. She jumped in the car and drove the 165 miles to Austin straightaway. She and Dylan spent that very night jamming. Now friends, they have crossed paths many times since. That same year, Wonderland and her trio -- having played the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally for the previous decade, opened it by singing the National anthem. After five years of intense touring, club residencies, and playing on recordings by Guy Forsyth (Love Songs, For & Against) and Jesse Dayton (Country Soul Brother and South Austin Sessions), among others, Wonderland released the Benson-produced Bloodless Revolution on Bismeaux in 2008; she also appeared on Austin City Limits that year, and had her music used in episodes of NBC's Homicide and Fox's Time of Your Life. After touring the U.S. and Europe, she and Forsyth collaborated on the holiday set Fireside Songs for the Soul, released by Bismeaux in 2010. In March 2011, she married writer/comedian A. Whitney Brown in a ceremony officiated by Michael Nesmith. In October she issued Peace Meal. Enlisting a handful of producers who included Benson, Nesmith, and former Dylan guitarist Larry Campbell, the star-studded lineup included Campbell, steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar, and bassist Glen Fukanaga alongside her trio for a collection of originals and covers that included Elmore James' "Dust My Broom," Muddy Waters' "Two Trains," and Dylan's "Meet Me in the Morning." In 2012 she guested on Pinetop Perkins' How Long, and in 2014 sang alongside Amy Helm and Shelley King on Marcia Ball's "Human Kindness" on the pianist's The Tattooed Lady and the Alligator Man. She also collaborated with ex-Stooges guitarist James Williamson on a 7" single cover of Iggy Pop's "Open Up & Bleed." 2015's Live Texas Trio was her final outing for Bismeaux Productions. Recorded in concert at both Antone's in Austin and at the Kessler Theater in Dallas, Wonderland performed with her trio, Forsyth, and two trumpeters on select tracks. Wonderland issued 2017's Moon Goes Missing on her own Home Records label. She produced the 11-song set performed by a sextet that included keyboardist Cole El-Saleh, bassist Bobby Perkins, Forsyth, drummer Kevin Lance, and trumpeter Oliver Steck. The program comprised seven originals -- including "Come Together" co-written with Ruthie Foster -- and three covers including Blind Willie Johnson's "Can't Nobody Hide from God" and George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone." After touring hard across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Wonderland returned from the road only to be solicited by John Mayall to become lead guitarist in the Bluesbreakers. She was the only woman ever to hold that position in that band's 65-year run (her predecessors included Peter Green, Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Coco Montoya, and Walter Trout.) She toured the world with the hard-working Mayall -- once playing 50 shows in 60 days in 19 countries -- and left the band when, at age 85, Mayall decided to retire from the road. Wonderland signed to North America's premier blues label Alligator Records for 2021's Tempting Fate. Produced by Dave Alvin, Wonderland used her own rhythm section to anchor the set's ten tunes. She invited Ball to play piano on the original "Texas Girl and Her Boots." Cashdollar contributed lap steel to a pair of cuts, including a cover of Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" -- sung in duet by Wonderland and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Alvin played guitar on several tunes and took a solo on a reading of the Grateful Dead's "Loser." Other covers included Mayall's pro-legalization anthem "The Laws Much Change" and Billy Joe Shaver's "Honey Bee." ~ Thom Jurek & Eric Hage