By Michael Gaither

When you’ve been around music for a while, it’s fun to realize how far you go back with some artists. Case in point: Rebecca Roudman and her band Dirty Cello play Kuumbwa Jazz Friday night. In a recent phone call, Roudman and I remembered that I’d met her band shortly after they first formed in 2011. I also learned that this Santa Cruz show is a bit of a coming home for her.

“My mother was a piano teacher,” she said. “When I was a kid, she asked if I wanted to play the harp. I said yes, but a harp wouldn’t fit in our car.” So she picked up the cello instead.

Years later, after college and with a degree in classical music, she joined the Santa Cruz Symphony. “I used to always come to town early, walk downtown and get a cup of tea. I loved it here,” she recalled. After a three-year stint locally, she moved north and worked with the Oakland and Santa Rosa symphonies.

Roudman soon began exploring other genres with her cello. “I started accompanying singer-songwriters, and then I started playing with blues musicians. Sometimes they would have me solo, and that was terrifying because I’d only played by reading music. But once I got a taste of that, I was addicted,” Roudman said.

She connected with her future musical partner Jason Eckl — who quickly switched from his instrument of flute to guitar — and Dirty Cello was born. That’s about the time that I caught up with them. I was hosting a new artist showcase at a festival in Northern California. Roudman and Eckl were in the lineup that year with their brand-new drummer; they’d just become a trio. “Our drummer was so new that the songs we played at the showcase, we had to rehearse in the parking lot. When we won, it really meant a lot. But we were also scared, because those were the three songs that we knew, and we had to do a set on the main stage the next day!

“We started experimenting with blues and gypsy jazz, and bluegrass,” she continued. “My classical colleagues thought it was cool, too. We had no idea what we wanted to become. Now we’re about 13 years old, and we really like to call ourselves a blues and rock band.” The blues folks in particular have embraced Dirty Cello. “The band rocks, and I’m proud to say our band has shared stages with people like Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Buddy Guy and Eric Gales. We’ve come a long way, which is very exciting,” Roudman said.

“I’ve enjoyed vicariously watching their travels and success in the years since that little Northern California showcase. “We’ve toured all over the world,” Roudman noted. “We recently did a tour of Bali and Singapore, and we’ve played at really unconventional places. We’ve played at the bottom of Moaning Caverns (in Vallecito, California), in a tiny church in Italy, even on a whale watching boat in Iceland. No venue is off limits.

“We’ll play anywhere,” Roudman added.In concert, Roudman and her band have an arsenal of cover tunes, but they’re also songwriters. “When we first started out, we did all covers because it was hard for people to wrap their heads around a cello player who was going to be playing the guitar parts and guitar solos. Now that people understand what we’re doing, we also mix in a ton of originals into our shows,” she explained.

Every show is completely different. “We just have a list of 60-80 songs onstage with us. Jason plays the emcee and reads the crowd. He helps us figure out whether to play rock or blues or one of our originals. And I can just stay completely in the moment. I love that,” Roudman said.

Michael Gaither is a performing songwriter, radio DJ and the music writer for The Santa Cruz Sentinel.