Another step on musical journey

Alynda Lee Segarra feels her band has a good balance of quiet songs and energetic numbers.

Lydia Jenkin meets a visiting American troubadour who went hobo in search of her musical identity

New Zealand will be the furthest Alynda Lee Segarra has travelled when the New Orleans-based artist heads down here with her band Hurray for the Riff Raff to perform this week. But that doesn't mean she's not well-travelled. Segarra, 26, who's of Puerto Rican descent, grew up in the Bronx, but spent her late teens and early 20s hitchhiking and freight train-hopping across the US, soaking up an awful lot of stories.

It also encouraged her to become a musician, particularly when she reached New Orleans.

"I started meeting these young people who were playing music on the street, playing a lot of American folk music, and playing traditional New Orleans jazz, a lot of mixtures of things, and I just felt like this was a great way for me to get started. I always wanted to play music, ever since I was little, but I never really had the confidence to do it."

She'd heard a lot of Motown and doo-wop in her own neighbourhood growing up, and started going to riot grrrl punk shows on the Lower East Side as a teen, but it was when she discovered Johnny Cash that her love of alt-country developed.

"Finding Johnny was a really big moment for me, because I feel like Johnny Cash is a great bridge from punk rock to classic country, he just had such a punk rock attitude, and he also had a great way about him, in that he was singing for the people. That was something that brought me to Woody Guthrie - he became my ultimate hero.

"Then I started going further, eventually finding this great legacy of female singer songwriters, like Loretta Lynn, or even more folkie people like Joni Mitchell. Even finding early blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey - there are a lot of really amazing female musicians from that kind of vein, and it all plays off of each other, whether it's blues or country, whatever you want to call it. And I found that all of them kind of had this punk rock attitude, this feeling of telling their story and being so unapologetically who they are, and that really spoke to me."

It was settling in New Orleans that brought out the songwriter in Segarra though, and the desire to lead her own band.

"Playing back-up was great for me to establish a good foundation, and to have time to figure out what I really wanted to say, and what I wanted to do. It really wasn't until I started listening to songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, and then I finally started listening to The Beatles, that I started to think about being a songwriter, and crafting stories.

"It took a while for me to feel like an audience might even possibly like it, but now I feel like we have a really good balance of quiet songs, with some more New Orleans-style songs, full of energy that make the crowd dance."

And as to what she sings about, well the name of the band might give you an idea - Segarra is a champion of the underdog, the marginalised.

"I've always felt a bit like an alien ... When I was little, listening to music really saved my life, I can say that for sure. It shaped a lot of my world views, it affected the way I felt about myself. So I really want to do that for somebody else, to keep that spirit alive, because that's what kept me alive."

Music profile

• Who: Alynda Lee Segarra, frontwoman for Hurray for the Riff Raff
• Where and when: Performing at the Tuning Fork in Auckland on Friday
• Listen to: Look Out Mama (2012), Small Town Heroes (2014)