20/02/2014, 21:30

LATA GOUVEIA

Born in Lisbon in 1975, Lata Gouveia started at the age of 18 singing and playing folk songs in bars in London’s West End, places like the Acoustic Café, the 12 Bar Blues Club and the open mikes in Camden Town. Throughout the 1990’s he fronted several bands in London, from Blues bands to Rock, Pop and Reggae bands and signed to Athole Still International Management in 1998.

In 2001 Lata composed music for Luis Galvao Teles movie “Tudo isto e Fado (Fado Filmes) and moved to Lisbon from where he set up his band Lata Dog, signed a license release with the label Difference (2003), a project that toured throughout the UK, Scandinavia, Spain and Portugal.

In 2005 he returned to London and for 2 years focused on being a solo songwriter again, writing and performing acoustically as he had done in the beginning.  The music he wrote in this period caught the attention of legendary Rocky Frisco, piano player with Lata’s biggest hero JJ Cale since the 1950’s.

On Frisco’s suggestion, Lata moved to the US and commuted between Texas and Oklahoma for the best part of the next 4 years, signing the US release license of Road US-75 to Captiva Records (2008) and playing bars, bowling alleys, restaurants, private parties, house concerts and music Festivals. Along the way he embraced and shared time with some of the greatest songwriters in Oklahoma. Artists like Randy Crouch, Rocky Frisco, Tom Skinner, Greg Jacobs, Don White, Monica Taylor, Jared Tyler, Jesse Aycock, Dustin Pittsley, Joe Baxter and the Red Dirt Rangers, some of the real heart of the Red Dirt Music family. In 2009 Lata produced a documentary film about Red Dirt Music which won him an endorsement by the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame and won the Best Music documentary award at the Barebones Film Festival.

Now based in Luxembourg, where he had spent his teenage years, Lata has has made a new solo album. In just two years he went from being virtually unknown in Luxembourg to playing for 10,000 people as the national headliner at Luxembourg City’s annual Rock um Kneudler 2013.

Lata Gouveia on vocals and guitar
Paul Porcelli on guitar
Daniela Kruger on bass
Jeff Herr on drums