Alex Monasterio
“I like to think about music coming from communities of people,” Westin Lee McDowell says as we sit inside Ghost, a community-run DIY venue tucked into the commercial sprawl off Siler Road. On Thursday, Oct. 2, McDowell will bring his unique blend of Southwestern blues, jazz and rock to Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery as part of its patio music series, an evening of food, drink and revelry. Ghost, meanwhile, has served kind of like a home court venue for McDowell—and his brother, the musician Dylan McDowell—plus untold numbers of other local musicmakers.
McDowell’s versatility is rooted in his love of folk traditions and the quirks of styles handed down through generations and kept alive on front porches and dance floors across the country. While his sound resists simple categorization, his performances remain grounded in music’s deeper purpose: building community. He leans into the unpredictability and natural evolution of live performance, believing the best qualities of a song only reveal themselves in the moment. The result is music that feels warm and familiar, yet alive as a constant reminder of the human hands and voices that bring it to fruition.
A longtime fixture of the Santa Fe scene, McDowell was raised by artists who instilled in him and his brother a deep love of tradition. His father, a poet and musician, and his mother, a dancer of flamenco and Mexican folklórico, remain among his greatest influences. Their devotion to honoring cultural traditions was not lost on McDowell, and he later studied performance and composition at the College of Santa Fe (RIP), where he participated in ensembles spanning mariachi, Irish folk and beyond.
That range is evident in the projects McDowell pursues. In addition to his solo work, he performs with his father in Shiners Club, a traditional jazz outfit with a Southwestern twist suited to all types of swing, and with Babelshack, an Albuquerque-based rock band for those with heavier, grungier tastes. Both groups are at different stages of recording new material, with Babelshack’s latest original release slated for Oct. 25. What ties it all together is McDowell’s outlook: that a good song isn’t finished on the page. Whether he’s tackling a cover or his own material, he’s finding ways to stretch it and make it new in the moment.
“Most singers who got famous, got famous singing someone else’s song,” McDowell says. “The interpretation can make the song.”
Like many in the folk tradition before him, he sees reinterpreting another musician’s work as essential to the evolution of a tune. To him, original music can sometimes get “stuck in itself,” and often benefits from the perspective of an outsider. Each performance, he believes, breathes new life into a well-worn melody, a core principle of his musical philosophy. The result is a show that lures listeners with familiarity, then challenges them with subversion. For McDowell, “musical memory” is as important as innovation, both threads woven together in an ongoing dialogue between artists.
Alex Monasterio
Of course, no musician plays in a vacuum. In Santa Fe, McDowell is part of a scrappy, resilient scene where venues and players keep the music alive night after night. He’s one of the current co-leaseholders at Ghost, working alongside a crew of enthusiastic volunteers to bring music and art into the city’s orbit. McDowell is optimistic about the state of the scene, too. Established spaces like Tumbleroot continue to thrive while newcomers such as the Marigold Room and The Mystic reflect a hunger for fresh voices beyond the usual hotel/bar circuit and its regulars.
Against that backdrop, McDowell is preparing for his next step. On Oct. 2, he’ll take the stage at Tumbleroot, bringing his evolving blend of originals and reimagined covers to the patio series. He’s using the night to showcase some of his latest original work—tunes he’s been carving out in the margins of a schedule otherwise packed with slinging songs. The setting and the music promise a lively night of rootsy picking and heartfelt melodies.
McDowell likens his approach to that of a chef experimenting with flavors to suit the tastes of the crowd in front of him in an informal back and forth.
“I just see myself as a chef, and I like to cook different styles of food for different people,” he tells SFR. “People tend to have different ears for music, and I try to find ways to capture them.”
As such, every performance is a meal shared and a chance to feed the community that helped shape his sound. Come Thursday at Tumbleroot, he’ll be back in the kitchen cooking up a set of originals and covers that promises to taste a little different every time.
Tumbleroot Patio Music Series: Westin McDowell: 5-8 pm Thursday, Oct. 2. Free. Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery, 2791 Agua Fría St., (505) 303-3808
