About

Led and curated by singer-songwriter and violinist Carrie Rodriguez, Laboratorio is an annual four-part concert series hosted at the State Theatre that utilizes world-class musicianship, the visual arts, and storytelling to explore and celebrate Latino culture. Each show features Carrie and the all-star Laboratorio house band in collaboration with different guest artists. For the first time, Laboratorio will be taking the show next door to the historic Paramount Theatre, to present a unique collaboration with the iconic indie rock band Calexico, along with poetry readings by acclaimed author, Roberto Tejada.

Praised by NPR for their “sprawling, cross-cultural indie rock,” Calexico has spent the better part of the past three decades exploring the dusty musical borderlands of the American Southwest, crafting singular, cinematic songs as mysterious and magnificent as the arid desert landscapes that inspired them. Founded in Tucson, AZ, by guitarist/singer Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino, the band first emerged to widespread acclaim in the mid-1990s with a string of arresting, evocative records that blurred the lines between their roots, rock, and Latin influences, but it was 2003’s Feast of Wire that truly marked the duo’s commercial and critical breakthrough, earning them their first appearances on the Billboard charts and rave reviews everywhere from The Guardian to Pitchfork, who called the record “genuinely masterful.” In the years to come, Calexico would go on to release eight more similarly well-received studio albums that would help land them slots at Coachella, Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, and Roskilde, alongside dates with the likes of Wilco, Pavement, Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird, and more.

With their most recent release in 2022, El Mirador, Calexico continues to break new ground. Writing and recording alongside long time band member Sergio Mendoza (keys, accordion, percussion), the album expands on long running influences of cumbia, mariachi and the plethora of diaspora sounds flourishing throughout the Southwest. By working with friends and recurring collaborators, Calexico highlights the unique social and linguistic intersections at the US-Mexico border and the magnificent possibilities of a borderless world.

Roberto Tejada is the author of poetry collections that include Carbonate of Copper (2025), Why the Assembly Disbanded (2022), Exposition Park (2010), and Mirrors for Gold (2006). His writings on art and media history include National Camera: Photography and Mexico’s Image Environment (2009), his work on the groundbreaking borderland Texan artist Celia Alvarez Muñoz (2009) and a collection of essays on Latinx art and culture, Still Nowhere in an Empty Vastness (2019). Awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Poetry (2021) he is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor at the University of Houston where he teaches Creative Writing and Art History.

This project is supported in part by the City of Austin Economic Development Department.