ALAMOSA — Legendary singer-songwriter Tish Hinojosa is known around the world for the strength, melodic beauty and pure clarity of her singing, drawing comparisons to Joan Baez, Emmy Lou Harris and Nanci Griffith. 

She’s been described as “tremendously gifted” by the LA Times. Her songwriting has been praised by the Chicago Tribune. “Simply put, Tish Hinojosa is a first-class songwriter.” 

And her ability to move fluidly from Spanish to English and Latino to folk to lively polka to country to Tex-Mex to pop creates a warm, open-armed, welcoming home for a devoted audience yearning for music that speaks to their heart. 

Hinojosa brings her music to Society Hall in Alamosa on Sunday, Jan. 12. 

There’s another quality about this woman with an extraordinary voice and big guitar whose music exudes a certain kind of optimism even when she’s singing original songs about the plight of farmworkers or hardships of immigrants.  

Throughout her life, Hinojosa has shown she has true grit. 

It was first obvious when, at the age of six, she ran away from Catholic school, a little girl in a school uniform walking 45 minutes through downtown San Antonio to her home on the west side because she was forbidden from speaking Spanish in school.  

“I was scared walking home. But I was more shocked by the disdain the nuns had for hearing Spanish. I was okay because my sisters spoke English but the recent immigrants from Mexico had it really hard. So, I guess I became a rebel in the first grade. I made a plan to leave because I had that desire to do right, and the right thing was to go home.” 

And it was that same grit that led to, after years of being devoted to and sacrificing for her music, an invitation to perform at the White House for former President Bill Clinton and Hillary, his wife.  

“Playing for President Clinton was like a magic dream,” she says. “They were so warm and nice to my kids. I just wish my parents had been alive to see that.” 

At first glance, nothing about Hinojosa’s life growing up would have necessarily predicted her future. The youngest of thirteen children – eleven daughters and two sons – she, like all her siblings, was born at home. “That’s how it was done in the Mexican community in San Antonio in the fifties.”  

Both parents were immigrants from Mexico. “My father and mother were not educated. Maybe some elementary school but just enough to learn to read and write in Spanish.” Her father, an auto mechanic, knew enough English to get by, while her mother, who only spoke Spanish, took in children during the day. “The house was always full of babies,” she says, laughing.  

The radio in the kitchen was always on and always tuned to the Mexican station. Meanwhile, her older sisters listened to pop music on their transistor radios in their rooms. “I got all of it,” she says.  

Despite the expense, her parents managed to send their children to Catholic school, encouraging them to take piano lessons in elementary school and choir in high school. That’s when her path began to reveal itself. 

“First day I walked into high school, there were a bunch of girls practicing songs to sing at the folk mass. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, so I started singing along with them. They were the ones who told me, ‘Wow, you really have a good voice’. I sang along to the radio at home like everybody else, but I didn’t think I had anything exceptional.” 

And then she picked up the guitar. 

“I knew from the time I was fifteen what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. The flow, how easily it came to me. I’d stay up late at night listening to songs over and over for hours learning the chords. I was just like a sponge, listening and absorbing so much.”   

But, she says, she needed a plan. 

“How was I going to get known? How was I going to get a record deal? The first thing I did was get a job on the Riverwalk – there were a lot of tourists. So, by the time I was 18, I was singing on the Riverwalk for the next three years. It was a good education.” 

Many of Hinojosa’s siblings were much older and she learned from watching them live their lives. But no one in her family had ever ventured out or into a career by herself. As part of an “early twenties whim” and a desire to explore the world, Hinojosa moved to Red River, New Mexico where she was hired as a back-up singer by Michael Martin Murphy.  

“Watching him, I learned how to perform and how to talk to the audience,” she says. When Murphy and his band went to Nashville, she went with them, ultimately landing a job singing demos for Mel Tillis Publishing. “That’s where I really got into country by singing the great old country songs.” That’s also where she saw musicians writing songs together. “I thought, I can do that.” 

By then, it was 1981. Although deeply in love with northern New Mexico, Hinojosa longed for the familiarity of south Texas and wrote “Amanacer”, a deeply heartfelt song about longing for a love that is far away. It was included on “Taos to Tennessee”, a self-produced album that got Hinojosa the attention so rightly deserved that then led to her touring across the country and around the world. 

And rightfully so as “Amanecer” is, in some ways, emblematic of Hinojosa’s music.  

In a time when music is often over-produced, performances overly staged and lyrics feel more manufactured than inspired, Hinojosa’s music is steeped in story, substance and soul. Each song has its roots in something real – whether it’s from her culture or her own life or the experiences of people in her family or an issue of personal importance or, as is the case with “Something in the Rain”, which she describes as a protest song, all three.  

“My aunt and cousins in California were farmworkers. I knew their struggles, how hard it was for families to stay in one place, how hard they have to work and travel and follow the crops.  It was always hard. And there was always exposure to pesticides.  

“My aunt had migraine headaches and never knew what to do about it. I wrote ‘Something in the Rain’ about that and pesticides and this young boy who’s going to do better because he doesn’t want his life to be like that”.  

There's something wrong with little sister/I hear her crying by my side/ Mama's shaking as she holds her/We try to hold her through the night. 

And Mom says "Close your eyes, mi'jito/ Dream of someplace far from here/ 

Like the pictures in your schoolbooks/ Someday you can take us there." 

Having just released her 16th album, Hinojosa continues to enchant without ever straying far from her roots. And, in so doing, she helps ground us all in music that’s real and rich and worth enjoying every chance we get.  

Tish Hinojosa is performing at Society Hall on Sunday, Jan. 12. The show starts at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m. Purchase tickets at The Green Spot or online www.societyhall.org.