Copyright Zohar Lindenbaum

Who is he?
A Mexican-American labourer from the heart of Detroit, 67-year old folk-funk singer Sixto Rodriguez is the most recent legend to be rescued from the dusty basement of obscurity by Seattle reissue label Light in the Attic.

Why are we only meeting him now?
Well, unless you’ve been living in South Africa or Australia, Rodriguez’s two albums, Cold Fact and Coming from Reality, have been out of print for several decades. After releasing the LPs in 1970 and 71 on Theo-Coff in the wake of Motown mania, and enjoying a brief taste of critical praise, the company went under and Rodriguez took a job in renovations and restorations while studying philosophy at Wayne State University. As Rodriguez humbly recounts on the phone from his hotel in Portland, “[Theo-Coff] went bankrupt in 1971. It was chaotic and everybody was disappointed to say the least. And nothing happened; I just went back to work.” A handful of dates in Australia in 1979 and 1981 constituted the only hint of a Rodriguez comeback.

Wait, wasn’t Rodriguez supposed to be dead?
That’s what Stephen Segerman and journalist Craig Bartholomew thought when they embarked on a quest to find “Jesus” Rodriguez (who, it turns out was the singer’s brother, but whose name appears in the liner notes to both records as the copyright holder) back in 1995. The most compelling leads came from South Africa, where Rodriguez had become a counter-cultural icon during the apartheid era thanks to the funky sexuality of Cold Fact’s “I Wonder.” All rumours pointed towards the singer’s demise, either through an overdose, imprisonment or an alleged on-stage suicide.

Rodriguez, however, had strayed no further from the mortal coil than his Motor City hometown. Segerman and Bartholomew eventually tracked him down and brought him to South Africa where he was greeted with packed shows. Now he’s touring North America, while his reissued albums get their long-overdue recognition.

What does the Latino Bob Dylan sound like?
First of all, that tag is a bit misleading. Yes, Rodriguez often delivers his socio-political lyrics in a Dylan-esque nasal whine, and “Crucify Your Mind” sounds like a cautiously meditative “Love Minus Zero,” but his tunes are far more “street” than Bobby D’s free associations. Rodriguez describes “Sugar Man,” an ode to the common drug dealer that predated Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” by three years, as “a descriptive song [rather than] a prescriptive one.”

How do these nearly 40-year-old songs hold up now that Rodriguez is back on tour?
So far so good, from the sound of things. Rodriguez played his first-ever Canadian date in Vancouver last week. He’s still somewhat surprised by the attention, “especially that [fans] show up early,” he says. “My South African fans, there are lots in the audience. They’re hardcore; they waited hours to see me. They’re sweethearts. In Italy, same thing, the first guy was there hours early, also from South Africa, just wandering around the villa there. I’m very moved by it.”

As for the performance, Rodriguez isn’t trying to recreate the stunning post-psychedelic production values of his albums. Instead, he’s opting for a raw and fresh take every night by playing with local musicians from each town. “They rehearse without me beforehand and then we hook up,” he explains. “We do sound check, so we treat it as a rehearsal. And we go through four, five, six songs, and that will be half of the show, or a third of it. It’s simple stuff and we move to it. It’s a great feeling. I think [the shows] sound better than the record.”