Dirty Cello brings out Jimi, Stevie Ray in music; group headlines May 2 show with eclectic mix on Delta King

When Rebecca Roudman first picked up the cello, she wasn't even 7 years old yet. Her mother simply asked her if she wanted to try it, and she said yes. Decades and many classical performances later, she decided it might be time to bring her skills into a different realm. "Everyone thinks I should say Yo Yo Ma," Roudman says about her musical influences, "but it's Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn." Her and husband-guitarist Jason Eckl formed Dirty Cello 15 years ago as a way of melding their classical knowledge with modern mainstream music, creating something diametrically opposed to what each was trained in that also honors it. Much in the same way Hendrix and Vaughn - guitarists who revolutionized music by pushing the boundaries of their sound; Hendrix especially, who was famous for his improvisational blending of blues and rock and pioneering the use of distortion - did with their own music, Dirty Cello was about taking something established and turning it on its head, a reflection of the band's name, which Roudman said she coined to reflect the opposite of the clean and classical stuff she'd done all her career. All of this and more is what the quartet – Roudman, Eckl, drummer Andrew Zuniga and bassist Evan Ceremony – will bring when they play the Delta King in Sacramento on May 2. Roudman calls Dirty Cello's particular type of genre "short-attention-span fun," playing anything from classic rock and '60s rock to blues to fast bluegrass and their original music. She says the band is "a way to take all of my classical skills and turn them into something I had more fun doing." Their first show was in a small art gallery in San Francisco; the band now play up to three shows a week all over the world. Being able to take an instrument more associated with the bright music of Mozart or Beethoven and apply it to the harder crunches of Aerosmith's "Dream On" or Guns 'N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" transcends novelty, proving itself popular with audiences all over the world – a deft touch brought by Roudman and company through their long musical experience. Writing original material can be unorthodox, carried by charged emotion and intuition more than anything. "Generally, I get mad about something," Roudman says about writing, "and then come up with a starter phrase; and then turn it over to my husband for the nuts and bolts of writing the song." Translating that raw emotion into music is tricky, but for Eckl, it's about making it all click. "My background has a lot to do with composition and orchestration, so when it comes to make sure that the notes make sense and the chords flow together, it's my job." Crafting the work in a way of making it make sense while still staying true to the improvisational nature of their music is something Dirty Cello routinely navigates when putting together arrangements. It's an artform all in itself, and why Roudman feels her music is akin to noted improvisers like Vaughnn and Hendrix. It's about discovery. "Working with DC (Dirty Cello) is about as painless as you can get," says Zuniga. "They have created a work flow that just works, and when it comes to writing songs with the band, there is very little friction and lots of room to experiment … It's almost night and day to playing with a more true-to-form rock band." Playing music his whole life, Zuniga started by taking guitar lessons at a very young age and later started learning how to play drums. He describes himself as mostly self-taught, credits artists such as the late Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan of Avenged Sevenfold as being why he wanted to learn to play the drums, while also bands like A7X, Primus, Metallica, Radiohead and Coldplay proved influential in his overall music taste and direction. For Eckl, an accomplished conductor and orchestral arranger who found the guitar only after Dirty Cello came into his life, it's about keeping rhythm, and he counts Johnny Cash as one of his biggest influences for rhythm guitar. Traveling has always played a major role in the band's forward-thinking approach to music and songwriting, something that resonates no matter who the audience they are playing for is. "Playing around the world is very interesting," Roudman says. "We discovered on our first tours to China and Italy that music, particularly American rock and roll, is almost a universal language, and so is having fun on stage. I guess this means that the influence from our international tours is knowing that the fundamentals of what we do with music connects us with everyone else." The band's upcoming show in Sacramento is somewhat unique, being in a storied and more intimate venue. And they are approaching it with the same improvisational gusto as their music, making it all their own. Eckl said, "We'll have to bring in our own lighting and sound system in order to maintain a level of control in the environment." For the band's frontwoman, after 14 Dirty Cello albums and many side projects, there's still only one thing they're about and that is having fun, which they're planning to provide Saturday night. "We like to have a great time and we make sure the audience does, too," Roudman says.