Rosie Flores becomes "Girl of the Century"  

Flores' first ever person-to-person encounter with Johnny Cash cannot be described as a bigger-than-life meeting with The Man in Black, however.

"I was at the Austin airport," she recalls, "it was during South by Southwest. It was back in the '90s; it must have been in '93/'94, or something like that. That was the year that Johnny Cash was the keynote speaker here in Austin. I did not recognize him from behind because his hair was really long and gray and kind of hippy-like from behind. And he had these pants on that – I think he'd probably just flown in from Jamaica. That was probably the kind of clothes he wore when he was hanging out at his place in Jamaica. They were kind of flowery, those Hawaiian baggy kind of trousers. He wasn't The Man in Black. His hair was gray and stringy. I did a quick notice: There's a kind of a hippy rock and roller kind of guy coming in from somewhere. I was interested in him because the guy that walking to the right of him was in a suit, and he was holding a guitar case. And I thought, 'That must be that guy's manager.'"

"They were walking kind of slower...I caught up to them, as I was just trying to get to baggage. They kind of split up, and to the left of me there was a friend that I knew from Austin, named Jo Rae Di Menno. We were just chatting and I said, 'Oh, I heard you had a baby. It's good to be back again. How are you doing?' You know, kind of girls catching up. And all of a sudden, she looked to the right of me, and she said, 'Have you met Rosie Flores?' And I looked over to my right, and he said, 'Hi, I'm Johnny Cash.' And my knees buckled slightly. And I said – my voice went about three octaves higher – 'You're Johnny Cash!' And he's like, 'I sure am.' So, I got to walk the rest of the way to baggage catching up with him.'"

Flores may be the roots girl of the century - especially for music fans that dig girls who can rock. She can play the guitar like ringing a bell, as well as roar like a lioness whenever she sings. And that singing style is made all the more appealing by that slight catch in her voice.

One of the songs on this new release is titled, This Little Girl's Gone Rockin'. And in Flores' case, she has, indeed, gone rockin' and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.