Guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela to play Fillmore

You might have difficulty imagining that a Mexican acoustic guitar duo could be mainly influenced by heavy metal — until you listen to Rodrigo y Gabriela. The group, which honed its craft in Dublin of all places, grew up loving bands such as Metallica and Led Zeppelin, which added a new dimension to the typical Latin flamenco sound. Gabriela talked about the duo’s show Tuesday night at the Fillmore Miami Beach, plus being invited to perform at the White House.

What can we expect from your show?

It’s a very high-energy show. What has happened during the tour is that most of the audience has jumped out of their seats. How did you develop your style on acoustic guitar with a metal influence? It was a process of years — we always played this music with jamming guitars, so I guess all these rhythms stick into your head, and at some point they just jump out of your hands. And then you realize that, oh, this rhythm is showing, and you work on this rhythm hard and obsessively until you have this clean sound. It’s a process.

What inspired you to pick up a guitar in the first place?

Well, I always loved music, and my family always played music since we were babies. But I think for me to play music in a universal way was the guitar, because on the guitar you can play classical music, rock music, contra, blues — you can play all different styles. But what really made me want to play was a video when I was very young of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck in concert and Jimmy Page, and I thought after that, “I wanna play.”

How did you end up performing for President Obama, and how was that experience?

The White House rang our management and wanted to know if we were available for this date. And we didn’t know exactly that we were gonna play until we got there. And then we met the president — Obama was in front of us with hundreds of photographers, and it was just crazy. And we met the first lady, Michelle, who was such a lovely person. And they hugged us and said they had our music in their iPods, and then introduced us to [Felipe] Calderon, the president of Mexico, and we have a photo in our house of me and Rodrigo and the two presidents and first ladies, and we laugh about it every time we see that photo.

Rodrigo Y Gabriela perform at 8p.m. Tuesday at the Fillmore Miami Beach, 1700 Washington Ave.; $32-$35; livenation.com.

This story was originally published April 30, 2012 at 9:05 PM with the headline "Guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela to play Fillmore."