Fame is a strange beast; it isn’t the same monster for everybody. For Rodrigo Sanchez, one half of the successful cult classical guitar duo Rodrigo Y Gabriela, fame is a challenge, particularly on a personal level. It’s principal ally, success, confronts most of what he calls home; its friend, money, means he has to translate everything and clear it with his roots and himself. And if that sounds complicated it’s supposed to be.

Rodrigo and rhythm guitarist, Gabriela Quintero, met in Mexico City while playing in the thrash metal band, Tierra Acida. It didn’t work out. Nowhere land beckoned. So they upped roots headed for Europe and ended up in Ireland, busked the streets doing versions of classic rock songs such as Stairway To Heaven and Metallica’s Orion, were discovered by singer/songwriter Damien Rice and hit it big with their fourth album,a self-titled monster that topped the Irish charts in March 2006 and received rave reviews everywhere. And, people, this pair can play. And that’s pretty much all they’ve been doing since then - playing endlessly around the world, and it isn’t over quite yet, although you sense Rodrigo is close to ‘enough’ and the duo just want to take a breather and work out what they are going to next.

He’s stashed away in Mexico on the end of yet another string of calls. How busy are Rodrigo Y Gabriela - well, this is the third chat with one or the other of them in the past 22 months. The story goes like this.

“It is a challenge to deal with everything that has happened,” he says. “It’s a good word. It’s interesting. You know that’s life and we’re just trying to enjoy it. There are many things on a personal level that are challenged and you have to deal with all those personal challenges. And they are even even more of a challenge than dealing with the whole industry thing.

“The toughest thing to deal with is money. Money can just rot things. I don’t come from a musically successful background. We left Mexico went to Europe, didn’t go home for five years. And things have changed, the structure of things changes, family has changed, friends have changed. For us, it was a lonely journey for those five years. We were our only friends.

“Then, all of a sudden, you meet a lot of people, and everybody wants to know you, and you don’t know who are friends and who aren’t.

“At the same time it is good that we have had the opportunity to do this. I don’t know how long it is going to last so we are trying to find the right balance and see what we are going to get out of it.”

and That’s a chapter they are still trying to write. A new album would be good but Rodrigo says they have to stop touring first . For two-and-a-half years they have been trying to find time to compose new music. It’s also a matter of better organisation. With the next record they’ll have the chance to organise all the tours, the centres they have to go to, the release dates, as opposed to the chaos that’s resulted from staggered release dates over the past 24 months.

“Well stop after the [northern] summer, take a year off, write, disconnect for a while. We need to, absolutely.
“We don’t want to do a part two of this album. We don’t fall into any particular musical genre - our music falls in between the spaces and we are free to experiment.

“We were lucky to have the reaction we’ve had so we can be confident in taking a year off and not worrying a lot about money. Just relax and be confident about concentrating on our music. We are thankful we will be able to do that.”

What Rodrigo and Gabriela have learned is industry and they’ve learnt how to survive. “For a while we did everything,” he says, “tour managing, driving, booking. We did the lot. Now we are released on indie labels in some parts of the world and on majors in others. We concede to both sides of the industry world. It’s funny how things work but, for us, music has to be the ultimate weapon.”

The strum has only just begun.