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From French Village to Old Pueblo to Palermo, Sicily

March 9, 2013 |

Marianne Dissard, photo by Hanna Pribitzer

A Tucson Chanteuse Moves On

Marianne Dissard is a prolific, thoughtful artist of multiple disciplines. Utilizing an array of platforms for expression, she will often combine those various outlets into layered, spellbinding projects.

As Dissard’s bio states, the French-born creative is a “singer, writer of lyrics and poetry, filmmaker and performance artist, (who) has toured extensively the world over, either solo or backed by her American band mates.”

A Tucsonan for close to 20 years, this month sees Dissard bidding the Old Pueblo adieu with a couple of farewell shows to send the chanteuse off musically, and with love. Zόcalo communicated with Dissard via email while she was in Seattle last month to talk about her time in Arizona and what is drawing her to Palermo.

How was the transition from living in France to moving to Arizona as a teenager? 

Transition from living in France to living in Mesa, Arizona at the age of 16 was rough. I went from a village of 2000 people to a high school of 2000 people and from green fields to dust and concrete. The French caféteria and Dobson High’s didn’t even provide the same foods. No more green beans and the fries got renamed. The language was not really an issue – I was bilingual very rapidly – but I truly went into shock after a few months and became a recluse. I couldn’t figure out the ‘dating’ thing, couldn’t force myself to say the Pledge in the morning and I missed the woods. It made me uncomfortable being the new kid, attracting attention because I was foreign and further, that fabled ‘French’, a desirable ‘foreign’. The only thing that excited me in that new environment was music. A new record store, Stinkweeds, had just opened across the school. It seemed every kid was in a band or a groupie of one of those. There was one kid in my French school who played a bit but in my new world, weekends were devoted to house parties with the school’s one punk band, one rockabilly posse, the ten straight-edgers and the five really dark goth kids. I suppose what was uniting us all, despite musical tastes that bled through from Bauhaus to Elvis and Willie Nelson, were the cheap drugs and the sheer boredom of life in Mesa, AZ. I felt for the lame ducks on the man-made ‘burbia ponds of Alma School.

What drew you to this dusty old town? 

I first moved to Tucson from Mesa in 1989, working for a summer on a Nickelodeon TV show called “Hey, Dude.” I moved to LA after that for a few years but made it back in 1994 after I was done with film school there. By that time, I had known Howe Gelb for a few years and had become a huge fan of Giant Sand. I was burned out with LA, burned out with the amount of film work I’d been doing so I chose to come to Tucson to make a film on Giant Sand. I didn’t think I would stay more than a summer, planning to end up in NYC for grad school in performance art. Well, things took another turn. I started enjoying the amount of music, musicians and live shows in Tucson.

There’s a part of chance, a part of unconscious decision-making but I suppose I just knew Tucson was a good place to relax, think about the next move and give myself a chance to figure out what I wanted. It soon became a great place to toss around ideas about films, performances, writing…

The energy I was mostly dissipating around town and inflicting on other people’s careers came into high-beam focus one night at Plush when Joey Burns asked me if I wanted to do an album with him. I credit him for kicking me into gear.

When it comes to your art forms, you’ve done everything from documentary film work to performance art, poetry, songwriting and singing ++ ! Do you have a favorite form of expression or do you seek particular outlets for different moods/messages?

It started with poetry when I was a kid. Pretty formal stuff without much content. I don’t think I found my subjects until much, much later. The film stuff started at 17 after I watched ‘Clockwork Orange’ and realized someone must have had a grand time thinking that up. I decided to become a director. I think I went for making documentary films instead of fiction because it seemed safer, like I wouldn’t expose myself too directly in the process. I also loved people’s stories and steeping them in larger socio-cultural contexts or making films about artists. I guess I was finding my way toward self-exposition.That came rather abruptly, through a significant encounter with an American performance artist and dancer with whom I collaborated in Europe on strange pieces that took us to museums here and there. I knew then I had no idea what I was doing on stage but I knew I was hooked. All in all, I suppose I move slow but deliberately. Only now does it seem I can integrate all these things I have done and try to make it make sense or be uniquely mine. It’s more complicated than just ‘making music’. I have to wrap everything I do with all I know to do. An album with a film as with ‘L’Abandon’ and its companion film ‘Lonesome Cowgirls’ or the solo tours from that album for which I used every trick of the performance art solo. But above all that, there is the word. My poetry found its best expression in lyrics. Mostly French lyrics, though, maybe as a way of making it even more complicated to approach me. I’ll forever be hiding but now I do it in plain sight.

Do you have particular Tucson memories/projects that stand out?

What I call my ‘community’ projects: shooting my Warhol-remake “Lonesome Cowgirls” in 2010, leading the Tucson Suffragettes through the 2004 Presidential election cycle, organizing the SXSW 2013 Tucson showcases, recording and touring my three studio albums with my Tucson crew. Sergio, Connor, Brian, Gabe, Naïm, Matt, Andrew, Vicky, Joey, Jon, Clay, Jim, John… those were the most successful and fulfilling projects I’ve ever done and I’ve done them all here.

There are other quirky memories I’m very fond of. Quitting Janos after a week because the owner handed me a comb during a staff meeting and moving on to graveyard shift waitressing at Grill in 1995, strips after strips of photo booth shots at Red Room, my most powerful – and fully naked – performance art piece at Downtown Performance Center in 1996, getting into a strip-fight during a Doo Rag reunion show held inside the women’s toilets of the Rialto during the first HoCo festivities in 2005, brunch at Crossroads with friends, walking to the top of A-Mountain from downtown, quickies in the desert, drunken sex in a classic gas-guzzler, nights and nights of walking up and down the Avenue and Congress Street with a basket of expensive roses to peddle to the romantically-inclined diner and the drunk hopeful.

It’s all a jumble of images, like a favorite movie whose scenes you can run from memory or more precisely, a film whose scenes are shot but haven’t been edited in place yet.

Why are you moving to Palermo?

After almost 20 years in Tucson, and 28 years in America…I miss Europe. Not particularly France but European mores and culture. I need to move on to the next step in my music-making and my life. I need to be challenged again, surrounded by a language I don’t understand but that gives me a lot of space to dream. I joke that Palermo is the Tucson of Europe, pre-downtown revitalization. Maybe I miss Grill and the Red Room. That was my time in Tucson, when UofA students were still a bit scared of crossing the underpass into downtown.

Palermo is wild, uninhibited, cheap, dirty, glorious and crumbling, burning from hundreds and hundreds of year of invasions, customs and earthquakes. It’s a place where I dream every night the most elaborate dreams. I’ll come back to Tucson to visit my friends, maybe to record at Waterworks. I’m keeping property here but if I could, I’d also sell that. I suppose I’ve been away in my mind – and from touring so much these past few years – so it might just be the officialization of something that I’ve felt I should do a while back already.

I’m glad I could recluse in Tucson whenever I’ve needed over the past twenty years to give time a chance to show me the way, to show me my way. There is space in the Western mentality for those maverick thoughts.

Adieu Tucson, Part 1 is Saturday, March 9 at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. with Naïm Amor, Clay Koweek, Connor Gallaher, Gabriel Sullivan, Brian Lopez. Spain headlines, Ricky Tutaan opens at 6:30pm. $5. Adieu Tucson, Part 2 happens at La Cocina, 201 N. Court Ave., Tuesday, March 19 with Dissard & Budo and Tucson friends kicking in with their own bands, starting at 6:30pm. Free. Follow Dissard’s adventures at MarianneDissard.com, Facebook.com/mariannedissard.


The Cordials

March 5, 2013 |

Left to right: Laura Kepner-Adney, Winston Watson, Courtney Robbins, Cristina Williams. photo by Rocky Yosek

The Cordials
Not Like Yesterday
(Prophette Records)

A conglomeration of genres defines the 10-track debut album from Tucson power-pop super quartet The Cordials. From punk frivolity and dreamy yet blistering lose-yourself-in-the-driving-chords songs to bittersweet Americana anthems, “Not Like Yesterday” is a heterogeneous music mix of the highest take-no-prisoners quality.

The line-up includes Laura Kepner-Adney (Silver Thread Trio), Courtney Robbins (Seashell Radio), Cristina Williams (The Modeens), and Winston Watson (Greyhound Soul, Talk to Strangers). The divergence of the members’ projects, married with the seemingly ingrained talent of the artists, creates something seriously special. It is a group more than the sum of its parts with a repertoire unique in this town.

In theory, a Tucson super group cranking killer tunes should be easy to come by. This city has seen more cross-pollination of musicians swapped for different projects over the decades than broken windows in Chelyabinsk, Russia from last month’s meteorite hit. Unlike the crashing cacophony of Chelyabinsk’s exploding glass, members of The Cordials blow it up extraordinarily well.

The band began in mid-2011, when Silver Thread Trio vocalist/musician and self-described “opera school (Oberlin Conservatory) drop-out” Laura Kepner-Adney said to herself: ‘I’m going to write a 2-chord song, and I’m not going to worry about form or depth of lyric or harmony, I’m just going to write it.’

“I had been playing in ST3 (Silver Thread Trio) for so long, working on delicate and carefully crafted songs…  It was kind of a revelation, and I wrote four songs in four days that way. I guess I just needed an outlet for something that could be spontaneous and sloppy and loud and a little reckless.”

Loud and spontaneous, yes! Sloppy and reckless, don’t think so. They are too good. Even live, if there is a slight misstep, their ability to musically dance around it is super tight. Plus, there really isn’t anything cooler than sexy rocker chicks harmonizing akin to the Sirens of Greek mythology, with an edge of course. Three-part harmonies are not easy to come by, but these ladies toss it off.

“We’re all longtime singers,” Kepner-Adney explains, “and the harmonies all just come naturally.”

Williams recalls working on the song “Roses Burn Blue” with the other gals, saying “Laura and Courtney are especially amazing vocal arrangers and it was exciting to hammer out intricate harmonies like that.”

Beyond the gorgeous vocals, the instrumental interactions also come together seamlessly: Williams commands the bass lines, Kepner-Adney and Robbins take turns on lead electric guitar while Watson drives the drums.

The band churns interesting, exhilarating, exciting music – befitting the name as, according to Dictionary.com, cordial as a noun is not just that sweet, aromatic liqueur but also a stimulating medicine, anything that invigorates or stimulates.

This band is auditory ambrosia. Definitely check out the March 9 CD release party and pick up the disk.

The album, recorded at Wavelab, not only features slick graphic design by Ryan Trayte, but guest appearances by Marco Rosano and Fen Ikner. Ikner also mixed and master the tunes, and will be on drums at the release show as Watson will be on tour with St. Maybe.

Find out more at:  facebook.com/thecordials and thecordialsmusic.com.  The Whistle Stop Depot, 127 W. 5th St., hosts the album release on Sat., March 9 at 11pm. The $5 admission also includes performances by Boreas (9pm), Andrew Collberg Band (10pm).

Nine Digits

July 7, 2012 |

Stories about local, undocumented youth who are working toward becoming American citizens. First names are used to protect the indenities.

Edgar loves performing and playing music.

Edgar loves performing and playing music.

Edgar is like any new high school graduate, an 18-year-old looking forward to starting college in the fall with a good friend who will be his roomie. His favorite subject is math, he is passionate about music (“music got me everywhere”), loves gardening and contributing to his community through volunteer work.

Edgar is a driven young man, hard-working, intelligent and determined to be successful in life. He is a shining example of the mission of the GEAR UP Project, a U.S. Department of Education program that served low-income students who began 6th grade in 2005 and were slated for a 2012 graduation. The federally-funded, competitive national program, which provided over $9 million locally to Tucson Unified and Sunnyside School Districts over the six years, was administered here by the University of Arizona and Pima Community College. The funds were matched locally through cash and in-kind services.

GEAR UP is the acronym for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs; it was designed, according to its website, “to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education.”

Edgar remembers the day when representatives came to his class to talk about the program.

“They told all of the students there was this project that they created, called the GEAR UP Project in which all of the 6th graders back then through TUSD schools were so called GEAR UP students and that they were going to get the privilege of having all these projects, one of them was the ‘Math Through Mariachi’ program. I thought, ‘Music, I’ve been wanting to do music for a good while,’ so I chose the mariachi program for the summer. Since then, they’ve been following us through high school until graduation, so that project helped us develop our knowledge for college and helped throughout high school in the ways of what to do in order to get to college and have a good career and education.”

It clicked for Edgar. He found himself excelling in math, while stoking his love of music. He explains that the instructors taught the students “how math works with music notes and music theory. Basically, counting the notes, notes equal this, the time measuring.”

The funds for the program were also slated to provide college scholarships for the participants. Edgar, however, does not qualify for those funds as he is an undocumented resident. Like hundreds of thousands of other young people, Edgar was brought to the United States, illegally, as a child.

“I was about 7-years-old; I believe it was in 2001. We moved here from Nogales, Sonora. My dad moved over here before us with one of his family members, he’s been here since 1999, working here. He asked my mom to bring us over here, he said, ‘Bring them over here so they can have a good education, and learn English.’ And, my mom agreed. And we didn’t know anything. My mom just told us, ‘We’re going on vacation.’ It was after I got out of 2nd grade and we headed over here to Tucson. We brought a bunch of clothing, and I asked my mom, ‘Why all of this clothing if we are only going to stay a couple of weeks?’ And then she told us, ‘We’re going to go live with your dad.’ Me and my two sisters, we were super excited. At the moment I was 7, my older sister was 11 or 12 and my little sister wasn’t even a year old, just months old. We came here and fell in love with Tucson.”

As anyone who has been the “new kid” knows, it isn’t easy. Try putting a language barrier on top of that. Edgar remembers wanting to learn English, attempting to make friends, and meeting resistance.

“I thought it was going to be so fun, but seeing new faces staring at me and just talking in English, just gave me a non-motivation of staying there and learning English. They weren’t encouraging me to stay there; they just stared at me like, ‘who’s this mysterious kid from out of nowhere?’ My teacher would sometimes speak to me in Spanish, but I think she came to dislike me. She would tell one of the students in English for that student to translate it to me in Spanish, even though she knew Spanish.”

Amid the adversity, Edgar gathered the power within himself to keep moving forward academically.

Edgar, center, flanked by his familia.

Edgar, center, flanked by his familia.

“I would say it took me about three months to be able to get the English going on and have a conversation with someone. Pretty much what motivated me was my 3rd grade teacher, although she disliked me, she gave me the strength to just keep learning, to see if I could manage to speak that new language. I wanted to prove to her, no matter what, ‘I will learn English, I will achieve my goal of success,’ even though that she believed I wouldn’t be able to manage the English language.”

Manage the language he did, and he speaks with purpose and clarity. Edgar is most animated when talking about music and math and his upcoming college career. He says that music has gotten him everywhere, he’s performed with several mariachi bands and humbly reveals the instruments he’s played: violin, clarinet, guitar, vihuela and guitarrόn. As a result of the GEAR UP “Math through Mariachi” experience, Edgar enjoys working with numbers and is looking forward to studying business management at a private university in Phoenix.

“In the future, I want to have my own business, probably helping out my older sister since she wants to have her own restaurant, she’s doing culinary arts right now, she wants to be a chef, so probably I will do a family business and manage the business area, and her the cooking area.”

When asked about the “American Dream” and if he feels like he is living it because of the education he has received, he is understandably hesitant when answering.

“I don’t know. I never understood the definition of the American dream. All I know is, what some people have told me about the American dream is, having your own home with the white picket fence, and everything, but man – those days are gone for us.”

Edgar’s temporal place in current and recent American policies has afforded him interesting experiences as an undocumented resident. Of course, there is the late June announcement from the Obama administration that individuals between 16- and 30-years-old who came to the United States before they were 16, lived in the U.S. continuously for five years, are high school graduates or GED certified without criminal records, will not be deported to their countries of birth – places many undocumented youth in the United States are unfamiliar with.

The Obama announcement preceded an expected Supreme Court ruled on Arizona v. United States – in response to Arizona’s controversial 2010 Senate Bill 1070. The bill outlined requirements for state and local police officers to attempt to determine the immigration status of any person stopped under state or local law if “reasonable suspicion” exists, makes it a crime for immigrants who are not authorized to work in the United States to apply for work, solicit work in a public place, or perform work within the state’s borders, among other provisions.

Edgar’s right to attend local schools as an undocumented resident goes back to a 1982 Supreme Court 5-4 ruling in the Plyler v. Doe case, which struck down a Texas law that denied children enrollment in schools who had not been legally admitted to the United States. The court ruled that the Texas law was in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, in summary: undocumented children have the same right to a free public education as U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Undocumented immigrant students are obligated, as are all other students, to attend school until they reach the age mandated by state law.

Although he has been afforded an education because of a case ruling eleven years before his birth, Edgar has definitely faced road blocks due to not having a social security number. In 2010, Edgar was nominated by his high school teachers and confirmed by the American-Israel Friendship League as a student representative for an exchange program with Israel. When the league informed Edgar about the necessary documents for the program, he confided to one of the representatives that he didn’t have legal residency in the U.S. He explained that he didn’t have the pertinent documentation to prove who he was, telling the representative, “I am just an anonymous person here, because I don’t have my visa or anything else to show who I am.”

Edgar reflects on the fact this was during the height and hype of S.B. 1070. “I believe it was at the time that S.B. 1070 was going on, and she told me, ‘Well, since you say you are undocumented, I’m supposed to report you to immigration, so that they can send you away, but I will not do this, because I have a big heart. I’m going to give you some information from some immigration lawyers, to see what they can do. So far, right now, you will not be able to go with us to Israel.’

“I was so depressed; I was upset for all of that – doing so much work (submitting the applicable documents for the exchange program), to not get to go. That was one of the moments that was devastating for me for not having those nine digits.

“I was scared, because if I ever applied for anything like that again, they were going to ask me for that (information), I was afraid to apply for anything, actually, because if I told them that I didn’t have anything, I was afraid that they were going to report me to immigration. I didn’t want that to happen.”

Edgar continues to forge ahead with the help of family and teachers, who told him, “Mijo, don’t be scared. Everything’s going to be alright as long as you know how to find the information, you will obtain it. There’s a lot of opportunities out there, whether you are undocumented or from here or anything, there’s big opportunities out in the world.”

Edgar looks to have a bright future, and with President Obama’s policy directive, he will be able to work – something he very much wants to do.

“I will be ready for it, it’s a good chance to start a good life and get a good job.”

The 1960s: Urban Renewal and Barrio Destruction

February 4, 2012 |

This article is part of a special February 2012 issue commemorating the 100th anniversary of Arizona’s statehood. The complete section of Tucson snapshots over the last 10 decades begins at this link.

Cover of "La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City," published by UA Press.

Cover of “La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City,” published by UA Press, 2010.

No discussion about Downtown Tucson over the last 100 years would be complete without paying homage to Los Tucsonenses and the late 1960s decimation of la calle – 80 acres of Downtown that was once a culturally diverse residential and business district.

Tucsonenses, as described by Lydia R. Otero in her book “La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City,” is a self-indentifying term for a population of (mostly) Mexican-Americans which “dates back to the nineteenth century that expresses a distinct cultural and historic connection to the city and the region around it.”

As Tucson’s population grew post-Gadsden Purchase (1853), the immigrating Anglos overtook the city’s business core along Congress Street and settled Downtown’s north and east ends. “In 1860,” Otero wrote, “Anglos constituted less than 20 percent of the population but controlled 87 percent of the wealth.”

Over the subsequent decades, Anglo dominance prompted Tucsonenses, along with Asian and African-American residents, to shift their businesses and homes (generally) south of Congress Street and west of Stone Avenue. These populations built and encompassed a thriving, ethnically diverse community.

Otero cites the “WPA Guide to 1930s Arizona” description of la calle: “Residents of Mexican extraction comprise around 45 percent of the Old Pueblo population. Most of them live in Old Town, called El Barrio Libre… Old Town is centered around South Meyer [Avenue] near the city’s main business area, is also peopled by Chinese and Negroes… This is the exclusive Mexican shopping district… In most of the bars around Meyer [Avenue], Negro chefs are busy concocting hot chili sauce to pour over barbequed short ribs.”

However, Tucson’s municipal power structure seemed to view the area as a hindrance to modernity and growth. In “Rehabilitation of Blighted Areas: Conservation of Sound Neighborhoods,” the 1942 study published by the Tucson Regional Plan strongly asserted the area’s real estate “ruination.” Some telling descriptions in the publication of the city’s motivations include defining blight as “the visible evidence of inability to attract profitable investment, the intermingling of incompatible uses… overcrowding of dwellings designed for fewer persons, occupancy in violation of local zoning.”

It is a wry irony that the current and ongoing goals of Tucson’s downtown revitalization call for mixed retail and residential use, in order to create critical mass and reduce vehicle dependency, yet when this was happening south of Congress Street for many decades, it was considered a worrisome zoning issue.

But the most telling description to shed light on the ambitions behind the recommended “rehabilitations” was the statement that an “intermixture of racial or ethnic groups” was considered another attribute of blighted neighborhoods. The 55-page study specifically targets the barrios as areas that “required major redevelopment.”

Aerial view of the barrio and la calle pre-urban renewal, circa 1940s. Photo courtesy Arizona Historical Society #1303 (A.E. Magee Collection)

Aerial view of the barrio and la calle pre-urban renewal, circa 1940s.
Photo courtesy Arizona Historical Society #1303 (A.E. Magee Collection)

In 1961, the city’s Urban Renewal Director/Assistant City Manager S. Lenwood Schorr issued the “Urban Renewal: For Slum Clearance and Redevelopment of the Old Pueblo District” study.

While not as overtly racist as the 1942 publication, the undertones were still there – stating the district was afflicted by “crime, fire and juvenile delinquency rates,” without providing specific evidence, such as hard numbers of police and fire responders to the area over any given time period.

The cumulative effects resulted in Tucson voters approving the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project on March 1, 1966. Despite the efforts of the La Placita Committee, the city razed 80 acres of irreplaceable culture, shops, homes, restaurants, entertainment venues (notably La Plaza Theatre) – wiping out over 100 years of historically significant buildings and scattering its residents asunder. In its place stand government buildings, the Tucson Convention Center complex and the La Placita Village complex.

All that remains of the neighborhood’s cultural heritage north of Cushing Street is the gazebo in La Placita Village, a kiosko originally called Plaza de la Mesilla. The locale dates back to the early nineteenth century and was the site of innumerable neighborhood fiestas.

Details on “La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City,” are available at UAPress.arizona.edu and on Amazon.com. Also check out these great titles by Thomas E. Sheridan: “Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854-1941,” and “Arizona: A History, Revised Edition.”

Distillation of Discovery

October 1, 2011 |

If you think you know about Prohibition, think again.

Dry rally photo webBehind the mobsters’ violence, the flappers’ shimmy and the teetotalers’ moralistic stance is an intriguing, complex era of American history eloquently rendered by directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick in their newest documentary, “Prohibition.”

Mr. Burns aptly describes the film as “firing on all cylinders.”

“It has got amazing, complicated characters; it’s a little known period in our history,” Mr. Burns explains during a phone interview. “We just have the superficial images of gangsters and flappers but not much other knowledge. So we wound it back 100 years to see the lead up to it and then really got deep into what Prohibition (was) that went beyond those flappers and those gangsters.”

The three-part series, airing from 8 p.m.-10 p.m. on PBS Oct.2-4, is presented in Burns’ characteristic award-winning fashion with compelling historic photos and footage accompanied by gorgeous music, wonderful narration, numerous well-spoken experts and fabulous voice-overs that resurrect the days’ notable players.

The first episode, A Nation of Drunkards, sets the stage with fascinating 19th century background. A concerned Rev. Lyman Beecher, who finds more and more male parishioners destabilizing their families due to alcohol addiction, writes several sermons on temperance which puts the movement’s wheels in motion. We learn that, in 1830, people over the age of 15 were drinking the equivalent of 88 bottles of whiskey yearly, three times more than the average American in this century; they spent more money on alcohol each year than the total expenditures of the federal government at that time.

With those facts, it makes sense that there would be a fermented backlash, heavily pushed by Christian women. The temperance campaign and women’s suffrage would become inextricably linked as Susan B. Anthony formed the first Women’s Temperance Movement and women found a collective cause and voice.

Other factors that led to Congress passing the 18th Amendment included: pressure and activism from the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, the male dominated Anti-Saloon League, passage of the 16th Amendment (giving the federal government the right to tax citizens’ income – previous to that the feds were taxing the alcohol trade which had, at one point, comprised 70% of the government’s income), the passage of some form of prohibition in 17 states and the onset of World War I and its anti-German propaganda.

Episode two, A Nation of Scofflaws, covers the union once the 18th Amendment was ratified by 36 states on Jan. 16, 1920. At that time, Prohibition was supported by most Americans, and initially seemed to work. Quickly though, people found ways to profit off of it and began to defy the law – from home brew sold to neighbors, to speakeasies and bloody gang wars over alcohol distribution, along with vast networks of bribery and corruption.

The strict Volstead Act (federal law applying the 18th Amendment) whetted normal citizens to become scofflaws, as the Act defined any beverage containing over one half of one percent alcohol illegal. It did, however, allow for medicinal prescriptions and sacramental wines. During the course of Prohibition, there would be six million prescriptions and the demand for sacramental wines would go up by millions of gallons a year.

A Nation of Scofflaws delves into the difficulties of enforcing the law, the strain on the court systems, sympathetic bootleggers like Roy Olmstead and George Remus, and the blatant, widespread disregard for the amendment from the average person to President Warren G. Harding’s whiskey-fueled poker meetings.

A Nation of Hypocrites, the third episode, begins in 1926. As contemptuous feelings for the law’s extremism grew, so did deaths from gang wars and drinking illegal liquor made from industrial alcohol. It was a chaotic period that featured great music, expansion of women’s liberation, and corruption at every level of government. It put democracy on trial.

The Great Depression struck the final blow against Prohibition. Here, marchers in Detroit bear signs reading, "Beer for Taxation, Jobs for Millions" ca. 1930. Credit: Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

The Great Depression struck the final blow against Prohibition.
Here, marchers in Detroit bear signs reading, “Beer for Taxation, Jobs for Millions” ca. 1930.
Credit: Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Enthralling personalities are showcased in this episode, including: Chicago’s corrupt Republican mayor Big Bill Thompson, mobster boss Al Capone, Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrant (whose personal evolution Mr. Burns describes as is “the whole arc of the story”), political activist Pauline Sabin, New Yorker writer “Lipstick” Lois Long and many others.

Prohibition’s effects mirror modern times. As Mr. Burns elucidates, “You begin to realize that so many of the themes are contemporary with single issue political campaigns that metastasize with horrible unintended consequences, the demonization of recent immigrants to the United States, smear campaigns during presidential elections, a whole group of people who feel that they’ve lost control of their country and are determined to take it back and don’t compromise, warrantless wiretaps; you’ve got all these things that are in today’s headlines and they are back then.”

Visit the interactive, in-depth companion site at PBS.org/prohibition.

Rooted in Community

July 5, 2011 |
Sparkroot plans by Repp Design + Construction. Courtesy Ari Shapiro

Sparkroot plans by Repp Design + Construction.
Courtesy Ari Shapiro

“Sparkroot is a concept that I have been mulching in my mind for years,” says Ari Shapiro of his latest Downtown venture, set to open in early August at 245 E. Congress St., at 5th Avenue. “It’s essentially the kind of space that I crave as a customer that I don’t feel really exists. The heart and soul of it is a coffee shop, but it’s a coffee shop that brings elements of a restaurant into it.”

Shapiro, who is also the proud founder and owner of three Xoom Juice smoothie shops (one is located in the 245 E. Congress St. strip), describes Sparkroot as a trifecta. It will have three beverage groups: coffee and tea, homemade sodas and boutique/micro beer and wine, and will serve healthy vegetarian fare. “We’re not a bar or a restaurant, or a pure coffee shop. We’re an amalgamation of all three.”

Shapiro shares the details with an energy that conveys measured excitement. However, the more he elucidates on the features of his new business and everything that has gone into it, the broader his smile and the livelier his brown eyes.

As we pour over the urban aesthetics of the Repp Design + Construction plans, Shapiro points out the coffee, bar and kitchen areas, the loft, and the layout of the seating. “There will be individual counter seating; we’re going to have a seven foot community table built by my friend Raj Helweg and have lounge chairs and sofas. We’re making a lot of furniture ourselves, but we’re also buying a lot of mid-century vintage stuff.” Notching up the cool factor is a 1963 Wurlitzer jukebox, with tunes for free, and patio seating along 5th Avenue.

Shapiro makes it clear how important it is to him to utilize local talent and is employing Tucson’s artist community to decorate and build out the space. Contributors include: Troy Neiman making a hanging bike rack and a table made of bike parts, Ezequiel Leoni building a 20 foot window bar facing Congress Street, Travis Edgar constructing a writer’s table.

“If you want a story Jamie, here’s the story – do you know how hard it is to get reclaimed wood?” Shapiro says they bought 480 board feet of Wisconsin barn wood from a man far south on Nogales Highway. “It is gorgeous, and weathered, and mostly red and there is still some hardware in planks. We are using that throughout the space.”

While the layout is certainly unique, what customers won’t get anywhere else in Tucson is the Blue Bottle Coffee Sparkroot is set to serve. Shapiro looked at local options and loved them, but went with the San Francisco based company because it “is at the very leading edge of specialty coffee.”

The beer and wine selections will feature quality options priced for everyone. “All wine is going to be $5 a glass, all day, no specials. I don’t want to serve a $9 glass of wine; I don’t want to serve a $7 glass of wine. And then all beer will be $4 a bottle.”

When it comes to the menu, Shapiro promises healthful options of homemade granola and whole food bars, Panini sandwiches, soups, hummus and more. “Basically, simple fare done with a lot of care and creativity.”

Keep an eye on Sparkroot.com for details on the opening.

Tesoro: Live in Studio 2A

July 2, 2011 |

TesoroCover webResistance is futile, the songs are too bewitching. The album, recorded at KXCI 91.3FM, consists of gorgeous notes adroitly composed and negotiated, sauntering from the enticing seduction of flamenco to jazz sensibilities. Tesoro calls it Flamenco Fusion. I dig that they fused in Tool’s “Forty-Six & 2” along with saluting Paco de Lucia, Chris Burton Jácome and Tito Puente.

It’s been over five years since Tesoro issued a disc, and the party takes place on July 9 from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Sullivan’s Steakhouse & Bar, 1785 E. River Rd. Other summer dates include: July 13, 29, 30 at Casa Vicente, 340 S. Stone Ave.; July 22, August 20, 26 at Hacienda del Sol, 5601 N. Hacienda del Sol Rd.; August 27 at La Encantada, 2905 E. Skyline Dr.

TesoroTucson.com has all of the details.

The Power of Music

July 1, 2011 |

Pioneering Discoveries in the New Science of Song
by Elena Mannes
Walker Publishing Company (2011), 288 pages

Power of MusicScience will not embrace visceral knowledge without evidence to back it. What humans, and our species’ ancestors, have innately known about the importance of music for hundreds of thousands of years is now being proven through modern science. Namely, that music and/or sound are fundamental aspects of individuals, societies, creatures on this planet, Earth, other planets and the universe as a whole.

In Elena Mannes’ new book, which grew out of her 2009 PBS documentary “The Music Instinct: Science & Song,” she covers biochemistry, neuroscience, physics, anthropology, ancient history, the cosmos and countless experiments that point to the fact that music, basically, rocks hard core.

Heady at times, as music theory and science are, the book is still accessible to the layman, but having a science and music background certainly helps. The coolest elements in this read are the numerous factoids that should convince anyone of music’s potency. Only four percent of the human population won’t get it, those individuals who are amusic and lack normal pitch perception. Speaking of pitch, it turns out that the auditory cortex is laid out in pitch order!

With the technological advances in medical science, researchers have conducted experiments that map brain activity when subjects are listening to and playing music. “There are so many different brain areas involved,” Mannes writes, “that one can say we have a veritable ‘brain orchestra’ going on inside our heads when we are involved with music.”

Beyond just hearing music, there is also the physicality of sound vibrations. The process of hearing involves the energy of sound waves moving through the air, into our ears, through our eardrums with cellular activity telling the brain what frequencies are coming through. Because sound is vibration, this doesn’t limit it to the hearing. Deaf people can also experience music, albeit differently, but all of us consume it bodily.

Our relationship with sound starts in utero. Studies have found that fetuses begin their auditory education in the third trimester. Because of this, newborns have experienced the cadence of their parents’ language pre-birth. In turn, it affects the way they cry. The wails of a baby have musical intervals, which are different depending on their parents’ language: “French infants have more rising melody contours than English and Japanese infants.”

The process of learning to play music and sing builds more brain matter and neural pathways, making the brain of a musician physically different from that of a non-musician – and markedly so in people who learned at a young age. However, the beauty of the brain’s plasticity means that adults still have the ability to “develop new neural networks to process music.”

Listening to music also targets the brain’s pleasure zone. I call it the musicgasm, science links it to the neurochemicals released during those Oh My God parts of a song. Hence the saying – sex, drugs and rock & roll.

The beauty of music is that it doesn’t have the same consequences of sex and drugs; it is good medicine, if you will. It helps with depression, eases physical pain, creates joy and brings people together. We all know this. It’s nice that science is finally catching up to prove it.

More information on Elena Mannes is at MannesProductions.com.

 

Metal Rhythms & Spanish Beats

December 1, 2010 |
Domingo DeGrazia

Domingo DeGrazia

Domingo DeGrazia is buttoned down at this lunch interview, but the visual belies a multifaceted character that cannot be defined by shirt-and-tie attire.

Attorney by day, Spanish guitarist by night, DeGrazia is a man with passions of robust depth and breadth which translate to his performances. Live shows are utterly captivating – gorgeous notes by his band of adept musicians fly deftly about. DeGrazia’s style culls from many eclectic genres, Spanish and Latin are obvious, but he says a lot of his rhythmic styles come from “straight metal.”

As a teenager, “the first songs we tried to play as a band were off the (1991 Sepultura) Arise album,” DeGrazia said. “It is crazy how much in common flamenco and metal really do kind of have…common movements from chord to chord and common rhythmic structures, if you can isolate the bare parts.

“There have been a couple of (flamenco) guys that did some of that. Rodrigo y Gabriela did some Metallica covers and played with Alex Skolnick from Testament and it comes off pretty well. You wouldn’t be able to tell much difference in the soloing if they played metal on nylon flamenco guitars because it’s all the same kind of key structure.”

As country and punk are not mutually exclusive, nor is Pink Floyd and bluegrass (see Pickin’ on Pink Floyd: Bluegrass Tribute), Domingo was a teenager into metal while also being attracted to world beats. Raised in Tucson, DeGrazia was influenced by the town’s Hispanic music, Native American bands and from attending tribal celebrations.

“I was inclined to listen to it and like it but I couldn’t play guitar well enough to actually make those ideas come to life. So, it wasn’t until late teens into early-mid twenties that I actually developed tools to be able to play and get the ideas out. And even now, there are still more ideas, but I’m technically limited, I can’t get all the sparkles of imagination out. But it’s coming. It’s easier now.”

I’m guessing he is comparing himself to classically trained, Spanish guitar professionals because he is a damn fine guitarist. Self-taught, Domingo said he had three lessons with a brilliant musician, but wasn’t interested in being “a technician that was proper and stuffy. Rather than being a master technician, I’d rather be somewhat of a hack that can play a decent song.”

Play decent songs he does. The man was a runner-up in 2010’s Tucson Weekly Tucson Area Music Awards (TAMMIES) best guitarist category.

“That was something I did not expect. I didn’t know that anyone was listening.”

Here’s hoping the Grammy commission has its ears perked: two of DeGrazia’s albums are in the initial consideration round in four categories.

Since 2003, Domingo has released four full lengths and a DVD; one solo album, two of the disks and the DVD include his full band with The Bluest Sky mainly featuring Domingo’s guitar and Beth Daunis’ violin.

Currently, Domingo is working on another Spanish guitar album (Nuanced) as well as a Christmas album – which will have traditional and standards, and if, he says, “I can make it work, some new stuff.”

I’ll bet he can make it work. In his 36 years, the man has packed a punch. Before he was 20, Domingo had both his pilot and helicopter licenses. It makes sense that he subsequently earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Now a juvenile defense/family law practitioner, DeGrazia says that his life has been “a cool kind of meandering journey. I got lucky a lot; I was in the right place at the right time, had some good opportunities and worked really hard.”

What drives this insatiable student of life?

“When I was young several people in my immediate family died including a brother and my Dad. I have a strong sense that life is fleeting and I’m trying to pack in as much as I can before time or old age make me useless. I know it’s not the safest way to live, but I’ve got some cool stories.”

Check out music samples, and more info on upcoming performances, at DeGraziaMusic.com.

Dealing in Art

April 1, 2010 |
Fine Art Consulting, (left) Joanne Stuhr and (right) Meg Hagyard. photo: Jamie Manser

Fine Art Consulting, (left) Joanne Stuhr and (right) Meg Hagyard.
photo: Jamie Manser

The founders of Fine Art Consulting are striking – not only in their physicality and elegant, casual style but also because of their poised, easy going manner. Before they explain their combined 40-year background in the arts, it’s easy to ascertain that Meg Hagyard and Joanne Stuhr have an intelligent, creative bent.

Both have a rich arts history – with Stuhr’s background as a museum curator and author on Latin American and contemporary art along with Haygard’s training as a studio artist and her work in arts management.

Haygard said that the two knew each other through the arts community and that their business partnership evolved from a two-year long project she was working on that Stuhr “did a lot of invaluable consulting on.”

With an apropos business name that matches their expertise, the services Haygard and Stuhr provide are fulfilling a need in the regional community.

“We have been doing a very soft launch of the business and haven’t done press yet but people keep finding us,” Haygard said. “That’s been encouraging, to feel like it’s going to be worthwhile for us to continue.”

What they offer to individuals and businesses includes collection care and management – which entails documentation of inventory, verification, authentication, insurance issues, institutional loan agreements, installations, as well as buying and selling.

Speaking of selling, from April 15-18, Fine Art Consulting is setting up shop at 439 N. 6th Ave. #179 to host an art sale that represents over a dozen clients who are refining their collections.

Works for sale include Picasso and Dali prints, Mexican folk art, installation pieces by Julia Latane, Israeli artists, 30s & 40s pieces, furniture and more.

“We try to have a variety to appeal to a broad range,” Haygard said. “It’s also a broad range of prices – from $50 to $4,000.”

A sampling of the pieces is available at FineArtConsultingltd.com. The preview takes place Thursday, April 15 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday-Sunday, April 16-18, the hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

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