MUSIC

Festival En El Barrio Viejo

March 22, 2013 |

2012 Festival en el Barrio. photo by David Olsen

Calexico and other great bands join together to support KXCI and celebrate the beautiful Barrio of Tucson and its community

Sunday, March 24th marks the Fourth Annual Festival En El Barrio Viejo, which is taking place downtown in the streets of the El Presidio neighborhood. This year’s festival boasts three stages filled with amazing bands from Tucson and beyond, local food and spirits including the restaurants and storefronts of the Old Town Artisans, booths for shopping and crafts and a chance to support one of Tucson’s greatest resources–KXCI Community Radio.

Making their fourth consecutive appearance headlining the festival will be the celebrated native-Tucson band Calexico, who have gained a global fan base and have received widespread notoriety for their 2012 album Algiers. Currently on tour in Europe, the band always makes Tucson their first priority and this great festival is no exception.

“I love Tucson, why wouldn’t I want to give back to the town that inspires us?” says Calexico lead singer Joey Burns. “Plus it’s a great way to get together and celebrate. Any way to get people together in the barrios and neighborhoods is a good thing. Combining that with good food, drink, music and activities for all of the family members makes this a special spring time occasion. Helping out our local community sponsored radio station is also another movement that we should all get behind. We love KXCI.”

Along with Calexico, this year’s festival includes an exciting line up featuring the Grammy award winning New Orleans outfit Rebirth Brass Band, Tucson’s own Sergio Mendoza Y La Orkesta, Heartless Bastards, Brian Lopez, Mariachi Aztlan, The Cordials and many other great acts. The bands will be spread out among the main Barrio stage, the Telles stage and the Mariachi Aztlan stage beginning at 1:00pm.

“It’s a great street party and we have a really killer musical lineup this year,” says Executive Director of the Rialto Foundation Curtis McCrary. “I’m really excited about Rebirth Brass Band. We had them at Rialto in 2008 and they were really terrific and put on a great show. Now they’ve been on the show Treme, and they have a lot of notoriety and we’re really excited to have them on the bill. Each year it seems to get better and more refined with more food and beer offerings and it’s a great thing to do on a nice afternoon.”

The proceeds from the festival will go toward funding for KXCI, who are loved by the Tucson community for their support of local artists and their tireless quest to keep independent radio alive in our city. The programming of KXCI largely benefits local bands and musicians and they have done much to boost the popularity of such artists, including Calexico.

“KXCI has always been supportive of local artists and bands,” says Burns. “They have been there for us since the beginning and continue to help out local bands and bring in interesting touring acts to their station. They have a lot of diversity in their programming and shows that I admire and can’t find anywhere else.”

“By sharing eclectic commercial-free music with our audience, we’re able to introduce songs and artists – old and new – that you simply don’t hear anywhere else on the radio dial,” says General Manager of KXCI Randy Peterson. “And because we’re locally based and community-driven, we’re able to reflect the interests and values of our community while at the same time championing those things we love about it.”

The beautiful setting of the festival is nestled in the Barrio of downtown Tucson on Alameda between Main and Church in El Presidio neighborhood, which contains beautiful historic houses, the Old Town Artisans complex and the Tucson Museum of Art.

“We’re really grateful for the support and willingness of the Presidio neighborhood, because if it wasn’t for them allowing us to bring this event to their doorsteps we wouldn’t be able to do this,” says McCrary. “It’s the perfect place to have an event like this and they’re all really supportive of our efforts and do everything they can to accommodate us and make us feel welcomed.”

“My favorite part is probably the incredible behind-the-scenes effort that it takes to make it all happen” says Peterson. “Putting on a multi-stage live outdoor event requires a lot of cooperation with the neighborhood (who are always wonderful), the musicians, the vendors, the organizers and city officials. A lot of people think this is “just” a KXCI event – but it wouldn’t happen without the incredible team at the Rialto Theatre and at Stateside Presents.”

Tickets cost $24.00 in advance, $27.00 at the door and can be purchased at the festival gates or prior at www.rialtotheatre.com. Special VIP tickets are available that include seating in the area closest to the stage, a private bartender and private bathrooms. Children under 10 are admitted free with a paid adult.

“It’s a great day of great music, first and foremost, but it’s also a wonderful opportunity to gather as a music loving community,” says Peterson. “On top of that there’s wonderful food, great drinks and a great time to be had by all. And if the attendees are smart, they will plan to take the following Monday off of work.”

The festival is located at 166 West Alameda Street. Visit www.rialtotheatre.com or www.kxci.org or call 520-740-1000 for more information.

 

A Beautiful Coalescence

March 19, 2013 |

Tucson is full of surprises.

In this Sonoran Desert valley are artists and musicians incubating, nurturing and growing their creative forms in living rooms and practice spaces and studios, honing their crafts until BAM – they are showcased on a national stage.

This is certainly more the exception than the rule, but it does happen and it happened this year with bluegrass quintet Run Boy Run. The 20somethings met at UofA and formed the band in 2009 but, as upright bassist Jesse Allen explains, “Most of our serious time as a band has happened since we were split between two cities.”

Members (besides Allen, include siblings Matt and Grace Rolland plus Jen and Bekah Sandoval) are divvied up between the Old Pueblo and Phoenix, creating a logistical challenge when it comes to rehearsals, performances and recording.

When asked where the band had been playing before heard by 4 million listeners on public radio show “A Prairie Home Companion” (APHC) this January and again in February, Allen says, “Frankly, we haven’t been.

“We didn’t play Tucson much because we were split between Tucson and Phoenix, and our Phoenix half was keeping us busy up there. It really wasn’t until we played the Tucson Folk Festival where we met Nowhere Man and Whiskey Girl (who are joining us for the release show on Thursday, March 21) that we started booking shows in Tucson; even our resident Sun Devil started falling in love with the Old Pueblo.”

It was a shock to hear, for the first time, such a wonderfully tight and talented local band being showcased on Garrison Keillor’s program. Where had they been hiding? And, how did they get a slot on the popular public radio show?

Allen explains: “Through some providential connections, we were given the right people to talk to when we found out they (APHC) were coming to Tempe. Grace was particularly persistent in contacting and following up with them. We got the call the Tuesday before the show telling us that Garrison would like to invite us to play on the show. Until that morning, we had viewed it as something we had almost no chance of being able to do. I’ve got a mental list of all the seemingly impossible accomplishments that I would dream of us being able to do, and APHC was one of the top on that list.”

The kids fit in perfectly with Keillor’s aesthetic. APHC fans know the host’s penchant for Americana music traditions and RBR’s self description as having its sound rooted in the Appalachian South made for a perfect match. Twice.

“The second time came as almost as much a surprise as the first,” Allen relays. “Garrison and the folks at APHC had been so nice, and dropped little comments about having us back, but I just dismissed them as courtesy — after all, who are we? It wasn’t until Mr. Keillor himself walked into the dressing room where we were gathering ourselves after the show with his calendar in hand, that we realized that they weren’t just courtesies, and he really did want us back on the show.”

It is an affirmation of the quality of the band’s musical aptitude, plus its dedication and hard work – the same qualities that shine through on RBR’s first full length “So Sang the Whippoorwill.” Front and center are soaring honeyed harmonies by the gals – Grace, Jen and Bekah – surrounded by a beautiful coalescence of bass, fiddles, mandolin and cello.

The album is comprised of 12 tracks, mostly penned by the musicians but it also includes three traditional songs and a cover of The Band’s “Get Up Jake.” It is a gorgeous release and very technically clean, both the recording and the playing, a result of hours and hours spent in the Jim Brady Recording Studios.

Fiddler Matt Rolland says, “The clarity is a testament to the fact that our co-producer and engineer, Jim, has great mics and knows how use them well for acoustic instruments and voices. I’m proud to say there is no auto tune or pitch adjustment on the album; we wanted this to be clean and acoustic, like you’d hear in real life.

“We spent about 85 hours in the studio tracking, from November to March. We generally played songs all together until we got a take that we liked.  Mixing and mastering took about a third of the time to track (about 35 hours).”

This attention to time, details, arrangements inform their impressive chops. Those chops landed the band a chance to open the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2012. That was a result of winning the 2011 Telluride Band Contest – a competition with strict guidelines.

The musicians seem up to any challenge, even with all the crew working full time jobs, they make time to make it happen. Flipping through the band’s blog, this striking entry by Allen seems to sum up how the group functions on a deep level of friendship to create a breathtaking ensemble.

“There is one factor in all of our work putting together the tunes we play that I feel is more important than any other: trust. We trust each other, and we do what we can to make sure we honor that trust in one another. This trust allows us to take risks, to listen critically, and to speak freely. Because we trust each other, we can play with freedom, and produce something we can all be proud of. A creation is always precious to the creator, so being able to put your creation into the hands of people you trust is a magnificent thing.”

Run Boy Run celebrates its CD release locally at Plush, 340 E. 6th St., on Thursday, March 21 at 8:30pm. Nowhere Man & Whiskey Girl open at 7:30 p.m. with Silver Thread Trio performing at 9:45 p.m. The band treats Phoenix to its tunes on Friday, March 22 at Crescent Ballroom, 308 N. 2nd Ave. at 7:30 p.m. with Silver Thread Trio in tow. Saturday March 23 sees the group performing in Flagstaff at the Museum of Northern Arizona, 7:30 p.m. Details available at RunBoyRunBand.com.

Stuart Oliver & The Desert Angels

March 19, 2013 |

Sheddin’ Every Skin
(Old Bisbee Records)

If you’re free on Sundays and music is your temple of wry reflections tied to sin and hopeful, redemptive contemplation… then spin this album. It’s a collection of 14 stories that are beautifully composed, performed and arranged. Stuart Oliver paints notes and words on time and space, ageless motifs of humanity’s dukkha (nature of suffering) and deliverance.

To rip right from the press release, this is “a self-produced 70s country-rock and psychedelic folk journey through Oliver’s colorful past, featuring ethereal harmonies by his sister Angela Taylor, Kate Becker and Silver Thread Trio’s Laura Kepner-Adney. Sam and Danielle Panther are on loan from Bisbee’s Green Machine, and Ryan Janac (Sunday Afternoon, Luca) is a mainstay on drums.” Other auditory contributions come from drummer Jim Glinski, bassist Peter Schnittman, Deanna Cross on viola, Mark Holdaway’s kalimba, banjo by Rudy Cortese and Louis Levinson sliding on pedal steel.

This is unapologetic cosmic Americana – evocative storytelling delicately carved from pain – musically and lyrically heart rendering. It can sit on the same shelf with The Byrds’ “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” and Lucinda Williams’ “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”.

Stuart Oliver’s songs are “inspired by coming to terms with tumultuous family, romantic, and cultural (also religious) relationships. Expatriating to the desert from the deep South was a key influence,” Oliver explicates. “Most of the songs have a mystical, spiritual element – the only way I can come to terms with said tumultuous relationships.”

It’s a process of mucking through the darkness of utter heartbreak to transitioning beyond it and into the light as a wiser being, being open to a beginner’s mind while still – when appropriate – donning the calloused cloak.

The bottom line is, don’t suffer your sorrows. Move through and past ‘em; create a new reality of healing and understanding in this temporal existence.

Find musical meditation and redemption at the “Sheddin’ Every Skin” CD release show on Saturday, March 30 at Café Passe’s super gorgeous and intimate patio, 415 N. 4th Ave. All ages, 8 p.m., $5 suggested donation. Get more information at OldBisbeeRecords.com.

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).

Grateful Dead Still Alive…sort of (and coming to Tucson)!

February 23, 2013 |

Bob Weir

Ah, the Grateful Dead…love ‘em, hate ‘em , ignore ‘em…whatever your personal feelings, they refuse to go away.  While their reputation as the quintessential Frisco jam band may not be everyone’s cup of herbal tea, for 30 years, this group had been fertile ground for a creative process that has spawned hundreds of original tunes, many exquisitely crafted as evidenced by the likes of the Indigo Girls, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Burning Spear and many others who have covered their songs.  Unfortunately, with some notable exceptions, the recordings and live execution of much of their work, have left many who have not drunk the kool-aid (metaphorically and literally), to wonder aloud,  “What’s the big deal?”

Well, to the millions who had consistently made them one of the highest grossing concert acts in the world, it was always about the songs and the jams, or as some folks in the education world like to put it, “content and delivery.”

When lead guitarist and band icon Jerry Garcia died in 1995 it was if a fast and smooth running train had been derailed.  The Dead were playing 80-100 shows a year, averaging three hours plus in length and a different show every night.   And while there were many jokes made about tour junkie Deadheads now being forced to “get a life”, the symbiotic nature of the Dead’s relationship with its fans meant it was only a matter of time before the band, either individually or collectively would find its way back onto the road.

Since that time there have been a handful of reunions amongst the four original surviving members—Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart.  First came The Other Ones (a couple of tours and one great recording) and then a single tour under the moniker The Dead.  Now there are periodic shows and short seasonal tours with Weir and Lesh fronting the group Furthur.  While these shows have provided a relatively authentic GD experience, it’s been the band members’ various solo projects that seem to have captured most of their imagination and interest.

Much can be written about the Phil Lesh and Friends experience, but it is the impending arrival of the Mickey Hart Band and the Bob Weir shows that is currently piquing interest.  Weir’s principal post Dead project has been Ratdog, a group he founded with bassist Rob Wasserman shortly before Garcia’s death.  While that group has undergone various transformations in substance and style (there’s that content and delivery again) it has evolved into a terrific Grateful Dead cover band with Weir actively working to keep Garcia’s legacy alive by continuing to sing many of his songs.

Weir’s last Tucson appearance was a few years ago at the Rialto with Ratdog, where that theater’s vastly improved sound system helped make for a memorable night.  This time, Weir heads down the block to the Fox Theatre which should also provide the perfect backdrop for his solo acoustic show.  While this show will be free of improvisational jams, acoustic arrangements will allow listeners to experience the music as it was created and before songs morphed into jams.   It’s also a given he’ll also include tunes written by Garcia and Robert Hunter.  Jonathan Wilson will open.

Mickey Hart

In sharp contrast, drummer and percussionist Mickey Hart, with a band, returns to the Rialto where he rocked the house more than ten years ago with a band that not only covered the Dead but offered some creative rearrangements as well.

Since the death of Garcia he has recorded and toured with various ensembles including the Planet Drum experience as well as the superb Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box.  While Hart has bravely attempted to handle vocals on previous tours, he appears happy to be giving up these reigns to others better suited for this, most notably Crystal Monee Hall and Joe Bagale.  While there will be plenty of drums and percussion, this is a full-on electric 8 piece band which will be augmented by opening act the African Showboyz from Ghana.

Bob Weir plays at the Fox Theatre on Wednesday, February 27; The Mickey Hart Band is at the Rialto on Tuesday, March 5.

Singing Across the Divide: Border Songs compilation captures the emotions of border politics

January 23, 2013 |

After his first field trip with his students to the Arizona-Mexico border, lined now with a metal fence ripping across the desert, Robert Neustadt wrote a song. The Northern Arizona University professor took his class on Latino Theater, Film, and the US/Mexico Border to the site of their studies to see it first hand, and when Neustadt sat down with a guitar later, the stories came forward. “I wrote that song because I had to write that song,” he explained. “It just sort of came out of me.” He had met undocumented migrants who had been deported – a sterile word for being split from families they’d built in the U.S., or even families they’d left in Mexico – and dropped off in Nogales with no resources to move or mend the divide. The title of the song is an even more sterile term for this separation: “Voluntary Return.”

The song has now joined 30 other tracks from musicians, poets and storytellers in a new album that tackles the emotion on both sides of the fence. “Border Songs” is available on CD Baby and since October has sold over 800 copies; the proceeds amounting to $16,000 are being donated to No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid organization that provides aid to migrants in the desert and at repatriation centers in northern Mexico.

Neustadt was haunted by what he’d seen across the border: the makeshift camps, the Border Patrol attitudes, the shrines to people who’d died in the heat. He wasn’t the only one. And when his friend and collaborator Chuck Cheesman shared a song he’d also written about the complicated tangle of border politics, the two realized there might be a whole album’s worth of songs like this across the state, maybe even the whole country. “I thought it was such a beautiful idea that I jumped on it and wouldn’t let go until we did it,” Neustadt professed. An album was born.

The sounds of the border songs are as diverse as the people in them. Sweet Honey in the Rock’s strong harmonies lead into the Latino beats of Lilo Gonzalez into the soft dulcet of Amos Lee in the first three tracks. The pieces swing from story and spoken word to ballads, rock, and Spanish-language rap, with appearances from Calexico, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Pete Seeger, Joel Rafael and Sergio Mendoza y La Orkesta. Everywhere in between, locally known songwriters contribute tracks. The artists talk about coyotes and Border Patrol and SB1070 and death and love torn away.

Concerts are popping up around Arizona, and Tucson will see one on January 5th at Southside Presbyterian Church. Among the performers is Glenn Weyant, a sound sculptor whose track on the album blends Margaret Randall reading a poem over Weyant playing the actual border wall itself, with violin bows, sticks and brushes. Perhaps above all, “Border Songs” seeks to create an experience of immigration like Weyant’s sound: tactile, tormented, and immediate.

“Border Songs” is available for purchase at CDBaby.com; all of the $20 pricetag benefits No More Deaths.

Border Songs in Concert will be at Southside Presbyterian Church, 317 W. 23rd St., on Sat.,  Jan. 5 at 7pm.  There is a $5 suggested donation, or admission with purchase of a “Border Songs” CD.  For more information, visit BorderSongs.com or find No More Deaths on Facebook.

A Jazzy New Year’s Eve

December 28, 2012 |

For the seventh time in as many years, the Tucson Jazz Society is hosting a gala New Year’s Eve Jazz concert at the JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort and Spa. This year the line up includes a triple bill of headliners who each have a new CD about to be released. Rick Braun, Richard Elliot and Pete White will help Tucson Jazz fans ring in the new year in style. Joining the bill is the Tucson Jazz Institute’s award winning Ellington Band which features many up and coming musicians who promise to impress. A five-course gourmet meal, silent auction and champagne toast at midnight will round out the evening which will also be raising funds to support the Tucson Alliance for Autism, The National Autism Society and the Tucson Jazz Society’s Youth Music Education Program. For tickets and more information visit TucsonJazz.org.

Festivus Yes! Bagels No!

December 17, 2012 |

The wry and undeniably hilarious nine-year run of U.S. television sitcom Seinfeld, and its subsequent eternal perpetuity in nonstop syndication, has provided Americans with numerous tropes to toss about in jest: soup nazi, man hands, puffy shirt. Funny, all.

Most enduring however, due to its stubborn unwillingness to slip quietly into comedy rerun archives, has been a concept introduced in a 1997 episode titled “The Strike.” With a plot revolving around an oppositional anti-holiday of sorts based on his own family history – a sarcastic gathering around a bare aluminum pole – Seinfeld screenwriter Daniel O’Keefe inadvertently launched a popular movement.

On the program, series character Frank Costanza claimed to have begun celebrating something called “Festivus” in reaction to the increasingly commercial and materialistic nature of Christmas. Recounting his memory of exchanging blows with a stranger over the last doll in a department store, “out of that a new holiday was born,” Costanza crowed. “A Festivus for the rest of us!”

Viewers were understandably amused by the idea of Festivus and its absurd so-called traditions such as the “Feats of Strength” and “Airing of Grievances.” A nerve was struck with the increasingly-secular public, which adopted Festivus (tongues firmly in cheek) and began celebrating it in earnest each year on December 23.

Is this how mainstream religions start? Now observed worldwide, Festivus already has taken on a life of its own. It is easy (and humorous) to imagine that in several thousand years, the story of Festivus could become obscured to the point of its adherents ascribing divine intervention to its origins.

Festivus gatherings in Tucson have gained steam over time. A Festivus party at The Loft Cinema was held in 2007. PJ Subs in 2011 enticed people to attend their not-so-solemn Festivus with live entertainment and a full bar. This year is no different.

The Old Pueblo’s first community-wide Festivus Celebration and Dance takes place Saturday, December 22 from 6pm-midnight at the historic El Casino Ballroom, 437 E. 26th St., with musical performances by Stefan George and the Ditchriders, Coyote Supper Club, John Coinman Band, Sabra Faulk and more. A $10 admission price benefits Community Radio KXCI 91.3 FM and the Tucson Kitchen Musicians Association in advance for the 28th annual Tucson Folk Festival May 4-5 of next year. Food and a full cash bar will be available. A Festivus miracle!

Visit TKMA.org and KXCI.org to learn about their commendable work, and FestivusWeb.com to convert.

Uncovering the Great Cover-Up

December 6, 2012 |

LeeAnne Savage performs at The Great Cover-Up, Saturday, December 15, at The Rialto Theatre

Several years ago Bob Dylan stunned a Tucson crowd, when seemingly out of nowhere, began singing, “Old Man look at my life, I’m a lot like you are…”  While  Dylan had been known to occasionally play an old country standard or something completely out of the mainstream, the idea of covering a Neil Young classic was so delightfully unexpected and out of context, it was the highlight of the night and indeed the only thing this concert goer still remembers. Such is the novelty when performers choose to go outside their well-developed comfort zones.

While organizers of Tucson’s annual Great Cover-Up, cannot claim this idea as their own, the notion of getting a bunch of original music bands together to cover any and everything (but themselves) for charity, is an idea they have continued to successfully nurture, develop and expand upon since 1998.

As Music Editor for the Tucson Weekly and author of its weekly Soundbites column, Stephen Seigel must plead guilty as one of the Cover-Ups principal co-conspirators.  A huge fan of a similarly styled event he attended in Champaign, IL in the late 1990s, he cleverly managed to convince Melissa Manos, front woman for the band Shoebomb, we needed this in Tucson.  Manos in turn enlisted help from Mia Proli, the booker at Club Congress, and for two years Manos and Proli delivered a wonderful one night event at the Congress to benefit the Brewster Center (providing temporary housing and counseling for victims of domestic violence).

Giving truth to the adage “no good deed goes unpunished,” Seigel eventually became the event’s chief organizer and spokesperson, effectively using his column to successfully recruit and publicize the event.  “It actually wasn’t too difficult.  As an established event it already had some momentum.  I was mostly very pleased just to see it continue from its charity aspect as well as the fun aspect.”

Eventually it became clear that one night at one venue could not contain the growing enthusiasm for the event as interest from performers and the community continued to swell. A good part of the fascination grew from not only performers who wanted to participate and the ever expanding list of groups they wanted to cover, but also from some of the wild and wacky juxtapositions that might occur when performers unexpectedly matched  themselves to artists covered.  The New Orleans/Dixieland styled group, Crawdaddy-O covering music from the show Jesus Christ Superstar or the Weird Lovemakers performing Devo (completely in character) or Sergio Mendoza’s former band, 7 to Blue, covering Paul McCartney and Wings are but a few examples of great moments in Great Cover-Up history.  In fact, “It was The Jons doing Tom Jones, that got me hooked,” said Mel Mason, now in her third year as one of the event’s co-organizers.

In 2010, after taking a well-deserved one year break, Seigel recruited occasional Tucson Weekly contributor and chief booker for The Rialto Theatre, Curtis McCrary.  Together they brought The Rialto into the mix adding an additional stage thus allowing several more bands to participate.  Last year with the addition of Plush as a Thursday night venue, and additional Saturday afternoon sessions at The Rialto and Club Congress, the event ballooned to accommodate 70 bands. This year, acknowledging the enormity of running five stages over three days, they chose to scale back just a bit eliminating one of the Saturday afternoon slots.  “We don’t relish turning people down,” said McCrary, “but with 80 bands applying for 50 slots, we can only do so much.”

Adding to the charm and appeal of the Cover-Up are its attempts to keep everything shrouded in secrecy.  With publicity focused on the bands and the artists covered (but not together), unless word leaks out (as it sometimes does), the unveiling of who is covering whom is not announced until the day of the show.  Mason, acknowledging the wide variety of bands and genres participating, admits not everyone will like every band.  “But it’s like listening to KXCI.  If you just wait a little bit you’ll always find something to your liking.”

This year’s Great Cover Up will be Thursday, December 13, at Plush; Friday, December 14 at Club Congress;  Saturday, Dec. 15, in the afternoon, at Club Congress and Saturday night at The Rialto.  Artists performing will include, Brian Lopez, Tryst, LeeAnne Savage, 8 Minutes to Burn, the Cordials and Silver Fox (featuring David Slutes) with artists being covered to include Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty, Hall & Oates, Alice Cooper, Weezer, David Bowie, The Doors and The Lovin’ Spoonful, and many others.

Proceeds from this year’s event will benefit the Tucson Area Musicians Healthcare Alliance.

More details at GreatCoverUpTucson.com

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