The return of live music has been a vague hope for more than a year, but downtown’s Fox Theatre now has a date: Thursday, Aug. 19, will see country band The Mavericks take the Fox stage and kick off its 2021/22 live performance season.

“This is a bit of a teaser of what is to come for the season ahead,” says Fox Theatre executive director Bonnie Schock. “It is certain to be a fantastic return of music and performance to downtown in the fall – with something for everyone. So, get ready for exceptional country, jazz, blues, folk and Americana, classic rock, comedy, personalities, lifelong learning, family, and film experiences once again."

Other planned shows include swing revivalists Big Bad Voodoo Daddy on Saturday, Sept. 11; singer/songwriter Amy Grant on Sunday, Oct. 24; and Irish folk band Altan on Sunday, Nov. 21.

The Fox plans to announce next month a lineup of more than 50 shows booked through April, with tickets for the season available to the public starting Friday, June 18. Guests who purchase tickets to four or more shows in advance will receive a 10% discount.

For more information, visit foxtucson.com

KXCI Community Radio executive director Cathy Rivers won't have to move far for her new role: executive director of the Rialto Theatre. Well known to the downtown music scene, Rivers will assume the new role starting June 1.

According to the Rialto, Rivers was selected due to her talent and proven skill as a local leader, in addition to being a longtime community partner.

“The Rialto Theatre is a vital Tucson institution and a crucial part of downtown, and by extension, our entire community,” Rivers said. “It is crucial that she not only survive these unprecedented times, but thrive in spite of them. I am confident that my experience, combined with community trust, will aid in solidifying the Rialto’s place within the fabric of the Tucson community and expanding its local, regional, and national prominence.”

Rivers assumes the executive director role after Curtis McCrary, who has led the Rialto for more than 15 years.

Although the Rialto is still holding off on hosting live music, it is currently hosting the Rialto Theatre Gallery Project, a retrospective photo show documenting many of its concerts. For more information, visit rialtotheatre.com/gallery-project

Mike Peters believes there is no time like the present to take on unprecedented battles as a rock ’n’ roll frontman. Yes, that sentence contains both “battles” and “rock ’n’ roll.” See, it’s like the founder-frontman of the Welsh post-punks The Alarm is still a kid at home with Dylan, P.F. Sloan and Clash sides, burning with desire to write and sing of the world around him.

That might be too easy. Remember, Peters so far has made a career of overcoming obstacles, both career-wise and the death-defying personal. For starters, he led his band to rise, fall hard and rise again. Alarm songs like “The Stand,” “Blaze of Glory,” “68 Guns” and “Spirit of 76” from the band’s initial line-up (1981-1991) are all fist-jacking sing-alongs with surprising songwriterly roots, easily traced back to the great folk-shouters. And, yes, Peters’ earnestness was all very Bono and Strummer, but his had the kid-like innocence of a schoolyard history nerd dressed up in cowboy boots, a bolo tie and rats-nest hair. The band got a pass because the anti-racist, pro-working-class songs were so damn good. (They even released one of the era’s most beautiful moments in “Rain in the Summertime.”)

That version of The Alarm nearly broke wide-open in America, and their albums all charted worldwide. But one night at UK’s Brixton Academy ’91, Peters up and left the band. This after recording the fifth album RAW, a lame-duck obligation with IRS Records. The foursome’s (Peters, bassist Eddie McDonald, guitarist Dave Sharp, drummer Nigel Twist) run to document topical and political events in pop songs, and the nurturing relationship with a re-energized Neil Young, had failed.

After some soul-searching and solo work, and, later, a stop in a reformed Big Country, Peters then rebuilt the band from scratch. The Alarm now contains former Gen X, The Cult and Kim Wilde guitar-hero James Stevenson, well-known U.K. drummer Steve “Smiley” Bernard, and Peters’ wife, keyboardist Jules Jones Peters.

In his life personal life, Peters, the father of two boys, had defeated non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1996, leukemia in 2005 and a relapse a decade later. His wife Jules beat breast cancer. From that, he and Jules created the worldwide Love Hope Strength Foundation, with partner/cancer survivor James Chippendale. In short, it is a charity to raise funds and awareness to benefit people with cancer and leukemia. The charity is successful, boasting a quarter-million registrants, and 4500 stem-cell donor matches. Peters’ motto? “Saving lives one concert at a time.”

The guy is one resilient dude, always has been, possessed of a never-say-die confidence, and more comebacks than The Italian Stallion. And here he goes again.

The Alarm’s new album, WAR (the band’s 18th!) was completely birthed in isolation — written, rehearsed, recorded (mostly remotely, files exchanged with other Alarm members), and distributed in 50 days during the quarantine-like state of the world, a timely response and calling to a world shuttered from disease.

COVID-19 wasn’t enough for Peters; his breaking point was ever-ugly Trump, and his coup attempt on American democracy in January. The album began the morning after the Capitol attack. (Peters had actually already written another album with sights on release once the world opened, but that was shelved for WAR.)

Get this: WAR (on Peters’ own Twenty First Century Recording Company) first arrived in blank CD-Rs (without the music) mailed to pre-orderers in advance. This allowed fans to burn the files that were soon sent them. The project is pretty unprecedented too. The band recorded each step of the project beginning January 7, starting with Zoom meetings with band members and producer George Williams. The daily video exchanges were viewed by fans all over the world via The Alarm website, essentially making them a piece of the album’s birth as well as studio spectators.

Peters and the band laid final WAR touches in the legendary Rockfield studios, and performed the 10-song album in its entirety, in customized safe social-distance work-arounds with see-through panels separating band members—even for the final vocals on the album’s sole cover (Massive Attack’s “Safe from Harm”), a duet with Welshman Benji Webbe of raga ragers Skindred.

The album is a tight, sonic stand against the handling of the pandemic and the U.S. Capitol riots. It’s like rock ’n’ roll never went anywhere, and this is its welcome, slogan-fortified protest music. Peters sounds as youthful as ever.

Opener “Protect and Survive” amps up on foreboding keys and drums, menacing guitars, and soaring Peters’ vocals that recall Neil Young in a fervor. Up-tempo anthem “We Got This” collides Zep with something like STP, and early Alarm; “Fail” finger-pistols the political divisiveness inspired by the Capitol attacks, a crafty reggae-lit verse and a pop chorus that’d do Mick Jones proud. “Warriors” is all four-on-the-floor pounding juxtaposed against heavy open-space guitars and a giant, key-change chorus emphasizing a “drone attack.’ Coup de gras, Massive Attacks “Safe from Harm” rocks and funks with all the grace of a ballad cranked out at 11, Webbe’s ominous growls underscore Peters' melodic cries of self-determination and autonomy like some late-night sonic noir, good versus evil.

The album is out now, streaming and physical. Peters also hand-painted a limited number of collectible WAR vinyl for purchase.

Tucson Weekly spoke with Peters via Zoom recently and discussed the pandemic, how Capitol riots influenced WAR’s creation, the video journal viewing of the entire process, the “Staycation” shows in Dyserth, where Peters and family reside, and putting out a social-distancing album by his 62nd birthday.

Tucson Weekly: When did the moment to record a new album really hit you?

Mike Peters: It literally happened straight away on the night the Capitol building was being occupied. I was actually on the phone with a friend of mine [D.C. lawyer and Love Hope Strength Foundation board member Elliot Berke]. He represents some pretty high-up politicians on both sides of the divide. And when people started storming the Capitol building it was happening in front of us. I kept seeing the headlines, “Alarming news, the Capitol is being occupied.”

I just thought, “Wow, we’ve got to write now. I’ve got to write a record that captures what’s going on at this very, very moment, and release it while it’s happening. If we do it retrospectively, it might not have the same impact.” I wanted a record people could put on the turntable, listen headphones, but we’re still in lockdown, or still facing the challenges that the pandemic has brought into all our lives.

TW: The Clash recorded “White Riot” to bring attention to race riots and police brutality, and the 1979 overtaking of the Nicaraguan dictatorship-run government, inspired The Clash’s Sandinista. Why is it important to get this album out in the here-and-now with that same mindset?

Peters: When the Sex Pistols released “God Save the Queen,” it was the Queen’s (Silver) Jubilee year; it wouldn’t have been the same a year later.

When the Clash put out “White Riot” the race riots were happening in the streets, all around London. It was in Notting Hill, and it was immediate music, and Jules had bought me the John Lennon “Give Me Some Truth” compilation of remixes, when you can really hear his voice in the foreground. And I was reading about “Instant Karma,” which Lennon said he’d written for breakfast, recorded for lunch and released it for dinner. And I said, we need to make a record with that kind of spirit behind it, and that’s what led to this whole project.

TW: Can you walk us through the process of this unique, yet time-sensitive process?

Peters: To get the record out on my birthday, Thursday, February 25th, at midnight on the 26th, to get it round the world on Spotify and iTunes and all the digitals, I had to have the record done by Monday morning. I could also then on Monday morning give it to the guy who was hand-cutting all the vinyl LPs, to get a head start. And get the CDs loaded for people because we sent a lot of CDRs out to America and Australia for people who wanted to have a physical copy of the album the day it came out, so we digitally sent them all the tracks, so it’s been quite a project. A lot of outside-the-box thinking.

TW: The ’91 Alarm album RAW was more or less the fulfilling of your IRS contract. Was this the bucket-list opportunity the alluded the band in 1991?

Peters: I always felt in ’91 we missed an opportunity to re-define the band’s stance and platform to face the future. Nirvana had come along, Pearl Jam; it was a whole new musical landscape. That was one of the trigger points.

So, we ended up making a lot of compromises on RAW with who sang, and who wrote, in rather than just writing about the Gulf War and the change of the times. So, I always felt we missed an opportunity, and I saw the Capitol building being occupied, I thought, “here’s the moment I can take that opportunity and do something with it.”

TW: What was the impetus behind journaling the process for fans and public consumption, and when did that come about?

Peters: What actually happened was as soon as I woke up in the morning [after seeing the Capitol riots] I didn’t even speak to anybody in the band. I didn’t speak to Jules. If I speak to people about this notion of making an album starting today, that I’m gonna put out on my birthday, everyone will talk me out of it. So, I literally when onto The Alarm website; I wrote my letter to everyone: “It’s time to make a record,” and that was it.

Jules saw it pop up on The Alarm website and said, “What are you doing?” I said, “We’re gonna make a record. We can’t let what just happened go by without documenting it in real time and responding to it as a musicians and songwriters. And so, we’re going to make a record now.” So I picked up the phone and called the band, and Jules got her phone out and started filming it straight away. Jules said, “I’m going to keep going. If you’re going to make a record and I’m going to record, and the band is going to see how you come up with these mad schemes of yours.” When I sat down and thought about it actually, I could have very easily fallen flat on my face if the songs hadn’t come in the way I had hoped. At the same time, there was so much going on in the world, if you can’t write a song now, then there’s no hope. There’s so much sing about, let’s do it.

TW: How different has it been being home with the boys and Jules for all this time, when normally you would be touring?

Peters: The thing I found the most frustrating at first when the lockdown happened was the bombardment of 24-hour news. I knew it was there, it was always in the background. But it wasn’t really until the pandemic hit, the lockdown started to be mentally disturbing; this 24-hour news. We’re going to tune into the main headline news on the BBC at 10 o’clock at night, but that is it. We’re going to disassociate ourselves from it, live in our own little world at home, go for our walks, live in nature and that’s what we are going to immerse ourselves in. And it became beautiful in its own way. We started walking in the woods with our kids, we’d see the flowers come out.

TW: Talk about working with Benji Webbe on Massive Attack’s “Safe from Harm.”

Peters: When I was having our vinyl 24-hour sessions when the lockdown was happening, that song came up and I thought, lyrically, this song is now. “Serious infections and dangerous ...” It’s all there. Benji Webbe popped into my mind. Opposite ends of the racial spectrum, opposite ends of the country. Benji’s from the south (Newport) and I’m from North (Prestatyn). I said, “I love this man, and he sang the whole song, which I wasn’t expecting, and he absolutely killed it, and the harmony was amazing.”

TW: You have always been on the cutting edge of new trends in music, digitally recording and editing, now video-journaling the recording process, you have also made the ultimate in connectivity to fans with Alarm Central found at the Alarm website. Can you expound on this all-encompassing social outlet?

Peters: Alarm Central is a platform that allows me to interact with the fans. We’ve come up to our 40th anniversary, so I’ve got a lot to share. I’ve got a scrapbook form 1974 about my journey to music but it’s gone all the way up to this very day, so, I’ve got a lot to share. It gives me a voice to share a lot about our history. It’s a one-stop website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, all in one and its free, or pay a premium for some exclusives.

TW: As I know you miss touring, but what is your outlook on getting back on the road, and even a return to the U.S.?

Peters: When something’s come around that changes the whole life dynamic like the pandemic has, you just have to look for different solutions. And you know I’m fearful that when touring does come back, the infrastructure’s going to be damaged, and damaged quite severely. It might be difficult for a band like The Alarm to come and play 50 dates across America, ’cause maybe only 20 (venues) survived. It’s going to be quite difficult at first to plan a tour, plan for tour buses, hotels. And venues might not have the same capital to take the risk.

Steve Roach, Tucson’s resident electronic music pioneer, is hosting a three-day gathering of “sonic innovators and ambient architects” this weekend. SoundQuest Fest runs from Friday, March 26 to Sunday, March 28, and will include a variety of local and international musicians, including Robert Rich, Serena Gabriel, Erik Wøllo, Michael Stearns, Madhavi Devi and more.

SoundQuest Fest is a free livestream concert series of ambient, New Age and electronic music that will run as a “continuous flow of streamed performances, audio-video wonder-worlds and deep immersion zones” from Roach’s YouTube channel.

Roach describes the music festival’s mission is to "create three days of global connection, togetherness, and inspiration through the power of sound and vision during this consequential and unique moment in time.”

Each night before the opening concert, "Timeroom TV" will feature music videos, sponsor features and interviews from the Soundquest musicians and more.

SoundQuest Fest debuted as a live festival in Tucson in 2010. But this online edition allows for performances from musicians around the world, all while keeping spectators safe.

Performing musicians: Robert Rich, Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, Erik Wøllo, Ian Boddy, Jeff Greinke, Chuck van Zyl, Serena Gabriel, Chris Meyer (Alias Zone), Nathan Youngblood, Will Merkle, Caldon Glover, Tony Obr, Howard Givens, Madhavi Devi and Craig Padilla. Audio-visual sets are provided by Bluetech, Matt Black and Daniel Pipitone.

The transcendence begins at 4 p.m. Friday, March 26.

For more information, visit soundquestfest.live.

Now that COVID-19 cases are trending downward across Pima County —and the governor has removed business occupancy restrictions—Hotel Congress is looking to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

"We are not idiots. A traditional green beer and Irish whiskey-drenched bacchanalia is not an appropriate option, but maybe—just maybe— we do a little more than a "tip o' the hat" to St. Patrick's Day," according to a recent Hotel Congress release.

The hotel's Cup Cafe will begin serving traditional Irish fares like corned beef and cabbage, Guinness beef stew and Irish cream cupcakes until 3 p.m. Wednesday. Then the party kicks into full swing at 5 p.m. on the hotel's plaza as the Plaza Eats food truck serves up all your Irish food favorites, Irish coffee, Irish whiskey flights, along with specials on Guinness pints and Jameson shots.

DJ PC Party will be holding down the ones-and-twos, complimentary party favors will be handed out to partygoers and the evening is set to crescendo with the Great Guinness Toast at 10 p.m.

Hotel Congress will be adhering to COVID-19 protocols during the celebration. For more information, visit the Hotel Congress website. 

Deadname Wash, a new compilation of electronic music, is raising funds for rent relief for transgender people. The album’s 13 songs were composed by musicians throughout Arizona, including multiple Tucson artists like Flor de Nopal, Kell, jaeki and Lav Andula.

The music on the album ranges from pop to post-punk to dance music, but all keep a foot in the realm of electronic music, and all songs are written by members of the queer community.

While the opening track "Isn't it Too Dreamy?" starts the compilation off with a dark and rhythmic track similar to The Cure, the album varies greatly, with “When” being more upbeat, and the lo-fi “i hear it gets better” in a mellower vein.

Deadname Wash is currently available as “name your price” on bandcamp, so you can support the cause with your purchase, or listen for free. For more information, visit deadname-wash.bandcamp.com

Gov. Doug Ducey announced he is rescinding his previous executive order limiting occupancy capacity for restaurants, gyms, theaters, water parks, bowling alleys and bars with dine-in service in a new executive order signed and released Friday.

The governor’s order still keeps the mask mandate and social distancing protocols in place, but businesses can return to full occupancy “effective immediately”.

“We’ve learned a lot over the past year. Our businesses have done an excellent job at responding to this pandemic in a safe and responsible way,” Ducey said. “We will always admire the sacrifice they and their employees have made and their vigilance to protect against the virus.”

Ducey is also giving Spring Training and major league sports the green light to proceed, provided they submit a plan on how they will implement CDC and state guidelines to the Arizona Department of Health Services and it received approval.

The executive order also precludes local municipalities to implement “extreme measures” that would stop businesses from operating.

Al Foul with a compilation album after the rockabilly musician recently announced his throat cancer diagnosis.

Al Foul: A Tribute to the One and Only features 28 of Tucson’s finest troubadours, from Calexico’s Joey Burns to burlesque performer/singer Lola Torch, performing tracks spanning the musician’s multi-decade career. Its official release is Friday, March 5, through legendary bluesman Tom Walbank’s Bandcamp page.

Walbank said once his friend when public with his diagnosis, the bluesman wanted to help Foul and his family out during this time. He spent the past two weeks reaching out and collecting tracks from other Old Pueblo musicians who jumped at a chance to honor Foul.

“Now that it’s [the diagnosis] was out in the open I thought about what I could do to help,” Walbank said. “Putting together an album seemed like a no-brainer since I know all these people around town that play music.”

Gabriel Sullivan from Dust + Stone Studio and Jim Waters from Waterworks donated time to record several of the album’s tracks, said Walbank. He also received a fair number of songs recorded on iPhones and other devices.

“I realized that because it’s a pandemic, not everyone wants to go to the studio and not everyone had a home studio, so it was a little tricky,” Walbank said. “So there are some songs which are done very intimate on an iPhones and stuff like that.”

The compilation is available for $10 at tomwalbank.bandcamp.com starting Friday, March 5.

If you want to otherwise help out Al Foul through these tough times, you can contribute to his GoFundMe fundraiser.

If you're not familiar with Al Foul, Tucson Weekly's Brian Smith profiled him in 2016. A snippet:

He lives and breathes and drinks and eats the music. He's averaging three in-state gigs a week, and he lives on the profits, as he's done for years. Between the tip jar, merch/music sales and venue guarantees, he's not getting rich. In fact, he needs to save money to put new tires on the RV.

The man has proven to be a gifted songwriter and entertainer on albums such as Keep the Motor Running, Spank That Ass  and The One, The Only, which have earned him followings in various places around the States and especially in France, where he's been touring annually for years. (His new, as-yet-untitled album drops later this year.) Tunes reveal a sort of autodidactic, street-ripened philosopher, just like old Goodis (the French called hime "the poet of the losers"), and a master of deceptively simple, yet funny, song narratives that offer little redemption, filled with busted-luck yarns of four-time losers, jailhouse bikers, day drunks, speed freaks, souring marriages—all things, folks and follies he's discovered on his travels, imagined or true, or bestowed upon him by his father, or wreckage he's crawled from.

Foul (born Alan Lewis Curtis) comes from a long line of blue-collar men, the kind who fought in wars, who drank hard and lived hard. His old man worked the steel mills, and when they closed up he worked as a machinist and then took care of Foul's mother, a schoolteacher stricken with multiple sclerosis at 21.

"She went from a cane to a walker to a chair to a bed to the grave in 15 years," Foul says. "Man, I had a real fear of getting MS. They say it's not hereditary but my mother's mother had it too."

A fear of heart attacks to boot. They run in the family on his dad's side. His pop had his fist one at 40, and the last one killed him at 63. ("Dad had a big gut; he ate Spam all the time.") A heart attack took his grandfather at 38.

Foul grew up in a hard, mostly Irish and Italian section in south Boston called Hyde Park. Racism rampant. His dad grew up a hard-ass "greaser" and a "rocker" who fought in the streets, "a true juvenile delinquent of the '50s, and an absolute terror when he was young because he didn't have a father. But a lot of kids didn't have fathers in the neighborhood; they lost them in the war."

The men on his dad's side of the family, old-school New England Protestants, disowned Foul's dad because he married a Polish woman.

Foul learned exactly how to react and not react by watching his father, and rebelling. Says dad was mean and brutal but had big heart, a man disquieted by contradiction, feeling trapped and overwhelmed with a sick wife and three children.

"There was not a door or wall in the house that wasn't kicked through," Foul says. "Inside the house was a cacophony of noise and arguments. My dad could verbally abuse his family like nobody. If you pissed him off he'd hit you with a belt. All the neighbors would sit outside drinking beer and laughing their asses off."

His "Archie Bunker type" dad happened to be a self-educated Malcolm X fan who read "a book a day." A gun collector too. They were “broke as church mouses” but dad always had money for new guns. His addiction.

"We never sat at a dinner table once," Foul adds. "Never once. Partly because my mother was sick. If you were tall enough to fix your food you did."

Folk musician David Huckfelt has gathered several notable names from the Tucson music scene to celebrate the release of his new album “Room Enough, Time Enough.” On Saturday, Feb. 20, at 6 p.m., Huckfelt will be joined for a “songwriter circle” by XIXA frontman Gabriel Sullivan, blues singer Billy Sedlmayr and Giant Sand founder Howe Gelb — all of whom perform on Huckfelt’s new album.

“I think about records geographically, and what a special jewel Tucson is artistically speaking,” Huckfelt said of his new album. “There’s so many people I wanted to include. We kept building the table a little bit longer and the tent a little bit wider with each step of this record. It did snowball a little bit, but there was always this idea to have an outlandish posse of people on this record.”

The socially distanced outdoor show has a limited capacity with masks required, and tickets are selling fast. However, you can also view the show from home with a free Youtube live stream.

Purchase tickets here, and tune in for the live-stream here.

In addition, Huckfelt will perform with folk singer Charlie Parr at Monterey Court next Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 7 p.m.

As we approach the anniversary of pandemic shutdowns, Tucson musician Katie Haverly has released a new song to put some wind in our sails. Written in March 2020, “Get Ready” is a surprisingly hopeful track, but avoids sounding cloying thanks to its unique chord structure and frantic shifts in tempo — reflecting a kind of power in the face of unease.

“It was a song to try and project hope and a better future for all of us,” Haverly said. “Get ready, because love is so much more powerful and enduring than fear. We have to believe it to see it.”

The track begins with meditative chimes and Haverly's smooth voice, before kicking into a wild chorus. Her 2020 album Matter landed on the Weekly’s list of best local albums of the year. And if this track is any hint, Haverly’s broadening musical style will lead to greater success when all this misery clears up.

The song was recorded and mixed by Steven Lee Tracy at Saint Cecilia Studios in Tucson, and is currently available on Spotify and Apple Music.