Dan Stuart is a habitual expat as well as a musician and author. His latest record, The Unfortunate Demise of Marlowe Billings, will be released in late July, through Cadiz Music in London, along with a novel of the same name. A founder of the band Green on Red, he claims no particular allegiance to any country, cuisine or musical genre and largely depends on the kindness of strangers, as well as a few old friends. Listen to the song “Never Going Back to Tucson”.
I woke up blind without a dime, never going back to Tucson…
In Barrio Viejo, just down the street from the old public baths, sits two ’68 Travco RVs beautifully restored and ready for the road, but for the time being, fenced in. They are owned by friends of mine, people I have known for 30 years. The yard features a sprawling mesquite tree and a bubbling fountain where a family of Harris hawks likes to drink and cool off. When visiting, it’s my job to keep the fountain flowing with daily replenishment, a task I take quite seriously. I also weed and do various chores that someone of my limited skill set can handle, like cleaning up pigeon shit from a ceiling fan or watering where the drip irrigation is failing. I try to water my own life here as well, especially when my son visits from Back East. It sounds cliché, but it really is an oasis, one of my favorite places on earth. My relationship with the rest of Tucson is more complicated, but here, near the El Tiradito shrine where I used to wait for the man, all is calm and serene.
I grew up way cross town in Indian Ridge, which was pretty isolated out northeast in the late ’60s and ’70s, but still down in the valley. Rancho Del Rio was close by where you could rent trail horses and ride through mesquite bosques that were later cut down for the whorish development to come. Tucson Country Club was adjacent to the west, a Republican stronghold in a city still liberal for the time. I smoked a lot of weed, blew up mailboxes, rode dirt bikes around, got good grades. Sabino Canyon was near and hitchhiking easy. I was a freak, my brother a cowboy. Life was simple but there was an unwritten rule, get out of Tucson as soon as you could or suffer the consequences. Only transplants were allowed to settle and thrive; locals were cursed with the provincial tattoo. The next state over we got called cactusheads, but that was okay because we had escaped from hell, or so we thought.
Streets too wide no place to hide, never going back to Tucson…
My dad always loved Tucson. Originally from Australia, he arrived here from California in ’67 to teach at the new medical school, with my East Coast mom and four kids in tow. His Tucson was not my Tucson. I, like so many of my friends, just wanted out, but he never wanted to leave. Soon, however, he will, as we all eventually must do, and that’s why I have returned to face one last summer. Frankly, I’m terrified, but of what exactly I couldn’t tell you. Death, that’s the easy part, but life? A desert childhood teaches lessons that never really go away, even if you’re in the middle of Paris eating crème brulée with the locals.
I’ve always used Tucson as a hideout, once for a few months in the late ’80s after L.A. and a love turned sour, then again in the ’90s when I stayed for nearly a decade, the missing years. Back from a junk-fueled spell in Spain, I painted houses and appraised real estate, unwittingly or not contributing to that bubble that popped in 2008. I played golf, made dinner, saw a son born, then moved with his mother to New York City, an awful decision that I knew would be the end of my marriage. At age 40, one simply doesn’t move from Tucson to New York City. The opposite sure, but not west to east. That’s just unnatural, like water flowing uphill. Now if I had been 20….
After the inevitable midlife crack-up, I wound up in magical Oaxaca but still came home as often as I could, usually meeting my now-teenage son here during his school holidays. He vaguely remembers living in a townhouse behind Mo Udall Park, just a few minutes from the house I grew up in. Riding a bike on the same residential streets I did as a kid, I’d be overcome with melancholy and distress, what the fuck was I doing back here? I rarely went out to socialize with old friends, especially the out-of-town musicians I knew who would play downtown once a year or so. My music days were over, or so I thought. I was living some sort of lie worse than any addiction, stone-cold sober and completely lost. Hometowns are cruel beasts; it’s rarely a good idea to return, unless there’s a final reckoning to be had, as if such a thing is possible.
It used to be fun under the sun, never going back to Tucson…
I decided to return this time after helping a friend move to Acapulco, someone who oddly enough suffers from the same type of rare cancer as my dad. Staring at the ocean from his condo high above old town, I pondered my father’s health as well as my own, and figured this was a last chance to spend some meaningful time with a patriarch who wasn’t always easy, but certainly not as difficult as his wayward son. Arriving after a three-day drive from Mexico City, back in my favorite Travco with the Indian blankets and leaky roof, I immediately started scheming how I was gonna survive the next few months while simultaneously planning my escape. Fortunately, everything I needed was within a few-minute walk or bike ride, not much different from what I was used to down south. Downtown has bloomed most beautifully, and miraculously there’s a bus that comes by every 15 minutes that goes clear across town to my parent’s house near Saguaro National Park East. Gathering provisions, the Spanish I heard in Food City on Saint Mary’s was comforting, as were the prices of the fresh produce, meat, and cheese, about the same as the grocery chains of Mexico. Better for us than our neighbors, let me tell you. Johnny Gibson’s downtown was a nice find but pricey, maybe in an emergency, but I’m happy that the memory of Tucson’s Jack LaLanne is being preserved. The main thing is to avoid any traps: a beautiful woman, a drug habit, a steady job. Just be a good son and hang tough until the next tour, which surely will make more money than the last. Then return to Mexico, or maybe the next continent down, steak and wine in Montevideo perhaps, or back to Europe even. Greece is still relatively cheap and bouncing back, anywhere but the USA. Love it or leave it, right?
The summer rain don’t smell the same, never going back to Tucson…
I left the first time fleeing a felony bust. A smash and grab of an iconic music store downtown, back in 1979. I figured if I could get a job in L.A., then the State of Arizona would grant my privileged white ass a second chance, and that’s exactly what happened. The band I led soon signed to a hip but corrupt record company, and I would mail in my monthly reports to L.A. County’s probation department from the road. Sociologists call that a “life chance” and we all know what would have happened if I was of a different hue. Still, the key was I skedaddled just in time, others I knew weren’t so fortunate.
Linda’s smile’s been gone for a while, never going back to Tucson …
Maybe no one ever leaves a place like Tucson, other more generic towns sure, Cincinnati comes to mind, or Fresno, but Tucson? It’s like removing a chunk of cholla from your leg, spines are sure to break off only to emerge years later when you least expect it; maybe while laying on a faraway beach after swimming the morning away. Always carry tweezers, cactusheads, what can I tell you? And a hat, that sun will kill you….
Listening to the fountain gurgle and thinking of my dad, it’s easy to float through time. My best memories were of us attending the Loft Cinema when it was a tiny theater on Sixth down by the U. The only art movie house at the time, I’m sure the flicks we saw had been discussed by the grad students in his lab, and he wanted to stay current. Films like Don’t Look Now, The Conformist, Walkabout, The Ruling Class, etc. opened the world up to me, and since we both appreciated cinema as an art form, we could talk about it with a mutual respect that didn’t apply as much to music or literature, where my tastes ran more coarse and lowbrow than his own. He might have been from a small town in Queensland, but by the time he arrived in Tucson at age 36 he had seen a huge swath of the world. He was viewed with curiosity by the locals, I’m sure. To this day he defends Tucson with a passion and has never regretted moving here. He loves his backyard, which faces northeast with striking views of the Rincons and Catalinas, the same direction he traveled from down under all those years ago. Yes, Tucson has been good to him and my family, my sisters stayed and flourished, yet I cannot move back just as he could never have returned permanently to Australia. Oceans and deserts are not that different after all; one can die of thirst just as easily in one or the other.
Laugh or cry I’m soon to die, never going back to Tucson….
One thing for certain, Tucson has changed more this century than it had in the previous few decades of the last, and mostly for the better. The street art is hit and miss, but it’s there. The trolley is delightful, despite the eyesore advertising. Bicycling around town one feels encouraged not threatened. Lots of creative spaces to do whatever, from gutter punk to fine art. It’s just a way more cool town than it used to be, at least west of Alvernon. On the negative side, the old-hippies-with-guns vibe has morphed into a deluded nationalism on display through offensive public comments and open-carry posturing. Much of the vertical development both built and proposed is uninspired, to say the least. The A-10 flyovers are a constant reminder of the Great Satan doing his thing. Casual fashion is out of control—grown men dressed as little boys, put some slacks on for God’s sake. As for politics, let’s just say Mo Udall would be appalled by some of these folks, and Tucson can no longer differentiate itself as much from Phoenix like it used to. Still, the kids seem fine, and look and act no different than their cohorts in Portland or Austin, which is OK by me. Many resent it, I know, but the Old Pueblo is becoming more cosmopolitan by the day, but fear not, the heat will keep the worst hipster culture at bay, leaving only the good stuff to roll up and puff. Hopefully, some better paying jobs will arrive along with this new urban vision, but let’s face it, that bar could not be lower.
So yeah, if I wasn’t from here I might sign up for a lifetime subscription, but I am, so I can’t. I’ll just have to remain a tourist to my own past, my inner geography meshing oddly with the current reality but always knowing where due north is. Cathedral Rock towers above our paltry lives, reminding us that this is all a temporary experience. We’re just toads in a summer puddle evaporating fast. Best enjoy it while you can.
Never going back to Tucson, never going back to Tucson…
Yeah right dude, sure.
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2018.
Maybe Stuart is “never going back to Tucson”, but I sure am. I miss Tucson every day in Oregon, which is also a very cool place, but the Willamette Valley is never going to be “home”, like Tucson is “home”.
The 50+ years (1959-2009) I lived in Tucson are treasured memories that come to life during winter visits. Several of those 50+ years were also in a house in Indian Ridge, where Stuart lived. And a couple of decades out of those 50+ years were also appraising real estate. However, unlike Stuart, I did NOT contribute to the real estate bubble, because I refused to lie about values for the mortgage brokers that demanded fictitious values to make their deals close.
Old friends and new ones make being in Tucson during our current winters wonderful times. We talk about our pasts and revive faded memories, while we make new ones. There never will be a place as wonderful as Tucson for me.
One more thing, the song “Never Going Back to Tucson” is a monotonous screed with depressing music. Horrible tune. Stuart should be permanently banned from ever returning to Tucson for singing such a rotten song.
A beautifully written piece as ever from Dan. My sincere sympathies go out to him at another emotionally difficult time – he’s had a few. But he’s also given a lot of people huge pleasure over many years with his writing and music. Looking forward to catching him on the road here in the UK later this year.
This is a beautiful letter. I have lived in Tucson since 1971, and could never call any other place my home. I summer in beautiful cool Colorado now, and love it. But my friends tell me it was 107 degrees in Tucson yesterday and hearing that only makes me miss it, and them, more! There is a magic about Tucson that can’t be explained, but Dan did as fine a job as I have read. Thanks
That’s one of the worst songs I’ve heard is a while. I was never a big fan of Green on Red or the whole Paisley Underground thing–it all seemed a tad Twee–how many covers of Lucifer Sam did we need? Chuck Prophet seems to have been the better songwriter–although it’s probably not fair to compare songwriters–apples and oranges. So I’ll just stick to judging the one song—excrement.
I enjoyed the article, but like Ricardo Small, I agree the song is too repetitive. A chorus with hardly any variety.
Another great piece of writing, Dan. Fuck the haters.
Not a bad piece, the life of an angst-riddled yuppie who never quite found his place in the universe once he opted for exile from his dad’s strata. And it can get lonely but for those childhood networks and friendships one manages to hang on to. That said, I got a kick with some of Stuart’s lines such as,
“I was living some sort of lie worse than any addiction, stone-cold sober and completely lost. Hometowns are cruel beasts; it’s rarely a good idea to return, unless there’s a final reckoning to be had, as if such a thing is possible.” A decent homage to Chandler (Raymond, not the burg).
That said, get over that first song and move on to the second and third. “Never Going Back” may be repetitive and lacking in inventive structure as pop songs go, but damn, after one listening it’s already ear worm!
Good luck in your pursuit of happiness, an elusive mirage “out there” but a zen moment in here, Mr. Stuart. You’re a man with heart and soul. I, too, miss Tucson. And I only spent my formative, impressionable U of A days there! But its good vibes, loving women, needed friendships, and memories dug into my soul like a fistful of fine, but painful cholla needles, and they’re never coming out…
Be well.
“Got to see the lights of Tucson, going back come on get a move on”….
Some people help create a place and others are in a constant search for the things that others have created. I think Dan tends towards the later. He is a wanderer and now that he’s wandered home again, he’s found that he is an old man and has missed out something he left behind because he couldn’t imagine it was possible. Now he’s just stuck somewhere between here and there. My message to you Dan is that it’s never too late. You can leave and continue to wander, only to find yourself even older and in the same land-yacht 5 or 10 years from now, or you can come home and be a part of something. There is room for you here. You are wanted and you can make a difference. You can create something here.
Nobody sings sad songs over places they hate. I understand the struggle I struggled with accepting so much less professionally to be here than I could have gotten elsewhere. However I got so much more in *almost* every other way and there is still more to come. Either you commit or you dont, and it sounds like you don’t.
Interesting piece of nostalgia and emotion.
That is a Cooper’s hawk at the fountain. Harris’s hawks tend toward a chocolate brown color generally and have some yellow at the beak. They do not have the distinctive tail stripes like the Cooper’s hawk.
Tucson found me an 8 year old boy in a cold-war world of 1961 beneath the desks of Bonillas Elementary during a “a-bomb” drill and exploring the “American Homes” district of 22nd and Swan… cheap, barebones Camelot ghetto for the hardworking Union man that was my dad and the aspiring Jackie-O mom in a spaghetti-strap sundress, wheeling in a ’59 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser. That began a love affair with a town, it’s people and the charm of diversity that was the jewel of the American Sonoran Desert. Alice Vail, Palo Verde, the UofA… years and my family came and went to and from Tucson so many times, and the pattern that formed a jig saw puzzle created an obsession with my child hood sweetheart in the shadows of the Catalinas, that one day I will complete and finally see my vision like a big bowl of celebration named pazole on the tabletop of my return to the old pueblo of my heart.
Born and raised, and here to stay.
The above folks are talking about Tucson and leaving home as if it is a Homer styled search for home. (The Greek guy, not the father of Lisa Simpson.) And hence Dan Stuart and his art and his attitudes are judged thusly; those who like Tucson seem to diss DS and those who find fault with Tucson or who are on a similar life journey see his point…even if they do not agree with all of it.
It strikes me as Stuart has high standards, standards Tucson (for whatever reason, good or bad, fair or unfair) cannot meet. So he continues wandering the globe and, perhaps it could be said, wandering artistically as well. But searching is not losing. I would reckon almost every writer here knows the phrase “all who wander are not lost” and that bell rings true here. Stuart may well never find home as his standards are too high but his journey and his art give every writer above something to measure their own lives and attitudes by. Do they love Tucson or have they simply settled for Tucson?
It is food for thought, it is what artists provide. You don’t have to agree with an artist’s attitude or enjoy his painting or novel to be provoked into thinking or even soul-searching by it. And folks, this was written by a guy in shorts and a Brooklyn Cyclones t-shirt…the very kind of casual wear Dan Stuart dislikes in his Tucson essay.
May your music set you free.
Great read. I lived in Tucson for 32 years, give or take. My family and friends are mostly all still there. The ones I love most. I also moved to NYC in my 40s. It worked out for me though. Its been a while now and it still feels like its where I shouldve always been. I also grew up aching to get out of Tucson. Hoping each band I joined would be the one. In the end it was happenstance and a switcheroo or two that snuck me out. Ill always have cholla spines under my skin, but now I need the constant hum and whine of a city that never sleeps just to get a few hours myself. White noise junky it seems. Tucson is too quiet. Too still. I find I feel exposed. Ive grown to love the anonymity of being one in 9,000,000. It feels strangely safe. So yeah man I feel you. Ill never go back, but Ill always drop in from time to time. Thanks for sharing. Made me a little homesick ;).
Every place has it’s own identity formed and defined by history, those that live and died there, climate, geography, and time. We are all visitors to our places. Visitors if we were born, raised, and never left, or dropped in and stayed because this is where the car broke down. Visitors.
We Got Cactus! Blood Spasm. I liked the gutter punk DT. Keep Tucson Shitty! I liked the article. TY Dan.
OK, so Dan doesnt like Tucson. A laundry list of things he likes and dislikes about the city. No real deep reasons given on why he feels this way. I was waiting for some kind of insight that might give a glimpse into why, but it was never revealed. He writes that the unwritten rule was to get out of Tucson or suffer the consequences. OK… what were those consequences? Article is dreck.
Never going back to Tucson is a love song. Why not write a song about Nashville or Austin or NYC? Because thats been done. Because those places dont evoke the complex emotions the big T does for people in the know. Tucson is a complex town. Its really just perfect. Try as you might to make analogies to other towns, but Tucson is other worldly, and so it never leaves you when you leave it. Stay or go, Tucson doesnt care, whether youre a Beatle, bum or billionaire; it stuck you the first night.
Wow. That prose was painful.
Baby Boomer navel gazing at its finest.
And no mention of Lucky Wishbone or Eegees as relics of his youth.
Hugs,
A Fellow Baby Boomer Native
James Joyce left Dublin never to return, but no one argues over whether he liked Dublin properly because he immortalized it. Sometimes those who need to leave do more for their hometown than those who stay. Nobody could come up with the sentences
Maybe no one ever leaves a place like Tucson, other more generic towns sure, Cincinnati comes to mind, or Fresno, but Tucson? It’s like removing a chunk of cholla from your leg, spines are sure to break off only to emerge years later when you least expect it …
who was not Tucsonan in a deep way, permanent resident or not.
Great song and a great letter Dan. Greetings from Athens Greece and Dustbowl (band).
Another litany of privileged white guilt by what seems to be another failed musician
A great article, from a gifted writer. He could replace the word Tucson, with Fargo in my case. The coldest, windiest place to the hottest place. I love the desert, and Im an air conditioning repairman the same age as the writer, about 60-65 I guess. And Im still on hot roofs 42 years later.
But I love the desert , once it gets ahold of you, its owns you. The good , bad and ugly. A right to work state, hard for a lot of people to make it. Vs the blue union states , where a janitor makes $25 an hour. Give me the warm weather and its struggles any day.. I lived in Fargo North Dakota 20 years.
The writer could have replaced the word Tucson, with 1000 different towns in our country. By 1000 different men and women, who didnt have ambition, and purpose.
This is more about lack of ambition, and success and happiness. Then it is about Tucson.
I loved his article, I love his free spirit. But that free spirit comes with a price.
A right to work state, can be a rough road. For a person with the wrong working skills, and low ambition.
The blue states, pay a janitor $30 an hour, and Benifits. In Tucson its $15 an hour and no benefits.
The warmer states , are harder for some.
I guess I’m exactly 3 years late with my comment here, since the story hails from 2018. But in my defense, having gradually ditched both public journalism and social media, and increasingly avoided media comment forums over the past several years, I been outta the loop. Funny how life, love, Covid, and all that other bullshit gets in the way sometimes, ya know? I just wanna listen to the record collection – and I’m proud to say it includes more than a few items from Tucson heroes and chums – and move along.
Yet having also lived in the Old Pueblo from 1992-01, I’ve also earned a passing acquaintance with so much of what the author AND column commenters describe. Even those ill tempered comments above suggesting some vague form of white privileged yuppiedom on the part of the author bear examination, regardless of their self righteous intentions. (Danny, to vaguely quote Kris addressing Sinead, don’t let the bastards get ya down., haha.)
It’s a complicated town, ya know? My wife and I miss it terribly, full disclosure? We moved there in 1992, seduced by the geography and culture and especially the bands, only to discover that many of my AZ heroes by then had become junkies with precious little left in their gas tanks. Well, at least it was still a dry heat.Plus, I scored a vintage ‘65 Valiant, a record store gig, and a wealth of local artists’ invaluable anecdotes, and our son was also born in Tucson as well prior to family duties drawing the three of us back to our home state. It was a great 10 year run.
So when folks try to discount Danny’s words as hagiographic, rose tinted, or even resentful here and there, (or summarily dismiss his music just ‘cos they don’t dig GoR), well, I fear they are missing the entire point of his love letter to his town.
If the readers out there feel they can add their own memories, good or bad, to the dialogue, please continue to do so. There’s plenty of gas, food, and lodging in Tucson that’ll help ‘em through while they compose themselves.