Mark your calendars...
Thursday, April 1999.1 FM Downtown Radio presents The Third Annual Psychout. This year featuring The Myrrors, The Psychedelephants, Silver Cloud Express and Tropical Beach. Backed by groovy psychedelic projections to assure that you are kept in a state of near-constant vertigo. At The Loft Cinema... Austin-based Parisian, Lou Rebecca's unique brand of electronic pop has officially arrived, polished and sprinkled with flirtation. Her self-titled debut EP (HoloDeck Records) ranges from dance anthems to ballads. With labelmates Missions at Club Congress... Watching It All Fall Apart, Fruition's fifth album, succeeds at masterfully transforming heartache into something glorious and life affirming. No simple task. At 191Toole. With Sweet Ghosts... Jazz has a long history of embracing new sounds. So the jazz harp, made famous by Alice Coltrane, is not pushing the envelope. It must be said, however, that no one has ever played the harp like this Columbian virtuoso. UA Presents Edmar Castañeda at The Fox Theatre... Parisian guitarist/composer Gabriel Naim Amor fills the early evening air with jazz at Tap & Bottle Downtown... Spoken wordsmith Lique (pronounced "leak") delivers quick-witted, rapid fire verses over classic hip-hop grooves. With the soulful live beats of Roch. At The Flycatcher... Award-winning rapper/actor Ludacris brings madness to the Pima County Fair...
Friday, April 20
On "Beat Up Broke Down Town," off Hangovers and Heartaches, this Tucson country singer mourns a loss—just maybe with an ice-cold beer in hand. "Those city light can't hold you the way I can." Drew Cooper celebrates the release of White Horse at The Rialto Theater. With The Cole Trains (Safford, AZ)... Post-twang: One could accept that descriptor if it weren't for tracks like "Catabolic Turnpike," which introduces a walking bass line straight from the Ray Brown school of jazz. Further augmented by a Ravi Shankar-esque sitar riff played on a banjo. Rich complexity typifies Death Raga Run-on Sentence, the band's latest. Opossum Sun Trail (Arcata, CA), with pop expressionists La Cerca and JL6... "We're a country casserole of classic roadhouse honky-tonk, dark folk Americana... with a dash of rockabilly." Sundust Road on the plaza at Hotel Congress. With country crooner Freddy Parish... "Remember the fair. Remember the clowns. Remember the cotton candy and all the sights and sounds." Yes, it's KFMA Deep Fry with Everclear and Anthrax at the Pima County Fair... The Owls Club is where fey voiced singer-songwriter Casey Golden kicks off his EU tour. With the bonfire jangle of Austin's Julian Neel... Led by spitfire vocalist/violaist Deanna Cross, The Unday bring their genre-defying sound to Club Congress. With Lowlife and Douglas Beat Market... The rapid-fire electro-punk beats that come charging on "New Machines" are reminiscent of The Faint—with all of the nihilism and disquietude but none of the vocoder frills. Touring in support of White Light Black Moon, Austin's Bloody Knives. With Tearful Moon (Houston synthwave) and post-punk shoegazers Early Black. DJs Positive Satan + Plastic Disease spin in between. At Sky Bar... Refusing to renounce her faith, Saint Cecilia, the patroness of musicians, was beheaded by sword, as legend has it. She sang in her heart to the Lord. Defying musical and cultural boundaries this musical phenomenon, La Santa Cecilia will manifest at 191 Toole...
Saturday, April 21
Moon Base fuses bass-music culture and underground art. With DJ sets by Moralz, GHAST, Eliogold, Hunter Guerin and Midnight Company. Visuals by Zeke Prebluda. At Sky Bar... If art mirrors the artist's mind. Songs like "Dahmer Does Hollywood" and "Infamous Butcher" make it difficult to clearly distinguish whether Amigo The Devil is a monster or absurd humorist. With special guests Blacklidge, Scattered Guts, Saalythic, Sorrows Ruin and Endavus. At The Rialto Theater... Languid days of summer vacation. Walking hand-in-hand to the Dairy Queen with that unforgettable first love. Like a snapshot in time, these bluegrass/folk/country pickers aim to capture a sense of place with instruments and aesthetic from days gone by. Slow Motion Cowboys at Exo Bar...
Sunday, April 22
This L.A. metal band's smash "Whore" has received over 40 million YouTube views. Vocalist Maria Brink screams, "I am the dirt you created/I am your sinner/And your whore." In This Moment at The Rialto Theater With The Word Alive b Ded... Their sound draws from traditional Tuareg music, African ballads and pop/rock. Imarhan debut at Club Congress with The Myrrors and Tom Walbank... After months of recovering from surgeries, this Minnesota MC returns with a new cleaned up persona—and two alligators in tow. Out on the Pookie Baby Tour, Prof slithers into 191 Toole. With local hip-hop institution Jivin Scientists... Turnstile (Baltimore hardcore punk) with Touche Amore (L.A. post-hardcore) will cause chaos at The Rock... With a preacher's tongue and the swagger that comes after a few-too-many Pabst Blue Ribbons, L.A.'s Ned & The Dirt entertain at The Flycatcher. With Dirt Friends and Pleasures...
Monday, April 23
McAllen, Texas' The Palatines bring uptempo pop-punk to Spark Project Collective. All ages. With the mighty Texas T Trash...
Tuesday, April 24
Dark and heavy like cloven hooves striking the ground. The Stalk (El Paso blackened sludge), Shitbear (thrash/prog), Black Baptist (experimental doom), Ijustsawyoudie (death industrial/noise) and Depressive. At House of Bards... Internationally-acclaimed percussionists showcase the ancient art of Japanese drumming. Tao: Drum Heart perform at The Fox Theatre... The members of Sweden's ambient electronic band Covenant share a musical bond of biblical proportions. Hmm. Well, or maybe The Necronomicon or some other grimoire? Out touring in support of The Blinding Dark, they wheel the bus into Club Congress. With HIDE (Chicago darkwave), Tristan/Iseult (techno) and The Shift (Tucson alt/electro/pop)...
Wednesday, April 25
The title track to Voice of the Wind opens with a prayer recited in Diné. It's the voice of his adopted Navajo mother. "I felt it was something that needed to be heard." His music is permeated with spirituality and devotion to promulgating the messages of our native ancestors. Folk rock multi-instrumentalist Trevor Green at Monterey Court... Sound artist Jim Colby debuts Saxorcism: A digital installation created from mangled audio samples of the saxophone. With percussionist John Niekrasz, the ambient synth noise of Born2Death and experimental beats from Pat Cain. Part of Tucson Noise Symposium 2018. At EXPLODED VIEW Gallery/Microcinema...
Explore the delicate underpinnings of equilibrium with alhhla (technicolor art-pop), westOasis (emo, loops and ukulele), Language Barrier (eerie indie rock) and Dani Boi (experimental guitar with social commentary). At The Flycatcher... Native American blues rockers Indigenous (South Dakota) recently released their 11th album Gray Skies. At Sea of Glass... Singer-songwriters Oscar Fuentes & Mark Febbo entertain at Tap & Bottle North...
Thursday, April 26
Ja Rule and Ashanti “mesmerize” at the Pima County Fair… Fronted by singer Jackie Cruz, Phoenix garage punks Man Hands are celebrating the release of their third album. With punk mavens Lenguas Largas and nautically themed concept band Krab Legz. At Club Congress… Named after a carbonaceous asteroid, The Bennu are on collision course to strike at Tap & Bottle Downtown… And, as of press time, ’70s California country-rock revivalists Midland’s concert at The Rialto Theater is Sold Out…
ABOUT TOWN...
You could feel the electrical charge in the air. On Monday, April 9, the cavernous repurposed warehouse space at 191 Toole was alive with teen spirit in eager anticipation of buzz band, I Don't Know How But They Found Me. Greeted by near-deafening shrieks, IDK charged hard from the downbeat, opening what would be a 75-minute set with "Choke." Putty in IDK's hands, the ebullient crowd sang along word-for-word. And, the enthusiastic response from adoring fans remained constant on through to "Modern Day Cain," the last song before the band exited the stage.IDK is an L.A.-based indie rock duo comprised of Panic! At The Disco's Dallon Weekes (lead vocals/bass) and Falling In Reverse's Ryan Seaman (drums/backing vocals). With the aid of some electronic gadgetry that Weekes triggered with his feet—samplers and loopers that added synthesized parts—the duo's sound was larger than life. Weekes describes the project as being "a musical entity outside of its own time. One that faded away into obscurity in the early '80s. And today, through the internet, sees its performances being rediscovered by a world that finally just might be ready for IDK."
After IDK returned for an encore, the final cherished moments came when Weekes and Seaman appeared in the audience, with just a tambourine to guide them, to lead the audience in a sing-along: "Nobody Likes The Opening Band." And again, the crowd knew every word.
With openers Phoenix's Sunday At Noon...
This Thursday, past, Tucson Poetry Festival kicked off its annual event at the Steinfeld Warehouse with impassioned and thought-provoking readings by poets Teré Fowler-Chapman, Isaac Kirkman and Spoken Futures, a youth poetry group. From love, loss and addiction to gender and border issues, the attentive, listening audience left the performance with powerful words to reflect upon and fodder to broach discussion...
IN MEMORIAM...
It has come to my attention that the Tucson music scene has lost a brother. I am saddened to report that musician Noah V. Gabbard passed away this past weekend.Formed in 2002, while still in high school, Gabbard fronted indie-rock trio Bombs for the Bored.
A gifted guitarist and songwriter, Gabbard went on to perform with a plethora of local bands: Redlands, Great American Tragedy, Fistsized, Holy Dose and with Cathy Rivers.
In a November 2004 interview, a still under-the-legal-drinking-aged Gabbard told Tucson Weekly that he was a "big fan of the Tucson music scene," playfully adding that he was "trying to escape a McDonald's career by playing music." Noting that it was the music of the Smashing Pumpkins and Conor Oberst that initially sparked into flame his desire to be a musician.
Former Tucson Weekly Music Editor Stephen Seigel recalls meeting Gabbard through writer/musician Joshua Levine. Levine had just added Gabbard to the lineup of HAIRSPRAYFIREANDGIRLS on guitar. "Josh told me, 'You've got to check this guy out... He's a prodigy,'" recounts a heavy-hearted Seigel.
Our heartfelt condolences go out to the friends, family and loved ones of Noah V. Gabbard.
Until next week, xoxo...
