There


Tucson: one hour late. Tucson: a beautiful station. Tucson: wireless internet.

Come and get it, officer!

We arrived at 10:30 P.M., which was one hour later than expected.  You know, the witching hour, the hour that determined whether or not the kids would be able to stay awake.  We pulled into Tucson just as we were all happily nodding off. Ok, the kids were totally sacked out. When we got in, we had to wake them up, Eureka wakes up and wanders off dazed, essentially sleepwalking, and Zephyr gets up, stands up, and then falls over.  Then falls into a chair, then falls into a person sleeping on the way out, like a narcalept. We go outside and collect our bags, magically of course to right where the luggage tractor will land, so it goes from the out of the way spot, to the in the way what are you doing spot.  The kids have fallen back asleep on the large suitcase. We go outside to find our new mystery friend, Jake. This is the guy who answered my cry for a gig, and this is the guy who is footing the bill to rent an old airplane hangar in the industrial part of Tucson so that several bands and glass blowers and art showers and pottery makers can all have a place to converge and make their crazy art without having to pay high rent to an urban improver developer.

Jake, our Tucson hero

Jake shows up, and thank goodness he is indeed a real person, who does what he says he will do, and he greets us with a big smile, and immediately, I know that Jake is A-OK and we aren’t going to have to sleep under the I-10 overpass.  Whew. Tucson had been a bit of a disaster booking wise. All I could zern from 2000 miles away is that there are lots of venues, and a bit of a downtown scene, but I couldn’t sniff out any $$$. We finally got the hint that worked from our friend Bobby Missile gave to us, he said, try the Hangart.  I looked up the Hangart, looked great. After I got the Hangart to agree to let us play, I had to kind of feel out how I would manage to get a place to stay for two days, and someone to meet us at the train station at 10:30 at night, and I didn’t know if we would be in the middle of the ghetto, or if it would be the sleek downtown station that it was.
Jake and Zac deliver our bags and instruments while I go back inside the beautiful, immaculate station and spread the kids out on the wood benches to sleep. There were several taxi drivers out front that seemed concerned that I wouldn’t have a ride and that I would be stuck living in the Amtrak station to raise my two children.  I assured them it would all resolve, and I wouldn’t be needing their services.
Jake and Zac came back, swept us all up, and took us back to his house, where we met Mallory, his 8 month pregnant little lady, and their roommate Nadia.  Hello!  Hi! Nice to meet you!  Nice to stay in your living room!  Nice to travel with two kids!  The kids never even woke up, they went straight to their pallete on the floor and zonked. Jake took Zac and I on a walk over to the Red Room Lounge, and just got a quick look around Tucson.
Tucson! There was an air of excitement, perhaps it is the way everyone has to hide out all day in the 100+ degree weather, or maybe it is because it is a college town, or perhaps because it is small enough that everyone downtown in the scene kind of knows each other.  Lots of people on bikes, lots of people walking around, just looked young and fresh.  And the landscaping in the yards was so bizarrely different, cacti everywhere, raked sand front yards, the famous sagarro cactus, lots of metal yard art, and you could just sense the absolute lack of water.  I try to conserve water when I can, but somehow living in Hot Springs makes it seem less important.  In Tucson, when the kids would run the water unnecessarily, I would just cringe.
The next morning, we go to the Time Market, where Jake works, and get a coffee, and hang out until the kids got wound up enough to bother all the nice people on their ipads. Then we headed over to the Hangart, where we were to play that night. What a great space!  A gallery, a basement rocked in, complete with Nintendo (much to the kids delight) and then big performance space full of amps and cords and guitars and keyboards.  It is pretty admirable that Jake, who is in his 20’s, takes this on. He could just stay home and play his Wii and think about indy rock, but he doesn’t.  He goes for broke to keep this kind of environment alive. If I had found a place like this, and a group of people like this when I was a kid, it would have changed my life. But I didn’t, instead I found them when I was 37, and it just made my life richer. After watching a guy blow glass for a while, we went back to his house to recover from the heat, and sit in the cool of the swamp cooler and relax till dinner time.

This photo is not rigged....

For dinner, we walked downtown and ate at the Red Room, they feed the bands that play at the Hangart.  Which is awesome.  The Red Room is obviously a very old, huge downtown diner, that has managed to stay alive.  The architecture is a mix of the ’50’s style diner that it once was, and the grunginess of a downtown restaurant that is open, get this, 24 hours. 24 hours a day! Eat your heart out, walmart.
After dinner, we walked over to the Hangart, slowly, observing all the pretty western looking buildings, passed an old wig shop, an old music store, a huge library, lots of random sculpture, and a few homeless people.
Tucson somehow has managed to survive a huge real estate boom and keep its downtown functioning. For instance, as far as we could tell, getting paid to play music might be hard, but seeing lots of interesting bands is not. You can still find old businesses that haven’t been run out by starbucks, and you can still afford to live there.  Artists can still make weird art and be left alone by the lone cry of gentrification. It seems like we could go to Tucson in 5 years, and it all be cleared out and “fixed up”, but somehow they have dodged that bullet.  Maybe it is the heat. Whatever it is, it is a welcome respite from the mean edge of hipness, to find a bunch of livers, of nice people that aren’t so sure they are too cool to talk to you.
When we got to the show at the Hangart, the audience was not yet in place, so I took a little time to get the kids settled out in the Nintendo basement.  Jake, who is a more patient man than I, took a minute to get the kids started in on Nintendo. (I have never played Nintendo, and just really show my age in those moments) We headed back upstairs, and after some folks showed up, we started our gig.  We played a late 45 minute set to an appreciative audience, and we appreciated them being there. Sometime during the set, Zephyr came in, so after we played I went to make sure they were OK, and Zac stuck around to receive accolades and money for CD’s. or tips. Or hand out posters. Turns out, he had a conversation with Bob Log. Which is a little funny, cuz Bob Log is a musician I have seen in Australia, and Seattle. So the world continues to be a small place, and I was pretty tickled to get to play him some tunes. The band that followed us, “Mr. Free and the Satellite Freakout” was a huge local draw, and i am sure that is why anyone was there at all, and they put on a great show. We kept the kids up too late that night. I mean, too late.

We had to stay in Tucson for two nights, because the way the Texas Eagle Amtrak line works, is it goes from San Antonio to Los Angeles three times a week.  So that made Tucson even more of a gamble.  First, we didn’t know anyone there, and secondly, we were going to have to stay multiple days. And while we are talking about Amtrak, I would have to note that after leaving the madness and chaos of San Antonio (meaning, we didn’t have any seats together, and no one was there to help us figure it out) when we got on the train in New Mexico, the conductor was waiting for us with four seats together.  And also in Tucson. The train coaches seem to go from old, with no electrical outlets to charge your computers etc, to new with a power strip running outlets every foot and a half down the wall.

Hot. Desert Hot. Prickly Hot.

Bring it on, weird cactus man.

The next day Mallory, who is way too pregnant to be nice enough to drive the lot of us around with no A/C in the car, took us for a drive out to Sagarro National Park. That is truly amazing, first, we never got on the interstate, and somehow the strip malls just kind of fizzled out until there we were going over a mountain pass onto this windy road with sabarro cacti EVERYWHERE!  Like pencils sticking out of the mountain, as if the mountain itself has needles on it. It was mindblowingly strange, and the mind boggles at why anyone would have EVER thought to build a city in that  hostile terrain. Really!  No water, nothing! Why???  We had to wander out into that desert for a few minutes and get a family photo, and a few minutes was about all we could stand. (all for our own reasons)
We went back to the house, and it was high time for our family to go entertain themselves. We grabbed some lunch, and then headed into the desert heat. Walking with the kids is an art to itself, you have to be slow, and patient, and earnestly respond to all their observations. They notice EVERYTHING.  And in Tucson, at street level there was lots to notice. It seemed every yard had some sort of face in the stone, or a mosaic on the front of the house, or a crazy cactus garden, and the bright colors of the houses!  oy! It is pretty amazing. Slowly we walk towards downtown.  Slowly we arrive, and find a goodwill on the way, and i tell you, the air conditioning in goodwill sure makes it easy to kill some time there.

Tucson high heel shoe queen

Knowing that when your shopping trip is over, you have to go back outside makes loitering in the kids clothing aisle seem like a grand idea!  Ironically, Zac found a brand new pair of woolrich knickers. What do you do with wool when it is 110 degrees out?  But he has been missing knickers ever since he wore his last pair out, and that was when we met 9 years ago. We left goodwill, and went down to the old school music store, and wandered around the piles of instrument parts until Zac found a tuba mute. Who has even ever heard of a tuba mute?!?  Why??  This store was amazing, their was a instrument rental section, an instrument repair section, a million gazillion cases with mysterious instruments in them, and the building was super old. Not to mention the herd of employees hanging around, and the sheet music section that was next door. Eureka wanted a ukelele and a book about learning it. Something about that kind of store definitely makes you want to shop, like all music is possible. This is the day I should learn the saxophone, they had a red white and blue clarinet in the front window.  Be still my beating heart.

The crew, at the Tucson Amtrak Station, leaving.

After a coffee break, we headed back to the house, ever so slowly, and made a big dinner for everyone. I just felt deep in my heart, that Mallory and her unborn child needed to experience a macaroni pie. Something about pregnancy and an unreal amount of calories, mixed with a granny recipe just seemed right. I know her baby thanked me. After dinner, it was already time to bid farewell to Tucson and get back on the train.  Luckily, the train wasn’t late so the kids were awake and able to crash out on the train.  We said goodbye to the family, and left with fuzzy warm feelings in our belly from Tucson.  Or was it just the heat? (or the macaroni pie?)