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. 

Though not explicitly about Tucson, Doxy Lamine’s new EP features many of the elements that make our town distinct. Doxy Lamine  is a side project of local rock band Infinite Beauties, led by guitarist and singer Adam Lopez. At under 25 minutes, the new EP is clean, energetic and to-the-point — and it certainly has some points to make.

Lopez was writing and rehearsing new material while recording his last album, 2020’s Precarious Time, with Jim Waters at Waterworks here in town. While the band was ready to record the new tracks right away, the pandemic kicked everything to the side.

“It was frustrating in many ways because we couldn't even rehearse, albeit it also gave me time for making demos and preparing the details for the return to the studio — I mean every detail!” Lopez said.

Ultimately, the band was able to record the well-polished tracks from July to October 2020. Though the sessions produced eight songs, only six made the cut. “The original idea was to have an eponymous CD, but we instinctively called it ‘Small, Small Town’ based on the opening tune and the artwork done by my son Sol,” Lopez said. “The song is not so much about Tucson, but more about dating in a small town.”

Themes aside, the EP itself works as a kind of small town, with each song serving a unique role and sound: the title track kicks things off in a bluesy fashion, with Lopez lamenting personal vices over a surprisingly upbeat rhythm and some wonderful violin lines by Mariah McCammond. "You Did It," has more of an alternative rock flair with call-and-response singing between Lopez and Marta DeLeon from the Weekend Lovers, gradually forming into a close harmony; "Crisis Or Opportunity" features a classic borderlands rock sound, based around a dusty guitar line and Lopez's low and smooth vocals.

Though the EP begins with standard rock affair, it grows more political and spiritual through its runtime, with some blunt and even existential lines on the second half like “Make peace with God before you’re dead … If it happened to you, maybe you’ll know how it feels.”

This all concludes with the multi-layered, progressive final track “Spirituality Song,” which begins with a spoken word recital by Joseph Graves. The jaunty closer channels some darker themes, but never loses sight of the driving central melodies. At points, the groove even sounds like another great Tucson band, The Mission Creeps, with its chilly keyboards and vast sound.

It’s a quick, easily digestible collection of tracks that reminds you to try to get your life together, and if you can’t, you might as well dance.

Tucson-based Zoom Records had released a never-before-issued single by Pete Ronstadt and The Nightbeats, more than 60 years after it was recorded, and all proceeds support Youth On Their Own charity.

Pete Ronstadt (you may have heard of his sister, Linda) and The Nightbeats were a group of seniors at Catalina High School in 1959. They recorded a cover of "Sea of Love" at Audio Recorders of Arizona in Phoenix the same year with Grammy Award winning engineer Jack Miller. Now, that single is pressed in a limited edition of 300 7-inch vinyls by Zoom Records (credited as Tucson’s “first rock label,” also founded by Catalina High students.)

The track certainly has a full ’50s sound, with a pop structure accompanied by saxophone, piano and drums. One side of the 45 features the original song as recorded in 1959, while the opposite side includes the track with additional strings accompaniment.

For more information, and to purchase the vinyl, click here.

LOS ANGELES – Like music venues around the world, the Paramount ballroom has been forced to endure months of limited work, reduced revenue and a forced transition to the digital world – no easy task for the venerable Boyle Heights venue, which is nearly 100 years old and has a legacy of supporting underdog artists.

Live-streaming is one option, but the expense is prohibitive, said Vicky Cabildo, the ballroom’s booker and production manager. Determining a price for the tickets is another issue faced by venues across the U.S.

“Aside from the location, you still need sound people, you still need to clean,” Cabildo said. “We have to pay the bands; you can’t ask people who aren’t working right now to do stuff for free, it’s just not fair. It’s also like how do we charge for these things? Not everyone is Katy Perry or Pearl Jam.”

DJ Jahmar is one of the busiest DJs in town, and it will take more than a pandemic to stop him. When he’s not working with the non-profit Deejays Against Hunger, he’s filling local clubs with authentic, rhythmic reggae. But even during COVID downtime, Jahmar is keeping active with livestreams and recording new music. Jahmar’s latest album, Zona Riddim, features collaborations with a wide range of vocalists and clean club instrumentals.

“I started working on the Zona Riddim album in March 2020 right when COVID hit because all of my DJ residences were banned due to city ordinances,” Jahmar said. “I still wanted the world to hear my music, so I decided I was going to release an album.”

Zona Riddim features a variety of guests across its eight tracks, all of which work off a similar instrumental in the Jamaican tradition. And it’s a tradition familiar to Jahmar, who has worked as a DJ for more than a decade, learning from his father Papa Ranger, a longtime KXCI reggae DJ and owner of the now-shuttered Twelve Tribes Reggae Shop. 

“In Jamaica we do reggae albums different, we do Riddim albums,” Jahmar said. “A Riddim is a compilation of artists on the same beat/instrumental but with different songs.”

Jahmar’s warm, energetic beats are a versatile template for the guest singers, working beneath autotuned rap and cleanly sung vocals. The album features both international and local reggae figures, including Josh David Barrett from the Wailers, Safaree from Love & Hip Hop, Denzel White, Los Rakas and Bobby Hustle.

These collaborations add to Jahmar’s goal for the album: to represent Jamaican culture and reggae music on the West Coast, and to keep people moving to his music no matter the circumstance.

Zona Riddim is available on music streaming platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal and more. For more information, visit foundation-media.ffm.to/zonariddim

French/Tucson singer Marianne Dissard has released the latest in her cover series, a complete re-working of Ritchie Valens’ “Come On Let's Go!” with a music video to boot.

Dissard and producer Raphael Mann deconstruct the rock ‘n’ roll classic, upping the sensuality in a way only a French singer like her can. What was originally a sweet, energetic tune has been reinvented with deep drums, wild saxophone and pauses to complete silence to stretch out the romantics.

But of course, the star of the show is Dissard’s vocals in her signature chanteuse style, highlighting the blunt message of the song: “wanting to fuck someone.” However, things are bound to get more complex in a pandemic.

"It's not so much reworking any of the songs, but trying to find the core concept or message of a song and working from there," Dissard said about the series. "That's the trick with covers: You have to find something that's already there and take it to where you as the artist can bring something new and fresh."

The track fits well in her series of “drastic re-imaginings” of classic tracks during pandemic times, and also features Tucsonan Naim Amor on guitar. Dissard’s collections of pandemic re-imaginings are slated to be released as an album in summer 2021. Other covers in the series include Phil Ochs, Bobbie Gentry and Carly Simon.