Austin trio Megafauna returns tonight to kick our asses, Tucson, and admit it ... we could really use their prog-rock, garage loudness and what singer Dani Neff brings with her voice and that damn guitar of her's.

Tonight, Thursday, Oct. 16, at Flycatcher, 340 E. 6th St., 9 p.m. with Garboski and Ghostal. $5 cover. Facebook event page.

From Tucson Weekly music writer Eric Swedlund, his May review of the band's Maximalist:

As the title to Austin trio Megafauna’s sophomore album Maximalist might suggest, it’s optimistic, expansive and unabashedly over-the-top; an endeavor to take music to its utmost potential. The band’s supercharged mixture of sounds ranging from prog-rock flash to alt-rock iconoclasm to pithy power-pop and garage rock energy is as infectious as it is inclusive. Megafauna paves their own hook-laden path — much like the Pixies and Queen, who taught the world that even the most unusual pairings of styles can result in unforgettable and eternal classics.

Megafauna singer/guitarist Dani Neff was named Austin’s Best Electric Guitarist by the Austin Chronicle. Although she’s frequently referred to as a “shredder,” one should never mistake her tasteful and clever virtuosity for flagrant flashiness. She’s a woman of many talents: a dancer, musician, painter, feminist, lawyer, reiki practitioner, psychonaut — clearly someone who embodies the maximalist philosophy.

The album kicks off with the driving, time-signature leaping rocker, “Eggs” in which drummer Zack Humphrey, bassist Greg Yancey and Neff shift rhythms on a dime while showcasing exactly what makes Megafauna a band to covet: their expertise at fusing seemingly disparate musical styles. Likewise, “Hug From a Robot” somehow perfectly pairs gliding melodies with hard rock bite, something akin to The Breeders meets Red-era King Crimson. Elsewhere, the perfectly radio-ready track “Time To Go” blasts off with chiming guitar as Neff coos, “When it’s time to go/ It’s time/ Won’t you sail me down to the fields.” Death never sounded so uplifting in a 3-minute rock song. “Haunted Factory” gallops along Humphrey’s syncopated hi-hat/snare interplay as Yancey’s rumbling, distortion-ravaged bass lines cut like fangs across Neff’s swiftly-picked guitar work as her powerful voice soars above the proceedings. Throughout, Maximalist is a truly inspired effort poised to become a touchstone of rock innovation.

Run Boy Run are getting ready to release their new album "Something to Someone," co-produced by Ryan Hadlock, who also worked on the Lumineers record at the end of the month, so they're teasing their fans with preview tracks scattered around the internet. Today, you get the chance to hear "Spin a Golden Thread," a song with harmonies about as lovely as anything I've heard recently.

From the press release:

The album was recorded at historic Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville, Washington with producers Ryan Hadlock (The Lumineers, Johnny Flynn) and Jerry Streeter (Brandi Carlile, Elephant Revival), whose attention to detail shines in Run Boy Run's multi-voiced, and multi-stringed arrangements. With three strong female voices, singing separately or in harmony, it's clear the band has a deeply rooted familial connection to traditional American music. It's in their collective blood. Continuing a sense of innovation in tradtional American music put forth by other bands such as Nickel Creek, Crooked Still, and Trampled By Turtles. Run Boy Run continues this journey into music that is dynamic, orchestral, and overflowing with beauty.

The Humane Society of Southern Arizona presents Raisin

#789518 — 10 Years Old — Domestic Short Hair — Female





Raisin is a confident and outgoing lap cat searching for the perfect place to rest her paws. This charming senior has a whole lot of love to give and makes no demands of her friends. She just wants to be close to her favorite people and enjoy their company. Raisin gets along with absolutely everyone and would make the perfect addition for any cat-loving home. Meet her today at the Humane Society of Southern Arizona!



As a senior pet, Raisin has a $25 adoption fee!

• Flier handed out before the board meeting

I attended the TUSD board meeting Tuesday night and scribbled notes as fast as I could. Here are some of the takeaways.

The district is submitting its annual report about its finances for the 2013-14 school year to the state Department of Education and the Auditor General. That means the finalized figures for the last school year ending in July, 2014, are signed, sealed and delivered. They're official numbers, not estimates or predictions, so if TUSD has it wrong, it's going to hear about it from the state. I think it's probable the district doesn't have it wrong.

Here's a summary of the information Chief Financial Officer Karla Soto presented to the board and the audience. Every one agreed it was the most detailed financial presentation in recent memory.

The 2013-14 school year began with about $14 million in cash reserves carried over from the 2012-13 school year, which was Superintendent Pedicone's final year.

This wasn't part of her presentation, but it's worth remembering, that year Pedicone said the district was facing a potential $17 million deficit. As a result, TUSD closed 11 schools and made other deep cuts. And yet, after the 11 schools were closed because the district said it had no other choice, it had $14 million in reserve, significantly more than the total savings from the 11 school closures.

So Superintendent Sanchez began the 2013-14 school with, in essence, a $14 million cash cushion. That's how much was sitting in the reserves before he started spending that year's budget. At the end of that year, in July, 2014, that reserve had grown to $20 million.

This also wasn't part of Soto's presentation, but a very different cash reserve figure has been floating around for the past 3 weeks, which came from leaving Deputy Superintendent Yousef Awwad's spreadsheet predictions of potential financial disaster. Awwad said the end-of-the-year reserves were $10 million, half of what Soto put in the report which is being sent to the state. According to Soto, instead of the reserves being spent down $5 million during Sanchez's first year, they grew $5 million.

Next, Soto presented her budget projections for the 2014-15. We have a long way to go before we reach July, 2015, so these are her best estimates. She said the district will spend $5 million from the $20 million reserve it began with, adding it to the district's budget to make a variety of improvements (I don't know where those funds will be spent). As a result, she projects the district will once again have cash reserves in the $14 million range in July, 2015, just as it had in July, 2013, when Sanchez took over as superintendent.

We have a pair of tickets to give away to see Mexican synthpoppers Belanova at the Rialto on Tuesday, Oct. 21. We'll draw a name on Monday the 20th at noon and email the lucky winner. All you have to do is go to our contest page and push a button (assuming you're already a member on our site...if not, signing up only takes a minute or two). Pretty simple.

If you'd like more info on the show or to buy tickets, head to rialtotheatre.com.

• Image courtesy of Shutterstock
• This isn't a member of Ducey's family, but it's an amusing image.

The Phoenix New Times has a story by Stephen Lemons and Lance Williams about Doug Ducey's family, making a case that he's left in his past a family with deep connections to organized crime in Ohio:

But the all-American image Ducey projects, one which helped him win the primary and may help him win the general election, belies a family tree that includes two generations of his mother's family's involvement in organized crime.

That said, New Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting discovered no evidence that Ducey ever profited from the activities of his involved maternal relatives — or that the GOP candidate engaged in any criminal activity.

According to newspaper accounts and public records from various court and congressional hearings, four of Ducey's relatives in an Italian-American family called Scott (anglicized from Scotti) were involved in illegal gambling in Ohio.

Family members ran after-hours gambling clubs and participated in bookmaking, numbers-running, extortion, loan-sharking, and other lucrative illicit activities from the 1920s through the 1980s.

The candidate's maternal grandfather, William Scott (a.k.a. Bill Scotti), was a convicted bookmaker who partnered with members of the Detroit mob.

His son Billy Scott, Ducey's uncle, was a high-profile sports bookmaker in Toledo who did time in federal prison in Arizona before fleeing to the Caribbean island of Antigua, where he became an online gambling kingpin.

Uncle Billy returned to the United States in 2012 to plead guilty in federal court to international money laundering and illegal Internet wagering.

Ducey's great uncle Tony Paul Scott (a.k.a. Neufio Scott), his grandfather's brother, was among Toledo's "most legendary racketeers" and one of the "elders of the loosely knit Toledo crime family," according to the Toledo Blade, the city's daily newspaper.

During his long life, Tony Paul was arrested numerous times, incarcerated for illegal gambling and highway robbery, and eventually stripped of his U.S. citizenship, though he was allowed to remain in this country until his death in 1993.

These sins of the state treasurer's fascinating bloodline have remained unknown to the general public. Until now.

The catch is since there's basically zero provable connection ethically or financially between Ducey and some of his unsavory relatives, is this a thing we should care about? This story does cast a different light on his All-American/apple pie backstory, but doesn't really say much about his ability to run the state (although we've said plenty about that otherwise).

However, if Fred Duval's $20 DMV mistake is going to be an issue, then I suppose everything's fair game.

Want to get a preview of the winners from the 2014 Best of Tucson issue, hitting streets (late, please be patient) on Thursday?

I'll be on the Home Stretch with Cathy Rivers Wednesday night at 5 p.m. talking BOT, so if you're dying to know the winner for a specific category, shout it out in the comments here and I'll see if I can shout it out on air tonight.

First, the bad news: 1055 Brewing was embarking on a bold experiment, aiming to brew a beer entirely sourced within Arizona, but had to announce yesterday on Facebook that it didn't pan out, describing the process as smelling like "a sweaty goat farm." The good news: 1055 isn't giving up, aiming to try again in July of 2015.

If you're looking to warm up ahead of Saturday's Baja Oktoberfest, exercising your palate with Arizona beers, Tap & Bottle has the perfect event on Friday: an all Grand Canyon State tap takeover, with all of the craft beer bar's taps dedicated to Arizona breweries starting at 5 p.m. Breweries to be featured include Mother Road, Perch, Fate, Huss, Four Peaks, as well as many of your Tucson favorites. More info at T&B's Facebook page.

Speaking of Baja Oktoberfest, the list of beers that will be available for your drinking pleasure at the event benefitting Tu Nidito is (mostly) out now and it's impressive, mixing local favorites, one-offs and beers both from Germany and inspired by their brewing styles.

More info on the festival at bajaoktoberfest.com. Tickets (for a bunch of great beer and a good time, all going to a really good cause) are $45 in advance.

The list of breweries and beers (as it stands, last we heard) is below the cut.

All the recent marriage equality decisions and what could happen in the courts soon reversing Arizona anti-same sex marriage law, tonight 6th annual Multifaith Pride Service seems particularly important with the Rev. Debra Peevey, faith outreach director from Why Marriage Matters Arizona, as one of the speakers.

The service, Weaving a Common Sacredness, is 7 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El, 225 N. Country Club Road. According to organizers, supportive faith traditions from throughout Tucson will join together in song, prayer and words of praise to honor the love, diversity and blessing of the LGBT community

Highlights:

Service goers are encourged to dress in Pride Spirit! The service will also be archived and availabe for live streaming at the following link: http://www.templeemanueltucson.org/media-galleries/video-player.

The service offering organizers are accepting donations for Mariposas Sin Fronteras, which is an organization that helps LGBTQ migrants and refugees who are in or recently out of our immigration detention center in Florence, Arizona. Information about the organization can be found here: http://mariposassinfronteras.org/about-us/. They ask for donations from the heart to assist the organization with bail funds to help get LGBTQ detainees out of our immigration system and on the track to political asylum here.Checks can be made out to the Rainbow Defense Fund.

Attendees are asked to share their Arizona marriage equality story at the reception. Eight spots are for this. There will be information available at the ushers table and at the reception! Here's a link to Why Marriage Matters Arizona http://whymarriagemattersarizona.org/.

I opened my paper this morning to find this screaming headline on the front page, top right hand column: Sanchez left financial experts frustrated. Sounds bad. Sounds really bad. I unfolded the paper, took a sip of coffee and began reading.

I read the story once, paused to drink more coffee and clear my head, then read it again. The second reading left me with the same impression as the first. There's not a whole lot of there there. The English teacher in me wanted to call the article Much Ado About Nothing, but that wouldn't have been fair. The article is about something. To tweak Shakespeare's title a bit, the article is Much Ado About Management Style. And it's not nearly consequential enough to merit a front page story above the fold.

Here's the thrust of the article. Superintendent H.T. Sanchez made financial decisions without consulting his Chief Financial Officer Karla Soto or his Deputy Superintendent Yousef Awwad who had been CFO before Soto. The article said both of them were frustrated with Sanchez at times and expressed their concerns in emails. Most of the concerns came from Awwad. Soto was mostly frustrated with the behind-deadline budget process which made it difficult for her to answer questions about the budget. That's about it.

Sanchez makes decisions without consulting administrators who should be in the loop, the article states. I'm not surprised. Given his style and the hurry he's in to move his agenda forward at TUSD, I imagine that happens on more than one occasion. So, what are the items Sanchez is impatiently pushing forward by taking some shortcuts with the process? According to the article:

Those initiatives included opening two early-learning centers, addressing salary inequity issues, lowering class sizes and moving away from the practice of annual layoffs.

Sounds like a pretty good agenda to me.

If the new programs Sanchez has put in place are valuable, the two questions raised by the article are: (1) Should Sanchez have consulted others more? and (2) Is he putting the district in hock with his expensive new programs? The answer to the first is probably Yes, he should consult with administrators more, at the district and school levels. The answer to the second is, we don't know if he's spending the district into debt. Awwad made that sound possible in the analysis he sent to Michael Hicks, but we haven't seen the figures beyond Awwad's early-in-the-school-year predictions.

That's really not a whole lot to wrap a lengthy, front page article around.