Nothing should have worked with Josh T. Pearson’s set at SXSW: He lost his voice the previous night, there were some technical difficulties, he revealed he was working on probably an hour of sleep, and to top it off, his four-piece band was only about three days old. Despite all of these setbacks, Pearson delivered an enrapturing performance. Perhaps it was simple luck, but for anyone who knows the indie-rock-gone-country-singer’s music, Pearson works well in the midst of disaster.

Pearson and his band played some select singles from his upcoming album, The Straight Hits!, as well as some reworked songs from his critically-acclaimed The Last of the Country Gentlemen.

His once sparse and depressive acoustic dirges received a second life. The keyboard player added lush and delicate layers, the drummer added a surprisingly effective beat to the experimental songs, and the bassist added a slick core to bring them all together. For a band that just, and I mean just, formed, they played tight and with a great amount of chemistry.

You’ve heard honest, twangy country rock like Neil Young, and you’ve heard the lengthy, epic (occasionally ambient) instrumental movements of post-rock—well Josh T. Pearson and his band somehow combined the two to make some bonafide country post-rock, if that can be called a thing.

And although the set was rife with apologies by the singer, it was also filled with great one-liners between the songs and a cheering, mesmerized crowd.

The Straight Hits! releases April 13.

Los Lobos guitarist Cesár Rosas shouted his thanks across SXSW outdoor stage in downtown Austin: “Thank you, music lovers!”

It’s a city full of music lovers. You can see it in the way that people play their music: During country artist Josh T. Pearson's set (which pretty much broke all of our hearts and put them back together again with every song), every member of the four-person band blurred the lines between human and instrument with their passion. When I tell Pearson’s bassist—a guy named Noah who met Pearson for the first time four days earlier—that I could tell how much he loves music just by watching him, he bubbles over with thanks.

“I need music in my life,” he says. “Sometimes, when I talk about some of my favorite bassists, I just get goosebumps.”

Or there’s Australian artist Gordi, an indie pop songwriter whose voice rings with relatable honesty (“every fiber of my being’s agreed that what you want can become something you need”), whether she’s belting with abandon or slipping into a sweet falsetto. Gordi introduces herself as Sophie Payten afterwards and mentions she finished medical school recently, and has an internship next year. She tries to keep it on “the back burner,” though, because music is her priority.

You can see it in the way people watch their music. When R&B/indie pop/soaring voice-coming-from-a-slight-frame musician Joey Dosik performs at The Barracuda, people are singing along, dancing, sometimes closing their eyes the way you do when you want to make sure you remember something for a long, long time.

Or, during a set by violinist, vocalist, and all-around performance artist Sudan Archives, one woman mouths along the words to nearly every song. She’s so enraptured that I don’t see her pull out her phone one time during the whole set… and what’s a more serious demonstration of love than not looking at your phone for a solid 20 minutes to pay attention to another person?

Marga!

“I grew up thinking I'm an artist because I didn't know any other way,” says actor, stand-up comedian and writer Marga Gomez. “My parents were both creative. All their friends were performing artists, so I was very comfortable in this world.”

Thus did Gomez become a Cuban Liza Minelli, only lesbian, del pueblo and a lot more savvy.

Her mid-century upbringing, although periodically rocky, surrounded Gomez with humor and filled her with drive. Her mother was a professional dancer; her father was a comedian and songwriter, and a producer of popular, Follies-scale variety shows for New York’s large community of Spanish-speaking immigrants. The hustle to stay on top of the entertainment business defined her family.

Between them, her parents have inspired half Gomez’ output of a dozen popular solo stage shows. The latest is Latin Standards, her tale of the father-daughter entertainer dynamic. Its title refers to the genre of her father’s music; “The comedy is a survival tool,” Gomez says. The New York Times named the show a Critic’s pick when it opened last year at The Public Theatre (Hamilton).

Borderlands Theatre presents Gomez performing Latin Standards February 14 through 18 at the Steinfeld Warehouse, 101 West 6th Street. The run opens with a Valentine’s day fiesta, including live music and food. Details and reservations are available at tinyurl.com/LatinStandards.
“I started writing solo shows because my parents were important but forgotten,” Gomez says. “I wanted the Latino community to know about these people and their times.

“At the end of the show, the great thing that people tell me is, even though I'm a Latina, I'm a lesbian, I'm from New York and I'm neurotic, people can totally relate to the father-daughter story, and they see their own father.”

Parts & Flowers

Mo Urban and Steena Salido bring their third C*nts Being C*nts Talking About C*nts Comedy Show to Flycatcher, free, at 9 p.m., Sunday, February 11 (after the Estrogen Hour benefit at Laff’s at 6). C*nts, etc., features seven comedians, including Genevieve Rice from Phoenix; poet Janet Spencer, and the all-woman rawk band, Sugar Stains. The event benefits the YWCA’s Project Period.

For Valentine’s Day, Hotel Congress presents Rebecca Tingley’s talk-show-format comedy show, Let’s Talk About Sex Baby, also featuring Randy Ford and Tammy King. Local comedians play truth or dare and answer audience questions.

Also on Valentine’s day, comedy siren Lisa Landry headlines a show at Laff’s where every woman will get a rose. Visit laffstucson.org for details.

Beer Week! A few highlights as Beer Week kicks off: Pueblo Vida celebrates with a spirit of friendliness and teamwork by releasing a brand new beer. The "Just Friends," a pale ale, is the product of a collaboration with Wren House Brewing. 4-10 p.m. Meanwhile, at downtown's Thunder Canyon, two of the biggest and most active local breweries are joining forces like the Power Rangers to release a delicious Pineapple Gose beer. What better way to start off the week than that? 5 p.m. to midnight. If you just can't get enough of those sweet, sweet carbs, consider pairing them together in two of their greatest forms: beer and pan dulce! (That's Mexican sweet bread). 1912 Brewing and Rancho Preciado are teaming up to give you some of the best of both worlds. You might never go back to pretzels to accompany your brews. 5 p.m. 2045 N Forbes Blvd, suite 105.

UA Presents: Straight Outta Philly. Phildanco, the dance group founded by Joan Myers Brown in 1970, is bringing its innovative, traditional African American dance-influenced, barrier-breaking performance to Tucson. Rennie Harris Pure Movement, founded by Harris himself and expanding the boundaries of hip hop, will take the stage as well. Both dance institutions will fuse hip-hop and ballet for a show that will have you bopping and reflecting in equal parts. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb 8. Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. 8. $20 to $55+.

Drunk Drag Queen Storytellers. Sometimes you just need a night at the diner with some friends. Sometimes you just need to hear some stories from drunk people. Sometimes you just gotta hang out with your fave local drag queens. But did you know you could get all of these pleasures in one place? Head over to Welcome Diner to enjoy all of the above, plus $1 PBRs, $4 well drinks, half-off bottles of wine, and-of course-food to fuel you through the night. 10 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 8. Welcome Diner Tucson, 902 E. Broadway Blvd.

Complied by Emily Dieckman and Jeff Gardner

The Sanctuary Movement has grown from 400 to 1,100 congregations nationwide since Donald Trump’s election.

Sanctuary congregations aid immigrants and the immigrant community in a variety of ways, including hosting legal clinics, advocating against and taking actions to stop deportations and housing immigrants in danger of deportation.

“ICE is attacking us as leaders and activists at the local and national level,” said Ingrid Encalada Latorre, an immigrant and activist currently in Sanctuary in Colorado. “They don’t want us to lead, but they won’t silence us because we too have rights as immigrants in this country.”

In the months after Donald Trump’s election, the number of congregations offering sanctuary to immigrants under threat of deportation doubled from 400 to 800 nationwide. The movement continues to grow, across 25 states. And the number of Sanctuary coalitions have grown from 12 to 40 since 2016, according to a new report, “Sanctuary in the Age of Trump,” released by a coalition of faith leaders, including Rev. Alison Harrington, a pastor in Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church.


North Carolina currently has more people in sanctuary than any other state, with five. And their movement continues to grow, with six more congregations working on becoming sanctuary churches and more calling each day, said Rev. Julie Peeples, senior pastor at Congregational United Church of Christ, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

“It is really growing rapidly here,” Peeples said. “My congregation and I continue to be inspired by the courage and strength of those in sanctuary and their leadership. They are teaching us how to love our neighbor and how to honor our nation’s pledge of ‘liberty and justice for all.’”

The report also says that it’s no longer just cities with large immigrant population that have congregations in the Sanctuary Movement, but more rural areas with a recent influx of immigrants, in states like North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and Virginia.

Congregations gave sanctuary to 37 people facing deportation, in 2017. Nine received some sort of temporary reprieve from deportation. Today, there are 36 people in public sanctuary, nationwide, according to the report.


The Sanctuary Movement has grown in direct response to the ramping up of deporting immigrants whose only crime is being in the country illegally, many of whom were registered with Homeland Security and allowed a stay of deportation under the Obama administration, given they participated in routine check-ins with ICE.

In 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton released a series of immigration directives that came to be known as the Morton memos. These memos limited the immigration enforcement to a subset of convicted criminals, as well as blocking immigration enforcement to crime victims, witnesses and “individuals pursuing legitimate civil rights complaints,” a measure that allowed immigrants to report crime without fear of deportation.

Today, ICE searches these people out, although they are well known to the government and have complied with their regular check-ins. The new report details the arrests of several immigrants with deportation stays who are immigrant rights activists, including immigrate-rights activist Ravi Ragbir, who was detained during a routine check-in meeting with ICE officials in Manhattan, on Jan. 11.

Ragbir was one of a number of immigrants vocal in the movement arrested by ICE in January. His arrest sparked protest that ended with 18 arrests, including two members of the New York City Council.

On Monday, Jan. 29, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ordered his release, saying his detention was “unnecessarily cruel.” He is still facing deportation.

“I am appalled to see the growing attacks on immigrant leaders,” said Ragbir’s wife Amy Gottlieb. “Ravi was detained at a regularly scheduled check-in with ICE, even though nothing had changed in his legal case. It is clear that he is targeted because of his outspoken challenges to our unjust immigration system. It is devastating to see my husband and so many others locked up in county jails, their liberty taken away from them, while private companies and others profit from our suffering.”

The faith leaders who contributed to the report said they plan on expanding the movement in the Southwest and Midwest and hosting trainings and strategy meetings.

“Sanctuary is needed more than ever,” the report says. “People of faith from many traditions recognize the increased need for Sanctuary as the harsh anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-black and anti-Muslim policies come to life under the Trump Administration.”

“Sanctuary in the Age of Trump” also details stories of several immigrants who and sought sanctuary, more examples of ICE ramping up intimidation tactics, and 10 policy recommendations.

With beauty treatment from Red Door Beauty, art gallery tours, raffles, food and beverages, the Tucson Museum of Art's Fashion Fête kept everyone entertained last Friday, Jan. 19. Guests received complimentary gifts from Kendra Scott.

The night was inspired by their two fashion exhibitions on display, Dress Matters: Clothing as Metaphor and Desert Dweller. Alba Rojas-Sukkar, TMA's chief development officer, said they wanted to give people a chance to see the exhibition if they had not already done so. The Desert Dweller made its debut to TMA on October 21, 2017, and wrapped its run this run this weekend.

The cocktail lounge theme was designed to create a relaxed atmosphere for the guests while they explored the exhibition, according to Rojas-Sukkar. The laid-back environment gave visitors the opportunity to drink, eat and mingle.

For a 6,000-year old entertainment, The Pastorela sure gets around. It’s performed all over the world every Christmas, perhaps most devotedly and hilariously in Mexico. The satire and personalities change every year, but there’s always a protagonist, shepherds, wise men, angels, Lucifer and Satan. The demons create trials and temptations the protagonist must overcome to assure Jesus’ birth. Two animals traditionally act as a Greek chorus.

A dog and sheep open this year’s Borderlands show by taking a knee; the satire and send ups roll from there, nonstop. Borderlands presents its 21st Pastorela Thursday through Sunday, Dec. 14 through 17, at the Leo Rich Theatre. Visit the Borderlands website for details and reservations.

Writer Milta Ortiz says, “The animals let the audience know it’s going to be a fun show. You can holler and sing along and laugh.” This year’s news, she says, offered almost too much fodder for the show’s political comedy. “It was ‘How do we pick?’,” she says. “I never like to give spoilers,” she says, “but I really didn’t even have to parody some things that happened because they were already funny.”

Our spies tell us, spoilers aside, that Vladimir Putin’s ways with the ladies, his swagger and bravado made excellent Pastorela material, as did the Russian manipulation of “fake news.” Immigration issues continue to provide balloons for Pastorela puncturing. The current show highlights the plight of DACA children – those brought to the U.S. by their parents as children and now under threat of deportation. And, in an epic scene, torn from actual headlines, Donald Trump throws corn and paper towels.

Thankfully, some things never change. Asked who’s performing pre-show warm-up music, Ortiz says, “It's always Gertie and the TO Boys.” They’re the pride of the Tonono O’odham Nation’s, irresistible Waila dance tradition.

This year, Borderlands revamped more than just the Pastorela’s political content, though. Producing director Marc David Pinate also gave it an updated look and a fresher feel. “It’s like when there’s a new cast on Saturday Night Live,” he says. The comparison is apt.

Pinate credits a series of improv workshops he held for the show’s all-new cast over the summer. “I hoped the (players) would get more comfortable with each other, just to have that openness to play like improv does. I told the actors first thing, ‘If you have an idea, just go for it. If it works, we'll put it in the script.’

“The temptation scenes are straight-out comedy sketches.”

“I'm busier in my career than I have ever been in my entire life,” says Baltimore septuagenarian John Waters, the author, stand-up comedian, satirist, paradigm smasher, movie auteur and, not least, his hometown’s Statue of Liberty. He styles himself as “The People’s Pervert.”

Waters brings his annual, one-man Christmas show to the Rialto Theatre on Saturday, Dec. 2. Tickets are $30 to $110 at rialtotheatre.com. The show’s parental advisory portends laughs guaranteed to up-end taste, decorum and firmly held beliefs of all kinds.

“I just want people to fear Christmas. It's extreme! It's coming and you can't escape it, no matter what religion you are or what your politics are or anything. You have to have an opinion about it. You have to spend money!”

Just in time, Make Trouble, Waters’ 2015 commencement speech to the Rhode Island School of Design has been released in limited edition, 7” red vinyl by Jack White’s label, Third Man. The speech earlier went viral online, then became an illustrated gift book published by Algonquin.

“I've lived my life to be a stocking stuffer!”

The joke is that he devotes his Christmas show to subverting the season’s excesses. He works up to the minute on timely content for each performance, writing with hilarious and pan-themic irreverence for the season’s tropes. Regarding dangerous toy lists, e.g.: “My friend used to give her daughter plastic bags to play with from the cleaner, and the child loved it. ‘You just watch them,’ she said. You have to watch your children.”

When he’s not touring, Waters’ days are filled with other creative pursuits and live appearances. He has made a dozen movies and published nearly as many books but, like the commencement speech, he says, “I love to get all my work re-invented all the time.” He notes that his 1970 film Multiple Maniacs came out again this year, restored by the Criterion Collection—another stocking-stuffer alert.

Waters’ career would have made history had it ended with his 1972 film, Pink Flamingos. That movie, his second, at once defined and subverted the exploitation genre. His Hairspray has been a megahit in every medium, from the Broadway stage to children’s books and multiple internet sites. While the HBO sequel hasn’t yet been financed, it’s written, and production may be inevitable.

“I'm still participating in that business,” Waters says. “Hollywood's been fair to me. My movies satirized all the things that used to be in movies. But I don't really satirize special effects.”

Heather Stricker was still a rookie the first time she played Christine opposite Armen Dirtadian’s Phantom of the Opera. The year was 2001 and it was The Gaslight Theatre's third run of Peter Van Slyke’s original comedy adaptation. Dirtadian had played in all of them, as had Joe Cooper, currently portraying a prat-falling Madame Giry. Cooper’s been with the company 31 years.

Dirtadian says reprising that first performance with Stricker is his favorite aspect of the production’s current run, which continues through Sunday, Nov. 5. It’s part of Gaslight’s fortieth anniversary season. “She was out of college at the time, trained in opera as a grad student,” Dirtadian says. “When she called me (for the current production) I jumped on it.”

Stricker now acts in every production and serves as the company’s public relations director. “This is really the best talent in Tucson,” she says. “We do so many shows here that it's a full-time job for a lot of us. The opening cast tends to be the same for each run, so anybody who comes to see every show will always see the same faces.”

Repeatable, long-running productions with multiple stagings each week enable the company to budget for cast continuity and production values that smaller, more risk-taking companies can only dream about. The costumers who create the Phantom’s lavish look operate a retail shop that provides another onsite profit center as does Little Anthony's Diner, which supplies the theater’s food service.

The profitability of its enviable business model may contribute to the Gaslight’s perennial wins in Tucson Weekly’s Best of Tucson, but people come for the fun. “This is something that non-theater people enjoy,” Stricker says. “You can see live music, live performers, comedy ….” She might add that it’s as family-friendly as a Disney movie. Actors take pains to engage the young ones at the front tables, especially throughout the olio after each show. It’s a short, unrelated variety entertainment played almost entirely for laughs.

Putting the Phantom in context, Dirtadian says, “It might be a little serious here at the Gaslight.” That’s like calling Mabel a tragic figure in Pirates of Penzance. But Stricker explains, “The fall shows are a little darker, so you're seeing a kind of spookier one for Halloween. They're still hilarious!”

Gaslight tickets are $20.95, less for children and veterans. Details are can be found online. Tickets are available by phone or in person.

Plastic, paint, chemicals, tires, trash, batteries, appliances, human waste and even some body parts. All of these were incinerated by the US military and private contractors in burn pits during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Thousands of soldiers who were exposed to the toxic smoke returned home and found themselves sick with respiratory diseases and rare cancers.

Delay, Deny, Hope You Die, a recently completed documentary about the burn pits and their effects on soldiers, is screening at The Loft Cinema (3233 E. Speedway Blvd.) ,at 7:15 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 12.

Director/producer Greg Lovett first heard about the story when he read Joseph Hickman’s book, The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers, two years ago.

“When I read the book, I was just really disturbed and mad and upset that this is going on, and that nobody is really doing anything about and nobody really knows about it,” he said.

Lovett started the documentary a year later, and it took about a year to complete. The film interviews doctors, lawyers, journalists and sick soldiers, like Sgt. Brian Alvarado, who was exposed to the burn pits as a Marine in in Iraq and now has cancer, hyperthyroidism and a feeding tube that leaves him unable to work.

In a promotional clip of the film, Hickman explains that soldiers were producing at least nine pounds of trash a day in the early days of the way, and the military turned to burn pits to dispose of waste. But a temporary solution became a permanent health hazard when the burn pits remained open despite new options becoming available.

“I think most people don’t understand that this is even happening,” Lovett said. “Maybe with knowledge comes change”

Here’s the thing: in order to make sure the film’s one-night-only screening at the Loft actually happens, the showing needs to sell 74 tickets by Oct. 1. Buy your ticket today here for $10 and click here to view the trailer.