I came to Leonard Cohen admittedly late. It seems we took a long break from each other ...

But I first heard heard his Songs of Leonard Cohen LP in 1969. It was a youth group from my church and the leader put on "Suzanne" twice as we wrote on a legal pad how we felt after hearing this song twice.

The sense of words unpacking a suitcase of what love does to you if your not careful, I'm pretty sure I was much more generic and if I wrote two sentences then I was pleased.

That song hovered here and there in my teens, flitting from flower to flower like a butterfly, aware of his 20-some year career until one day when a friend accosted me, made me sit down and listen to Cohen's "Hallelujah." The time was '85 or '86 and word went he'd recorded tons of versions, and finally came to settle on this one. It had power with a subtle grain of wood that led all direction one way, a spiritual one with as few words could speak such texture. (At that particular moment I was fairly far away from that procession of the divine.)

In the mid-'90s he continued to make his records stark, full of space, "Everybody Knows," "The Future," and more, all made their way to the screen bringing this poet's music to a younger audience while his peers followed the changes in his brand.

The Cohen documentary, I'm Your Man, played to good reviews. The track "Tower of Song" got extensive airplay at public radio. There was an acceptance of his artistry that broke through genres.

He was so full of words, written against the grain, in slow, seductive lines, modernism, rarely pretentious and one of the world's true poets. His live shows sold out. His time was heavily sought. And I might guess, he tried to stay just outside the star machinations that ruined so many from his generation and those to come.

With Cohen no longer among us and faced with which song of his to choose from a catalog so vast, so well known and so widely loved, for me, it is "Going Home," an intimate piece of a moment between Leonard and his god, off his 2012 album, Old Ideas, that is the most appropriate selection for this purpose.

That song is in my eyes a reconciliation with god, a slow shuffle brings it on, created by a snare drum brushed in two strokes. In it you find the mighty and in it you find the weak, a bloodletting true to his work on recording, or on page, or maybe in how he looked at a fan in the seventh row. We are in a dark place, but a right place, a Rhodes keyboard and still the damn shuffle, "going home," and the listener, a conversation he believes god would have him. The first words sparkle, drops of a morning's refuge, this is a still-life of what he is to hear. Alone, the intimacy, first words, a conversation, the belief that god is speaking straight to you (I'd love to speak with Leonard/He is a sportsman and a shepherd/He is a lazy bastard living in a suit/Going home without my sorrow/Going home sometime tomorrow/Going home to where it's better than before).

Leonard Cohen: Sept. 21, 1934 - Nov. 7, 2016.

The gentrified streets of downtown Tucson Friday night were packed. Music was everywhere. First, Tom Walbank, armed with a Danelectro electric guitar, a slide, a tiny Marshall amp and a harmonica, entertained an early evening crowd under a small tent in the Hotel Congress plaza. This Englishman (and Tucson resident) is a veritable blues encyclopedia, a devotee of the form. He sang with command everything from Muddy Waters to Hambone Willie Newbern to Tampa Red, and his distinctive blues playing captured the ears of music junkies and passersby as diners ate their repast al fresco.

Over on Toole Avenue, Night of the Living Fest was happening. A behemoth stage, food trucks, a repurposed school bus belonging to Old Paint Records, and a silk screener customizing t-shirts dominated the fenced-off outdoor area. Massive speaker bins bookended the well-lit stage, and the adjacent warehouse boasted an equally well-equipped indoor stage.

Night of the Living Fest, “A celebration of the weird,” took place November 4 through 6, and featured more than 40 bands.

Lenguas Largas
Lenguas Largas took mightily to the stage. Boasting three percussionists—like Cerberus the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to the Underworld—they performed “Ese Culito,” a fever inducing garage/soul/psych jam whose title translates loosely to “That Lil’ Ass” was the highwater mark of their set. As the applause waned a couple of long-haired dudes shouted out, “You old bastards rocked it hard!” Indeed, they did.

The Resonars
The Resonars described as “The Sound of Electricity plus” delivered a rad set of ‘60s folk rock and British-invasion influenced tunes with lush three-part harmonies, Keith Moon-esque drumming and wicked guitar playing. During the pop brilliance of “World Apart,” Matt Rendon reached back and cranked up every remaining knob on his beat-to-shit, yet firebreathing Marshall amp that wasn't already dimed and exploded into feedback-laden string bending bliss. That alone was worth the price of admission.


Feels
Fronted by Laena Geronimo, daughter of DEVO drummer   Alan Myers, Feels delivered  an inspired set of garage- and punk-influenced songs from their self-titled debut LP  on Ty Segall's “home-cooked” Castle Face Records imprint. Three chicks rocked their asses off. Moreover,  it was their over-top energy, fuzzy guitars, smart songwriting and swagger that won over the young crowd clamoring at the edge of the indoor stage.  

The Sloths
In ‘65, The Sloths released a single “Makin’ Love,” hit fabled Sunset Strip then imploded in ‘66. After a dormancy, they reformed in 2011. Narrative songs like “One Way Out” possessed an epic, “People Who Died” quality; the musicians were solid. But not everyone can be like Jim Carroll was, or dare to try. 

Guantanamo Baywatch
Brimming with kinetic energy, a slamming drummer and reverb-drenched guitar tones lifted from the blessed hellride that is The Ventures “Hawaii Five-O,” Guantanamo Baywatch killed with their swampy fusion of surf, garage and rockabilly, and delivered a set of pure trashy fun.

The Shivas
Somewhere ‘round midnight a sizeable congregation stood in devout worship before the stage where The Shivas performed as many revelers began to about-face leaving the personification of the Hindu god—the destroyer of ego and ultimately the universe—behind.

Other notables on the bill: The Canadian American garage rock of Peach Kelli Pop, Newcastle, Australia’s self-proclaimed “shit pop” of Gooch Palms, Hollywood glam combo Hammered Satin and the occult glam of Death Valley Girls.

We are going to break the rules here today. Why? ’Cause it is somewhere between or beneath the 2016 election (the Presidential one), the classy one, where all the dirty tricks are pulled out for our displeasure and this year it would seem the usual suspects are popping out of voting booths everywhere. The FBI is a given but, man, Boris and his aging KGB clique may get their chance to shine. Not like afro-sheen but Charlie Sheen (living in Barrio Libre) rumor has it.

Stay with me, whatever nasty tricks have happened yet, we the people are at work, or at the park jogging the twins, or drunk, or flying a sign with some poly sci third-grade scrawling whose spelling alone probably brings this messy cat in 60 bucks before noon.

Now I introduce not one cabinet not even a flying cabinet to this World 's Fair 2016. It's held in Houston I hear at Six Flags Over Texas. Texas is a foreign country metaphysically speaking and I ain't got the strength to say no. Good riddance to the Texans.

Laura Nyro, bless her heart, was a young Jewish songwriter from the Bronx. She was one-half Brill Building, one fourth grand piano, and colored fingernails, Gypsy Rosalie, and one-hundred percent original American songstress who sold her first hit at 16 or 17 (her age depends on who you ask). The song was “And When I Die,” not “Pass the Dutchie,” or anything in the Jonas Brothers catalogue. She was the real deal. They (the record industry) came to her. Men who loved and understood her, like Clive Davis and David Geffen, got their hearts broken in two by Ms. Nyro ... 

I woke up and put on an old interview I have with Nyro and it's is full of mystic shit, jokes about Jersey, and her words can only be her own, she was one a kind.

I wrote about this band way back in 2004 (with photog Doug Coombe) and that’s when I first met its piano man Eddie Harsch. Before that I'd often see him down in Greektown, in downtown Detroit, scoring weed. Now the tall, lanky Harsch just looked so lived in; he moved with a stoner's grace, like he had a total comfort about himself, an earned soul. He looked way older than his years, and he knew more about music from the American South than anyone I’d ever met, even in Detroit, and that’s saying a helluva lot. He played the piano and Hammond B3 organ with absolute grace too; his beautiful counterpoint lines and runs exercised perfect restraint, even on the flat-out rock ’n’ rollers. You can hear him on Black Crowes records, like Amorica and Three Snakes and One Charm. (Harsch co-wrote “Silver Car,” the best song by far on Chris Robinson’s solo debut, New Earth Mud). He played in the Crowes for years. 

Harsch was also in this band Bulldog, in Detroit, fronted by my friend, gifted singer-songwriter Kenny Tudrick. (The quartet also included pedal steel player Pete Ballard, another wholly undersung Detroiter.) They made one absolute gem of an album, which blended a kind of melancholy Gram Parsons, and Neil Young and The Band, or something like that, and it had real gentle power. No one cared about Bulldog in Detroit, or anywhere else. Timing is everything, of course, and these guys really were a bunch of stoners. They should've been huge. Their sound was their own because this guy Tudrick is the real thing—seek out his solo records, they hum and they soar—and Eddie Harsch was the real thing too. I just found out that Harsch had died yesterday, and it's heartbreaking. He was playing with Rich Robinson again. A gentle giant to be sure.

This song, "Crash and Burn" is lovely, in an "Out on the Weekend" kinda way. Watch Tudrick, Harsch and Bulldog in the vid below.

Austin’s James McMurtry writes songs with the richness of novels, his characters struggling through life’s trials in vignettes sculpted as vivid as the world in front of your eyes.

Touring in support of Complicated Game, his ninth studio album and his first in six years, McMurtry will perform at Club Congress on Thursday, Nov. 3. Doors open at 7 p.m. and tickets are $17 in advance and $20 day of show.

No stranger to Tucson, McMurtry attended the UA for a time in the 1980s, while his father, Pullitzer Prize-winning novelist Larry McMurtry, splits his time between Texas and Tucson.

At 54, James McMurtry remarkably is turning better with age, with Complicated Game garnering some of the best reviews of the celebrated songwriter’s career. It’s a record that revolves around relationships, a dense and thoughtful batch of songs that finds its characters in an array of familiar moods: hopeful, spiteful, perseverant, patient, thankful and ornery.

“The songs that I managed to get in time to make the record seem to be about relationships. The producer didn’t want to mess with political songs. Everybody loves women; everybody hates politics, so get away from that,” says McMurtry, whose best-known song, 2005’s “We Can’t Make It Here,” chronicled the miseries that George W. Bush’s failures inflicted on the country.

Complicated Game (released last February on the label of the same name) is filled with sharply observant story songs like "Copper Canteen," “These Things I’ve Come to Know” and “You Got to Me,” but McMurtry says changes in the music industry have him focused on touring more than ever.

“When we first talked about doing this it was like five years ago. You can see that we're moving pretty fast,” says Mike Sydloski, frontman for The Dracula Kite: Songs of The Cure, early in the set. Replete with black eyeliner, de rigeur for a band paying homage to goth popsters The Cure, The Dracula Kite took the Surly Wench stage late Friday night to an enthusiastic crowd.

Their name's part of a lyric in the song “Perfect Murder” from the ’83 album Blue Sunshine by The Glove, a spinoff project featuring Cure man Robert Smith and Siouxsie & The Banshees guitarist Steve Severin.

The Dracula Kite is vet Tucson musicians Chris Callahan (guitar and keyboard), Mike Sydloski (vocals and guitar), Daniel Thomas (drums) and David Hostetler (bass). They are busy dudes, playing in Atom Heart Mother: A Tribute to Pink Floyd and involved individually in other local bands like Jillian & The Giants, Shrimp Chaperone and others.

“Mike and I have known each other since we were six or seven,” Hostetler says. "Our dads were in the Air Force and they were best friends. One of the reasons we started that band [Atom Heart Mother] was because our dads were huge fans of music, and big fans of Pink Floyd, so it was kind of a way of thanking our dads for turning us into music junkies.”

Few Tucson bands in recent years have been as polarizing as Burning Palms. Regarded and derided equally as soulful psych-rockers and charlatans, accomplished, economical players and untrained musicians who can barely hold together a primitive racket, visionaries and overly reliant on image—Burning Palms are actually all of these things. The group, under the tutelage of singer/guitarist/songwriter Simone Stopford, is a complex and multi-layered animal.

Ostensibly a psych/garage revival band, Stopford’s songs are handcrafted pop under the veneer of swirling guitars and tribal drums, which means that the band’s music has aged far better than many of its early-2010s garage revivalist peers. Furthermore, I have little doubt that the upcoming Burning Palms record (recorded by Stopford with a completely different line-up than 2014’s self-titled album) will contain nary a trace of the previous ‘60s-flavored sound.

“Hologram” skitters along on a divided Bo Diddley beat that starts and stops until the familiar shuffle is gone. Stopford and co-vocalist Julia DeConcini stomp and dance atop the rhythm, disappearing and appearing again in the holes in the music like the artificial image of the track’s title and mumbled, sighed lyrics.

The song marches around in a circle for a couple of minutes, almost aimlessly. But the abrupt ending pulls the preceding sounds into focus—by playing around with silence and noise and beats, “Hologram” actually resembles its namesake. And for a band with a seemingly unlimited bag of tricks, banishing the laws of reality in their own music ranks with the best of them. Go see see them Tuesday, Nov. 1 at 191 Toole with Thee Oh Sees. Doors at 7.

Electronic dance music's popularity has increased tremendously among millennials in Tucson because of its unique, vibrant sound. Surprisingly, electronic music is not considered just one specific genre, but includes genres such as: drum and bass, dubstep, hard-style, trance, glitch hop and house.

This increase in electronic music has brought many new artists from around the world to come and perform in the city, and one of those is Seven Lions, who has been rapidly rising as an electronic artist since 2010.

Seven Lions, also known as Jeff Montalvo, is a famous producer and DJ from Santa Barbara, California who specializes in trance, electro house, glitch hop, drum and bass and dubstep music. He recently held a concert at the Rialto Theater on Oct. 25 as part of his new tour called, "The Journey Tour," and the venue was completely packed full with eager, dance-music lovers!

The crowd was full of energy, and when Seven Lions finally came on stage around 11pm, everyone was immediately taken by his performance and were jumping around, dancing with their friends and enjoying the distinct, creative sounds Montalvo creates behind the scenes!

According to the Seven Lions website, Montalvo "has always been driven to transcend musical boundaries to satisfy his creative vision." He also toured with other electronic artists such as Porter Robinson and Krewella who moved him to innovate and refine his productions and performances.

Seven Lions is a unique artist because he believes touring and making music is a way to inspire people, while also exploring the world and visiting new places around the country. Also, as part of his efforts to inspire, he donates $1 from every ticket sold on the tour to support the F Cancer foundation, a nonprofit Canadian charity focused on prevention, early detection and supporting those affected by cancer. This charity is very important to him as an artist, and that in itself is enough to make him very inspiring.

"The Journey tour is about taking the great opportunity to travel around the country on a bus and actually exploring and not just sitting in hotels," Montalvo said. "It's a big beautiful planet and there is so much diversity so we are going to try and hit a bunch of cool places along the way."

In the past couple of years, Seven Lions has also played Maya Day & Night Club and Livewire venues in Scottsdale and also Crush festival by Insomniac in Phoenix. He said there is "always lots of energy from fans in Arizona who come to jam with me."

I'm sure Seven Lions will be returning back to Arizona shortly after that unforgettable performance at the Rialto Theater.

Nino’s Steakhouse once sat on a sad stretch of North First Avenue. “Not just for Cowboys ...” read their logo’s tagline. Yet there were plenty of pointy-toed cowboy boots on feet of regulars and barflys, but most of those never once walked anywhere near cow dung pastures or stepped into a saddle stirrup. 

This steakhouse was a spawning ground for the post-punk Tucson music scene in the early ’80s, and probably the birthplace of post-punk’s petulant bastard child “desert rock.” Here, in this restaurant by day, sweaty music incubator by night, I saw singer-songwriter/producer Howe Gelb performing with the Giant Sandworms for the first time.

It takes years for a worthy artist to find and develop their voice. And Gelb is unequivocally a tenacious artist. He started humbly, playing the low-ceilinged backroom at Nino’s to a handful of people.

It’d be egregiously remiss to not acknowledge and commend Gelb’s musical evolution and prolific output—one could easily stay up for a couple of days straight, fueled by caffeine, and still not have listened to all of the songs that Gelb has written and recorded or played on—that spans a three-decade long career. Dude’s insanely accomplished. His is staggering body of work, and it’s easy to lose count; some 50 albums, which include critically acclaimed records such as 1998’s Hisser, 2000’s Chore of Enchantment, 2006’s Sno’ Angel Like You, 2008’s ProVisions and 2013’s The Coincidentalist.

Gelb has also been featured in numerous films: Drunken Bees (1996), Looking for a Thrill: An Anthology of Inspiration (2005), High and Dry: Where the Desert Meets Rock and Roll (2006), This Band Has No Members (2006) and Ingenious (2009).

There is a tree of life whose fruit-heavy branches span far and wide with Gelb comprising the roots and trunk: Giant Sandworms, Giant Sand, The Band of Blacky Ranchette, Rainer & Das Combo, Friends of Dean Martinez, John Convertino, Joey Burns, Arizona Amp and Alternator, OP8, Calexico, Brian Lopez, Gabriel Sullivan are but some of the fruit.  

In addition, Gelb has twisted lots of knobs, even co-produced Scottish singer/songwriter KT Tunstall’s fifth studio album Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon (2013) on which he also co-wrote and sang on several songs. Gelb produced Sylvie the great 2014 debut album by Sylvie Simmons esteemed writer, former editor at Mojo and biographer who penned I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (published by Ecco in 2012). He did John Doe’s latest.

Louise Le Hir is one of those people you meet and you’re not for sure where it is she’s going but you’re damn sure she’s gonna get there. She called early one fall morning two years ago, asked if I’d like to go with her to a studio where she was making her first record, meet the owner and take in some music, see the setup. I was drinking my first cup of coffee when she pulled up in a small car that wouldn’t shift into first or second gear, making a short drive more dangerous than usual. But there’s little that’s usual about Louise. She’d been in Tucson seven years, give or take, playing, singing, drinking men under the table, and doing her music slow and patient. She stands out, a natural with long wispy brown hair, a low pitch in her speaking voice, a hint of the Midwest twisting through a throaty laugh, long legs that carried a complex life full of people and places where you don’t go but rather end up, just the same.

Amongst chords, equipment and a drum kit, I met Matt Rendon, the young, motivated music lover who had made a sort of umbrella of different bands, his bands, mainly The Resonars, and projects all out of Rendon’s midtown studio. A large amount of his work comes out on super-buzzed Burger Records in California. He seems inspired by singles, A and B sides that once stood for creative achievement in three minutes, that blew out of the radio like a precious sledge hammer. He also relates to ’60s pop, but he ain’t stuck in a decade long gone; nah, he just has earnest love affair with music. He is unpretentious and warm. He’s recording music that he feels makes a difference.

So I took a chair in a corner of the room and asked if I could hear a finished tune from the month they’d been working slow but steady. Matt gave me headphones and Louise asked him to que “Cosmic Love Song No. 23” for me. The snare drum rolls into an uptempo groove, Lana Rebel holds up the bottom on bass guitar. It is full on. Louise chipping away at her Les Paul Jr. as she begins a narration of a lover’s ups and downs, free of metaphor or apology. Harmonies come strong and large behind her words, an amalgamation of Billy Sherrill’s production sound adjoining some sharp lost Byrds track when Gene Clark was burning up songs like cigarettes. The first verse ends and the chorus busts wide open, pedal steel solo fresh, free of indulgence, just lonesome hearts splashed against Jackson Pollock’s canvas. Connor "Catfish" Gallaher’s solo rings to the heavens and the next verse is moving as we try to stay with it. Louise belts out grace without pretense and we hit that chorus one more time: And I only fall in love to feel the pain/Ain’t no ordinary thing I can explain/I need life to keep on livin’/I love you for your misgivin’s/And I only fall in love to feel the pain. It’s like one beautiful paper cut you bear for its magic and then the song slows and a single chord rings.

This is a haunting, gorgeous song, comes in under four minutes, and later this month a
video of this pearl will be out for all to watch, once and then again and again.