Every year since the passing of Nowhere Man and A Whiskey Girl's Derrick and Amy Ross, we've written about the people they've left behind and the work they've done to make sure the husband-wife music duo are not forgotten through a benefit show for the Southern Arizona Lupus Foundation. This week, in a mini music feature, we gave you notice of Saturday's show at The Flycatcher. We're giving you notice the next couple of days, because we're certain with Jimmy Eat World returning to Tucson for this special night, it will sell out.

But we also want to make sure it's understood how special this event is. Yes, as a fundraiser you will hear a lot about lupus—complications from this disease took Amy away from the Tucson and Bisbee communities. But you will hear the music of NMWG from local music—many dear friends of the couple—who do want to make sure the music is heard, loved and celebrated.

On Saturday, Nov. 14, the Third Benefit to Fight Lupus takes place at the Flycatcher (340 E. Sixth St.).

So cheers to Bryan Sanders, Jimi Giannatti and Keli Carpenter for continuing this benefit and not forgetting their friends. We're lucky to have these dear people call Tucson home, just as we were lucky to have Amy and Derrick give us their music. Go. Remember. And yes, celebrate.

Calexico has a eerie new video for "Bullets and Rocks," a grim vision of the future from 2015's "Edge of the Sun." 

The band is back on a European tour but they'll be playing Portland's Crystal Ballroom on New Year's Eve if you don't have plans yet.

You likely know of STEFF KOEPPEN [sic] as the jazzy frontwoman of Steff & the Articles, but the Tucsonan is stepping out (though not leaving the band by any means) and into her own solo work. Although her new EP, Game We Play, isn't coming out until Nov. 20, TW got an exclusive release of one of her new songs. 

Decidedly poppier with even some Lorde vibes, KOEPPEN's distinguishing her own unique voice in the scope of truly radio-friendly jams. Plus, with the release of "Celebrate," as well as "Something Like This" on other sites, you can get a pretty good idea of what KOEPPEN's new electro-pop project will look like—and it's lookin' pretty good.

So, without further ado, here's "What Am I Doing Here":

Vintage guitars, amplifiers, synthesizers and rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia have a new home on Fourth Avenue.

Chamber of Sounds Vintage Music Emporium will be open from Wednesday through Christmas Eve at the site of the old Tucson Herb Store, 408 N. Fourth Ave.

The pop-up music shop is an extension of the Chamber of Sounds business run by Jamie Laboz (of The Modeens), who produces effects pedals and analog synthesizers. Joining Laboz in the brick-and-mortar shop is fellow musician and collector Brian Green (Leila Lopez Band).

“We’ve talked about doing a store for a few years, but we just couldn’t find the right space,” Laboz says.

But when the opportunity came about to open a temporary spot, to sell instruments and various vintage gear through the holiday season and the Fourth Avenue Street Fair, Laboz and Green decided to test the waters.

“This is an ideal location,” Green says. “The streetcar stop is right out front, there’s foot traffic all up and down Fourth Avenue and Wooden Tooth Records is right accross the street.”

The musicians have both been collectors for years, and say finding the right instrument or piece of gear at the right time can unlock the perfect sound for a new band or recording project.

“We’ve both just accumulated a lot of gear and for the most part it’s stuff we’ve used, but a lot of it we haven’t touched in a year or more,” Laboz says. “I’m selling a guitar that was all I played for years, but it’s time to let someone else play it now.”

In addition to instruments like guitars, bass guitars and analog synthesizers, the shop will sell amplifiers and effects pedals from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as new ones handmade locally. Rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, like old magazines, books, shirts and vinyl, will round out the stock.

Multicolored stage lighting, a turntable playing psychedelic rock and a couch for people to chill out on will add to the store’s ambience.

“It’s going to be like a living room with a really funky vibe,” Laboz says. “We want people to come here and feel comfortable hanging out.”

The Chamber of Sounds Vintage Music Emporium will be open from Nov. 4 through Dec. 24, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. from Wednesday through Friday and from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. 

Tucson's Sun Bones just came out with a new video for their song arms and it's just the kind of thing to get you in the spirit of the season. While All Souls will celebrate loved ones lost, incorporating bright colors and ornate alters, Halloween is coming up too and that's all about being spooky and maybe even seeking sweet, sweet revenge. Well, folks, the "Arms" video has a little of column A and a little of column B.

Compared to Sun Bones' typically lush and a little funky jams, "Arms" is much more sullen and sparse. The video follows in suit thematically, using automata from Hoodoo Projects and sculptures from Bryn Fraker, all through the lens of director Timothy Reckart. There are also a few great homages to some favorite Old Pueblo spots, both here and gone. 

So, check it out:

Sun Bones - Arms from Timothy Reckart on Vimeo.

Alright, maybe that headline was a tad misleading, but you should check out this vintage Marvel comics magazine cover courtesy of io9 that depicts Tucson's patron saint of twang in an actual supergroup with C-3PO on drums, Captain American on bass and Dr. Strange on guitar. The February 1978 issue of Pizzazz also promises a "scintillatin'" poster of Dr. J that I'd really like to see.


Pretty cool, right?

Linda Rondstadt also played in Tucson with another supergroup—The Rolling Stones—that same year. Coincidence? I think so. But still, you should listen to this:

The latest release from Fort Lowell Records, the vinyl-focused label founded in Tucson in 2010, is out this week and it’s a new project from a couple of familiar faces.

Band & The Beat is a synth-pop duo of singer Tracy Shedd and her husband James Tritten, who lived in Tucson for seven years before moving to North Carolina in 2013.

Shedd’s 2008 Cigarettes & Smoke Machines and it’s follow up, 2013’s Arizona were recorded in Tucson at WaveLab Studio and Fort Lowell Records, which sprang from Tritten’s love of vinyl records, put out singles from local bands such as Young Mothers, Dead Western Plains, Andrew Collberg and Howe Gelb.

The label’s first full-length album was the tribute record Luz de Vida: A Compilation to Benefit the Victims of the Tucson Tragedy. LPs from Saint Maybe, La Cerca and Naïm Amor would follow, with the label committed to Tucson bands even after Tritten and Shedd relocated to Raleigh.

It was in Tucson that Shedd and Tritten began moving from a full band arrangement to playing as a duo, first using an iPhone drum machine with electric guitars and then performing as a stripped-down acoustic duo. The new project came about as Shedd and Tritten were just jamming at home.

“We were just having fun down in our basement, messing around with some stuff, just trying to create some different sounds with her electric piano,” Tritten says. “On a Saturday afternoon, we’d been messing with it all day long and we just weren’t happy with the sound, so at 8 at night I got frustrated and went on Craigslist and typed in the word ‘synthesizer.’ I knew the sound I was trying to get out was basically a synthesized sound and by 10 that night we bought an analog synthesizer. We stayed up playing music literally all through the night.”


The two-song digital 45 from Band & The Beat is a shift away from both the electric-guitar indie rock and the acoustic Arizona, with analog drum machine and Tritten and Shedd both trading in guitars for synthesizers.

“We didn’t want to make a Tracy Shedd record that was all of a sudden a synth-pop record, so we decided to give the project it’s own name,” Tritten says. “Tracy has played piano her whole life, but she’s been learning how to program synthesizers and make the sounds she wants. I understood a little about how to program them, but I never personally played keyboards before.”

And though the “21 / Buoy” single, the 16th release from Fort Lowell Records, is limited to digital at this point, Tritten wants to return to the label’s origins and press a 7-inch record as well.

“We would love to put it on vinyl. I’m hoping to at some point,” he says. “But we were so excited about this project and we both liked it so much that we didn’t want to wait. It’s very easy for us with Fort Lowell to put it out as fast as possible.”

In the meantime, Tritten says, look for more digital 45s from Band & The Beat. You can buy the newest release by visiting the label's Bandcamp page.

It's something like being at a Jimmy Buffett concert, and, up front, a Justin Timberlake concert (is he still relevant to reference?). Everyone just wants to sing along and sway and forget being an adult. Things don't have to be so hard. Or, conversely, they want to get tangled in a mess of limbs that can only be described as a human pretzel. For Mac Demarco fans, both dreams became realities last night at Rialto Theatre at a sold out show.

Mac Demarco has a way about him. It could be the boyish smile, Canadian chill vibes or that gap between his teeth (sigh), but the moment "Mac Daddy" (yes, someone called him that) took the stage voices were blown and phones were up. I had expected this sort of crowd response from Father John Misty, but Demarco's giddy fanbase came as kind of a surprise.

His simple, relaxed and distorted stoner rock is realistically not the most impressive or technically intricate thing I've seen. In fact, (and I do listen to his music enough) some of his songs sound almost exactly the same before the lyrics kick in. Certain choruses progress the same as others. Sorry, it's true.  But, to his credit, dude can pack a room. If I were to guess why, it's because everyone kind of just wants to hang out with him and his goofy bandmates, smoke some stuff and get real weird. Their stage banter was the right amount of inclusive to make any audience member feel like, "Oh hey, me and this dude could totally kick it."

So, pull up a chair and kick it with Mac Demarco:

 

From the moment their debut single “Touch Me I’m Sick” was released in 1988, Mudhoney has defined the Seattle sound. Nearly three decades later, the band is still playing loud, wild rock music, even as countless imitators—as well as storied peers like Nirvana—have come and gone.

“The most important thing is we all just get along with each other and we all really like what we do,” says singer-guitarist Mark Arm. “We’ll take pretty long breaks sometimes, so when we all get back together it feels great.”

“Touch Me I’m Sick” became a grunge touchstone, pulling influences from garage and punk bands together into a song as catchy as it was raw. And though the band would release three records on Reprise, “Touch Me I’m Sick” began a relationship with Sub Pop that continues to this day. Arm also manages the label’s warehouse.

“It’s great and it feels really unique,” Arm says. “I’ve been working here at Sub Pop for 10 years and I’ve seen bands come and go on the label and that happens more often than not. For us to have a place that we can call home feels really, really great.”


Celebrating Sub Pop’s 25th anniversary in 2013, Mudhoney performed on top of the Space Needle, 605 feet above the town the band helped make famous for its music scene.

“It was cool, weird of course,” Arm says. “Luckily I wasn’t at the edge. (Guitarist) Steve (Turner) was so it was fine with me. Right where Steve was, the railing went from solid piece of metal to a wire. It was a total trip. We were standing on a little chunk of a platform that most people will never get to go.”

That summer also saw the release of Mudhoney’s ninth studio album, “Vanishing Point,” a return to the quintessential superfuzz sound that reached No. 9 on Billboard’s Heatseeker’s chart, tying the band’s previous best. While most of their peers and imitators have gone by the wayside, quit or pulled out acoustic guitars as they’ve gotten older, Mudhoney are still churning out raw tunes, brimming with punk energy.


“It’s a hard thing to put a finger on and explain,” Arm says. “Sometimes things are better felt than talked about. It’s just the sound that comes out when the four of us play together. Everything gets reduced to the common ground that the four of us have.”

On tour this fall amidst work on a new songs, Mudhoney will play career-spanning sets.

“We try to hit every record. There’s always something that gets lost here and there, but there’s plenty of early stuff and plenty of recent stuff,” Arm says.

There’s no set date for a new Mudhoney record, but Arm says the band is in the same groove as ever.

“We’re slowly working on new stuff, but it’s hard to get any momentum going when you take a month off,” Arm says. “We don’t have a principal songwriter or anything. We’re really a collaborative band and I like working that way. Sometimes it’s a little slower.”


Mudhoney
With The Freeks
8 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 21
Club Congress
311 E. Congress St.
$20-$24,
622-8848
hotelcongress.com

TW contributor Robert Deming hit the brutal streets of Tucson last weekend to bring you some glimpses of the Southwest Terror Fest. Saturday night's Sleep show at the Rialto Theatre and Sunday's Acid King concert were two of the most anticipated events featured at Terror Fest this year.

So, without further ado, here are the face melting bands and fans of the 2015 Southwest Terror Fest...