You might know Steff Koeppen as the piano-playing songstress fronting one of Tucson's more popular acts, Steff & The Articles, but Koeppen is working on something completely different now. With a new solo EP to be released, she's given listeners a sneak peak of what to expect from her new musical endeavors. 

While her band tends to go for a more jazzy, crooning and sometimes stripped-down orchestral take on sultry, her solo single "Celebrate," which was released on Tuesday, June 23, moves from moody beats to a bright chorus and, eventually, a brief electro breakdown. The lyrics beckon listeners to sing, dance, loosen up, live it up and, of course, celebrate. If you're looking for a summer pop jam off the mainstream consciousness, this might be it. 

You can check out Koeppen's new single "Celebrate" on Soundcloud now and we'll keep you updated on the details of her upcoming EP release.

Spend enough time in Tucson’s music scene and you will start to hear the term “the Tucson sound.” It comes straight from the musicians’ mouths, from the fans, from the reviews and is embedded in our long history of musicality.

What does it mean exactly? Well, like any other classification or genre identifier, there is no one right answer. Tucson sound, is maybe best described as music which embodies the preserving spirit of dwellers in a desert environment, which from the start appeared so inhabitable. Maybe it speaks to a certain mysticism that permeates beneath the hot sands. Maybe it is influence drawn from country, Latin music and desert rock.

Though the answer is subjective, many of Tucson’s die hard music enthusiasts can speak to what this sound has meant to them. Nostalgia is a reoccurring theme.

Club Congress, 311 East Congress St., has long cultivated a space to showcase the unique voice of Tucson artists and kind of stands as a museum documenting the search for this “sound.” The historic venue will take that niche and turn it literal with their upcoming “Tucson Rock n Roll Museum” exhibit.

The vision for the collection is to pay tribute to Tucson’s music history over the past half century, through the help of the community who was a part of it.

Congress is reaching out to this city’s musicians and fans for rock and roll memorabilia to include in the community driven museum. The guidelines are light and they are welcoming posters, photographs, newspaper clips and videos which help tell the story of “the sound.”

Calexico's Joey Burns took his ukulele to the WFUV Christmas Concert in 2013 and got Beth Orton, Sam Beam (Iron & Wine), Glen Hasnard (The Frames/Swell Season), Nick Lowe, Kathleen Edwards, Amos Lee and everyone in his band to sign the instrument. Then, while performing on Conan, Burns had Neko Case, Jon Rauhouse, Kelly Hogan and Eric Bachman make their mark on the ukulele as well.

Now Burns is auctioning off the signed ukulele as a fundraiser for Tucson's community radio station KXCI. The instrument itself is a Carlo Robelli soprano ukulele with a sapele body, nato neck, rosewood fingerboard and bridge and chrome tuners.

The auction ends on Wednesday, June 17, and with two days left, the auction is only up to $136 (at the time of this post). You can put your bid in by visiting the item's Bidding for Good page. The winner can either pick up the uke at KXCI headquarters (220 S. Fourth Ave.) or opt to pay for shipping. 

After you've had your Sunday brunch and taken your requisite post-brunch nap, head over to Che's Lounge to be serenaded by two harmonizing sirens now called Hestina. Sure, Sirens used to be the band's monicker, but that doesn't mean their entrancing vocals paired with a lone ukulele are any less alluring under the band's new name. 

The New Orleans based duo, comprised of Kimberly Vice and Michelle Ausman, plays at Che's, located at 350 N. Fourth Ave., on June 14 from 6 until 8 p.m. It is a 21 and over event and free to attend. 

Check out Hestina's song "Belong," coupled with some pretty cool puppet animation from the minds of Lee Garcia and Milissa Orzolek.

Belong from milissa orzolek on Vimeo.

Last night Abigail Washburn and her multi-Grammy-winning husband Béla Fleck brought the back porch to the Fox Theatre for an evening of community bonding over worldly, and world class banjo pickin'. The duo are on tour promoting their new self-titled duet album.

The playing was predictably dazzling, but the cozy relationships, between the two and with the crowd, were the show's highlights. Particular fun was Washburn's introduction of an original murder ballad. As she talked about her fondness for murder ballads in general, and the inspirations for the one she was about to sing, Fleck interjected commentary about how, when she starts playing murder ballads, he heads down to the basement  and starts fussing with resonator screws and finding uses for 3-in-One oil and a tiny Phillips head screwdriver.

A later conversation with the crowd focused on KXCI, which Washburn referred to as "that radio station that has the reputation for being so cool."

As Fleck has toured the world with his band, the Flecktones, he's won a cabinet-full of awards, performed with rock stars and jazz greats, and re-defined the whole point of a banjo. Washburn has meanwhile become a global diplomat and collector of Asian instruments and musical aesthetics. Last night she gave a master class in how to engage a crowd as if inviting them onstage, and proved she is a whale of a clog dancer.

Her background may even be the more remarkable of the pair. It certainly explains some of the hints of Oriental influences in both their music. From her website:

"Washburn is one of the few foreign artists currently touring China independently and regularly. She completed a month-long tour (Nov-Dec 2011) of China's Silk Road supported by grants from the US Embassy, Beijing. Abigail ... gave a talk at the 2012 TED Convention in Long Beach about building US-China relations through music. In March of 2013, she was commissioned by New York Voices and the NY Public Theater to write and debut a theatrical work titled, Post-American Girl, which draws from her 17-year relationship with China and addresses themes of expanding identity, cultural relativism, pilgrimage, the universal appeal of music and opening the heart big enough to fold it all in. Abigail was recently named the first US-China Fellow at Vanderbilt University. Her efforts to share US music in China and Chinese music in the US exist within a hope that cultural understanding and the communal experience of beauty and sound rooted in tradition will lead the way to a richer existence."

The duo's "evening with" performance was a musical adventure from the heart of Americana to parts unknown, studded with cultural gems from all over the globe. It was a benefit for the Sonoran Institute, which, among many conservation projects throughout the Southwest, is working to restore and protect the lower Santa Cruz River. Such environmental concerns are also near to Washburn's heart. She participates in the Nature Conservancy's All Hands on Earth program which highlights artists' engagement with nature. Other participants include Glen Hansard, La Santa Cecilia and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.

For those looking to inject some eerie vibes into their day, look no further than Human Behavior's new music video created by local visual artist Nika Kaiser. Blending visual Kaiser's penchant for the supernatural and use of desert scenery, the video is trippy and even a little unsettling. That, combined with the twangy and dark sounds of the song, which is simply titled "Chapter 3," the video takes you on part of a journey, but certainly leaves you wanting more. The jarring shouts, the screeching ambient background noise and drawling guitar vocalization on the track only lends to the mystery.


"Chapter 3" can be found on Human Behavior's newest release Bethpage. Tucson Weekly's most recent feature of the band had this to say of the album:

Asian Fred, the new musical project from singer-songwriter-guitarist Fred Huang, is releasing a video for the band’s first single, "Jonestown Shuffle," today as they prepare for a July residency at R Bar.

Huang most recently led Of the Painted Choir, a Phoenix band that played regularly in Tucson. Influenced by ‘60s pop, R&B and Motown, Asian Fred moves away from the folkier sounds that inspired Of the Painted Choir.

“With Asian Fred, I feel like I have a better grasp of what I want to do musically and what I want to express. I hope the new stuff shows some maturity in my songwriting ability,” Huang said via email.

After moving back to Tucson, he recruited drummer Steven Yanez Romo (Electric Blankets, Ghostal), lead guitarist Noah Horton (Holy Rolling Empire, Texas Justice) and Kyle Gutierrez (The Swim, The Mean Reds) on bass and vocals.

“The band kind of fell into place and just worked out,” Huang said. “Romo asked if he could join the band on a Facebook post after I posted a demo. At that time, Kyle had just moved back to Tucson from Brooklyn and didn't have a project. One night out, he asked if he could play bass and I was happy to have him on board. Noah was the only member that I recruited. I originally assumed he wouldn't have time and wouldn't be interested in joining another project, but we were hanging out and Noah expressed that he missed playing lead guitar and singing backup.”

One of the strongest ties that bind Tucson's musicians together, it seems, is a clear sense of place that permeates through genre and styling to form a cohesive, though not necessarily analogous, aural motif that just feels like the Sonoran desert. Although Ryne Warner freely admits not being from here initially, his music, performed under the title OHIOAN, offers a collective music making experience informed by the desert surroundings.

"The point of the band is to be admittedly an outsider. I don’t pretend to be from here," Warner says. "I'm sure I'd make totally different music if I was in Berlin, but I'm here grabbing ideas from everywhere."

While many of OHIOAN's former recorded works were released in a more "documentary" approach, meaning recorded essentially live as they would be played in concert, the band's forthcoming release EMPTY / EVERY MT is a more ambitious and "theatrical" approach to recording. The drawback here being, the more ambitious the project, the more studio time (and therefore money) needed to actually release the record.

That's where you come in. Warner says he and his band are seeking $4,300 to release EMPTY / EVERY MT, which was almost entirely recorded already at Dry River Studios by Andrew Colberg and now just needs to be mixed, edited and mastered.

"It's not a joke, if that's what you're asking," a representative from iHeartRadio responded when asked about the flurry of doubt surrounding a recently announced Lil Wayne show in Tucson.

The links and rumors are true. Lil Wayne will be playing at Club XS on Tuesday, June 30 as a Hot 98.3 promotional concert in support of the New Orleans-based rapper's "Sorry 4 the Wait 2" mixtape release. In fact, presale kicked off today for the tickets, which are $60 or $100, depending on which price tier you opt for. According to the Hot 98.3 website, you can use the promo code HOT to buy tickets to the event today

"It's cause he can't do concerts right now so he's doing club nights," she went on to explain, "It's due to some legal issues with his label, but that's all I know."

Club XS operated out of the old DV8 Night Club on Speedway Boulevard between Wilmot and Craycroft roads. The venue, located at 5851 E. Speedway Blvd., boasts 13,000 square feet of club space.

According to the website, there are a limited 1,000 tickets available. The tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, June 5 at noon via Brown Paper Tickets.

You know the drill. Fill out our form to be entered to win a pair of tickets to see Shuggie Otis. We'll pick a winner at 2 p.m. on Thursday.