Rock battle, Shakes-beer, Joesler tour: 5 Tucson events this weekend

When the discussions were concluded and the debates settled, the judges selected Weird Guilty Pleasures, Roman Barten-Sherman and the Interstellar Blues Orchestra, Creating The Scene, The Looks and Kyle Gallardo to compete in Saturday’s battle — the rejuvenated contest of a similar battle the hotel hosted in 2010. Prizes include a headlining gig at Club Congress, studio time, a spot on community radio station KXCI and music gear gift cards.

The battle takes place at 3 p.m. Saturday in the Hotel Congress Plaza, 311 E. Congress St.

Here’s a look at the finalists:

Weird Guilty Pleasures

Genre: Alternative pop/punk rock.

Members: Lead singer, guitar Adam Ruhl, 19; lead guitar Dylan Nanney, 21; bass guitar Cristian Boneta, 20; drummer Michael Bauman, 21.

The music: “Our music is pretty hard to describe. I do most of the writing for the band and I tend to be all over the place,” said Ruhl, the band’s co-founder with Bauman. “But ultimately what it is is really fun, upbeat music. Really fast-paced, energetic, stuff that gets you moving.”

Where you can see them: 191 Toole, 191 E. Toole Ave. in the old Scrappy’s space; The Rock, 136 N. Park Ave.

Recordings: The EP “Summertime Lovin’,” recorded in a home studio last July.

How it all got started: Ruhl and Bauman were friends who started jamming together and discovered they had some strong musical chemistry. In January 2012, they recruited Nanney, who was a bass player in another musical life. Ruhl and Bauman convinced him to switch gears to lead guitar when they brought Boneta into the band.

Not just a hobby: “We are all in it for the long run. Michael is in school for a backup plan, but all four of us are really committed to music and there’s nothing we would rather do than make this a career.” — Ruhl.

What the judges said: “We chose Weird Guilty Pleasures based on their high energy and experience in the Tucson scene, with past shows at the Rock, Hotel Congress and 191 Toole. These gentlemen are just getting started as all the band’s members are around 20 years old. The pop-punk outfit will be closing out the main event ... in style.” — Libman.

Creating The Scene

Genre: Indie pop rock

Members: Keyboards and lead vocals Jake Walters, 17; guitar Austin Kent, 18; drummer Andres Beltran Del Rio, 18; bass player Nic Fricke, 14.

The music: “I’ve always been in musical theater so I feel like the music that comes out of the band is very influenced by music theater,” said Walters. “Everything is dramatic and tells a story. I write based on my personal experiences. Teenage angst. It’s a very emotional experience. I want people to go on a journey and realize it’s pretty bad but it’s OK.”

Where you may have seen them: The Rock, 136 N. Park Ave.; Sierra Vista; the Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress St.; Gary’s Place, 125 W. Ventura St.

Recordings: The band is working on its debut album to be released on local indie imprint Wolfgang & Sons.

How it all got started: The band formed in 2011, although not with its current lineup. The constant has been founder Walters, a senior at Academy of Tucson charter high school with Del Rio. Fricke and Kent are both taking high school classes online.

Not just a hobby: “I want to keep doing this. I feel like we’ve all put in so much work it’s not just a hobby. It used to be, but now it’s become the one thing we can all agree upon.” — Walters.

What the judges said: “Jake Walters is a prolific 17-year-old songwriter from Tucson. It was difficult to choose between Jake’s solo material and his band Creating the Scene, as both projects evoke broad-spectrum emotion that one rarely finds in an artist his age. At the end of the day, we chose his full band so we can see how Jake performs in a full ensemble.” — Libman.

Kyle Gallardo

Genre: Pretty dark, mainly sad music.

Members: Guitar and synthesizers Kyle Gallardo, 19. (Tyler Gillihan will join on keyboards for this performance.)

The music: “A lot of the tone is very sad and the notes are typically low. Mostly everything is very guitar-based. It’s all very dark and I’d like to think some parts are very catchy as well and that the lyrics will reach people. Dark and moody. It just seems easier to write for me. I’ve always leaned toward the angst kind of music. I find it pretty fascinating when you hear a dark song and it reaches you in a way that you can’t stop listening to it.”

Where you may have seen him: “This is actually going to be my first show,” Gallardo said. “I’m kinda nervous mainly because I’m playing before a lot of strangers. I think it’s all going to hit me when I’m on stage.”

Recordings: Finished debut EP “Uneventful” on Jan. 31. The concept recording follows a self-penned story of a man killing his wife. “It feels like I can express myself without necessarily being a murderer,” he explained.

How it all got started: Gallardo started writing music last August. “I’ve always been quite musical. I started in middle school. I was in a band with some friends doing some heavy stuff, but I branched off on my own.”

Not just a hobby: “It started out as a hobby. I thought I would go to school and study to become a filmmaker and make movies. But after I started playing music. I think music has definitely (become) something that is going to stick with me a very long time. It would be amazing to be a musician the rest of your life, but I know you don’t just become a famous musician and tour the world.” — Gallardo.

What the judges said: “Kyle Gallardo’s introspective bedroom recordings may make him the most unique and mature entry we received this year. We found ourselves streaming the 19-year-old’s ‘Uneventful’ release on Bandcamp multiple different occasions while we were still in the submission stage. We’re very excited to see Kyle joined by a keyboard player for his battle performance.” — Libman.

Roman Barten-Sherman and the Interstellar Blues Orchestra

Genre: Country blues

Members: Guitar Roman Barten-Sherman, 12; drums and percussion Rylande Dodge, 15.

The music: “When I entered the collaboration I was thinking more about the country bluesy stuff. But the great thing about working with a collaborator is that they change your style. So we are working on some other things including hill country, kind of trancelike music from north Mississippi,” said Barten-Sherman.

Where you may have seen them: This is the pair’s first public performance together, but Barten-Sherman is a regular at Club Congress as an opener for Tucson Delta bluesman Tom Walbank and has performed at the Rialto Theatre, Café Passe and blues festivals around the country.

Recordings: None yet, but Barten-Sherman, who has been performing for several years, has a YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/totalmobilehome) where you can see dozens of his performances.

How it got started: About three months ago, Barten-Sherman, who has been playing banjo and baritone ukulele since he was 2 and guitar since he was 6, teamed up with Dodge, a member of Tucson High Magnet School’s Jovert steel drum band directed by his father, Khris Dodge. “It’s just been such a blast. It’s going to be absolutely wonderful when the judges see that the Intersteller Blues Orchestra is two people.”

Not just a hobby: “I hope to be playing with Ryalnde the rest of my life. I enjoy playing solo but playing with Rylande has really opened my eyes. And playing with Rylande is my first time playing with a musician of this talent level that’s my same age.” — Barten-Sherman.

What the judges said: “Roman Barten-Sherman and the Interstellar Blues Orchestra was an easy choice for us, not only because we are familiar with the young artist, who plays with Tom Walbank on the Hotel Congress plaza every other week, but also because he is one of the most gifted 12-year-old guitar players we have ever seen. Most people have seen him perform solo, but now we get to see him accompanied by 15-year-old Rylande Dodge on drums for a multi-dimensional take on hisperformance that we all know and admire.” — Libman.

The Looks

Note: We couldn’t reach The Looks through emails and social media. Here’s the bio information provided by Hotel Congress.

Genre: Rock

Members: Ben Offerman, Brian Kelly, Charlie Harden, Toby Chivers; three of the members are 17, one is 18.

About the band: The four-piece rock band has been playing for a number of years and has recording experience.

What the judges said: “The Looks are a four-piece local rock ‘n’ roll band, with all members in the 17- to 18-year-old range. Based on their age, they’re the exact demographic we’d like to see submitting to the youth Battle of the Bands in future years. When listening to The Looks, just imagine four young rockers jamming in their parents garage, writing music, having a great time. For them, it seems that that’s what it’s all about.” — Libman.

Joe Nichols, fresh off an exciting show before more than 24,000 fans at Country Thunder on April 10, returns to Arizona this weekend to play the Pima County Fair.

If his show here is anything like the one he performed in Florence, expect this to happen:

• He doesn’t muddy up his country music waters with hick-hop — that’s country’s version of hip-hop (think Florida George Line and Big & Rich) — but he’s not beyond taking a rap song and turning it into a country ballad. At Country Thunder, much to the delight of the audience, he twangified Sir Mix-A-Lot’s party anthem “I Like Big Butts” with all the respect he would bring covering a George Strait tear-jerker.
• Fiddle and steel guitar make regular appearances, contributing to the neo-traditional richness of a Joe Nichols show. Expect to hear him rewind his career — the setlist is sure to include his early hits “The Impossible,” “Brokenheartsville,” “I Hate the Way I Love You,” “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off” — and fast-forward to today — “Yeah,” “Y’ant it,” “Hee Haw,” “Sunny and 75” off his late 2013 CD “Crickets.”
• In Florence, he also performed a pretty terrific cover of Merle Haggard’s “Footlights”; at one point, it looked like he might be on the verge of tearing up, although it could have been the dust from people dancing in the sprawling festival grounds.

“I hope I am always able to do (traditional leaning country music) because that is truly where my soul is with music,” Nichols said in a phone interview in late March. “I’ve always been a traditional country fan and always will be … if I can keep surviving like that.”

This is also what we learned from our phone call with Nichols:

• The comeback kid: Nichols has had some bumps in his road including bouts with substance abuse that’s landed him in rehab a couple times. “I think a lot of people have given up on me probably several times. Someone on my team once said, ‘I wish they would quit quitting on you’. It kinda feels like that. I think people have used the term comeback two or three times in my career. I don’t know if I really look at it like that because I have never really gone anywhere. But I get that out of visibility is what they are getting at.”

• New smaller label, new bigger energy: “I am with a label now (Red Bow) that really cares about me as a person and cares about my future and actually has the same kind of plan and projected future for me as I’ve always wanted. For me to be with people that are like-minded and finding myself in that situation is a great situation. Because since maybe 2006 there’s been that kind of cloud a little bit over my relationship with the label that I was with ... Show Dog. Not that there was any person at fault for that, but sometimes working relationships, the chemistry is not very good. But I’ve got to say that the chemistry with this label is great.”

• No. 1 out of the box: “When we got out of the studio with the first four songs, there was one song that felt obvious to me that it belonged on radio and I felt super strong about it and that was ‘Yeah’.”

• Don’t expect to see Nichols, 38, the father of two, on any Pima County Fair rides: “Something about when you hit 28 or 30, the rides at the fairs and the festivals lose their appeal.”

Salvador Duran will perform Mexican ballads, known as corridos, written by high school students in a special concert Saturday.

The performance is to honor the winners and semifinalists of a 15-year-old contest held by the University of Arizona Poetry Center, in which students wrote and submitted corridos on a variety of topics such as family, immigration, politics and friendships.

This marks the last year the Poetry Center will host the contest.

“In terms of the contest itself, we are saying goodbye to this program because we feel we’ve reached the limits of what a contest structure has to offer,” said Renee Angle, the poetry center’s education director. “The program has run successfully for 15 years, and during that time, we’ve built an archive of youth voices we’re very proud of.

“Corrido has helped us connect with students and support the multilingualism of our region that we believe is vital to creating a vibrant arts culture and engaged citizenry.”

The center will turn its efforts to creating other programs that feature multilingual poetry to connect with students over a longer time frame to “honor youth voices in a way that does not distinguish between ‘winners’ and ‘losers,’” Angle said.

This year’s winning corridos were written by students attending Rio Rico and Benson high schools, and selected by poet and performer Logan Phillips.

Adlemy Yocupicio won first place for a corrido titled “43.”

Second place went to John Barrera for a corrido titled “Mis Abuelos,” and Karla Guerra was awarded third for “No Era Penal.”

Two of the winning students will perform the corridos with Duran at Saturday’s concert.

Maryann Green admits to a big, big weakness.

“Shakespeare is my passion,” says the theater teacher at Rincon/University High School.

“I don’t think you can ever have too much Shakespeare.”

She’s hoping her passion is contagious: Green and her theater-centric organization Drama Queen Productions are the energy behind Saturday’s “Beer with the Bard,” a sort of pub crawl with bits and pieces of Shakespeare performed by wandering performers.

Her determination: Shakespeare, or theater for that matter, should not be a “stuffy event.”

Three bars volunteered their space, actors jumped in, and Green had herself a happening. At each stop along the way scenes from different plays will be performed.

But Shakespeare wrote 37 plays (more if you count a few lost ones). How to choose which snippets to perform?

Well, Green does have her favorites. And she wanted to pick scenes that many would be familiar with.

But in a few cases, the venues themselves seem to set the scene, and she chose accordingly.

The crawl starts out with a bit of Henry IV, Part 1, at Club Congress. A scene between the bawdy Falstaff and the good king will be performed. “Who doesn’t love Falstaff?” asks Green.

Also at Congress, Green zeroed in on a scene in the Forest of Arden from “As You Like It.”

From there, the troupe and, it hopes, its audience, will slip under the Fourth Avenue underpass and stop at the Surly Wench Pub. Bits of “Taming of the Shrew” will be on the program. “Can’t not do that there,” says Green of the play about, well, a surly wench.

And it all ends with a scene from “Romeo and Juliet” at the Flycatcher.

Green’s expectation is that the onlookers will travel with the actors to each stop. Performances at the pubs will be about 30 minutes each, but you gotta give or take some time there, she says.

“This is the first time we’ve done this, so it will be an experiment. We’ll see how it goes.”

Tickets to the event are at the low end — $5 for a wristband for all three places— and Green knows that not everyone will pony up.

“If you’re hanging out at a pub, you get a free show,” she says.

But, she adds, if you have that wristband, specials, from drink to food, can be had.

Best of all, you get to experience Shakespeare in a laid-back environment and with a brew in hand.

And that’s the way we like our Bard.

People will have the chance to peek inside never-before-toured Joesler-designed homes as part of this year’s Historic Home Tour.

Organized by Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation, the event Saturday offers a look at six houses by Swiss-born Josias Joesler, the city’s best-known architect. The homes represent a collection of significant examples of Joesler’s work, said Demion Clinco, the foundation’s executive director.

“It’s the opportunity to begin to understand the dynamics and design sensibility of Tucson that was so prevalent in the ’20s and ’30s and captures an essence of what Tucson was — and still strives to be,” Clinco said.

One Joesler feature that will be prominently on display is the idea of indoor/outdoor design through screened-in Arizona rooms, Clinco said.

The tour features six homes along with a “bonus” midtown house that had been altered over the years. Its owners are in the process of restoring it, which gives tour-goers an idea of the work that goes into historic home restoration, Clinco said.

St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church, which Joesler designed in 1936, also will be open to the public.

“It’s a great way of spending an afternoon, experiencing quintessential Tucson and supporting a good cause,” Clinco said.

Proceeds benefit Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to preserve the city’s unique architecture.