Live music and DJ nights maintain uneasy coexistence in Tucson club scene

Tuesday was a chilly night in Tucson, but the mood at the downtown Solar Culture venue could not have been warmer.

A crowd filled to capacity packed the gallery, bobbing their heads to the twangy desert grooves of Calexico, a local group whose fanbase is now international.

On nights like this, the viability of Tucson's live music scene seems beyond question. But recent years have seen major changes in Tucson's nightlife. Many live venues, like Third Stone on Fourth Avenue, have closed their doors, replaced by clubs like XS, Heart-Five, or MacDaddy's, that increasingly focus on the burgeoning dance music scene. Guitars, drums and lead singers, long at the center of Tucson's club culture, are increasingly sharing the stage with sequencers, turntables and DJs.