By Annie Holub
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 16, 1998

On the bandwagon

It's the fourth annual TAMMIES Club Crawl, celebrating the fifth annual Tucson Area Music Awards. Seventy bands, 18 stages, one night, five bucks. Representatives from nearly every music genre in Tucson will be rocketing the noise pollution level up. Way up.

The TAMMIES began in 1993, when the folks over at the Tucson Weekly decided that they wanted to do for Tucson what the independent weekly in San Francisco was doing with the BAMMIES, the Bay Area Music Awards - which is an awards opportunity for local musicians; a chance to strut their stuff and get recognition for the strut effort. The TAMMIES involves Tucson citizens voting for their favorite bands through an annual poll in the Weekly.

But the best part about the TAMMIES isn't the awards ceremony, which took place last night at the Rialto Theatre. It's the Club Crawl.

The first two years it was called the Showcase Shuffle," said Jeb Schoonover, the producer of the Club Crawl. "We were trying to showcase different genres (by grouping them together)."

This year, Schoonover has worked with the club owners to try and match up bands with other similar bands, not necessarily in the same genre, but with the same sort of sound, so that people can wander in and out of club after club and see band after band in genre after genre, all for the price of a single wristband which gets you in to every Crawl venue.

"It's the most obvious day of people being interested in bands in town," said Annie Hawkins, of Annie Hawkins Band, which are playing at the Rialto Cabaret. ("It's that blue building," Schoonover noted.)

The general sentiment from participating bands is that the TAMMIES are a chance to show that they are a part of the Tucson music community. Bands get a chance to play for large audiences, and people get to try their ears out on bands they might not have considered hearing. Most of the bands agree that the TAMMIES are better as a showcase and not as a competition.

"They're paying us, which is a good thing for a change, and we're probably going to be playing for a lot of people who wouldn't be seeing us otherwise," said Jason Garthwait, from How to Build a Rocketship, who will be playing at The Hut.

"It definitely helps the bands as far as getting the name out," put in Jimmy Carr from Crawdaddy-O, who won't be playing the Club Crawl but won Best New Band last year. "That's really where the TAMMIES are the most beneficial - everything else is just bragging rights."

"We're trying to showcase new talent," said Schoonover. "It has a residual effect. The idea is that it builds. Maybe you go into a new club you hadn't been into before, and think it's really neat. You can go in and check out a couple of new places. I like to think it helps year-round.

"Our goal is to work to get the scene bigger and better. We hope to reach more people and get more people involved" added Schoonover.

Jefferson Keenan of the Phantom Limbs, an "electric folk pop" group who has played every TAMMIES Club Crawl, said that in previous years, the awards ceremony was after the Crawl, and there were ballots everywhere so people could vote after seeing the nominated bands. That way, you might be able to see a band you haven't had a chance to see before, fall in love, vote for them and hope they win. With the awards ceremony before the fact, bands could be winning on reputation alone.

"It seems kind of backwards," said Melissa Manas of Shoebomb, while Jeremy Nasta of Whatever, "a high powered funk dance and hard-rock fusion" band that will be playing at Third Stone said, "We were disappointed that the awards took place before the Club Crawl event, but we're stoked we got picked and we're happy to support the Tucson music scene."

Annie Hawkins, however, pointed out that "for the bands who are going to win it's not that big of a deal, because they're already successful."

So the TAMMIES are really about getting a chance to see some of the best bands in town on one night, all within walking distance of each other; it's an opportunity to mingle within the music scene, and rub elbows with the brethren.

"You literally can walk back and forth almost continuously, and you can literally see 25 bands in one night," said Schoonover. "You might only see 15 minutes of each band, but you're able to 'crawl' and go from building to building, venue to venue, and see lots of different bands."

This year some new innovations to the Club Crawl will be in action on Saturday night. Fifth Avenue, west of the Rialto at Broadway Boulevard and Congress Street, will be blocked off to create an outdoor main stage, where you can see the likes of Shoebomb, Giant Sand and Dave's Big Deluxe. An all-ages show is set for the Youth Storefront, featuring Gat-Rot and Feast Upon Cactus Thorns.

Schoonover expressed an interest in reaching the non-legal-drinking-age members of the Tucson music scene as a step in his goal of trying to involve more people. "In the past we did showcasing at the DPC and they were never well attended. I know there's an audience out there and I hope they come out to support it. Hopefully the Youth Storefront show will go well," he said.

The bands playing at the Storefront are thrash/heavy/adrenaline-inducing type bands; if you're looking for something a little different, you can theoretically get in on a one-shot deal to see the shows at the Aroma Cafe and the Zenith Center, and the Crawl also has some free outdoor stages. Dubbed as "Community Venues," they feature country and jazz acts and can be found at the Winsett Park stage, Cushing Street Bar and Grill, the Casbah Tea House and Ronstadt Transit Center.

The Crawl utilizes as many bar spaces as are willing to participate downtown and on Fourth Avenue; Double Zero will be hosting a show in its "Mine Shaft," Club Congress will be lending its indoor and outdoor stages, Mutt's and The Hut will be rockin' out, and all the female singer-songwriters can be found at the Zenith Center. (Schoonover was quick to point out that he did that particular grouping because originally, the show was to be at the Damesrocket Theatre, and he thought it would be a creative use of that venue's name. Get it? Damesrocket?)

Unlimited access to any and all shows can be obtained by buying a wristband for $5 from Zia's, or from any of the venues the night of the Crawl. Also released in conjunction with the TAMMIES is a compact disc compilation entitled "Cantankerous" sponsored by KFMA, featuring 12 songs, that can also be purchased for five bucks.

"If we all support live music, the venues will be more successful. That's what Tucson needs," said Schoonover.

The TAMMIES is a Tucson consistency that we can count on every year to reinforce, regurgitate and reinstate that, yes, we do have a large number of local bands, fans and musicians. It's the best example of positive support that the scene has to offer back to the scene.

Fourth Avenue:

Aroma Cafe
346 N. Fourth Ave. 623-2088

Blue Room
536 N. Fourth Ave. 770-1377

Cafe Sweetwater
340 E. Sixth St. 622-6464

The Hut
305 N. Fourth Ave. 623-3200

Mutts
424 N. Fourth Ave. 628-8664

O'Malley's on Fourth
247 N. Fourth Ave. 623-8600

Third Stone
500 N. Fourth Ave. 628-8844

Zenith Center
330 E. Seventh St. 623-0913

Winsett Park Stage
Fourth Avenue between Seventh and Eighth streets

Casbah Tea House
628 N. Fourth Ave. 792-9910

KXCI Tucson Musicians Showcase
Fourth Avenue and Fifth Street 623-1000

Downtown:

Club Congress/Hotel Congress
311 E. Congress St. 622-8848

Double Zero
121 E. Congress St. 670-9332

Rialto Cabaret
201 E. Broadway Blvd. 740-0126

Temple of Music and Art Cabaret Stage
300 S. Scott Ave. 884-4875

Rialto Theatre
318 E. Congress St. 740-0126

Youth Storefront
123 S. Arizona Ave.

Zia Main Stage
Fifth Avenue and Broadway Boulevard

Arizona Avenue at Congress Street
Ronstadt Transit Center

Cushing Street Bar and Grill
343 S. Meyer Ave. 622-7984