The Show for April 22, 2026: Trump's 2020 grievances, saving the Mystery Castle and more

Top Arizona Democrats are at odds with the Republican Senate President over voting records he turned over to the FBI. Is the top DOJ attorney in the state taking sides? Plus, an oddball stone and scrap fortress atop Phoenix’s South Mountain has been spared from demolition.

Transcript

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I'm Lauren Gilger, co-host of the show and original production from KJZZ. Every weekday we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here's today's episode.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning and welcome to the show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I'm Lauren Gilger. Coming up a preview of what could be a tough wildfire season in Arizona and a plea to fund more firefighters. And we will bring you a tiny desert concert where you'll meet a young band that relishes an awkward show. But first, two of the top Democrats in the state are at odds with the Republican Senate president after he turned over a trove of records to the FBI related to Arizona's 2020 election. And now there are questions about the state's top DOJ attorney and his involvement. Last month State Senator Warren Peterson gave federal officials electronic records from the controversial Cyber Ninjas audit of Arizona's 2020 election as part of their ongoing investigation into that election, which President Trump lost to Joe Biden. Since there has been a dizzying back and forth between Arizona Attorney General Chris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Peterson, as they voice concerns about voter information. And Peterson pushes back. Wayne Schutsky with KJZZ's politics desk has been covering it all and he joins me now to walk us through this fight. Good morning Wayne.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay, so what is the federal government up to here? Like why are they investigating the 2020 election?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: In a nutshell, they are essentially rehashing President Trump's grievances about the 2020 election, which obviously he lost and lost in Arizona to Democrat Joe Biden. So he's long claimed without evidence that widespread fraud led to that loss, and it just looks like now that he's back in power, he's using the levers of government to go back and dig back into some of those conspiracies.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay, so what records did Peterson turn over to the FBI? This wasn't quite the same as all those headlines we saw about Fulton County, Georgia, right, where the FBI raided election offices. This was records from this so-called audit that has been as I think you put it in your story, much maligned.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, yeah, no raid necessary. They presented Senator Peterson, Senate President Peterson with a subpoena. And we don't know exactly all of the records specifically, but he turned over terabytes and terabytes, which is just a huge amount of data from that audit, which was where they had the little uh spinning lazy Susans and all sorts of stuff and were looking at counting uh Maricopa County's ballots to try and verify the election. Obviously, a lot of election experts said that that um situation was was really not professional, not done the right way, and you can't really trust the results, though they did show that Joe Biden won. Um however, all the documents they got, you know, all sorts of election related documents from Maricopa County. That's kind of the concern. So that was likely included in the tranche of data that he turned over.

LAUREN GILGER: I remember the scenes at the State Fairgrounds, right? Okay, so what are Fontes and Mayes concerned about here?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: So they think this is happening parallel to the DOJ's effort to get access to unredacted voter rolls in Arizona and other states, which Mayes and Fontes are fighting in court. And so um they basically sent a letter out to all the county recorders across the state and said, hey, if the DOJ comes at you with similar subpoenas like they did with the Senate President for your voter records, do not comply whether or not they have a grand jury subpoena or not because um we think that that would violate um federal state privacy laws because of all the personal information and uh voter private private voter information included in there. So they're saying don't do it, subpoena or not.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay, okay. So they sent this letter and Peterson shot back, referred them for obstruction of justice?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, he basically wrote to US Attorney uh Kurshane and said, hey, I believe that this is obstruction of justice, witness tampering, like can you please look into this basically.

LAUREN GILGER: And now you've got a response from the US Attorney for Arizona and and he was pretty forthcoming.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, um he, you know, he said he's he's taken, you know, he's taken a look at these allegations, but also seemed very sympathetic to Peterson's allegations in there, you know, saying that he I think astonishing was the word he would use that these officials would try to um interfere with the grand jury's duty.

LAUREN GILGER: Tell us what we know about this US Attorney, Kurshane.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Um, so he's not like the some of these more controversial figures we've seen especially in a lot of like uh East Coast states that Trump appointees, you know, personal Trump attorneys, folks that have no DOJ experience just being thrust into these roles for which they have very little experience. He's a former um Assistant US attorney. He clerked for uh Supreme Court, Arizona Supreme Court Justice Bill Montgomery. He he's got a background in this. Like he he made sense as an appointee. Um so it you know he was actually reappointed by the district court because he hasn't been Senate confirmed, so that's a process that's required. We've seen other Trump appointees, some of these more political figures not receive that uh reappointment. So I mean on the surface he seems like a pretty typical DOJ appointee for a Republican president.

LAUREN GILGER: Is this out of the ordinary though Wayne, that the US Attorney here is sort of saying what he thinks very clearly in this letter?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Um, I mean less and less so in in this era of politics we are in, but typically when like for instance if I reach out and ask about a an investigation, um the response is very short and curt. You know, we either we don't comment on pending investigations or this has been referred to an investigative agency like the FBI, that's a response I've gotten. Um last time Senate President Peterson did this with uh Senator Annalise Ortiz when she was notifying folks about um ICE in their communities, he sent a letter to the DOJ basically asking the same thing, can you look into this, did it break the law. And the DOJ's response to me at that time was essentially um we're not an investigative agency. Right. Um but we're looking and sending this maybe to FBI or whoever. So very different than that past situation.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, very different response. What did Mayes and Fontes have to say about that?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Um, they basically said it's ridiculous and that it's political posturing and that, you know, they're try they're doing what they believe their duty is complying with the law and they think this is just a a political effort both by Senate President Peterson who happens to be running against Attorney General Mayes potentially to be the next AG, and um US Attorney uh Kurshane uh to just appease Trump basically.

LAUREN GILGER: So Wayne, what does all of this mean for the upcoming midterms elections? Like we've seen a lot of reporting, a lot of folks concerned about potential efforts by the Trump administration to change election norms, to you know, maybe claim election interference. There are concerns about what could happen coming up here. How does this all play into that larger narrative?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, we've seen the Trump administration, you know, President Trump himself trying to use executive orders to give the federal government more power over elections and we're still trying to see how that plays out. So um, you know, especially Democrats believe this is part of that effort to either um give an excuse to kind of take over control of those elections or to just sow doubt. And so if, you know, as is expected right now, Democrats do relatively well in the midterms that then they can use these type of situations to sow doubt and claim that, you know, there was some sort of some sort of funny business going on versus just the electorate, you know, doing what it usually does, which is sending the midterms to the opposite party.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And and one more question there on what you just alluded to, which is that the midterms are coming up and we do expect, it sounds like based on polling, that Democrats could do pretty well. This could shape things.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, I mean that's again, and that's not abnormal, you know, especially right now President Trump, it's proven a lot of the stuff he's doing right now, the Iran war, things like that are very unpopular with voters. And so assuming that kind of stays the course, that is going to give momentum to Democrats plus, you know, the the minority party typically does well, the party not in the White House in midterms almost every every cycle like this. So so yeah, they have a lot of Democrats have a lot of headwinds and this could be a Republican attempt they think to just try to tamp down on those.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay, we'll see what happens. KJZZ's Wayne Schutsky with our politics desk. Wayne, thanks as always.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: It has been one of the hottest winters and now springs on record in Arizona this year. There has never been a hotter March recorded in Phoenix than last month. The Valley's temperatures were an astonishing 12 degrees above normal. And on top of that, it's been incredibly dry across the state too. This was the 13th driest March on record across Arizona. And in Flagstaff where we expect to see snow every winter, March left them 58 inches behind normal this year. And all of that means we could be looking at a tough wildfire season coming up. John Truett is State Fire Manager and Officer for the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management and he's on the line now to tell me more about what we might expect this upcoming wildfire season. Good morning John.

JOHN TRUETT: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, so this year we saw as I outlined there like an incredibly warm winter, a spring heat wave that didn't really let up. And you know, any snow that had fallen in the high country has pretty much melted. What does all of this mean for wildfire season?

JOHN TRUETT: Well, what it means is it can cure out our fuels uh faster than normal. And uh the the there's no real moisture in the soil right now, so we're not going to get a a very long green up if if at all. Um so right now we're on that downward trend of our green up and getting into a cured state in our in our fuels out there across the state.

LAUREN GILGER: So when you say a green up, like every year in the spring you expect rain and then the green to come, right, the grass to grow, the trees to bloom, and then it dries out in the summer, but this is coming early?

JOHN TRUETT: Yeah, that's just the cycle of our vegetation out there every every spring we get a green up no matter what kind of rain we get, but it's a short duration this time and um, you know, we're already uh four to six weeks ahead of time on our curing out of our vegetation.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay, so does that mean a wildfire season could start earlier than normal this year?

JOHN TRUETT: The potential is there, as you seen a couple in the last week or so a little bit of cooler weather in and out, but yeah, it's gonna be definitely an early start. We're having fire starts now. Uh they're not getting outside of uh a single day burning period yet, but that is very close at hand.

LAUREN GILGER: I remember after some wet winters in the state saying, you know, all of that water means there's more grass, there's more greenery, and that bodes badly for wildfire season when all that dries out. Is there some kind of silver lining here in the fact that we just haven't had much rain so there won't be quite as much green to begin with?

JOHN TRUETT: In a normal cycle yes, but if you remember recall last fall we had an abundance of rain which created a an above normal grass crop. So um yeah the the cycles are a little bit off but in a normal year we get less rain, we'll get less growth and uh a little bit less what we call fuel loading out there of our vegetation.

LAUREN GILGER: Your department and Governor Katie Hobbs announced recently this new AZ Fire Cam system. It's 360 degree view cameras that are kind of placed around the state that I think the idea is you can detect smoke early. What might these do for catching those fires right away?

JOHN TRUETT: It's it's more of a detection uh tool for us. We we've got them out in an area what we call a low frequency but high value at risk. Um so our response times are really gonna be based on our staffing and our staffing is um, you know, it's it's low at best. So these will give us at least the intel that we have a fire start and when we look at that that that image of that that smoke, we can tell how hot it's burning and if it's going to be a priority uh right off the bat, we can launch more resources to it that if we have them available.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So let me ask you about resources. We've reported in the past on this kind of ongoing major shortage of firefighters particularly wildland firefighters around the country and here as well. How do you try to get folks on board? What what's your department doing to try to make a dent there?

JOHN TRUETT: Well for us it's on our recruiting side uh you know unfortunately we're we're just limited on how many firefighters we can hire and we're at maximum right as we speak now. So really we needed to add more positions to the statewide Arizona State firefighting workforce. When it comes to our our local government, our fire departments, our fire districts, they're having shortages as well uh just kind of based on the their budgets and um their availability to hire uh out there just because of the shortage of of any type of funding that that those individual departments have.

LAUREN GILGER: Oh, so it's interesting. So it's not a matter of getting people into the field, it's having the budget to hire them.

JOHN TRUETT: Exactly. We're we're very short staffed uh when it comes to a statewide fire department uh per se. And uh, you know, we could use a few more folks and a few more permanent positions to provide that coverage and that that public safety throughout the state.

LAUREN GILGER: I mean that's got to be a concern especially as we're looking at these kind of increasingly dangerous wildfire seasons across the state and as you're saying this one could start early. Why why isn't the funding there? What's the conversation like with policy leaders?

JOHN TRUETT: It's all about what we call FTEs and full time uh employees and um, you know, we're we're, you know, always uh, you know, talking with with the legislators, talking with uh the folks downtown uh to, you know, just to to make them aware of that we have an increasing uh fire danger out there, we have increasing uh urban sprawl beyond these the these fire district boundaries that become the responsibility of the state. And um it's just uh needing to keep up with the growth of the state is is what we're trying to advocate.

LAUREN GILGER: So I always wonder this because we've seen the temperatures especially in the summer here not just in the Valley but across the state go up, you know, so much in recent years and you see 110, 115 sometimes. When you're also out there fighting a fire, how much harder does the job get in fighting wildfires when we see these temperatures rise?

JOHN TRUETT: Yeah, it's just again it's on how we manage our personnel out there, you know, obviously you can't go, you know, 10 hours straight when it when the our fire environment is like that. So we we make sure we give them breaks uh at at the proper time. Um, you know, and it's all about physical conditioning and um, you know, we really rely heavily on the science behind, the physical science behind, you know, hydration and rest work and and all that. So we we pay a lot of attention to it but we can only do so much on an extreme environment.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, absolutely. Let me ask you lastly, there are reports that Arizona should be expecting what's being called like a Super El Niño this year, which could be good news, it could bring cooler temperatures, some much needed rain to the region, maybe a lot of rain in fact. Are you looking at that? Could this mean a wetter monsoon season, help things out when fire season gets underway?

JOHN TRUETT: Yeah in in our business the fire service we work real close with the National uh Weather Service, you know, cause fire is is a science behind it and weather is one of the driving factors of it. And what we've been uh talking with the National Weather Service is that Super El Niño coming in, um it's all going to be about timing. It could be coming in, you know, as early as July but as late as the fall. So it's really the timing of when all that comes and kind of add to our our monsoon season, but it'll be late in in some of our opinions and some of the the facts that we're getting from the National Weather Service, it may not come in until late July or August. So it'll help a little bit, but that may be a, you know, a little bit a little bit too late.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay, all right. John Truett State Fire Manager and Officer for the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management here with a wildfire season preview. John thanks so much.

JOHN TRUETT: No, thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, it is The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Lauren Gilger. Coming up a local electroclash indie sleaze revival band gives an inside look at their self-produced live performances.

KEANU KLEPFER: We slowly have been like putting in like synths and like samplers and like guitars and drums to like really make it like a live thing for us and I think we're just trying to have this blend that no one else has where it's like, you know, a band that's also like doing a DJ set.

LAUREN GILGER: Our tiny desert concert series continues with a duo called Belgium Tree. But first, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona says it's acquired the archives of nine photographers. Among them is Mark Klett, who's been photographing the Sonoran Desert for decades. Even if you don't know his name, you've almost certainly seen Klett's photos. He's been shooting them since he came to Arizona in 1982. His images feature iconic desert scenes, often including saguaros. As part of our series on the Sonoran Desert called Saguaro Land a couple of years ago, my co-host Mark Brodie met with Klett at his studio, which is just through the backyard of his Tempe home. The building, which he shares with his family, features several printers, computers and boxes upon boxes of photos. That's not to mention the nearly floor-to-ceiling desert images on the wall and the large-scale portraits taken by his wife that hang at one end of the studio. Mark started the conversation by asking Klett how he looks at the desert differently now than he did when he started in the early 80s.

MARK KLETT: Oh yeah, it's kind of hard for me to even remember what I thought when I first came here in the 1980s. But I it was definitely not a place I was familiar with. Uh I came from Idaho and it was February and the first thing I noticed was it was nice and warm and I thought what, you know, what am I getting myself into down here. But I had a lot of time on the weekends and I would travel around to just try to understand this place that I I lived in. I wasn't familiar at all with a desert, with the plants, the the cactus, um the the way that the landscape looked, the geography. And so my way of introducing myself to it was just to go out and have an experience.

MARK BRODIE: What about it appeals to you as an artist, as a photographer?

MARK KLETT: Well, that's an interesting question. Uh the thing I was kind of poised to understand about this place was that it has the appearance initially of um being a place that's untouched. And that's not true. And you go out and you start looking around, soon realize that there's a history here. And one of the things that does happen in the desert uh unlike other places in the country is that history often remains visible over time. So if somebody drives across the desert for example, that track could be visible for decades and decades after that. If someone uh built a dwelling uh say a Native American site, that could still be visible hundreds of years later. So this this record is to me really interesting that um you can see this history of the passage of people. And that's one of the things that really drew me to the place was that I I realized it wasn't just my experience, this was multiple experiences over time. So when I went out I was looking for that, I was looking for the signs of that passage.

MARK BRODIE: When you look at the desert and you're trying to find a spot, you know, a site to to take your photos, what do you look for now? And I'm wondering if that's maybe different than what you would have looked for in the past.

MARK KLETT: Yeah, I think that um, when I first started I was just photographing anything that seemed curious to me. Uh you know, one of the ways that you work or I work as an artist is that it's um intuitive. I don't really know what I'm trying to do when I start. Uh I go out there and the first thing you have to do is just do something. So I'm photographing something I'm curious about or maybe I like the light or I like the composition I can work with it. But after a while then I'm thinking, what am I looking at, you know, what what kinds of things am I looking at, why does it look this way. Uh what's the history of something I'm seeing. And and so that involves research. Well what's happened to me over time is that I've built up a lot of that, you know, I've gotten to know the place a lot more, I've read a lot of the history, you know, and so when I go out now I'm quite aware of things that I wasn't aware of, you know, 40 years ago. So I do make different pictures.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have an estimate as far as how many photos of saguaros you've taken over the years?

MARK KLETT: No, I hate I'd hate to estimate that. Well, I mean, it it wouldn't seem too outrageous if even if I could remember it because uh, you know, I was working in in the old days I worked with film and a 4x5 inch camera. It's it's a camera and a type of way working that you don't work super quickly. Now I work with a digital camera but it it requires the same kind of thing. You have to put on a tripod and set it up. So it's a it's a slower way of working but it's a much more detailed way. So I mean somebody today with a with a DSLR or a digital camera can go out and shoot just thousands and thousands of pictures you know in a short period of time on a card which we wouldn't do in the old days because it costs too much with film even if you could try to do it. Uh so I haven't done that many. I would I would put the number in say the thousands, but it wouldn't be like somebody could do today with a with a you know different kind of camera.

MARK BRODIE: What do you think that you learn about the Sonoran Desert through photographing it?

MARK KLETT: Well again, it's that research. Um so I've been interested in saguaros as you mentioned for, you know, ever since I got here. And uh I didn't know much about them when I started. I was responding to their shape, to their uh to the way they articulated, to the kind of gestures that they made, their their kind of reference to the human form, that sort of thing. Um but then over time, you know, I researched more about saguaros and read about them. So, you know, I think that the research on any subject that I that I run across uh that impacts my vision, you know, when when I get that information the next time I go out, I see things a little bit differently. So photography can start off as being a simple response to something. But I think in the end for it to become meaningful it often has to evolve in in the way that it works uh into more knowledge.

MARK BRODIE: Do you consider it maybe part of your mission or part of your job to teach people a little bit about the Sonoran Desert? I mean your photographs are not just seen here in the Valley, they're seen all over the country, all over the world. Do you feel that you're trying to maybe teach people or maybe get people to appreciate or understand the desert a little more through your photographs?

MARK KLETT: Well I hope maybe appreciate. I I don't know if I'm the best person to teach them really substantial facts about the desert. But I think if it makes people realize that this place does isn't just an iconic you know desert where people might think if they're if they're not from around here for example they might think oh the desert's this dry dusty place full of sand and it's all the cactus have two arms that look like somebody sticking their arms up in a hold up and you know if if it's just not this iconic generic view of what a desert is but instead it's this really diverse land with an incredible history to it that's the history layered with different cultures. You know, if if that can get people to think about the richness of this place then then I feel good about it.

MARK BRODIE: It's interesting what you say about how the perception of the Sonoran Desert for a lot of people who are not from here is that it's dry and dusty and not a lot lives here and not a lot grows here. You've been taking photos of it as you said since the early 80s. Have you gotten bored with it ever? Like do you still see things, different things, or maybe look at things differently or find new spots that you maybe, you know, didn't know about before that that really keeps it interesting?

MARK KLETT: Uh, no, I don't get bored. Um, in fact I I've thought or you know my wife and I have thought sometimes you know do we want to live someplace else and we both agree that we just couldn't part with the desert. I think that it's just too important to me now. The experience of the place never gets old for me. It's a beautiful it's a place where danger and beauty and uncertainty all come together.

MARK BRODIE: What you're saying is like when you're out in the desert, it's the real thing. It's not Disneyland, it's not a National Park like this is it. Almost anything can happen out there.

MARK KLETT: Yeah, and and I don't mean to denigrate the National Parks because they're they're still incredibly beautiful and gorgeous places but I I think it's not curated in a sense. There aren't any interpretive signs. There aren't any campgrounds where I go. There aren't any safety features, you know. And if you break down, you run out of water or you run across abandoned smugglers in the wrong place, nobody's gonna help you out, you know. This is the place where you know, you're taking charge of your own your own life at that point and yet it's also the place of incredible beauty.

MARK BRODIE: Mark Klett, thanks a lot for having us here. I appreciate it.

MARK KLETT: Oh thanks for coming.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I am Lauren Gilger. The Valley has a well-earned reputation as a place that doesn't always honor its past. That's evident in the number of historic buildings we've lost over the years and continue to lose. But KJZZ contributor Robrt Pela has a different story about one beloved spot.

ROBRT PELA: Here's a bit of news: for once, Phoenix's long-suffering crew of historic preservationists has scored a victory. Mystery Castle, that oddball stone and scrap fortress perched atop South Mountain, has been spared from demolition. Mystery Castle was a tourist stop owned and operated by Mary Lou Gulley, who lived there until her death in 2010. Her father had built the house for her in the 1930s using telephone poles, automobile parts, adobe, stone and whatever else Boyce Luther Gulley could get his hands on. After his death in the mid-1940s, Mary Lou and her mother began offering paid tours of the place. For decades, visitors wandered its rooms, heard its stories, and experienced it as a home, shown by the woman for whom it had been built, rather than as a piece of Sonoran history. After years of neglect and vandalism, the owner of this weird local landmark, who had inherited it from Mary Lou, threw in the towel. She boarded the joint up in 2024, sold off its contents and filed for a demolition permit. Local outcry from fans of the place led to a new owner, who recently stepped in with a pledge to preserve Mystery Castle. The Herberger family of companies, which has been involved in other local historical preservation projects, has promised to rehab the castle and once again welcome visitors to its long dilapidated walls. Cut to sighs of relief and nostalgic Facebook posts from locals who once toured Mystery Castle on a fourth grade field trip. The new owners have floated the idea of turning Mystery Castle into a destination event venue. Okay. But event venues are tidy. They're designed to be safe, rentable, and photogenic. Mystery Castle was none of those things. It was precarious and eccentric, a folk art fever dream made by a guy who wasn't a builder. How is the Herberger family going to turn that into an event venue? And if they do, will it still be Mystery Castle? I'm reminded of all the nice people in the world who buy old houses for their quaint charm, and then rip out all the quaint charm and replace it with granite countertops and open floor plans and ceiling fans because, I don't know, why do people do this? Why not just buy a new house? Mystery Castle isn't a stately Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece or even a Ralph Haver home. It's a folk art project made from found objects. To leave it untouched risks further decay, but to restore it risks erasing the very improvisation that made it meaningful. And for the millionth time, wouldn't it be better if we just started appreciating and caring for our local landmarks, even the ones made out of bits of junk? I mean, you know, instead of waiting until they've been assigned a date with a wrecking ball before we step in. A public forum about Mystery Castle is scheduled for early May, giving Phoenicians a rare chance to help decide if Phoenix wants to be a city that keeps its oddities or one that polishes them into marketable assets. Will the castle remain a public curiosity or will it become a private commodity with occasional public hours? Phoenix hasn't historically been great at managing this kind of preservation problem. It's better with clean slates made by knocking down old buildings and starting over again with an empty lot. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of Mystery Castle and whether its resurrection as a destination will rob it of the very character that made it mysterious. For KJZZ, I'm Robert Pela.

LAUREN GILGER: That was Robert Pela. You can find more of his work at kjzz.org.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, it is the show on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Lauren Gilger. And now it's time for our next Tiny Desert Concert. This time, we'd like to introduce you to a young band that's been called quote, an electroclash/indie sleaze revival duo known for intense self-produced live performances. At least that's how Visit Phoenix described Belgium Tree when they brought them to South by Southwest this year as part of a Phoenix artist showcase. The band is fronted by Dace Santa Cruz and Keanu Klepfer. I spoke with them recently about the band, their music, performing live, and how it all began in their high school Spanish class. You'll hear Keanu first.

KEANU KLEPFER: It was first day, it was first day of Spanish. You know, obviously Mr. Mel asked what we did over the summer. I said I made beats, and he got to sit and "I was like I made beats all over the summer," and like I think I lied about like making like some kind of fake project of like making rap beats and then Dace —

LAUREN GILGER: It wasn't real?

KEANU KLEPFER: It was not real. It was so not real. I was just trying to be so cool. Like sometimes you got to fake it to make it. Like I feel like that's that's how we do it a lot. I mean like —

DACE SANTA CRUZ: He was he was saying that like, yeah, I made this rap project with this rapper that's my friend. It's super super cool. And I was like, afterwards I was like, "Yo, that's awesome. Can I hear the beats?" And you were like, "Nah I'll just, I'll just give you my phone number and I'll send you some beats there."

LAUREN GILGER: That's awesome. So you I mean you're like high school kids, you're making parody songs, mashups, remakes. When did this become more than, you know, two high school kids messing around with GarageBand, right?

KEANU KLEPFER: Summer, summer of 2022. Dace came over, I was like house sitting our music teacher's house and he comes in and he shows me this song called "Fish Skin Waffle," which was our very first song that we ever released.

[CLIP FROM "FISH SKIN WAFFLE" PLAYS]

And it was basically finished. I was like, "Dude, like let me just play drums for you. Like we'll, we'll take over everything. Like let's go on to." I was just like delusional. I was like, "Let's go, let's do this."

And then after that we were like, "Oh, we should make like a whole project together." So we made a whole project together, started writing together, and like it it was like a little bit more legitimate than anything we've ever done before. And yeah, it we finished it by like New Year's.

DACE SANTA CRUZ: We made a whole EP together. The first song I made, and then I made like another one by myself and then the rest we made together. And Keanu definitely brought it to the next level. He's a very, very, very talented producer that does things I can't do.

LAUREN GILGER: So I mean, you were so young doing this first project. This must have felt pretty cool. Like did you feel like very accomplished and like you'd discovered something new about yourselves here?

DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yes, a little bit too much. I was like, well, I was still nervous to release it but because I never told anybody about stuff I released. And once we released it and people like that we knew like our immediate friends were like, "Oh, this is good music." I was like, "OK, this is awesome. We're gonna blow up tomorrow."

KEANU KLEPFER: Blow up tomorrow. And then probably a week after we released it on Spotify we were like sitting down like just like laying on the couch being like, "Why the hell are we not blowing up right now?" We just didn't understand.

DACE SANTA CRUZ: "Why is this not why does this have 200 listens? This is crazy. We should be having a million." We were definitely —

KEANU KLEPFER: We're still delusional.

DACE SANTA CRUZ: We're still delusional with it, but yeah, we we thought it would go a lot more.

KEANU KLEPFER: A lot of people that we respect and that we've met have talked about like the journey of it being like 10 years or something like that. Like they had to like hustle and grind for such a long time. And so I think that really keeps us going, and I think we'll be like, "All right, we're gonna go 100% until I think we're like 35, and then we'll talk about plumbing."

LAUREN GILGER: You've got a 35-year cutoff?

KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah. ...

DACE SANTA CRUZ: It's also just fun. Playing music is fun. So yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: It is fun. All right, so you're gonna play a song for us now. Tell us about it.

KEANU KLEPFER: This song is called "Drop Me Off." It's a new one. It's about not having your license when you probably should.

[BELGIUM TREE PLAYS "DROP ME OFF]

LAUREN GILGER: I want to ask about how you take what you do from the production into the live show. Because I mean it was fun to watch, but like you're mixing tracks live, like you've got a little mixer on stage there, you're singing, you had a guitar once or twice but not always. I mean, there's a lot going on and and it's sort of a mixture of a live show and a you know like a DJ set almost, right?

KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, I mean look, I think we're trying to be cutting edge at the end of the day and like I think, you know, we love electronic music and we also love like the very 2000s kind of like Interpol kind of era of like New York and stuff, and I think we're just trying to blend that and still have like this live set.

'Cause I think beforehand we just had like one sampler and me and Dace would like go up there screaming like clipping the mic and like having like the tracks like blow out every speaker that we would do stuff with. And so we had to kind of like learn to be like, "Alright, like maybe like let's not do like a karaoke set, like maybe we should actually do like a live set."

So we slowly have been like putting in like synths and like samplers and like guitars and drums to like really make it like a live thing for us, and I think we're just trying to have this blend that no one else has where it's a band that's also like doing a DJ set, like you said.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, it's an interesting mix. Do you feel the difference in the audience when you do it like this as opposed to trying to do it the way you did before?

DACE SANTA CRUZ: Definitely. Our early, the amount of shows we've had, I mean we kind of we love a good awkward show. We love making the audience feel —

LAUREN GILGER: It definitely happens.

DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yeah, for sure.

KEANU KLEPFER: It happens more to us than a lot of bands.

DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yeah. If I had a dollar for every time a show we played went terrible and like we just fell flat on our faces, I would be able to retire right now. Whenever things are going especially terrible, we're like, "You know what, we'll just take off our shirt. Let's lean into it."

LAUREN GILGER: We're just gonna go nuts.

DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yeah, we'll go crazy.

KEANU KLEPFER: Take of our shirt. Start hugging people in the crowd, like it gets weird. Doing pushups. Getting weird.

But I think people sometimes don't know how to react to our stuff. Like we want everyone like dancing and doing stuff, but I think sometimes people are just not about that, which is totally fine. Like I whenever I go to a show I'm like all the way in the back and like not doing anything. So I don't know why I expect other people to be any different.

LAUREN GILGER: You're your worst audience member.

KEANU KLEPFER: We are both being extremely hypocritical here.

LAUREN GILGER: But talk about some of the moments when your live show has hit and you've really felt like the whole crowd in it. I mean, what's that feel like?

DACE SANTA CRUZ: It's the best. Putting a lot of hard work into a song, it can only give you so much like reward seeing numbers at on a screen of like who listened to it. Even if it's a lot, it's at the end of the day it's just a screen saying numbers. So it's like hard to like know that translation.

So whenever like somebody is like yelling every word or like dancing and like knowing everything and like doing what we do on stage, that, even if it's just one person, it hits so hard. It's really nothing nothing like it in the world.

KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, we did a show at Walter Studios opening up for FOMA, and it was a packed Walter Studios and everyone was vibing and we had like visuals in the back and we were only silhouettes and like that kind of hard work is like amazing and like it was just like strobes all the time.

Like I don't know, we like overstimulation. I think we're like in that era of like overstimulating. And so —

DACE SANTA CRUZ: We're like the YouTube Shorts of bands.

KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, 100%. Like it's like ADHD on 10. Like, you know what I mean?

LAUREN GILGER: Let me ask you, Dace, about writing the songs. Where does it start for you? Is it a beat? Is it a line,a chorus, a story?

DACE SANTA CRUZ: The way it works for me is I usually just have a mood that I'm in, whatever I'm feeling, and I'll write down just like, lyrics that kind of encapsulate how I'm feeling. And then whenever I'm still kind of sitting in that mood, like that time period of me when I wrote that, I just go to the computer and usually just start with guitar and just try to make something. And then it's a matter of just like, okay, how can I rewrite these lyrics to fit to this melody that I just made to this instrumental.

LAUREN GILGER: Let me ask you then, Keanu, about the production stuff, right? Like, do you take a stripped-back sounding, almost folky song from this guy and then turn it into something that sounds like what you did out there?

KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, actually yeah, kind of. Yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: That's crazy. How do you do that?

KEANU KLEPFER: I mean, look, I wish I can answer it. I think, like, you know, at some point you're an antenna of just, like, ideas and like, I think it kind of goes by super fast, where you don't know. But I don't know. We're trying to make these crazy sounds happen with great pop songs and these great kind of songs. And I think that's just — I wish I could answer that better.

DACE SANTA CRUZ: I'll answer it. He is goated, that's why. He literally just does it. It's so crazy.

LAUREN GILGER: So where do you want to take this? Where do you guys see this going? Is this a long term project for you? You said age 35 you're done.

KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah.

DACE SANTA CRUZ: Yeah, we have time. We have time. Nineteen, 21? Yeah, we have time. I don't know yet. I mean, we're just gonna keep grinding, keep on trying to make the best music we can and make smash records.

KEANU KLEPFER: Yeah, I think we're just trying to influence, like, more kids, too, to  really try to blend something and to make something that's newer, you know what I mean? I think that's the most important thing, you know?

LAUREN GILGER: Well Dace, Keanu, thank you both so much. Thanks for performing for us. I appreciate it.

DACE SANTA CRUZ: Thank you so much for having us.

KEANU KLEPFER: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, so let's have you take us out on a song. What are you going to play for us?

DACE SANTA CRUZ: This one is called "it's only what's good."

[BELGIUM TREE PLAYS "it's only what's good"]