Tucson has a rich music scene. From famous acts like Calexico to hometown favorites like Sidewinders, there’s no shortage of great music being made in the Old Pueblo.
Karen Greene, librarian in Pima County and big local music fan, says the scene is even deeper than she knew. So, when she heard about a platform that was helping local libraries highlight local music, she jumped at the chance to make it happen in Arizona.
The result is called Desert Streams, and Oct. 15 is the last day for musicians to submit to be included in the next round. Greene joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
KAREN GREENE: My husband is a local musician and we go out to see local music all the time and there's so many good bands in Pima County. So many. I can't even keep track of it all and we'd be out and I'd be like, “wow. A why isn't this band nationally known?” or “B why aren't there more people in the audience?” There's, yeah, there's so much good music here.
And so I wanted to figure out a way that we could help showcase all of the great music that's in Pima County. And I heard about this program through a company called MUSICat that did just that. They showcase local music, it's streaming and it's through library systems. And I thought, well, that's what we need to do.”
LAUREN GILGER: And you're at the library, so there you go. So how does this work? It's, it's a platform where you can basically showcase these local artists, but they're also paid for contributing, right?
GREENE: So what happens is, so we have a contract with a company called MUSICat. They created this platform specifically for public libraries to join. Twice a year, we're asking bands to submit music.
We have a curation team that will then pick out 25 bands at a time that we will then pay them an honorarium so that we can have their album or four song EP available for folks to stream for free. You don't need a library card, there's no pay, it's all free.
GILGER: So giving them a real outlet, which can be tough for local artists, I know. Talk a little bit about the diversity, the range of music that you're trying to represent here. It's quite a process to get selected for this. There's a whole jury of people you have deciding who, who gets selected, right?
GREENE: Right. There are, at this point, there are five jurors. So three of us work for the library and we're all into music and then we have two community members. One is a musician himself as well as someone who books bands at a bar and the other is a DJ and is also into local music.
And so we all listen to all of the songs that are submitted and they're sorted into the different genres. So, we wanna make sure that we get as many genres as we possibly can. There's, there's just so many different styles of music that are here. We want to make sure that we can hit that
GILGER: Give us a sense of the gamut, like this is a lot and, and which you wouldn't necessarily think of. Like, when I think of Tucson music, I think of somebody like Calexico or Niko Case is from Tucson, right? Like a kind of Southwestern sound, but it goes far beyond that, it sounds like.
GREENE: I mean, we got a lot of rock and folk submissions. There's a lot of rock bands, there's a lot of folk bands, but we have ambient, we have classical, we have world music, we have jazz, we have whatever alternative is called alternative. I- we called it alternative, but alternative is like everything we have rap. I mean, we, we really have a wide variety.
GILGER: Did you have any submissions that you listen to as part of this jury and thought, you know, like, “I didn't even know this kind of music existed here?”
GREENE: Exactly. Yes, that, that happened all the time. The other thing we want to showcase our bands that are new. So when you mentioned Calexico before, well, we didn't, everyone knows Calexico we don't need to help showcase them, but we do want to help showcase bands that are just starting out.
We have some folks that during the pandemic, they learned how to play an instrument or they picked up an instrument that they had let go and they, you can record at home and they recording, they haven't even played out yet in public, but they have recorded music. So we wanna help, get the word out about those kinds of bands.
There's one band that I, I had no idea that this band existed and I haven't had a chance to see them live, but Elijah and his Kora. So I am a huge fan of the instrument, the kora, a West African instrument and here's this guy playing it and he submitted music and I was so excited about that.
GILGER: So, stuff you've never heard of and you're really plugged in to the local scene there. That's super interesting. What are some of the kind, of classics? The ones that you were like, “this band has to be on this list because I've been watching them in Tucson forever and people need to know about them.”
GREENE: Miss Olivia & the Interlopers.
She, that band, they actually played, we had a kickoff event where we had three bands that had been selected and a DJ that had been selected. They all performed and Miss Olivia and the Interlopers. They've been around for a while, and while folks know about them, If you have not heard her voice before you need to, everybody needs to hear her sing. She's fantastic.
GILGER: What's been the reaction like from the bands themselves? This is an opportunity for them, for sure. It sounds like you got a lot of people submitting.
GREENE: Yes, we had for the first round, we had 165-ish bands submit and we only had 25 slots. That was so hard. That was really, really hard. I had no idea, kind of what I was getting into with that. It's really hard to make those decisions.
This round, we don't have quite as many bands submitting, but we still only have 25 slots. The bands have been really excited and even bands that didn't get selected when we sent them the email saying thank you for submitting, you weren't selected. A bunch of them got in touch and said, thank you so much for even having this opportunity.
GILGER: Wow. Well, so what kind of contribution are you trying to make here? It sounds like you care a lot about the local music scene in Tucson. Is this something you think can really kind of contribute to that?
GREENE: Absolutely. Absolutely. It can because it allows people to explore and see what bands are out there and then have an impact and go see them live, support them live, support their music, share their music.
It also is something that I was thinking would be a fun thing if you were visiting a town. So you're visiting Tucson and you're like, “hey, what should I do at night?” You could find out what bands were playing and you can hear their music beforehand. I mean, that's something I would do.