Desert Soul

The Sewer Rats were a group of high school misfits who drove every weekend to the same spot in the quiet, dead of night to a meeting place in the desert. Sitting around a make-shift bonfire (using only the pieces of debris available in the cooling sand), they passed the time taking hardy swigs of cheap beer, long drags on cigarettes and occasionally strumming a song. Kyle DeBruhl, the self-proclaimed ring leader, would talk of these nights during the slow, painful newspaper hour just before fifth period lunch like they were sacred ceremonies of brotherhood. Me, being a stubborn native New Yorker, missed the point entirely.

There's nothing great about the desert. It's hot. It's sweaty. It's boring, I thought. What I didn't realize is I was thinking only of the daylight hours. I had no idea what a late night rendezvous in the cool desert night was like...until now.

Flash forward five years. I was scouring Myspace on a tip from an editor at the Tucson Citizen, Polly Higgins. The band she recommended was Greyhound Soul. The assignment: define the difference between Desert Rock and Border Rock. A much more challenging task than I imagined. I decided to start with the basics. What does it mean to be in the desert? What are the fundamental characteristics of being a border town smack dab in the middle of the desert with no where to go but Mexico.



I found my answer in Joe Pena's voice. "Midnight Radio," the track that happened to be cued on Greyhound Soul's site, embodied everything those stories DeBruhl used to tell me. His throaty vocals are the sand that sticks to the roof of your mouth and the back of your throat when taking a deep breath of hot, desert air. The smooth slide guitar is the sound of sun-soaked delerium that can only be quenched with a cold, wet beer freshly plucked from the cooler on the porch.

So does the music make the place or does the place make the music? Was this truly Desert Rock like the critics say or was it Border Rock? All I know is, that song IS Tucson. That black spot in a sea of rust, brown dirt on the tattered map in the glove compartment of my boiling car finally found its true sound.

If you don't believe Greyhound Soul is the sound of a border town, take the song, pop it into your CD player in the dead of night and just drive. Crack the window and let the cool, gritty air pour in. You'll know what I mean if you drive long enough. That's what it means to live in Tucson, on the border.