Lopez brings big band to Europe tour bon voyage gig

Tucson singer-songwriter Brian Lopez is double-dipping on his latest European tour.

He will spend the first half of the journey going from Berlin to Belgrade supporting Tucson desert rockers Giant Sand. Then he and fellow Tucson musician Gabriel Sullivan will head out on a 10-day co-headlining trek that takes them to Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and France before he finally comes home to Tucson a few days before Christmas.

Before he goes, Lopez is putting on a bon voyage concert at Club Congress on Friday, Nov. 13. It will be the first time in more than a year that Lopez, the 32-year-old former frontman of alternative/experimental rockers Mostly Bears and a member of the Tucson cumbia outfit Chicha Dust, performs with a full band. He shares the stage Friday with his longtime bandmates, including his Mostly Bears co-founder and bass player Geoffrey Hildalgo.

“With ‘Static Noise,’ my new album, there’s a lot that goes into it, so to be able to replicate that wireless is kind of tricky when you’re just doing a solo, acoustic thing,” he said, recalling a tour of France last April that included a big band and stage effects.

“It’s just nice to do a big rock ‘n’ roll show, to put it simply. It’ll be fun,” he added in a conversation that touched on the differences between touring in America and Europe and why performing in Tucson is Lopez’s ultimate stage high.

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On playing in Europe: “They are a lot more receptive to off-center music and art, I think, as opposed to American culture, which is so YouTube generation. Like 15 minutes of fame. ... Europeans seem to be more into ... the fine arts, and that includes music, as well. In the U.S., it’s hard to break in unless you have a very well-polished radio hit .... or some YouTube phenomenon occurring.

“In Europe, I have been able to go back and forth for a long time and slowly cultivate a dedicated audience, an audience that won’t leave me for ‘the next thing.’ I don’t mean to alienate the American audience; I am still trying hard to captivate them in the same way. America’s hard.”

Tucson love: “Tucson is very embracing. They are quite lovely to me, in fact. I hold Tucson in a special place in my heart. I don’t play Tucson nearly as often, which makes the shows even more special when I get a chance to play here. It’s always a bigger deal for me to play Tucson on a personal level. It’s like being on the Golden State Warriors and playing in the Bay Area rather than going to Toronto to play the Raptors.”

Bring on the band: Mona Chambers on cello, Vicki Brown on violin, Jack Sterbis on drums, Gabriel Sullivan on guitar, Geoffrey Hildalgo on bass, Jason Urman on keyboards and Lopez on lead vocals and guitar. “Even though we don’t see each other as often, when we get together to do one of my shows, it kind of brings back some nostalgia of when I was first starting and getting ahold of these guys to follow me into the deep depths of music hell and back,” he said. “And they’ve stuck with me and it’s been so fun and rewarding in so many different ways.”

Where are the Bears? Lopez and Hildalgo are still involved in music and perform together on Lopez’s solo efforts as well as with Chicha Dust and other projects. Lopez said he fell out of touch with drummer Nick Wantland, who is married and has a family “and is just happy not doing music,” Lopez said.