David Huckfelt walked into the Red Room at The Grill in 2003, guitar in hand, ready to introduce himself to the handful of folks in the iconic downtown Tucson dive bar.
The first person he met was Tucson blues harmonica whiz Tom Walbank, who was largely responsible for the Red Room becoming a venue for blues and folk artists.
That chance meeting turned into a lifelong friendship that will play out on the La Rosa stage on Thursday, Dec. 4.
David Huckfelt, left, and Tom Walbank have been performing together since they met more than 20 years ago in Tucson. They are reuniting at La Rosa on Dec. 4.
Walbank, who left Tucson for Washington, D.C., in June, and Huckfelt, who lived in Tucson a couple of years before moving to Minneapolis, are coming home to release new albums.
Walbank's "In the Details" features 17 tracks, including some recorded with guest artists Phil Wiggins, Arthur Migliaza, Howe Gelb, Sullivan, the Bad News Blues Band (Mike Blommer, Steve Grams and Glenn Velardi), Tasha Bundy and Walbank's regular drummer Dimitri Manos.
"There's quite a few that have been recorded live over the years," Walbank said last month during an interview from D.C. "There's a few studio tracks. So it's more of a compilation."
David Huckfelt's performance at La Rosa on Dec. 4 will be the first time he will perform tracks from his forthcoming album, "I Was Born, But ...," due out in January.
Huckfelt recorded "I Was Born, But … ," an album of covers by Tom Petty, Warren Zevon, George Jones and others, over two days in 2024 at Gabriel Sullivan's Dust & Stone Recording Studio in downtown Tucson.
The album, produced by Sullivan and due out in January on the indie imprint Don Giovanni Records, features a handful of Tucson artists, including Walbank, Sullivan, Winston Watson, Connor “Catfish” Gallaher, Thøger Lund and, according to Huckfelt, "the barrio’s favorite outlaw poet/singer" Billy Sedlmayr.
Tom Walbank is coming home from Washington, D.C., where he has lived for six months.
Several of those artists are expected to join Huckfelt on the La Rosa stage Thursday as the Unarmed Force of Sonora band with Gelb, Sullivan, Watson, Lund and others.
Huckefelt said he and Walbank will do solo sets then come together "with various inlaws, outlaws and special guests."
Folk and blues singer-songwriter David Huckfelt lived in Tucson two years in the early 2000s.
"You’d need a Taser to keep Tucson musicians away that night," he said.
Many of those artists were in the Dust & Stone recording studio over those two days in winter 2024 when Huckfelt recorded the album. Huckfelt said the group went into the studio without sheet music or rehearsing and recorded the 16 songs in two days, which Huckfelt said might have been a record for Dust & Stone.
"After we made it, I needed to let it sit for awhile because they weren’t my songs and I was eager to write," he said.
Huckfelt sat on the project for six months. When he went back to it, "the performances stunned me, the musicianship and how live it sounded," he said.
"I Was Born, But ... " is the second album Huckfelt recorded in Tucson. The first was his 2022 sophomore album "Room Enough," which was the last album he recorded.
Walbank and Huckfelt see Thursday's concert as a homecoming with all the feelies of reuniting with old friends in a familiar space.
“I think that the things in my life that happened when I lived in Tucson were monumental," said Huckfelt, the father of a 5-year-old son. "I just love the community. I feel like it’s a home away from home. I feel like my music career started in Tucson. My first gigs were in Tucson.”
Tom Walbank's new album is almost a retrospective of his 35-year career.
Thursday's concert at La Rosa, 800 N. Country Club Road in the former Benedictine Monastery chapel, begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $15 through larosatucson.org.
"Bury Me Not (The Dying Cowboy)" is a cut off an album the Pines frontman David Huckfelt recorded in Tucson in early 2020 on his album "Room Enough, Time Enough."
