Retreat from Tucson's heat with Music on the Mountain series

Tom Walbank was three, maybe four songs into his first set on Saturday, July 6, when a dozen or so folks scurried to find seats at the back of the Mount Lemmon Lodge patio.

Nearly every chair at the two dozen or so tables and all of the love seats and lounge chairs near the makeshift stage were taken so folks got a little creative.

Some brought their own lawn chairs and set them up along the wall so they weren’t impeding the walkway.

Tucsonan Tayler Sipe sat on an end table next to her 4-year-old son Jackson, who sat on a rider stroller.

One couple dragged the piano bench from the lobby onto the patio.

As the patio-turned-concert venue filled up, Walbank looked around.

“I’m digging this,” said Tucson’s preeminent bluesman, who was making his debut at the reimagined Music on the Mountain concert series.

Since April, the year-old Mount Lemmon Lodge has hosted Tucson musicians for its weekly concert series, a reboot of sorts of the original Music on the Mountain series held from 2009-13.

A community gathering place

The series is the brainchild of the lodge’s owner and architect Diana Osborne, who wanted to create a gathering place for the small mountain community (population 50).

“Diana’s goal in creating this place was to bring back those mountain lodges that were destroyed by fire,” said General Manager Jeremy Gassen. “The lodges were a gathering place for the community.”

Music has always had a role in that ethos, going back to the 1960s and ‘70s when Tucson musicians would make the 70-minute trek up the scenic highway to play the old Mount Lemmon Inn.

That ended in 1977, when the inn burned down.

Fast-forward 32 years to 2009. A pair of Mount Lemmon businessmen — developer Jim Campbell and restaurateur Bob Zimmerman — figured live music was overdue to return to Summerhaven.

The pair launched the Music on the Mountain series, curated by former Tucson promoter Bonnie Vining, to give Tucsonans an excuse to escape the sweltering heat on Sunday afternoons and boost the handful of shops and restaurants in the village.

On a good day, 300 to 400 people would set up lawn chairs or settle onto the boulders and logs framing the makeshift stage in a vacant lot on Summerhaven’s main road. The live music leaned acoustic and Americana and a few shows attracted even bigger audiences. At some point in their day trips, those folks would wander into the nearby shops including the popular fudge shop in the Mt. Lemmon General Store & Gift Shop and the iconic Cookie Cabin, where $9 gets you a fresh-baked giant cookie big enough for two or three.

The series went on hiatus in 2012 due to high fire danger, then returned in 2013. That turned out to be its final summer; Vining, who also produced concerts in Tucson, retired to Costa Rica and live music, aside from the occasional singer brought in to provide a live soundtrack for Summerhaven arts and crafts shows, was once again just a memory.

A musical reboot

Earlier this year, five or six months after Osborne opened her family’s 16-room Alps-inspired lodge at 12833 N. Sabino Canyon Park, she reached out to Tucson concert promoter Vibz Arizona and its founder Jim Travis about bringing back Music on the Mountain.

It was an idea that Travis had already been considering in his regular trips up to the mountain when the lodge was under construction.

“I drove up there and thought, ‘I’m going to put music here. I’m going to bring music back on the mountain,’” said the longtime Tucson promoter.

Tucson musician Bobby Ronstadt made the introductions with Osborne and by early spring, the pair had put plans in motion for a weekly concert series on Saturday afternoons.

It kicked off on April 20 with Tucson reggae band A-1. Other early acts in the series included jazz singer Susan Artemis, Tiny House of Funk, Jay Fairchild and John Hughes.

Gassen said that once word got out about the series, he started getting calls from musicians wanting to be part of the lineup and fans wanting to know more about it.

It was a slow start

But Travis said attendance started off slow. He thinks it’s because people hadn’t heard that there was live music. Every week the audience gets bigger, but Travis said he would like to see all the seats filled for every show.

“We’ve had a couple that have been packed, but I think people are not aware yet that music is back on the mountain,” he said, noting that one of the biggest concerts so far has been the Tucson blues band Porch Rockers, who performed on June 22 as a fierce monsoon passed over the area.

Audiences come from the mountain’s sparse year-round population, overnight guests at the lodge and nearby cabins, and Tucson day trippers looking for a little relief from the summer swelter.

The temperatures in Tucson soared to a blistering 108 on Saturday as around 200 people filled the Mount Lemmon Lodge patio, lured in by the cool breeze blowing through the forest framing Summerhaven. The iPhone weather app said the temperature was 87 degrees but it felt more like a springtime 80.

Tayler Sipe said she had no idea about Saturday’s show with Walbank. She and her mother, Sandy, decided to bring Jackson to Summerhaven “to get out of the heat.” They planned to go on a short hike, check out the stores and drive up to Ski Valley to take a ride on the ski lift.

“We stumbled on this and he just loves it,” she said moments after her son introduced himself to Walbank between songs.

Jackson seemed enthralled as the raspy-baritoned Walbank mixed his original songs with old-school classics, from Muddy Waters’ 1948 gem “Gypsy Woman” to Elmore James’ “Shake Your Money Maker” released in 1961. He worked the slide on his guitar while he growled into the mic then blew into his blues harp as his longtime drummer Dimitri Manos kept the beat on a snare drum.

An older woman shimmied up to the small space in front of the makeshift stage and danced the same two-step, turn, two-step moves to every song.

In the lobby area, where a dozen people were planted in the couches and easy chairs, Tucson retiree Cliff Geraci was doing a similar dance.

“This is a great venue,” he said, taking a sip of beer.

Geraci is a regular to blues concerts in Tucson and had recently seen Walbank at a Tucson brewery. During a break in the music, he went up to the singer and showed him a picture on his phone from that show.

Geraci said he had no idea Walbank was performing on Saturday when he rode his motorcycle up from Tucson. All he knew was that there was a blues show and that the weather was a lot cooler up on the mountain than down in the valley.

Travis said he anticipates this weekend’s show with the classic rock band Gift Horse could see the biggest audience yet.

“I just have a feeling that it’s going to be hitting now,” he said. “When I see in my social media 100 hits on a show announcement and comments like ‘I didn’t know they had music on the mountain again’ ... I think word’s getting out.”

Music on the Mountain concerts are mostly held on Saturdays and some Sundays at the Mount Lemmon Lodge, 12833 N. Sabino Canyon Park, through October. Admission is free and artists do accept tips. For more information, visit mountlemmonlodge.com.