There is nothing retiring about those in the retirement communities in northwest Tucson.
You’ll find senior rock ‘n’ rollers, concert goers, dancers, whoopers, singers, pizza lovers and wine sippers.
Doubt it? Spend a few nights at the Gaslight Music Hall.
We did. And they all showed up.
Friday, Aug. 5
Dancing in the Street:
Rock ‘n’ Soul Dance Party
The Gaslight Music Hall is generally packed to the lip of the stage with tables and chairs. Not on this night.
The first several rows are removed, revealing a shiny wood dance floor.
Nearly all of the hall’s 120 seats are filled. Staff dressed in old timey dance hall garb run around taking orders and placing baskets of popcorn on tables.
Glasses of wine are filled to the brim. The popcorn baskets — gratis — sitting on the red and white table cloths are never empty.
Robert Shaw, long a regular at The Gaslight Theatre on Tucson’s east side, and well known for his Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash shows, manages the music hall, the latest addition to the Gaslight family.
A hush comes over the crowd as he steps on to the stage and up to the mic, the band gathering behind him.
“We just got our liquor license,” he says to the crowd. “The more you drink, the better we sound.” The audience laughs. The refrain starts most performances.
He introduces Crystal Stark and the band and quickly steps off stage. “Are you ready to rock and roll?” Stark asks. The audience roars, and she and the band go right into “Dancing in the Streets.” The gets-you-moving music doesn’t take a break. Nor do the dancers — that floor is crowded for each number. Women with men, women with women, men and women alone. There’s an exuberant energy as they dance and sing along. A gentleman, who looks to be in his early 70s, gets close to the floor, doing a modified alligator dance. A couple dressed alike in Hawaiian shirts moves to the music. There’s a woman with crutches, another in a leg cast. This is a crowd that loves its dance.
And these popular dance parties almost didn’t happen.
Shortly after the music hall opened in February, Sun City residents Kris and Earl Cohen approached Shaw.
“They came to us and said, ‘there’s a big dance contingent out here,’” recalls Shaw. They thought a regular dance party was a fine idea. “I was a little resistant to it,” he says. “I didn’t think we’d get that many people out.”
He was wrong. Each dance party — there are one or two a month — has a theme, from country to Motown to blues, and each is packed, he says.
The Cohens haven’t missed one. “They are fabulous,” says Kris of the events, sitting down during a band break. The minute the band comes back on, the couple jump up ready to dance again. They will stop when the band’s does.
Joining the Cohens on the dance floor are Dove Mountain residents Ruth and Frank Parness. They mouth the words to the songs and move with the music. Ruth walks with crutches; sometimes they lean up against the stage while she dances, sometimes she has them tucked under her arms.
The two are regulars. Ruth is the dance enthusiast in the retirees’ household.
“I don’t love dancing,” admits Frank.
“But he loves me,” Ruth quickly adds.
As Stark belts out “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Carol Knowlten rises from her table toward the back of the room and hits the dance floor. She’s alone this evening. “I just love the music and I just wanted to dance,” she says, her cheeks pink from the exertion. She lives close to the music hall and she often comes for concerts and dance parties.
She says there is a comfort here in showing up alone, dancing alone, having a glass of wine alone.
Others agree.
“This is a happy place; it’s long overdue,” says Raye Kerr, who is there with her friend, Jan Maresca. They both live nearby and this is the third time the two have hit the music hall. “It’s just cozy,” adds Marcesca. “It’s family.”
Saturday, Aug. 6
Sing Me Back Home: The Legend of Merle Haggard
It’s 3 in the afternoon. The music hall is empty but the stage is filled with musicians tuning instruments and testing mics. Tim Gallagher, the lead singer, does jumping jacks as the sound man makes adjustments.
Shaw is putting up a faux wooden fence and cacti cutouts to enhance the country feel of the concert, slated to start in a little less than four hours. The dance floor is filled with tables and chairs, bringing the seating capacity up to 204.
In the sound-and-light booth, high up and in the back of the room, light technician Charlie Gebow has a song list for that night’s concert in front of him. He quickly scrolls through the internet looking for images to illustrate each number.
The kitchen is sparkling and empty; in a few hours, staff will begin to arrive, fire up the pizza ovens, fill baskets with popcorn, and get the bar ready. About 6:15, the doors open and the crowd filters in.
Shaw is hobnobbing before the show. Or maybe he’s pacing: this is the first time out for the Haggard show, the latest of the tribute bands from Shaw’s Lonely Street Productions.
He realizes how slammed the staff is and begins to take orders and deliver trays full of drinks.
Greg and Leslie Hahn are sitting about midway back, sipping a drink and eating a pizza. The retired couple came in from Picture Rocks for the show. They’ve been here before. “We’ve seen concerts with music by Crosby, Stills Nash and Young, Janis Joplin, Johnny Cash, the Eagles,” says Greg. “It’s great entertainment for this area.”
“And the thin crust pizza is good, too,” adds Leslie.
The lights dim and Shaw steps on stage.
“You ready to hear some real country music?” he asks the crowd. They are.
The musicians are suited up. They open with Haggard’s hit “Swinging Doors.” An image of swinging bar doors comes up on the slide behind them.
When Gallagher and the band break out with “If You’ve Got The Money, Honey,” voices from the audience rise up to meet his.
He drops some Haggard history then launches into “Mule Skinner Blues.” “Who was that by?” he asks the audience. “Jimmie Rodgers,” a chorus of audience members respond.
This is a crowd that knows its country.
Saturday, Aug. 13
“Remember the King”
Shaw has an arsenal of about 60 shows in his Lonely Street Productions, many of which will show up on the music hall’s stages.
He is in some of them; he is known for his Elvis Presley and Cash shows. But he has cut his number of performances.
“I decided to pull back because I was so surprised to find I love the production side,” he says in an interview.
However, he is a long-time performer; he can’t give that up.
“Getting to perform is the icing,” he says.
And his Elvis is wildly popular. There is not an empty seat in the music hall. Among the familiar-to-the-music hall faces here are the Cohens, in their usual table a few rows from the stage. Their dancing this night will be confined to their chairs.
This show takes us from early Elvis to jumpsuit Elvis. The first act, Shaw comes out dressed in black with a gold lame jacket; the band wears black suits and red ties. He shakes, and the audience, heavy on the female side, screams. He breaks out into “That’s All Right,” then goes right into “Hound Dog.”
He curls his lip and shimmies his hips. “Thank you. Thank you very much,” he says. “I gotta say that or I don’t get paid.”
A hallmark of the Shaw-produced shows is music and information. We learn about Elvis’ love for his mom, how RCA bought out his contract from Sun Records for $40,000, and the time Steve Allen refused to have Elvis on his show because he was “too vulgar.”
“Anyone remember the Steve Allen show?” Shaw asks. A sea of white-haired heads nod.
Next up is “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.” Midway through the song, he leans over and takes a napkin from a woman in the front row, mops his brow and returns it to her. The crowd goes wild, whistling and cheering.
A few more numbers and he slips off the stage and comes back moments later decked out in black leather. This is 1968 Elvis, dressed as the singer was for his comeback special.
He begins to sing “Trouble” and Karen Dano lets out a loud whistle. She is here with her cousins from Chicago. The music hall is one of her favorite places; she knew her cousins would love it, too.
“Everybody is so happy about the music hall,” says Dano, who learned to whistle from her dad. “I would come by myself.”
Dano, who lives nearby, says her dad, though not here this night, loves it, too.
“He’s 87 and he brings his girlfriend here,” she says. “He lives just down the street.”
Shaw and the band take a break and 11-year-old Alex Komie, gets up from his front-row seat and stretches his legs.
Most everyone at the show — at all the shows we attended — are older than him by a half century or more. “It’s really good,” he says about the music.
Though what would be even better is a Michael Jackson tribute concert, the Orange Grove Middle School student says.
Second act, and Shaw is dressed in bell-bottoms, a red silky shirt, has a huge gold buckle around his waist, and a jacket with a high, high collar and the initials “EP” in rhinestones on the back.
There is plenty of chair dancing as he sings “See See Rider,” and cheers when he croons “Suspicious Minds.” A medley that includes “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” receives a standing ovation.
It isn’t long before a backup singer hangs several white scarfs around his neck. Loud cheers erupt. This crowd knows what’s coming.
Shaw sings “Love Me Tender” as he leaves the stage and cruises through the audience. He stops to take a scarf from his neck and wraps it around an enthusiastic fan, who throws her arms around him and gives him a kiss on the cheek.
He repeats the gesture as he slowly moves toward the back of the room while he sings, a spotlight following him.
Melody Weber, who will be 92 this month, waves her arms and beams at him from her seat toward the back. He stops and slips a scarf around her neck as he sings a few more bars of the song. She is beside herself, giving him a big hug. He kisses her on the cheek.
After the concert, Shaw and the rest of the band stand near the exit to thank people for coming. The line is very long, and very slow as people ask for pictures and spill their memories of Elvis. Shaw listens to each, commenting, smiling, not giving a hint of how exhausted he must be after a two-hour show.
Weber is tired after the energy-charged concert that had her swaying and cheering throughout, but she is determined to wait in line so that Shaw can autograph her scarf.
“It’s so wonderful to have something like this here,” she says as she leaves. “The talent is so great and women can feel so comfortable.”
And about that peck on the cheek she got from Shaw:
“I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “He was such a sweet kisser.”
