The audience at the 32nd annual Tucson Blues Heritage Festival was in no hurry to leave Reid Park that Sunday in mid-October.
Even after headliner Los Lobos had finished up, they stayed, waiting for South Tucson guitar-playing brothers Eric and Steve Garcia to take the stage.
When they did, the crowd pressed up to the stage as Eric Garcia, beaming from ear-to-ear, played a spirited set of rocking blues.
“If you saw the look on (Eric’s) face and the crowd, how they reacted to him, it was a lot of fun,” said Steve Garcia, 11 years Eric’s senior.
“I was concerned that the crowd would leave after Los Lobos, but the Garcia Brothers held the crowd in spite of going on last,” added organizer Marty Kool. “They did a great job and they owned that performance.”
The concert was the last big gig for Eric Garcia, who died on Christmas Eve from kidney disease. He was 49.
“I’m happy he got to do that before he passed,” said Kool, who had worked with Eric Garcia over the years in shows at Hacienda del Sol. “He was an old soul. Such a kind and gentle guy, always with a smile on his face, handshake for everybody. Kinda took everything in stride.”
Eric Garcia was born on March 22, 1967, on the Tohono O’odham Nation in Sells. He grew up in South Tucson and sang in the choir at the South Tucson Community Church of the Nazarene.
He graduated from Pueblo High School and spent several years helping his parents run their store and restaurant in Sells before returning to Tucson to work with his brother in his carpentry business.
“When he came down and he worked for me, he gave me all that respect as far as his boss,” Steve Garcia recalled. “When we played music, I gave him that respect because he was boss. His musicianship far exceeded mine.”
Garcia said his brother, who was diagnosed with diabetes in his mid-20s, took a shot at a big-league music career, moving to California and once auditioning for Brit-rocker Ozzy Osbourne. He also toured in the early 2000s with Redbone, the Native American rock band that scored a No. 1 hit song on pop radio in the early 1970s, and spent a few months flirting with the music scene in Boston with longtime girlfriend Lauren Moore.
But he was happiest playing close to home, joining his brother more than 20 years ago and playing rocking blues in benefit concerts for Tucson motorcycle clubs, fundraisers, clubs and festivals. Eric Garcia also appeared at Tucson open mic nights, which exposed his guitar-playing prowess to fellow musicians in Tucson’s tight-knit community. Garcia said his brother quickly developed a reputation as a go-to session musician.
“He was very happy with his music,” Garcia said. “He had been offered bigger places to play. I don’t know why he turned them down. But he was a songwriter and studio musician.”
Eric Garcia had been undergoing dialysis for the past two years, the result of the diabetes that seemed to strike his family hard. Big brother Steve lost a leg to diabetes in 2013.
On Dec. 15, a week before his death, Eric Garcia made his last public appearance, playing a private party with his brother and drummer Brian Barbarisi. Steve Garcia said he had noticed around Thanksgiving that his brother’s health was declining and by the time of the final gig, his brother was visibly weak.
“I could tell he was forgetting words” when he sang, Steve Garcia said.
The day after that party, Eric Garcia made the first of several trips to the hospital in the days before he died. Moore and Garcia said Eric Garcia was exhausted; he had not slept in a week and confided in his brother that he was afraid that if he slept, he would not wake up, Garcia said.
“I’m really going to miss him,” Garcia said. “Everything reminds me of him. No matter where I go in Tucson … everything reminds me of him.”
“He was an amazing guy,” said Moore. “He was sensitive and sincere and kind and loving and giving. He would do anything you ask him.”