A lifetime ago, Billy Bacon and the Forbidden Pigs played their first Tucson show at El Casino Ballroom.
It was 1988 and from all recollections, it was a raucous night of Tex-Mex, honky-tonk, blues and rockabilly. The San Diego trio rocked the crowd to its core and and launched a love affair of sorts.
Throughout the 1990s, the trio returned and played El Casino, the Rialto Theatre, Club Congress, and the long-closed Mudbugs and Vaudeville. When Bacon’s arthritis became unbearable in the early 2000s, the Tucson shows came to an end.
On Friday, May 18, Bacon and company will try to recapture that magic at the Forbidden Pigs 30th anniversary reunion show at 191 Toole. Bacon will share the stage with the group’s original guitarist, Mike Hebert, who’s been a fixture in Tucson’s and Arizona’s Americana music scene for years. The show is being presented by the Rialto Theatre and Tucson’s Americana promoter Jeb Schoonover.
“It will be fun playing with Mike again,” Bacon said during a phone call from his home in Texas last week. “It will be great. I’m looking forward to it.”
Friday’s show will be Bacon’s first in Tucson in about 15 years. His arthritis has reduced his touring from 250 shows a year to about a dozen. But he still continues to record; his latest album “High, Wide and Handsome” came out in 2016 and he said he is now working on the followup.
The Forbidden Pigs, with Bacon playing stand-up bass, recorded five albums with titles including “Dressed to Swill,” “The Other White Meat” and “Pork Que.”
Post-Forbidden Pigs life for Bacon included recording 10 albums including with such Americana icons as Joe Walsh, Dave Alvin, Chris Gaffney and Candye Kane, regulars to Tucson stages in large part because of Schoonover’s Honkytonk Hacienda. Hebert moved to Tucson and performed with several bands including the Hoodo Kings out of Phoenix, the Kings of Pleasure and his latest project, The Mike Hebert Prison Band
Hebert will do double duty at Friday’s concert, playing a set with his Prison Band in addition to joining Bacon. Arizona Americana singer-songwriter Mark Insley is also on the bill.
