Jesse Valenzuela doesn’t pay much mind to college football.
Unless his hometown Arizona State University Sun Devils are matching wits and wide receivers against the rival Wildcats.
“The only game I’m interested in is when ASU beats the hell out of the Wildcats,” Valenzuela said in November, a week before the big Duel in the Desert showdown at Arizona Stadium.
Sorry, Jesse, but the Cats whupped the Devils by three-plus touchdowns.
On Friday, Dec. 30, Valenzuela and his Gin Blossoms bandmates will headline the Desert Diamond Casino Tailgate Festival at the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl, to be played at Arizona Stadium. The band is expected to go on stage at 1 p.m., two hours after the tailgate opens to the public at 11 a.m.
Chances are Valenzuela and the guys — Scott Johnson, Bill Leen and Robin Wilson — won’t stick around for the actual bowl game between the U.S. Air Force Academy Falcons and University of South Alabama Jaguars. Valenzuela, who moved from the band’s native Tempe to Los Angeles 25 years ago, has a higher pursuit: Food.
“Remember that old area of town where the thrift stores were?” he asked.
Yep, North Fourth Avenue.
“Is that old Italian restaurant still there?”
You mean Caruso’s? Oh, yeah.
“Yeah, Caruso’s. That must be like 60 years old. I love his spaghetti sauce,” he said, then suggested that he might have to drop in and get a side of sauce to go.
But it will have to wait until he gets his fill of Sonoran-style Mexican food with his Tucson uncles, Tony and George.
“Maybe we’ll all go out to Mexican food. Hopefully El Minuto is open that day and we’ll all go eat tortilla soup,” he said.
It should be; El Minuto, 354 S. Main Ave., is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays.
The Gin Blossoms, one of the biggest bands to come out of Tempe in the late 1980s-early ’90s, consider playing any Arizona city as a homecoming. Long before their breakthrough album “New Miserable Experience” in 1992, the Gin Blossoms were trudging across the region playing small clubs and dive bars.
“I played the old Fox Theatre downtown and we were staying at some hotel down there and I walked down to the Congress and I ran into (Tucson drummer) Bruce Halper and some other local musical impresarios and had a good time,” said Valenzuela, who hits the road with his jangle pop band for roughly 80 shows a year and spends the rest of his time writing music for film and TV. “It’s a beautiful town and I really love it there. I would move there in a heartbeat.”
The Gin Blossoms, whose members are in their early 50s, will celebrate their 30th year in 2017, hopefully with a new album — their first since 2010’s “No Chocolate Cake.” The band has been working on the project, which they will self-produce and release, since late 2015 and Valenzuela said each member has come to the table with three songs. In past projects, Valenzuela has been the lead songwriter.
“Putting out a record is a nice, novel idea, but you don’t make money on records any more,” he added. “It would be good to just make songs and put them up on the website and people can have them, I guess.”
Valenzuela said he and the band have long retired any notion of late night TV or the radio success (“Hey Jealousy,” “Mrs. Rita,” “Follow You Down,” “Found Out About You”) that swooped them onto the national scene in the ’90s.
“We’re at a point in our career where you can’t press your nose against the window and keep screaming and clamoring for attention. It’s just not gracious,” he added with a laugh. “The idea was to be able to play music for a living, and (we’ve) been lucky to have that happen.”
