'Tom's Last Waltz' honors Wayback Machine singer, band

Tom Woolley’s death was not entirely unexpected, says his Wayback Machine bandmate Jim Lipson.

But that did not do much to ease the pain.

Lipson and his fellow Wayback bandmates Bev Seckinger and Shanti Foster have decided that after 20 years of sharing a stage with Woolley behind the mic they don’t see themselves continuing with a band that he co-founded with Lipson.

So on Saturday, Oct. 5, the surviving band members are playing a show at Monterey Court — a regular Wayback Machine stomping ground — that will be both a memorial of sorts for Woolley and a farewell for the band. With two decades, two acclaimed studio recordings with Tucson’s celebrated WaveLab and three live recordings, Wayback Machine is calling it quits.

“Of course I suspect that my principal bandmates Bev Seckinger, Shanti Foster and I will continue to make music, but we cannot in good faith carry on with the Wayback Machine moniker and so this is also our farewell gig under that name,” Lipson said.

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Saturday’s sendoff dubbed “Tom’s Last Waltz” will include appearances by two dozen Tucson musicians including Heather Hardy, AmoChip Dabney, Craig Schumacher, Danny Krieger, John Coinman, Mitzi Cowell and Eb Eberlein. Proceeds from the $10 admission will benefit the 35h annual Tucson Folk Festival next April.

Saturday’s event runs from 5 to 10 p.m. at Monterey Court, 505 W. Miracle Mile Road, where for the past several years, Wayback Machine has played a couple shows a year to benefit the folk festival.

Saturday’s show had been on the books before Woolley was diagnosed in June with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

He died weeks later in mid-July, according to social media posts.

Woolley was 67.