Spend this weekend at these Tucson shows

No weekend plans?

Here’s an idea: Catch a live show, starting with supporting local music on Friday, June 2, with the Muffulettas on the Hotel Congress Plaza before going old-school 1970s soft rock/pop with Ambrosia and Firefall at Desert Diamond Casino on Saturday, June 3.

End your weekend Sunday, June 4, with laughter at the AVA at Casino del Sol with standup comedian Franco Escamilla.

The Muffulettas

7 p.m. Friday, Hotel Congress Plaza, 311 E. Congress St.; $5 at hotelcongress.com

No, we’re not talking about the classic New Orleans sandwich with olives and Italian cold cuts, but we are talking the classic New Orleans sound.

Not the Preservation Hall Jazz Band kinda New Orleans, but the sound made popular by folks like Dr. John, Professor Longhair, Linda Lyndell, The Meters, The Neville Brothers, King Floyd, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Earl King.

With a three-piece horn section, two vocalists, bass, guitar and keyboards, Tucson’s Muffulettas is the kind of band that turns every show into a big dance party.

Kevin Stultz started the band 11 years ago as a selfish pet project: He wanted to learn to play piano like the New Orleans greats he had long admired.

“I just like the funky sound and the type of rhythms and music,” he said. “I’ve been a fan of a lot of those artists a really long time.”

Muffulettas members include vocalists Joshua Butcher and Robin Messing of the Tangelos and in-demand Tucson guitarist Damon Barnaby, who recently teamed up with Butcher to form the roots rock duo Barnaby and the Butcher.

The band plays four to six shows a year, most of them at Monterey Court, Stultz said. They also play mardi gras at the New Orleans-inspired Tucson restaurant The Parish. This year, they added a second mardi gras show at The Delta downtown, which is a sister to The Parish.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Ambrosia and Firefall

8 p.m. Saturday, Desert Diamond Casino Diamond Center, 1100 W. Pima Mine Road; $25-$45 through ddcaz.com.

Ambrosia and Firefall were the kind of soft-rock bands whose swoonable love songs were played at junior high dances as the perfect prompt to get clumsy boys and awkward girls onto the disco ball-lit dance floor.

Between them, the bands racked up nearly a dozen Top 40 hits in their heydays between 1975-80, including Ambrosia’s “How Much I Feel,” “Biggest Part of Me,” “You’re the Only Woman (You & I)” and “Holdin’ onto Yesterday;” and Firefall’s “You Are the Woman,” “Just Remember I Love You,” “Runaway Love” and “Heading for A Fall.”

Firefall has only one original member on its lineup, while Ambrosia has three of its original four.

Franco Escamilla

7:30 p.m. Sunday, AVA at Casino del Sol, 5655 W. Valencia Road; $35-$200 through casinodelsol.com.

Apparently, Escamilla is a smart aleck known for having a dark, acerbic sense of humor. Hence his nickname: El Amo del Sarcasmo (The Master of Sarcasm), which has served him well in a comedy career that started in earnest after the western Mexico native launched a YouTube channel several years ago. By 2016, he had his own comedy talk show on American Spanish-language TV followed up with four Netflix specials.

He has appeared in concert at Mexico’s most important venues, including the National Auditorium, and was the first Latin comedian to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York. He also has done sold-out shows in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

We get Escamilla as part of his “Gaby” Tour that he is taking to several American cities.