Ronstadt family musical dynasty hitting the stage in Tucson

Michael J. Ronstadt had an idea a decade ago to get all of the musical Ronstadt cousins, siblings, nieces and nephews together on a single stage for an evening of family music.

It never happened.

But some good ideas are worth hanging onto, waiting out the circumstances and conflicts until the timing is just right.

On Oct. 23, five ensembles of Ronstadts, four generations in all if you count the baby in Katie (Ronstadt) Arellano’s belly, will fill the historic Fox Tucson Theatre stage for “The Ronstadt Family in Concert: An evening celebrating a musical dynasty.” Linda Ronstadt, who lives in San Francisco and is battling Parkinson’s Disease, will not be performing, although she will be part of the multimedia presented during the concert.

“I wanted to kind of emulate the show that he envisioned,” Bobby Ronstadt said of his late cousin, Michael, who died in 2016.

The concert is presented by the Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona, whose chairman Ken Goodman was instrumental in organizing it.

Goodman said that he and Bobby Ronstadt first started talking about a Ronstadt family concert not long after his organization had hosted a fundraising concert with the Phoenix flamenco ensemble ¡FlaMÉXico! in 2019. About 700 people loosely filled the Fox that night, raising nearly $80,000 for Jewish Family & Children’s Services, which for the past 80 years has provided counseling services for victims of trauma and services for families and the elderly.

Goodman thought a Ronstadt family concert would be a great fundraising follow up, especially after his organization added refugee resettlement to its services. Working with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and under the auspices of the U.S. State Department, JFCS to date has helped 55 refugees primarily from Afghanistan to resettle in Tucson and is now getting refugees from the Middle East, South America and Ukraine.

“We are all about people being safe and helping people with challenges in life,” said Goodman, who became chairman in 2019.

His idea for the Ronstadt family was “to get however many groups there are of Ronstadts … on one stage,” Goodman said.

He reached out to Bobby Ronstadt, who was on board from the start.

“There has never been a showcase of all the family groups,” Ronstadt said, adding that the chance for all of the Ronstadts to share the historic Fox stage was exciting.

“The Fox is a very special venue,” he said. “I find it exciting that we all get to play.”

Ronstadt reached out to his musical family members from both sides of the family — his uncle, Gilbert, who was Michael and Linda’s father; and his father, Edward, who had a dozen children including Bobby’s youngest brother, Tim, who will be part of the concert.

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The Fox concert will feature five Ronstadt ensembles — the Kiko Jácome Trio featuring Linda’s older sister Susie’s son Kiko Jácome; Linda’s niece Mindy Ronstadt; the Ronstadt Brothers, Michael’s sons Michael G. and Peter Dalton; PD Ronstadt & the Company, with the Ronstadt brothers, Bobby Ronstadt and Bobby’s granddaughter Katie (Ronstadt) Arellano; and Never on Time, with Tim, his child Charlie Ronstadt, his niece Lupe (Ronstadt-Quiroz) Brown and two nephews by marriage, Mike Hartshorn and Tyler Kinzer.

“Our family tree is actually a forest,” Bobby Ronstadt joked, noting that there are 110 descendants of patriarch Federico Ronstadt, who came to Tucson when he was 14 in 1882.

Throughout the family’s 140-year Tucson history, music has been an anchor. Family gatherings always included family members “tuning up the guitars” and singing songs mostly in Spanish. In “Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands,” Linda Ronstadt’s just-released memoir with co-writer Lawrence Downes, she recalled that her father would sing the lead, joined by her aunts and uncles, then the cousins and friends.

“The music never felt like a performance, it simply ebbed and flowed with the rest of the conversation,” she wrote.

Until COVID, Bobby Ronstadt’s niece hosted “Third Sunday” family potlucks that always ended with music.

“By the end of the night we would be in the living room singing and ‘Volver, Volver’ would be the last song we’d sing,” he said.

The ranchera song has been a Ronstadt family tradition for decades and it will be the finale of the Oct. 23 concert. All five Ronstadt ensembles will share the stage along with family members called up from the audience to perform the song made famous by Vicente Fernández.

The Fox concert will be the first and probably only opportunity to see all of the Ronstadts on one stage, Bobby Ronstadt said.

“It’s really a once in a lifetime because I don’t think it would happen again,” he said. “It’s going to be the first and only concert like this.”

“This event has turned into, in my mind, a Tucson historic event,” added Goodman. “You’ve got the Ronstadt family and their history since the 1880s in Tucson. And you have the JFCS, which has been here 80 years. And then you have the Fox Theatre, a historic theater.”

The show is at 4 p.m. at the Fox, 17 W. Congress St. Tickets are $46-$75 through foxtucson.com

Photos: Tucson-native, Grammy-winner Linda Ronstadt