I love it when a plan comes together. —John “Hannibal” Smith.
Manifestation, results, the hard work bearing fruit. This is what satisfaction looks like.
For the Moramarco Conspiracy, tonight is the payoff: an album release party for the Bisbee Song Cycle, a collection of 12 tracks from a quiver full of local musicians. Months of work, cat-herding, schedule wrangling, trial and error, and finally the record, now available to all. Find it one YouTube, find it on Spotify, or pick your favorite streaming platform here. If physical media, the technology of the future, is more your style, you can seek out a loose CD since there have been reported sightings of such around town.
On February 3, Moramarco held a party in partnership with the Bisbee Grand Saloon, beneath the lights of their new, bespoke performance stage. Several of the musicians featured on the compilation were in attendance: TS Henry Webb, Daniele Panther, Steve Drew of One Ghost, Shanti Nicechops, Beca and Scott Reyes, Astra Kelly and of course, the emcee, Moramarco, the man himself.
There have been a number of compilation albums featuring local musicians over the years. KBRP’s Spirit of Bisbee volumes 1 and 2 come to mind, as does a hard to find compilation called “Best of Homegrown,” published by what was then called Old Bisbee Records (now Desert Myth) in time for the 2008 Blues Festival.
What sets the Bisbee Song Cycle apart from these great collections is that Conspirator in Chief Moramarco insisted upon two things: the songs were to be Bisbee songs written and performed by Bisbee songsters, and that the material be previously unreleased–or at the very least, be re-recorded at his home studio so as to get a cohesive post-production sound.
Bisbee certainly puts the muse in music, and so it was high time someone put together an album of songs about the town, written and performed by those who live and breathe the magic. To get to share space on the album and in the Grand that night was more than a treat. It was and is an honor to be among such august company.
The reader is invited to listen to the collection and pick their favorites. I’ll share my top three below:
Bisbee Whores by Beca Reyes.
Beca and Scott Reyes have been an anchor of the Bisbee music scene for decades. She’s the songwriter, and Scott is about the best harp player to be found in this time zone. Bisbee Whores is about those storied “Soiled Doves” whose trade formed a loose…well, it’s tempting to swing at every pitch here but let’s keep it above the belt and call it, uh, a relief society of sorts, one that might have kept those first generation miners from burning the town to the ground. God bless them and keep them. As a historical portrait of Bisbee’s beginnings as a wild west mining town, this song deserves a spot in the top three.
Annalee once said to me
As she soaked in a tub good and hot
To be the queen
Pretend you’re green
And don’t give out names if you’re caught!
Bisbee, I’m Gonna Ride by TS Henry Webb.
TS lives and breathes music, and thank goodness he found us and set up camp here in Bisbee. He’s a great piano player, and plays a mean flute to boot. And, a he’s a songwriter. I’m Gonna Ride is about the push and pull of the town–it’s a place full of love, even if its tough love. This is a smoldering, slow burning blues served over easy, with good old “Fiddle John” Cordes backing him up.
It’s a town for the troubled
It’s a town for the woe
Everybody’s hustling, but there
Ain’t no place to go
Nobody’s payin, everybody wants a show
Just too many monkeys
Peelin off the dough
I’m gonna ride, I’m gonna ride
–Back to you
Magnolia by “Badfoot” Mikle, aka MJ.
This song man…It’s one thing to have a song bring a tear to the eye, but I can’t even think about this one without getting all misty. It’s a sentimental song about old memories, good and bad, nostalgia tinted with loss and pain. I don’t know what it is but this track, the shortest on the album, is like a gut punch. Maybe it was busking under the shade of that same old magnolia tree in Grassy Park in 2008 as a wide-eyed Bisbee newbie. It was an instant throwback to being a kid in Houston when the sweet magnolia blooms of spring made make the whole neighborhood smell like sweet lemonade. That tree is gone now, just like the years separating those days from the here and now.
I remember back in school with those vatos locos
Stone City Crew
Now the OBC
Is you
And me
Above Photos By Linda Coole
Keith Allen Dennis is a Bisbee writer, living the dream of becoming the songster he was meant to be. He dearly misses that old Grassy Park magnolia but what goes up must come down and life goes on. Find his music at keithallendennis.bandcamp.com.