The Arizona Music History Archive
If you found your way here, there is a good chance that at some point in your life you stood in a club, rehearsal room, record store, parking lot, backyard, warehouse or some other forgotten corner of Arizona and watched local music happen right in front of you. Maybe you were in the band, maybe you booked the show, ran sound, took photographs, worked radio, printed flyers, sold tickets, hauled gear, managed somebody, promoted the night, or simply stood in front of the stage and remembered what happened when the lights went down.
That is what The Death of Local Music and The Arizona Music History Archive are about. My name is Richard N. Ornelas, also known as Reverend Black Jack McBride, and I created this project because too much local music history disappears when the people who lived it stop telling the stories.
Famous bands usually leave a trail behind them—albums, magazine articles, interviews, videos, websites and record-company paperwork. Local bands are different. Sometimes all that remains is a cassette in a box, a flyer folded inside an old photo album, a shirt no one has worn in thirty years, a handful of photographs, a name written on the back of a picture, or one person saying, “Man, I remember those guys.” That is history too.
Start at the Beginning
The Death of Local Music — Volume I is available now on Amazon. The book looks at the rise, fall and future of Arizona's local music scene and the people, places and communities that kept it alive.
Click the book cover or the button below to view Volume I on Amazon.
Buy Volume I on AmazonVolume II — Arizona Legacy Bands
The current work is The Death of Local Music — Volume II: Arizona Legacy Bands, focused primarily on the Arizona music scene of the 1980s and 1990s, while also following roots that reach back into the 1960s and 1970s and stories that carried forward into the 2000s.
This is not a popularity contest and it is not a ranking of who was the biggest band, who sold the most records, who had the best guitarist or who should have gotten signed. The bands that never made it out of town matter too. The musicians who played every weekend and then disappeared matter. The promoters, photographers, club owners, managers, DJs, sound engineers, road crews, fans, families and friends who helped hold the scene together matter because all of them helped create Arizona music history.
The Death of Local Music Series
The Death of Local Music is not a one-book project. The Arizona music story is too large to force into a single volume, so the archive is being built as a continuing series. Each book preserves a different part of that history while the website serves as the public doorway into the larger project.
Volume I
The opening volume introduces the larger story of Arizona local music, the people and places that built it, what changed, what was lost, and why preserving the history matters now.
Currently in DevelopmentVolume II — Arizona Legacy Bands
Focused primarily on the 1980s and 1990s, with roots reaching into the 1960s and 1970s, Volume II preserves the bands, musicians, venues, recordings and firsthand stories that helped build the desert scene.
Archive Page Live · Book in DevelopmentVolume III — 2000–2009
Volume III carries the story into the first decade of the new century, when websites, MySpace, downloading, changing venues, new promoters and the decline of the traditional CD era began reshaping how Arizona bands recorded, promoted themselves, toured and survived.
Archive Page Live · Book PlannedVolume IV — 2010 to the Present
Volume IV carries the archive from 2010 into the present day, following how Arizona local music continued to change through social media, streaming, new venues, changing promotion, new generations of bands and the ongoing struggle to keep a local scene alive.
Memorial Archive Page Live · Book PlannedVolume V — Those We Have Lost
Volume V is devoted to the musicians, scene builders, friends and familiar faces we have lost through the years. It will preserve their stories, their contributions and the memories of the people who knew them, so their names and their place in Arizona music history are not forgotten.
Archive Page Live · Possible Future BookVolume VI — Arizona Blues
Explore Arizona blues history from South Phoenix ballrooms and early R&B roots to Small Paul Hamilton, Drivin' Wheel, Char's, the Rhythm Room and the musicians who carried the blues forward across generations.
This Is an Oral-History Project
Accuracy matters. Whenever possible, I want to hear directly from the people who were there. I want names spelled correctly, the right musicians in the right bands, and dates checked when surviving evidence allows it. Flyers, photographs, demos, album artwork, newspaper articles, set lists, advertisements, recordings, ticket stubs and other surviving material can help establish what really happened.
Memory is not perfect, and that is okay. Two people can remember the same night differently. When that happens, I would rather preserve both memories honestly than pretend certainty exists where it does not. Corrections are welcome, and better evidence should always make the archive stronger.
Your History May Be the Missing Piece
If you played in an Arizona band, booked shows, promoted concerts, worked at a club, worked radio, photographed musicians, recorded demos, ran sound, sold merchandise, printed flyers or helped behind the scenes, your story may belong here. If you have old material sitting in a box somewhere, do not assume nobody cares about it.
An old cassette may be the only surviving recording of a band. A flyer may establish a date nobody remembers. A photograph may contain a musician whose name has disappeared from the story. A newspaper clipping may settle an argument that has been going on for thirty years. Sometimes one name leads to another name, another band, another venue and another interview, and suddenly a piece of Arizona music history that had almost vanished starts coming back together.
Books, Profiles and Archive Material
This website will continue growing across six archive volumes, with Volume VI now serving as the working Arizona Blues research archive. You will find firsthand interviews, band histories, archival discoveries, old flyers, photographs, cassette information, venue stories, corrections, book updates and pieces of Arizona music history that may not exist anywhere else anymore. Some stories will be complete, some will be fragments, and some may begin with nothing more than a band name and one person who still remembers hearing them.
Speak the Names Again
The whole reason this project exists is simple: if we do not preserve this history now, eventually there may be nobody left who remembers how it really happened. So if you were there, reach out. If you remember something, tell the story. If you have something sitting in a box, pull it out. If somebody's name has been forgotten, speak it again.
This is Arizona music history, and it belongs to the people who lived it.
aka Reverend Black Jack McBride
Author — The Death of Local Music
The Arizona Music History Archive
Smoke Wagon Productions · Phoenix, Arizona KEEP LOCAL MUSIC ALIVE