An iconic Arizona music festival is calling it quits after 18 years. Here's why

It’s been 18 years since David Slutes came up with the idea behind one of Arizona’s most beloved music festivals while looking for a way to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of Club Congress in Tucson.

“I said, 'It's not about Club Congress,’” Slutes recalls. “It's about all this great Tucson music that's made Club Congress what it is.”

That first HOCO Fest, held over Labor Day weekend in 2005, featured 40 reunions of Tucson acts that Slutes felt should be part of any proper celebration of that legacy as well as what he jokingly refers to as “some of the 'new kids'” like Calexico.

Tucson's HOCO Fest was meant to be a one-time-only festival

That first HOCO Fest was supposed to be a one-off.

“But it was so cool that we thought we'd do it again the next year,” Slutes recalls. “People just loved it. So we'd keep doing it.”

They had a banner year in 2022.

“We had probably our best festival ever last year,” Slutes enthuses.

So why has he decided 2023 will be the final HOCO Fest?

He wants to preserve the legacy of what this festival has meant by ending on a high note.

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How HOCO Fest in Tucson evolved through the years

Slutes has always had reservations about just repeating what seems to be working. That’s why in its third year, the festival shifted its focus to sustainability as the first completely solar-powered festival in the West.

“Then a few years went by,” Slutes recalls, “and we said, 'Well, we can't just keep having reunions all the time.’”

It started feeling a bit too safe.

“I didn't want it to just be some regular dumb festival,” he says. “Everyone does that festival. This is a smaller boutique fest. It has to have meaning. It has be tied to something more tangible, more substantive. So I handed over the event to my main man, Matt Baquet.”

The idea was to make it “relevant and cool” by bringing in cutting-edge artists and exposing them to Tucson.

“So we shifted the mission to being this really intensely progressive boutique event with underground artists that are kind of critically acclaimed but maybe people haven't heard of,” Slutes says.

“We thought we had a big enough platform and a big enough community that we could still bring people in and do all that. So we did that for three years. And it was super successful.”

Then the world shut down for COVID-19 and Club Congress tightened its belt, which led to staff reductions.

“COVID clobbered us,” Slutes says.

'If I can't do it perfectly well, then I don't want to do it'

The team behind HOCO Fest rallied to pull off another “intensely progressive” boutique festival last year but it was way too much for the remaining members of the team. They just don’t have that kind of bandwidth anymore.

“It was just so hard and so intense,” Slutes says.

“And now Matt, who was my lead guy doing it, had to move on and do other things. He wasn't even working here anymore. So it fell back to us and I said, 'Well, you know what? I can do HOCO again and celebrate its original mission.’ But after that? I think it becomes… what's the word? It's not relevant anymore.”

He wanted HOCO Fest to go out with a bang.

“If I can't do it perfectly well, then I don't want to do it,” Slutes says. “Maybe in three to five years we have another festival and celebrate this stuff, but you can't just keep trotting out the same old horses every year. It loses meaning. It's not special anymore.”

Making the final HOCO Fest in 2023 a blowout to remember

Slutes is uniquely qualified to put a special celebration of the Tucson music scene together. Long before taking the reins at Club Congress as entertainment director, he was rocking the scene as the singer for the Sidewinders, who released two albums on the RCA subsidiary Mammoth Records before changing their name to the Sand Rubies.

“I knew that because of my deep roots in this community, I could put together one amazing Tucson Arizona fest,” he says. “That I could do a lot of the heavy lifting myself and make it wonderful.”

As to why he didn’t try to do another festival like last year’s, Slutes says, “The thing about doing a festival like that is a lot of the work is not getting the perfect artists. You have to do the education piece so they have enough people to see them.”

With local acts, he says, “The heavy lifting is done a lot by the acts themselves and the community. So it's a much easier thing to do a really good event and have all the acts make sure that they have people at the shows.”

The final HOCO Fest will include a celebration of Linda Ronstadt

HOCO Fest returns to downtown Tucson for one final Labor Day Weekend extravaganza set to kick off Friday, Sept. 1, with 60 acts in four days meant to celebrate the rich diversity of Tucson music past and present.

It’s being billed as HOCO Homecoming.

Highlights range from a reunion of the Dusty Chaps, who signed to Capitol Records in the ‘70s, to heavy-metal greats Gatecreeper, hip-hop export MURS, alt-country-by-way-of-the-desert legends Giant Sand, Gentlemen Afterdark, Chicano punk royalty Alice Bag, and Orkesta Mendoza providing a world-class mambo dance party.

Slutes is performing with the Sidewinders, Angie Bowie and Kid Congo Powers top the bill on a Hall of Fame glam-punk stage.

There’s also a daily celebration of Tucson’s most important musical ambassador, the legendary Linda Ronstadt.

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Linda Ronstadt is 'the one piece that has always been missing'

“The one piece that has always been missing and that was always sort of the elephant in the room was Linda Ronstadt,” Slutes says.

"She's obviously the biggest Tucson act. She really can't perform right now. But we can do these events where we can actually celebrate different parts of her career.”

There’s a big band night devoted to her Nelson Riddle albums, a “Canciones de mi Padre” re-rerelease party featuring Ronstadt collaborators Los Cenzontles, and Pete Ronstadt hosts a Songs and Stories show devoted to the hit years.

They’re also screening the Ronstadt documentaries “The Sound of My Voice” and “Linda and The Mockingbirds” as well as “The Pirates Of Penzance,” a 1983 film of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera in which Ronstadt starred.

“We really give her as much ado as possible,” Slutes says.

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What to expect at the final HOCO Fest in Tucson

Those Ronstadt films are screening as part of the HOCO Film Festival, a two-day festival with a Tucson music focus at the Loft Cinema and the Screening Room. The festival also features the premiere of “Tale of Two Houses,” a documentary about a time in the mid-80’s when the Tucson underground revolved around two houses situated side by side.

Other events include an art show, a record fair, a heavy metal matinee and an ambient lounge with electronic pioneer Steve Reich.

“We have all the metal shows,” Slutes says. “We have a really super hip-hop show. We have all the desert rock bands. I think we have every era in the last 40-50 years and as many genres as possible.

"And even though we have over 60 acts, we're probably missing another 60 that should've been, could've been a part of it.”

Details: Friday-Saturday, Sept. 1-4. Full festival passes are $100. Day passes are $10-$25. Both are on sale now at hocofest.com.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: HOCO Fest 2023: Say goodbye to iconic Tucson music festival