A Mile South of Somewhere

Hello from Marfa! After tying up some loose ends in LA, including a truly wonderful rehearsal with my band for Calgary Folk Fest, I braved yet another two day solo drive, and find myself back in West Texas.

Today I want to talk about a special town that is near and dear to my heart: Tucson, Arizona. It’s usually where I stay when I’m heading from LA to Marfa (I aim for Phoenix on the way back), so I was just there late last week.

As y’all know, I love radio, and I especially like to listen to local radio stations in my car when I’m in new places. I had heard that there was a radio station in Tucson led by a cult, but I kind of forgot about it, until last week when I accidentally tuned to KVAN Visionary Radio as I was pulling in to Tucson. I was immediately blown away because the music is actually really good and within seconds I realized oh my god, this is that cult run radio station. I listened to KVAN the whole time I was in my car in Tucson, so intrigued. I even tried to Shazaam one of the songs to no avail - it apparently didn’t exist outside of the station, from what I could tell.

I initially thought that today’s Substack would be all about KVAN and how odd but good it is, but a very brief google search showed me that, unfortunately, the cult has a ton of sinister underpinnings, so I obviously can’t promote this station. And I’m kind of shocked that it still exists on the radio?

Rolling Stone wrote a piece about it, and this Substack goes in to the story as well:

So yeah, that is a bummer.

On to more positive things…It was mine and my boyfriend’s anniversary this past weekend and I wanted to get him a special gift. I think the best gifts are things people want but don’t need and would probably not buy themselves. I knew that he had been wanting a TV with a built in VCR, and I found one on Facebook marketplace in Tucson.

So on my way out of town, while listening to KVAN, I drove half an hour up toward the Catalina foothills to man’s house who told me he was one of the top dealers of CRT televisions in the United States. I was, naturally, wary of going to a strangers house alone, so I shared my location with my boyfriend and hoped for the best.

When I pulled up, though, I knew we were good. This guy was a pro! He has a business on ebay called Analogue Attic, and I walked up to his open garage, not inside his house, so I felt super comfortable.

I bought a few VHS tapes to start the collection at a thrift store in Las Cruces and I’m kind of hooked already. I know this gift is supposed to be for my boyfriend but he’s going to have to share. Watching actual tapes is so fun.

And lastly, let’s talk hotels.

Please, please, quit playing games with my heart Hotel Congress. I wish I knew how to quit you, but I keep coming back for more.

I have a long history with this hotel over the last decade plus that I’ve been driving between Texas and LA. And sometimes its amazing, but… I’ve also been burned time and time again.

There are two issues with Hotel Congress.

1. They do not have coffee in the rooms (a fate worse than death)

2. They are a venue and the rooms can be loud until 1am

Now, I know these things. I am well aware of these things. But the last time I stayed there, they had a coffee station set up just outside of the rooms, and that was totally fine actually. Also, I thought (wrongly) that I knew a workaround for the noise situation. If it’s a club night, you can forget about a good nights sleep, but if it’s not a club you used to be okay.

I checked the calendar and saw they were showing a soccer game in the plaza outside the hotel and that they had a DJ after. That seemed fine to me, since the venue directly under the rooms didn’t have late music that night. How bad can it be if something is happening outside?

When I checked in, I asked about the coffee situation and was told that they only do the coffee set up during “busy season”, but I could buy coffee in the restaurant. Horrifying!

So there I was, accepting the no coffee situation, but not yet aware of just how loud the room would be. And the thing is, y’all know me, I am down to clown. But when I have a 7+ hour solo drive the next day it’s actually, and I’m not trying to be dramatic here, kind of dangerous to not sleep.

So I had a cute dinner in the hotel’s restaurant, watched some jazz at the Century Room nearby, and thought about getting another drink at the hotel bar (I do love their bar) but then decided to just curl up with my book in bed around 10:30 or 11. This is when I heard the pulsating club music and tried to ignore it. Oontz Oontz Oontz. You know what I Mean. It was like… distracting and hard to read.

So I asked the front desk for ear plugs and they were out… cool… but offered to let me switch to a room that might be quieter. I decided to check it out, quickly googled if it was haunted (it wasn’t), and even though it was barely noticeable if it was quieter or not, it felt good to just do something, so I went ahead and moved.

The silver lining here is I discovered something I am now deeply into: brown noise. I was googling how to get to sleep and drown out the oontz oontz, and google led me to brown noise, which is a deep low frequency sound that lulls you right to sleep. It worked and I love her?

I love this hotel. It’s so cute. It’s historic. Some of the rooms are haunted (I don’t stay in those). I love the bar, I love the restaurant, they have good shows there sometimes. But sadly… I just don’t think it makes sense to stay there if I can’t guarantee actual sleep. Did I learn my lesson once and for all? Will I try again? Like any toxic relationship, I will almost certainly give it one more chance.

In the morning, before I headed over to analogue attic, I made a video of a new song. It will be coming out very soon, and the video is a special treat for my beloved paid subscribers behind the paywall along with a little secret tidbit. I have a lot of new things to share with yall in the coming weeks, and I’m planning to let substack know about all of it first.

Until next week,

Jess