About Me
Having Performed and written together for over four years, songwriters Graham Perry and Kevin Kilgore joined with guitarist Steve McCraw, drummer Anthony Barrasso, and bassist Steve Hearn to form the new-and-improved Tucson Simpson, a band whose style is an eclectic mix of Delta Blues, Commercial Pop and Roots Rock. The band has enjoyed success on the Memphis club circuit and Memphis in May Bar-B-Que Festival network as a headline act.Drawing from experience acquired as a songwriter for Crutchfield Music, Perry (a PhD Candidate at The University of Memphis) continues to pen a number of tunes for the band, two of which will appear on the long-awaited Martin Crutchfield self-titled album (release date TBA). Kilgore (who wrote the premiere track off of the band’s 2001 EP Drawn & Ready) and the other members contributed their own writing expertise on their 2002 effort Hot Town to create a musical style that can fittingly be called Delta Rock.Hot Town, the band’s first full-length cd, is a well-rounded collection of powerful electric and acoustic guitars, soulful melodies, and catchy hooks that resonate the varying life-experiences of the musicians. The album was certainly a watershed for the band-members after losing guitarist Sam Plumlee, who died after recording his signature lead on “The Money Ain’t There†in mid-record. With a renewed sense of purpose, the band persevered with the help of Jeff Miller (Survivor) and Terry Ferguson (Hoehn & Duren) on some of the most heart-wrenching tracks on the CD.Hot Town was the ..14 add in the CMJ charts in its debut week, enjoying early airplay on college and independent stations KAFM (Grand Junction, CO), KRCX (Denver, CO), Bearcast (Cincinnatti, OH), WQAC (Alma, MI), KFSF (San Fran., CA), KDWG (Dillon, MT), KMSM (Butte, MT), KRZA (Alamosa, CO), WDCC (Sanford, NC), WMHB (Waterville, ME), WODU (Norfolk, VA), WWEC (Elizabethtown, PA), WRSE (Chicago, IL), WRST (Oshkosh, WI), WSND (Notre Dame, IN), KRVS (LaFayette, LA), WODU (Norfolk, VA), WGKR (Jersey City, NJ), KUMD (Duluth, MN), WKWZ (Syosset, NY), and KUCO (Edmond, OK), to name only a handful of the over 125 adds it has enjoyed nationwide. The boys are in the process of recording a new full-length CD which should upright their previous efforts on end.
