On her way to becoming a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, and the subject of an upcoming biopic starring Selena Gomez, Linda Ronstadt has packed theaters around the world. But her favorite sits on a one-way side street in Tucson, Ariz.
With a courtyard draped in vines and string lights and a main stage the size of a “good little opera house,” the 1927 Temple of Music and Art is “just magical,” Ms. Ronstadt said. Before the onset of progressive supranuclear palsy—a Parkinson’s-like disorder that ended her singing career in 2009—she could fill an auditorium with her unamplified voice (little surprise to anyone who ever heard her belt out “Blue Bayou ” or “Long Long Time,” for the legions who may have only discovered it in “The Last of Us”). She also loves the theater’s proscenium: a stage-framing arch that immediately focuses the eye — “like that fireplace,” she explained, gesturing toward a wall near the couch where we were chatting in her cozy San Francisco living room.
At 77, Ms. Ronstadt now lives in the Bay Area, near her children, but the border of the Sonoran Desert where she was born and raised will always be her home. And despite the changes he sees when he returns every six months or so, many familiar local delights remain, for starters: hot cheese fries at El Minuto Cafe, frozen shrimp cocktail at Hotel Congress, giant saguaros at every turn, and live entertainment of all kinds at Fox Tucson Theatre, where her father — a businessman with a famous baritone — performed as Gil Ronstadt and His Star-Spangled Megaphone.
The Ronstadts have been a part of the Tucson music scene since her grandfather arrived from Mexico in 1882 and helped found the civic band Club Filarmónico Tucsonense. And perhaps no place showcases the family’s heritage like the former Tucson Music Hall, rechristened the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in May 2022. The naming ceremony took place during a spectacular mariachi performance featuring Jesús “Chuy” Guzmán, who recorded with Ms. Ronstadt on 1987’s “Canciones de Mi Padre” — still the best-selling non-English album in US history. This grown-up ode to frontier classics was revamped and re-released last fall, and there’s perhaps no better soundtrack to explore its city.
Here are five of her favorite places to visit in Tucson:
1. Barrio bread
Her first stop is a relative newcomer: a 15-year-old artisan bread company that won its owner, Don Guerra, a 2022 James Beard Award for Outstanding Baker. “I always go there straight from the airport,” Ms. Ronstadt said. who used to bake her own bread (the loaf pictured on the back of the ‘Feels Like Home’ album is one of her creations). She loves the heritage grains Mr. Guerra uses (Sonoran white wheat, for one), and especially in her order: the sesame Cubano, which is so flavorful, she prefers it unadorned.
“It’s my favorite hotel in the world,” Ms. Ronstadt said of the 1930 Spanish Colonial Revival landmark where she stays when in town. The place is rich in family history — both her own (she’s been attending parties there since she was a girl) and the owners. Isabella Greenway, Arizona’s first congresswoman and Eleanor Roosevelt’s maid of honor, opened the inn’s doors four generations ago. Traditions aside, Ms. Ronstadt loves the native landscape, the piano-equipped Audubon Bar & Patio, and the fireplace and sunlight that illuminate her beloved guest house.
Planted on the site of an ancient indigenous settlement, this ode to more than 4,000 years of local agriculture is many types of gardens in one – some native to the region, others introduced through migration. Native plants such as corn, beans, and squash grow on O’odham, Yoeme, and Hohokam plots, while citrus fruits pepper Spanish colonial gardens, jujube graces the Chinese garden, and leafy greens thrive in Africa on America’s fields ( to name a few of the hundreds of crops on site). Docents are generous with samples of anything that looks ripe during the tours, but there are also special tastings and food events on the calendar. “I love going there to get a bite of fresh,” Ms. Ronstadt said. Tip: If the garden-made orange marmalade is in stock, buy some.
4. The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
In the 1950s, when her father was a founding member and her mother was one of the original teachers, the Desert Museum, as locals call it, was “a little roadside attraction,” Ms. Ronstadt said. . “I was going to see George L. Mountainlion,” the first of a series of adopted mountain lions who lived there. The place has since evolved into a famous zoo, botanic garden, aquarium, gallery and natural history museum, but it still feels refreshingly untamed. “You’re not looking at the perfect geometry imposed on the desert,” he observed of the animals’ habitats. “Nature hates perfect geometry.”
5. Mission San Xavier del Bac
Completed in 1797 (though restoration is ongoing), this National Historic Landmark on Tohono O’odham land is Arizona’s oldest intact European structure—and it’s still an active church. “I’m an atheist, but I baptized my children there,” Ms. Ronstadt said, referring to the magic she feels behind the mission’s white walls. In the kaleidoscopic interior – all elaborate sculptures, frescoes and trompe l’oeil – she lit candles with Ry Cooder, called for a break mid-recording with Emmylou Harris and adjusted the patron saint’s blanket “to make sure she was comfortable”. Atheist or not, she finds something sacred there. To borrow from the classic Latin chorus on her recently re-released Christmas album: Life is full of “mystery.”
