First opened in 1920, the Rialto Theatre is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and has a storied and fascinating history as a vaudeville theatre, silent movie palace, live performance venue for theatre and traveling artists from the 1920s and 1930s, a first-run movie theater, Spanish language film house, infamous porn theater, and now an important live music venue. Luis Carrión reports.

If you happen to be someone that enjoys watching live music you know about the Rialto Theatre. The Rialto is now listed as one of the top 100 venues of its kind in the world according to Pollstar, the concert industry’s trade magazine, and this is due in large part to the consistently large attendance numbers that the theatre generates on an ongoing basis. The numbers are impressive and consist of more than 300,000 patron visits, and 484 concerts by world-caliber artists, according the The Rialto’s own figures.

Doug Biggers is the executive director of the Rialto Theatre Foundation, and he says that Tucson is able attract top name acts as they travel on I-10 between Texas and California. He also says that we are considered a tertiary market, and in spite of the top 100 listing he points out that there are plenty of opportunities to fail when it comes to booking big acts. “We always say ‘it’s a crazy business… it’s a crazy business.'” He goes on point out that “we have no way to predict what a given show is going to do, and we generally have guaranteed 'X' amount of dollars to an artist and we’re on the hook.” He smiles wryly and goes on to say that “it’s really a very sophisticated form of gambling.”

It might be gambling of a sort but for Curtis McCrary, the General Manager of the Rialto, it’s also a job. He handles the booking of all the acts. He thinks that his lifelong passion for music has positioned him well for this task, and he says that he has a good sense of the musical trends of the day. On the night that we visited The Rialto for this story, Matisyahu was the featured performer. Known for blending traditional Jewish themes with Reggae, rock and hip hop sounds, Matisyahu is most recognizable for his single "King Without a Crown." The cross-cultural nature of Matisyahu’s music has garnered an eclectic audience. “The audience tonight is going to be a pretty divers and eclectic group of people,” McCrary says as he stands surveying the busy lobby of the theatre. They look like “college age mostly… educated. I can already see (they are) kind of a little different than I expected.”

The audience attending this evening’s show is particular to the music of the artist, and the demographics visiting the theatre can vary drastically from one evening to the next. In fact, one of the most interesting things to do when you pass the theatre is to try to guess what the music is by looking at the crowd around the entrance. Birds of a feather indeed flock together, and it is often striking to see every member of Tucson’s Goth demo congregate on the sidewalk along Congress. The Rialto has operated in this way, as a concert venue for some of the more popular music groups to tour our city, since 2004. This is when the City of Tucson bought the Theatre as part of Rio Nuevo. For the time being, it’s clear that the Rialto is serving as a much needed economic engine for the East end of Downtown, and fans of live music are showing the appreciation with large attendance numbers.

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