In the course of becoming a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner and the topic of a forthcoming biopic set to star Selena Gomez, Linda Ronstadt has packed theaters across the globe. But her favorite sits on a one-way side street in Tucson, Ariz.
With a courtyard draped in vines and string lights and a fundamental stage the scale of “a superb little opera house,” the 1927 Temple of Music and Art is “just magic,” said Ms. Ronstadt. Before the onset of progressive supranuclear palsy — a Parkinson’s-like disorder that ended her singing profession in 2009 — she could fill the auditorium along with her unamplified voice (little surprise to anyone who’s ever heard her belt out “Blue Bayou” or “Long Long Time,” for the legions who can have just discovered her on “The Last of Us”). She also loves the theater’s proscenium: a stage-framing arch that immediately focuses the attention — “like that fireplace,” she explained, gesturing toward a wall near the sofa where we chatted in her cozy San Francisco lounge.
At 77, Ms. Ronstadt now lives within the Bay Area, near her kids, however the Sonoran Desert borderlands where she was born and raised will at all times be home. And despite the changes she sees when she returns every six months or so, loads of familiar local pleasures remain, for starters: bubbling-hot cheese crisps at El Minuto Cafe, ice-chilled shrimp cocktail at Hotel Congress, giant saguaros at every turn and live entertainment of every kind at the Fox Tucson Theater, where her father — a businessman with a renowned baritone — used to perform 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 Club Filarmónico Tucsonense civic band. And perhaps no place highlights the family’s cultural legacy like the previous Tucson Music Hall, rechristened the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in May 2022. The naming ceremony took place during a mariachi spectacular that featured Jesús “Chuy” Guzmán, who’d recorded with Ms. Ronstadt on the 1987 “Canciones de Mi Padre” — still the best-selling non-English album in U.S. history. This ode to the borderland classics she’d grown up on was remastered and rereleased last fall, and there could also be no higher soundtrack for exploring her hometown.
Here are five of her favorite places to go to in Tucson:
1. Barrio Bread
Her first stop is a relative newcomer: a 15-year-old artisanal bread company that earned its owner, Don Guerra, the James Beard Award for Outstanding Baker in 2022. “I at all times go there straight from the airport,” said Ms. Ronstadt, who used to bake her own bread (the loaf pictured on the back of the “Feels Like Home” album is certainly one of her creations). She loves the heritage grains Mr. Guerra uses (white Sonoran wheat, for one), and particularly in her go-to order: the Cubano with sesame seeds, which is so flavorful, she prefers it unadorned.
“It’s my favorite hotel on this planet,” said Ms. Ronstadt of the 1930 Spanish Colonial Revival landmark where she stays when she’s on the town. The place is wealthy in family history — each her own (she’s been attending celebrations there since she was a woman) and that of the owners. Isabella Greenway, Arizona’s first congresswoman and Eleanor Roosevelt’s bridesmaid, opened the inn’s doors 4 generations ago. Beyond the lore, Ms. Ronstadt loves the native landscaping, the piano-equipped Audubon Bar & Patio, and the fireside and sunlight that illuminate her favorite guest room.
Planted at the location of an ancient Indigenous settlement, this ode to greater than 4,000 years of local agriculture is several sorts of gardens in a single — some born of the region, others imported through migration. Native mainstays reminiscent of corn, beans and squash grow within the O’odham, Yoeme and Hohokam plots, while citrus trees scent the Spanish colonial orchards, jujube adorns the Chinese garden and leafy greens thrive within the Africa within the Americas fields (to call a couple of of the lots of of crops on site). Docents are generous with samples of whatever looks ripe in the course of the guided tours, but there are also dedicated tastings and food events on the calendar. “I really like going over there to get a mouthful of something fresh,” Ms. Ronstadt said. Tip: If the garden-made orange marmalade is in stock, buy some.
4. The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
In the Fifties, when her father was a founding member and her mother was certainly one of the unique docents, the Desert Museum, as locals call it, was “just a little bit roadside attraction,” Ms. Ronstadt said. “I’d go to see George L. Mountainlion,” the primary in a series of adopted mountain lions to live there. The place has since grown right into a renowned zoo, botanical garden, aquarium, gallery and natural history museum, but still feels refreshingly untamed. “You’re not taking a look at some perfect geometry imposed on the desert,” she observed of the animals’ habitats. “Nature hates perfect geometry.”
5. San Xavier del Bac Mission
Completed in 1797 (though restoration is ongoing), this national historic landmark on Tohono O’odham land is Arizona’s oldest intact European structure — and still an lively church. “I’m an atheist, but I baptized my children there,” said Ms. Ronstadt, citing the magic she feels behind the mission’s white partitions. In the kaleidoscopic interior — all ornate carvings, frescoes and trompe l’oeil — she’s lit candles with Ry Cooder, sought mid-recording respite with Emmylou Harris and adjusted the patron saint’s prayer-charm-studded blanket “to be certain that he’s comfortable.” Atheist or not, she finds something sacred there. To borrow from the Latin choral classic on her recently rereleased Christmas album: Life is stuffed with “mysterium.”
