On the last Saturday of August, the Maricopa Community Center will transform into something the town has never quite seen before: a stage for its own homegrown musicians, from a Roy Orbison look-alike to a family metal band whose youngest member is seven. The event is Maricopa's Got Talent, the audition phase of a citywide music competition that promises to trace a straight line from an open room in a community center to the headline spot at Maricopa's First Friday celebration in October.
Hosted by Rancho El Dorado resident Adam Orta, the Aug. 29 audition is free for spectators, who will double as judges, voting for their favorite musicians. Performances run from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., and the top ten acts will advance to a Sept. 12 competition at Duke's Roadhouse, where judges will select three performers to headline the First Friday event in October. The stakes are more than bragging rights: winners take home a cash prize and a featured spot on the October stage.
Orta has spent the weeks before the audition filling thirty slots, and the response surprised even him. By the time registration closed, twenty-eight of the thirty available spaces had been claimed. "When you offer a cash prize and you honor the art, people are going to come out, and that's exactly what happened," he said.
The competition was not born of ambition alone. Orta has deep roots in comedy and event planning. His uncle is Joey Medina, of the Latin Kings of Comedy tour, and he once worked as a special events coordinator for the Arizona Latino Arts and Cultural Center in Phoenix. Yet the real turning point came in the wake of a divorce, when a friend handed him a fat stack of tickets to the House of Comedy in Scottsdale and urged him to give comedy a shot as a way to repair his mental health. "She gave me a fat stack of tickets to the House of Comedy in Scottsdale, and even though I live in Maricopa, I'd still go out there as much as I could," Orta recalled.
That love affair with live performance eventually became a calling. He founded Southern Arizona Productions, or So Az Productions, a family-owned production company dedicated to bringing quality entertainment to the region. It is also a mission born of a hard lesson: the company came about after a near-death experience in which Orta was involved in a rollover crash while under the influence. The DUI shook him and changed his outlook on life. "Realizing I don't have tomorrow promised, I knew I had a legacy to build for my kids," he said. He hopes the events he produces carry the same healing he found on the road of comedy. "What I want is to bring the community healing just like comedy healed me," Orta said.
Inspiration for the competition came from Councilmember Amber Liermann, whose First Friday posts drew Orta in. He said he was moved after seeing her posts and decided to get involved, both to spotlight local talent and to build a pool of performers for future events. "A lot of times the underdog is really tenacious; they're eager to get their stage time," he said.
The audition is designed to be inclusive, both by age and by format. Youth acts eighteen and under take the stage from 5:30 to 6:30; seniors sixty-two and up follow from 6:30 to 7:30; and solo, duo, and group acts close the night from 7:30 to 8:30. To participate, a musician must be a Maricopa resident, though anyone may attend and spectate. Each act gets a single set of three minutes with a sound check immediately before, and if a performer brings a backing track, they can feed it through the venue's Bluetooth or USB setup. Orta's production supplies a sound board, a Bose speaker, and two mics; if a band needs more, they're welcome to bring their own amplifiers, mics, cords, and sound tech.
Among the thirty acts is a fair cross-section of the town, each with a story as distinctive as its songs. Cash Dean, a Glennwilde resident, says his band The Rise might be the only Maricopa-based rock band. Music was simply the family trade — his parents were audio engineers and his mother worked on a ZZ Top album — but Dean stayed focused on sports through school and didn't turn to music until after high school, when he wandered into an open mic and joined a classic-rock cover band full of players more than twice his age. He's now recording his first album in his at-home studio and will audition with either "Siren Song" or "Bullrider," both originals.
Brian Ray, a Province resident and Oregon transplant, has been playing live for over forty years, but his earliest shows were a family affair in his parents' basement: he "played" boxes as the drummer, his brother wielded a tennis racket as a guitar, and his sister used the end of a bed as her piano. He studied at Oregon State on a music scholarship before setting out on a cover-music journey, and these days he's a familiar Friday night presence at Nando's Mexican Cafe. For the audition, he's torn between "How Sweet It Is" and "Up on the Roof."
Amanda Acosta, from Glennwilde, was raised in a household where music was the air everyone breathed. Both of her parents are singers, and her father led worship for close to fifty years. She sang in church and choir. This year she opened the Maricopa Little League season by singing the national anthem. "Singing is my favorite thing to do," she said. She's planning a country turn with Miranda Lambert's "Mama's Broken Heart."
Patrick Atkinson, of Homestead, is best known for his Roy Orbison covers and his remarkably similar looks to the "Pretty Woman" singer. But he's not committed to a tribute for the audition — he instead plans to gather friends for a mini performance and let them vote on his song. "A singer never really hears the way they sound, so it's best to rely on other people," he explained. Atkinson's career started in Colorado, where he performed as Orbinson, before he was approached by an Elvis Presley impersonator and a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who invited him to join Stars Alive, a musical-legends cover band. He performed with them for twenty years, never quite believing the resemblance he's so often told he has — he suspects the sunglasses do most of the work. His audition options include "Only the Lonely," "You Look So Good in Love," "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You," and "It's Only Make Believe."
And then there are The Painted Llamas, a family metal band from Tortosa that grew out of a joke. Natalie and Paul Davis's kids started saying "puppy cat" in a guttural, death-metal growl, and it stuck. "It just became a thing. The kids and their dad came up with the lyrics," Natalie said. Their three children — Jude, 10, Bethany, 9, and Elijah, 7 — are on vocals and beginning to learn instruments. Paul sings and plays guitar; Natalie sings and plays bass and drums; and the band has three other performers on rotation, including Glennwilde resident Chuck Bible. The family registered for three separate audition slots: one for mom, one for dad, and a third for the band itself. "Sometimes it's a lot of arguing. But honestly, it's just been a lot of fun spending a lot of time together," Natalie said. Natalie will sing the Cranberries' "Zombie," Paul an original called "The Worship Vein," and the band an original, "Ice Cream Baby."
The winner's stage awaits. The three acts chosen at Duke's Roadhouse will headline Maricopa's First Friday event in October. Orta says the competition helps build a community that can look inward for its entertainment, and the winner's prize is a chance to be heard by neighbors. "A lot of times the underdog is really tenacious; they're eager to get their stage time," he said. The audition on Aug. 29 is the first test, and Maricopa's homegrown talent is ready to answer.