With their new clothing and luggage company, these two Tucson talents want to bring denim back where it belongs: cowboy country. By Gillian Drummond. Photos by Dave Dunmyre. (Plus: see below for an exclusive chance to hang out with the boys).

Rob Easter (left) and Smith Darby of Too Strong USA. Photo by Dave Dunmyre

As a kid, Smith Darby liked to take things apart, make things, and create things. He remembers reverse-engineering a telephone. He unwittingly put it back together wrong, and when his mother tried to answer the phone she heard a dial tone through the speaking part of the handset.

Two decades later, he would do a similar  thing with a pair of secondhand Levi 501's - meticulously taking them apart, then sewing them up again. "They turned out completely wrong," he says. But it was all part of the process of finding out how jeans are made. And, thankfully for his customers-to-be, he has gotten a lot better at it since.

Smith is one part of the two-man business that calls itself Too Strong USA. Together with his friend Rob Easter, he is set on adding one more thing to Arizona's famous 'five C's' (copper, cattle, cotton, citrus and climate): denim jeans.

In a building in central Tucson that's part home, part machine shop and a tiny part store front, Rob and Smith are their own jean genies, producing jeans, shirts, aprons and luggage in denim and leather - garments that not only honor Arizona's cowboy heritage, but bellow it from the (revitalized downtown) rooftops.

Their premise is this: why not make jeans in cowboy country, the very place that made the garment famous?

Inside the Too Strong shop. Photo by Dave Dunmyre

Many kids and teens make it their job to reject a home town - flee it for a while, before returning and realizing what they missed. Not so for Rob and Smith. Smith, 30, was born in Tucson and, save for a two-year art college stint in San Diego, has lived here all his life. Rob moved here from southern California at age three. "When I became a teenager I realized how badass Arizona is," he says, admitting to frequent after-school views of the film Tombstone and sporting a tattoo of the flag of Arizona on his right arm.

Rob models a pair of Too Strong USA jeans. Photo by Dave Dunmyre

Now 25, Rob is making his name - and much of his living - as a bartender in New York and San Francisco. But he comes back to Tucson frequently, and says he would love nothing better than to bring jobs and clothes manufacturing to his hometown. (He also plans to one day open a bar  here, but that's another story).

Too Strong's plans are grand. They want to use homegrown Pima cotton to make their denim. They want to use Arizona copper to make the rivets on their jeans. They plan a factory right here. But that's some way off. First they have to get their brand off the ground, and also secure necessary financing. "We want to have people working in here," says Rob, sitting in their downtown studio. "But we're not thinking to grow too fast. We're going slowly and just learning."

In the meantime, the duo is sourcing its denim from North Carolina, and honing its first pair of men's jeans, for production in Arizona in another month or so. They've each been wearing prototypes for many months - taking note of not only how they fit, but where the pockets and rivets are situated. For Smith, the sewer of the two, there has been a lot of designing, sewing, re-sewing, consulting (with other garment companies and with manufacturers), and "looking at people's asses". Smith admits he has had more than one curious look after being caught eyeing up the stitching and the structure of people's jeans - both on a behind and a crotch.

The two came together through friends two years ago. When Rob found out Smith was making bags out of vinyl and leather, and upholstering the interiors of cars, he discussed with him his idea for an Arizona brand of jeans. Smith had not worked with denim and knew nothing about making jeans. "I  really thought, 'Oh f***, I don't know if I want the headache'," he says. But at the same time, with itchy feet about what he was going to do next, he knew he wouldn't be able to help himself from getting involved.

Photo by Dave Dunmyre

They share a love of music (both have played in garage rock bands),  good quality, simplicity of style, and things that last. And in Smith's case, there's also a penchant for sturdy pieces of machinery with moving parts. They're already fulfilling orders for aprons and luggage  from stores in the midwest to local firms (Boxhill, one of 3 Story's sponsors, is working with them on some signature items.) Work is steady enough that Smith was able to give up his auto upholstery job a few months ago.

The jeans will be priced at around $200. Part of their mission is to persuade Tucsonans that investing in a good pair of jeans is worth it. "Once you put on a good pair of jeans you don't go back to Walmart. You're like 'I'm going to wear less but wear better'," says Rob. Hence the company name, Too Strong USA. As well as sounding like Tucson, it sums up their philosophy, they say: that their products and ethics must be rock solid.

Smith at work cutting out a pattern. Photo by Dave Dunmyre

Smith, both an artist and an "oddball handyman", had flirted with sewing, making clothes for himself while he was in a garage rock band. But it was when he joined an auto upholstery shop that he caught the bug. The two guys at the helm of the business probably had 100 years of auto upholstery experience between them, says Smith. And they used a 1950s industrial sewing machine made by Japanese firm Juki. "I was really fascinated with what I could do with it, with the material they could run in it."

One of Smith's industrial sewing machines. Photo by Dave Dunmyre

So in his lunch breaks - when he wouldn't be bugging anyone or holding anyone up - he got behind the machine and sewed. Meantime, he collected scraps of vinyl from the shop floor and went home and sewed some more. He got through several regular sewing machines before buying his own industrial one (he now owns three).

He made messenger bags, which were first given to friends, and then led to sales at street festivals and Popcycle.

"The act of sitting there is so cathartic, when you really get into that zone and all of a sudden other design ideas and solutions appear in your head," says Smith.

While Smith does the sewing and tailoring, Rob is the marketer. Rob lasted just a few weeks at the University of Arizona, before deciding he could learn more actually working. He worked as a bartender at The Melting Pot and Scott & Co. in Tucson, then headed to "brew school" in Chicago, learning about mixology and hospitality. There followed stints in bars in Brooklyn and serving the likes of Jay-Z. He also bartends special events and private parties.

One thing Rob has learned from his bartending is the art of networking.  And as a result, Too Strong is operating largely on trade and barter. Rob uses his various bartending gigs as ways to make contact with people: businesses he might learn from, individuals who might invest. A high-profile band might be given some jeans to wear, for example, and they lead their friends and acquaintances to the Too Strong USA brand.

A beer or whisky is always on hand at Too Strong. Photo by Dave Dunmyre

In tandem with Too Strong, Rob is about to launch an American whiskey brand called Workhorse Rye. His is aged in lightly toasted French oak (American whiskeys are traditionally aged in charred American oak  barrels).  "It's all organic, our fermentation time is long, and it's the only one like it,"  he says. "One of them looks like red wine, and we do encourage wine glass usage." He has been sharing his whiskey with select people, much of the time at private parties.

The  similarities between the whiskey and the jeans - two well-honed products with a long maturation -  is not lost on Rob, who says he and Smith are in no rush: "We could have already started making jeans.  But that's simply not how we work. Smith and I are in the same boat. We want to do what we want to do."

They appear to enjoy that they're on the down-low. Even their digs have an air of a speakeasy; visits are by appointment only, and they don't publicize their whereabouts.

But, just as importantly, they're enjoying themselves. For anyone who visits, there's a glass of whiskey or a beer waiting, some vinyl spinning on the record player, usually a friend or girlfriend dropping by. Oh yes, and there's this: the whiff that something big is about to happen.

* Here's an exclusive offer for you: Too Strong USA's Rob Easter wants to give a New Year's present to Tucson. So this Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Jan 10th, 11th and 12th) he's offering to hem any jean you bring to their shop. Talk nicely and you may get a taste of his whiskey too... Interested? Email [email protected] to arrange.

We get our own back on Smith for all that "ass" watching. Photo by Dave Dunmyre

Plans are afoot to turn Rex Ranch from dude ranch to artists' colony. But as the team behind the resurrection gets an extension on its deadline, the challenge is not just financial, it's architectural. By Lee Allen.

Rex Ranch in Amado, Arizona. Photo by Sarah Lee

Sometimes it takes history to make history, which is what the Save Rex Ranch group is trying to accomplish. A diverse group of volunteers is working to buy and restore the historic Southern Arizona landmark near Tubac in the hopes of turning the former dude ranch into a cultural arts center where artists, designers, scientists, and others of creative ilk could mix and mingle in a meeting of the minds.

The project to morph the structures (built in the 1880s) into artistic residences requires passion in addition to the usual - time, labor, and money. Especially money. Up for sale with no takers over the past couple of years, the original asking price of $2 million was dropped to $735,000. And that’s when Joseph Beyer stepped in.

Joseph Beyer, the man who stepped in to save Rex Ranch. Photo by Sarah Lee

"There aren't many places like this left any more and this is exactly the kind of thing I always dreamed could happen," says Joseph, who had stayed ten years ago and made frequent trips to Southern Arizona.  "Places like this were built to accommodate people --- and that's what we want to do. We are going to find a way to make this happen,” says the director of digital initiatives for Sundance Institute.

The pressure is on; as of the first week of January only $40,850 of the $735,000 had been raised, mainly through crowd funding. Last month, the bank extended the deadline from December to February 14th.

30 Rock's Jack McBrayer is one of the project advisers. Photo by Leoine

Many of Beyer’s project collaborators and advisers include leaders of the arts in Arizona and California who know the value of having a place for creative thinkers and artists to do their thing. Among the collaborators are: singer Lee Anne Savage; Peggy Johnson, executive director of Tucson's Loft Cinema; upworthy founding curator Adam Mordecai; and 30 Rock actor Jack McBrayer.

Joseph says he will work tirelessly to repurpose the historic property, and he has described its potential as "epic". “The property has a patina of being someplace special, and it’s calling for something like this to happen --- to take a historic property of this size and complexity and turn it into something dynamic and useful,” he says.

Like a desert wildfire in the dry season, this idea has taken off. The advisory board is growing with the addition of folks such as Tucson architect Corky Poster, restoration expert David Yubeta, Native American actor Jon Proudstar, and others with interest in the arts and sciences. “We have over a hundred volunteers who want to be a part of making history. And I just learned that even though the project is still in concept stage, we’ve already received 75 applications for residency,” said Beyer.

For those who need specific numbers to define worth, the 50-acre property has 13 buildings, 22 rooms and suites, 8 casitas, and amenities like fountains, gardens, and a horse stable. “The individual buildings aren’t the special part, their interrelationship is,” says Joseph.

Rex Ranch in its heyday. Photo courtesy of Save Rex Ranch

“Some of the rooms were operating as lodging just three years ago, so there’s a lot here to work with in what we’re calling an adaptive re-use architectural project. We have some great ideas to restore the casita designed by famed Tucson architect Josias Joesler, turning it into the centerpiece of the property as a whole. We want to stabilize and preserve the 100+-year-old adobe structures. It’s not our intent to change the look and feel of the property, we’d just like to bring it off the grid in a non-disruptive fashion, adding things like solar power and internet connectivity - invisible retrofits,” says Joseph.

Photo by Sarah Lee

Los Angeles architect Anthony Laney, a volunteer adviser to the project, says some rooms are likely to be used for meetings, and short overnight stays. "I know that in the short term the dream is to simply bring back the beauty and quality of the place, to restore buildings to a level where they can be occupied and fully functional," he says.

Adds Joseph: “All ideas are on the table. That’s the great joy of this project - no restrictions, no directives - it’s fluid and dynamic and designed to be that way. There is a power and a spirit to this place that just needs some spit and polish to bring out its best.”

Architects and preservationists will play a big part in bringing back what once was. “This place is in reasonably good shape, so the preservation part, the stabilization/adaptation/reuse efforts - the physical improvements -will be the easy part,” says architectural preservationist Corky Poster of Poster Frost Mirto. “We are our own history, and the more history we can make productive, the more we can bring our heritage forward. Buildings and properties get preserved when someone figures out a contemporary use for historic sites and structures. Until someone figures out a viable rationale in today’s world, things won’t get rehabilitated (much like the 54,000-square-feet of old adobe buildings in Camp Naco that no one can figure out a use for),” he says.

Photo by Sarah Lee

Corky, currently working on a well-thought-out restoration plan for Pima County’s 5,000-acre Canoa Ranch property, says properties need to rise to their potential. “With Rex Ranch, heritage and spirit are already built into it --- it’s already there, and that’s good because you can’t create that aura.”

Adobe restorer David Yubeta is an experienced mud man who says the hand-formed earthen brick buildings on the ranch “are acting like adobe should when no eyes are on it and it suffers from neglect. We all deteriorate with age, but there aren’t a lot of things I’d worry about yet. When plaster falls off, it just looks bad, but it can be replaced. I haven’t seen anything there that was so badly lost that it made my heart sad.”

Photo by Sarah Lee

Fellow advisory board member Jon Proudstar is a Native American artist, filmmaker, and researcher who says: “Historically, Southern Arizona has been the hub of some incredible things, everything from Geronimo and Pancho Villa to Doc Holliday and Dillinger. Throughout our history, there have been seminal moments that didn’t just happen by accident. Tucson is full of brilliant human beings, mind-expanding individuals, and we’ve needed something like this to be their focal point.”

“There’s no intent to take a historic property and turn it into a modern architectural destination,” says Joseph Beyer. “We want this to be more than an art and design colony. We want creative people to come here with their creativity. There are so many things to consider, like adding an interactive sculpture exhibit to display ideas and works or a small plot to experiment with structural forms, materials, and ideas. We’re so damned excited about the variety of things that could happen here.”

Meantime, Joseph says he is hoping to negotiate a lower price.  "To date, over $40,000 has arrived in small donations.  An anonymous donor in Tucson gave us $15,000 to pay for all needed inspections and for the first time in over two years, the electricity is back on.  Although we need to raise enough to buy the place, we're going to win here with.  We wouldn't be doing this if we thought we'd fail," he says.

* For more information on the campaign to Save Rex Ranch - including how to volunteer and donate - visit the group's website or Facebook page.

Photo by Sarah Lee

Vinyl records are big... yeah, we know. But how about x-ray, picnic plate and chocolate ones? We meet a Tucson newcomer who is making it his business to cut records with a difference. By Gillian Drummond.

Photo by Of Us Giants

There are certain things you just never expect to do. Like looking at a single made out of a picnic plate. Or listening to a record made out of chocolate.

But then the world of Mike Dixon and his record label, PIAPTK Recordings, and side business LatheCuts.com, is unexpected. It's also trippy and fantastical and fun.

Mike, a lifetime record lover, will cut records out of almost anything. He's cut them on X-rays and mirrors, strips of wood laminate flooring, even plastic picnic plates. He's made them see-through. He's put sprinkles of gold dust inside them for extra novelty. Most of the time, though, he sticks to squares of plexiglass (not only are square-shaped singles more of a  novelty, they're less costly for Mike). His customers? Bands who want records in very small numbers, and who don't necessarily want to make money. They're more interested in a document of their work, a souvenir of sorts. "They're people that want their music on vinyl," says Mike.

Photo by Whitney Ford-Terry

(And, for the record, the chocolate one only lasted one play. It trashed the needle, the record itself broke, and Mike and his pal ate it. But it was fun while it lasted, and ended up as a video on YouTube.)

In a messy room in his University area house, one where machinery shares space with packing materials, debris, and a poster of Kris Kristofferson, Mike works three lathe machines. Music is uploaded to his iPod, which is then fed into a computer that feeds into a cutter head. The sound vibrations, or electrical energy, send signals to the stylus of the cutter head and as it vibrates it cuts grooves into the record surface, moving in concentric circles towards its center.

Inside Mike's home studio. Photo by Mike Dixon

Lathe cutting records is nothing new; it's how all master cuts of records are made. What's different about Mike's company is that, instead of sending the 'master lacquer' copy to be pressed in a plant, he cuts each individual record himself.

It's laborious, lasting as long as the record lasts. But it's a process that has propelled Mike to the forefront of lathe cutting records. His might be a tiny satellite of the music industry, but this is a guy who is making his mark. Not only has he issued hundreds of records, he's developed different strands to his business. There is the record cutting business, through LatheCuts.com; a record label, PIAPTK & Soild Gold Recordings; and a mobile record cutting business, MobileVinylRecorders.com, which last year he took to the Coachella and Pitchfork music festivals.

One of Mike's records featured gold dust sealed into a see-through disc. Photo by Mike Dixon

Late last year, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt got wind of Mike's work and asked him to cut records at a party the actor is throwing at this month's Sundance Film Festival, to launch a TV show version of HitRecord, Gordon-Levitt's collaborative film and music production project. Mike and Kris Dorr, his partner in MobileVinylRecorders.com, will cut 500 records ahead of time, and another 50 or 60 at the party itself.

This year will see  him at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. There is also talk of a possible party at the Grammys.

Mike Dixon's love of vinyl, and his penchant for country-influenced music, began in his childhood. Growing up in Texas, he would go through his parents' record collection. His dad listened to The Doors, and on the radio in his truck there was always a country music channel playing. To this day, hearing Glen Campbell, C. W. McCall and the soundtrack to Every Which Way But Loose puts Mike back in that truck and rewinds his life two and a half decades.

Then came junior high and punk rock, high school and college, and playing drums in various bands. While he was at college (he has a degree in marketing) one of those bands wanted to put their music out on vinyl. 'You had to order so many, like 300 or 400 copies," says Mike. He discovered a guy in New Zealand, Peter King, who had been doing limited run vinyl - as low as 20 records - since the 1980s.

Mike taking his mobile cutting business on the road. Photo by Caleb Condit

Mike worked with Peter King, whose credits include The Beastie Boys and Pavement. After he graduated college, Mike realized he could do a similar thing in the USA.  He still holds King in high esteem ("The guy's a genius. He's the pioneer of this type of record.")  but with years of production now under his belt, and continuous improvements, Mike believes he may be catching up. "The  better the results I got, the more I wanted better results," he explains of his quest for a better quality.

Recently, for example, he stumbled on the idea of using lighter fluid to soften the record's plastic. Lighter fluid is less messy than the turtle wax Mike had been using, and it extends a needle's life. He used to get just 10 to 15 records from one needle (bought from an experimental hobbyist in Tennessee). Now he gets 50 to 60.

A picnic plate record. Photo courtesy of Mike Dixon

"A lot of bands want their records on vinyl but can't sell hundreds of records," reasons Mike. "These are hand-made. They're  unique, rare, there are maybe only 30 of these made." In addition to novelty records, he produces high-impact packaging, using silk screening and letter pressing.

Says Tucson musician Andrew Collberg: "In a world where music releases have become pretty dull and sterile, Mike does quite the opposite. He puts out albums with the goal of making it hard for people to listen to music; cutting records to picnic plates, X-rays, odd shapes, or anything that could work. I think this forces people to give a shit, because it's gone form being just a music project into being something completely different, an art project."

Today, apart from the requisite turntable in his home office, Mike has a record turntable at close hand in the living room of his home. "I like the physical interaction that you have," he says of handling vinyl. "And I'm really into the visual stuff [that accompanies the record]. You have to go over here and open this thing up. There's the nostalgia, and the pop and crackle, and the warmth of the sound." Added to that is the pleasure of putting out quirky products; an album he issued by Tucson band Golden BooTs, on blue/black vinyl, comes with a warning: "This record has peculiar qualities". Side A has double grooves that run parallel to each other, and Side B plays from the inside out.

Ryen Eggleston, one half of Golden BooTs, describes Mike as "very driven and creative". He adds: "He offered some great ideas up to us for vinyl and we just went with it."

Photo courtesy of Mike Dixon

For his PIAPTK record label (it stands for People In A Position To Know Vinyl), he prefers to lathe cut only singles, because lathe cutting albums would take up way too much time. Albums are sent to a pressing plant. The bands are obscure, their descriptions amusing: "freak folk", "hush folk",  "psych pop" and lounge pop.  He has also issued, as lathe-cut singles, what he calls The Trust Series; customers don't know what's on the record, they just trust in Mike's taste in music.

Mike not only has alt-country band Golden BooTs on his label, he manages them too. He met the band while they were on tour, playing in Olympia, Washington, where Mike and his wife Beth lived at the time. They met again a year or so later, and the next day Mike recorded them live to his 1930's wire recorder, a predecessor to reel-to-reel tape machines, which records sound onto hair-thin stainless steel wire. The recordings were later released on a 7" single with three other artists.

The friendship grew, and the band members - Ryen Eggleston and Dimitri Manos - persuaded Mike and Beth to move to Tucson last summer. He resigned his job teaching business in high school and resolved to make his living cutting and selling records.

So far, so good. Lathe Cuts has stopped taking orders; that's how busy he is. And after next week's Sundance gig, we're betting Mike and his love of vinyl spreads even further.