’Tis the season! This Christmas season brings plenty of events for families to enjoy across the Verde Valley.

Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Michael R. Bluff sentenced Jason Howard Engel, 42, of Camp Verde, to 15 years in the Arizona State Prison on Nov. 18. The charges stem from a vehicular collision that occurred Sept. 7, when Engel ran a red light at the intersection of State Route 89A and Willard Street, striking and killing Cottonwood Police Cmdr. Jody Makuch, who was off duty.

"My uncle, Lt. Cmdr. Solomon S. Isquith, was the engineering officer and the senior officer on board the battleship USS Utah [BB-31/AG-16], a World War II battleship converted to a target ship for aerial bombing practice, when, at 8 a.m. that Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, two Japanese torpedoes crashed into Utah’s port side," writes Sedona resident David Isquith, a retired U.S. Navy captain.

Break out the lights and Christmas soundtracks — Jerome has officially rung the Christmas bells with a visit from Santa Claus himself. Although Jerome’s Town Dinner was canceled this year due to an uptick in COVID-19, the community came alive Saturday, Nov. 27, for the Santa Lights Up The Mountain event.

Cornville is set to receive a new cell tower soon, but some members of the community oppose the location, the height or both. The proposed cell tower by SQF LLC will be located behind Cornville Country Market at 9420 E. Cornville Road. While the site will broaden cell coverage in the area, it comes at the cost of having a 100-foot tower protruding into the sky.

Long-time Jerome musician Hank Erwin has beaten cancer while on tour, worked as a U.S. Merchant Marine on the Great Lakes and has a plethora of life experiences to draw from when writing his music.

His newest release, “The Copper Album,” includes homages to old friends, references to his time working on iron ore freighters and stories from Jerome, where he still spends much of his time when he’s not in Austin, Texas, or touring with his band.

Erwin began playing music when he was 9 years old.

“I pestered [my parents] for two years,” Erwin said. “I was mesmerized by MTV when I was 7. They were both adamantly opposed to me getting into music. They both had to take music lessons when they were kids and hated it.”

Little did they know, Erwin would soon dedicate his life to writing soul-filled country and blues.

When Erwin was a Merchant Marine he was struck by a ship that had been docked in layup and wasn’t being used anymore.

“It was the last of this specific style of ship that had been built just for Great Lakes shipping and it had been not able to keep up with changing times in the lakes,” Erwin said. “It just inspired me and that’s what inspired the song ‘The Dirge of the Edward L. Ryerson.’”

The SS Edward L. Ryerson freighter can carry up to 34,000 long tons of steel or iron, but due to the downturn in the U.S. steel industry and reduced shipments to and from Canada, the ship has been laid up in port since 2009.

When Erwin was living in Jerome he had some friends visit him from the band Porter and The Blue Bonnet Rattlesnakes. They played some shows together and had planned to take him on tour with them, but decided at the last minute to tour as a three-piece band instead of four.

“That leg of the tour I was supposed to be on there was an accident and they were all killed except for the drummer,” Erwin said of the fatal accident in North Carolina on Oct. 19, 2016. “The name of their bus that they toured on— they toured in an old converted airport shuttle that they named Sally … that song [Sally] was a tribute to them.”

In 2017 when Erwin was living in Jerome, the historic Cuban Queen Bordello collapsed in a windstorm, inspiring him to write “Hail! The Copper Queen.”

“It was kind of an accident,” Erwin said. “While I was writing it — Jerome being a copper town — I was accidentally saying ‘the copper queen’ but I realized at the end that it actually worked better than ‘the Cuban Queen.’ Apparently, according to the book I was reading, she wasn’t even Cuban anyway.”

The Cuban Queen, the bordello’s madam was supposedly from New Orleans and came to Jerome in the 1920s to run an upscale “house of pleasure” the Cuban Queen Bordello. She was also said to have been married to Jelly Roll Morton, the self-proclaimed inventor of jazz.

“Since she was this mysterious person, the song has this kind of dark vibe to it,” Erwin said.

It is the only track on the album to use a synthesizer, which Erwin describes as a “dirty synth.”

Having beat cancer and experienced a certain amount of suffering in his life, Erwin said he does channel some degree of struggle and pain into his art. However, he said he doesn’t necessarily think that it is necessary to create good music.

For more about Hank Erwin, or to purchase his album, visit his website www.hankerwinmusic.com.

Lyrics to “The Dirge of The Edward L. Ryerson (The Last)“

manitowoc #425
began april 20, 1959
and deep in the heart of the following winter
she was launched as the largest lake michigander

and she was the last of the american flagged
new ships build for the great lakes
with fore and aft quarters, built as a steamer
the last straight decker, no self unloader

fast and unique, she could do almost 20
10,000 horsepower pushed her on easy
her quarters were made to take care of her sailors
her lines of design drew crowds of admirers

didn’t take long for her to break records
broke 25,000 loaded in superior
she took it through the soo locks and on down to indy
​she was built to haul iron ore and nothing else really

after near 30 years of fast and smooth sailing
i awoke one morning and heard from the captain:
“she’s laying up early, this year things are changing
it’s over my head and under their fingertips
over my head and under their fingers”

and five long years now she sat at the dock
and i sat at home waiting for the call
and i took a dive straight deep in the bottle
tried to convince myself anything is possible

but i know she’ll probably never sail again
she’ll go back to the steel mills, from where she came
some piece of shit barge will drag her to the beaches
and blue flame torches will pull her to pieces

and along with her went the job of the watchmen
some of the old freighters cut off the stern end
pushed in a tugboat, cut the crew in half
so lift up your bottle and drink with me to the last

and down to the water, i stumbled to try
oh i took off my clothes and swam for ontario
and didn’t quite make it, reaching for summer
i felt her grip just before i went under

and the water she quietly closed in around me
she wanted me since the first time she found me
when i was a boy and rode in a boat
testing her will with what she will let float

and when she was done she gave me up for land
body swollen from her loving revenge
no name and no face, no life anymore
just corneas glazed as the eye of a storm

and who will remember the names uncheckered
the fitzgerald foundered where the anderson weathered
even in shelter, their back to the storm
sailors will mainly just dream about shore

Gabriel Rhodes will present the Rhodes Summit Review on Thursday, Dec. 30, at the Main Stage bar and dance club in Cottonwood. Doors open at 5 p.m. and the show starts at 6 p.m. Cover is $5.

The eighth summit will be a night of entertainment with some of the finest Arizona musicians, all in tribute and remembrance to guitarist, singer, songwriter and Arizona Blues Hall of Fame inductee, the late Danny Rhodes [Jan. 30, 1950-May 23, 2008].

This year’s summit features three notable Arizona bands: Toucan Eddy, who will play from 6 to 8 p.m.; Big Daddy D & The Dynamites, who will play from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m.; and Well Dressed Wolves, who will play from 11 p.m. to close.

Food will be provided.

During the Rhodes Summit, there has been an ongoing tradition: A group photo with all the attending patrons wearing the official Rhodes Summit T-shirt, available for purchase during the event. Get a shirt and become part of the history and story of the Danny Rhodes Summit.

Danny Rhodes

Rhodes became a fixture in the local Northern Arizona music scene from 1996 to 2007, as well as touring the U.S. and taking his music to all corners of the country. He is remembered for giving energetic live shows, displaying his virtuosic guitar playing, soulful voice and his unique songwriting style, taking his inspiration from the blues, funk, New Orleans jazz and 1960s-era rock music.

He has played in all 50 states, as well as Canada, Japan and Europe. He also performed on Austin City Limits, the Grand Ole Opry, HBO and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. In the late 1970s, Rhodes spent two years in Austin, Texas, and shared bills with Stevie Ray Vaughn and the Neville Brothers.

Later moving to Nashville, Tenn., he performed with Dicky Betts, Brenda Lee, Mel McDaniel, Eddie Rabbitt, Charlie Rich, Gregg Allman, Rodney Crowell, Gatemouth Brown and Dash Crofts. He was a staff writer for Warner/Chappell, the publishing company for Warner Bros.

He wrote songs for several artists, including Etta James. Rhodes’s song, “Get Funky,” was the first single from her “Stickin’ to My Guns” album released on Island Records.

In 1996, he moved to Arizona and formed Danny Rhodes and the Messengers. The band won the 1999 Arizona Battle of the Bands, went on to open for the Neville Brothers, the Radiators, Tab Benoit and Sonny Landreth, and released two albums, “Home Cookin’” in 1997 and “Welcome To The Night” in 2002. In 2006, he released his first and only solo album, “Cairo To Cottonwood.”

For several years, Rhodes hosted a blues show at Cliff Castle Casino and has performed with many of the biggest names in Arizona blues, including Big Pete Pearson, Long John Hunter, Bob Blasi, J.D. Simo, Chuck Hall, Tommy Dukes, Maxine Johnson, Chico Chism, Chris Hiatt and Hans Olson. In 2006, he was inducted in the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame.

Rhodes died May 23, 2008. Later that year, his fourth and final album was released posthumously, a self-titled double album, compiled of unreleased tracks recorded from 1995-2007, demos and live tracks.

Toucan Eddy

The Toucan Eddy Band formed in Flagstaff in the late 1970s, founded by singer, songwriter and guitarist Bert Campbell, lead guitarist Dale Cadell and singer, songwriter and guitarist Thomas Waterfield.

The band soon gained a reputation for “A Class” musicianship and energetic live shows, classifying their music as Rhythm and Roll, a combination of rock, R&B, Latin and select original music.

After 10 years together the band broke up with members going off to seek other musical endeavors, most notably Campbell moving to Nashville, Tenn., to pursue a songwriting career and Cadell forming the legendary Arizona group, Limbs Akimbo. The original three founders would reform Toucan Eddy in the 1990s and the group is going strong to this day. Waterfield left to pursue a solo career but sits in with the group on occasion.

From the current lineup, drummer and vocalist Joey Rivera Cruz is a veteran musician of the local Arizona scene as well as of the California and Nashville music communities. On saxophone and flute, David Russell is a staple from the Prescott Jazz community and has played with various groups over the years. Rounding it out is bassist and vocalist John Sarson, simply known as “the quiet one.”

Big Daddy D & The Dynamites

Darryl “Big Daddy D” Porras was born in Los Angeles and moved to Prescott in 1976, living in Northern Arizona until 2005 then moving to and residing in Phoenix.

Picking up the guitar at 17, his first exposure to the blues was hearing Stevie Ray Vaughn. He soon discovered artists like Three Kings, Buddy Guy and Albert King, furthering his love and passion for the classic genre.

In 1992, he would join his first band, the Leisure Kings, a band led by Freddie Cisneros, a Texan blues guitarist and Arizona Blues Hall of Fame inductee voted “Best Unknown Guitar Player” in Guitar Player magazine in 1989.

During his five-year tenure in the band, Cisneros would become a mentor to Porras, shaping the musician known today as Big Daddy D.

While living in Prescott, he would also become a consistent presence on the local Blues scene and would soon play for artists such as Chuck Hall, Hans Olson and the Hoodoo Kings.

In 1999, he formed Big Daddy D and The Dynamites. Initially covering blues masters such as BB King, Freddy King and Buddy Guy, the band would go on to incorporate influences from soul, swing and jazz into their sound, forming a distinct sound and feel they’re known for today. Over the years, the band has been a host to many accomplished musicians such as mentor Freddie Cisneros, Roger Smith, Bob Sellani and Ray DeSylvester, all recognized by the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame.

Twenty years later, Big Daddy D & The Dynamites are still performing, playing shows throughout Phoenix and Northern Arizona.

Well Dressed Wolves

Well Dressed Wolves, formerly known as The Mods, are a rock trio based out of Phoenix. The band consists of guitarist Travis Eaton, bassist Louis Occhiline and Danny Rhodes’ son, drummer Gabriel Rhodes. The band officially formed in the summer of 2004. They quickly found a chemistry that had been lacking in their previous bands, being united by the influences of 1960s rock as well as 1990s alternative.

Travis Eaton began playing music at the age of 4. Originally inspired by country music, he was exposed to rock ‘n’ roll after hearing Creedence Clearwater Revival. He then discovered The Beatles and made the decision to pursue rock music. When he was 10, as a tribute to the Beatles, he began performing in a band called the Moptops. Soon after that, he would join a local rock band called Recall, where he met drummer Gabriel Rhodes.

Gabriel Rhodes is the son of Danny Rhodes and has been playing drums for over 30 years.

Gabriel Rhodes has played, recorded and toured with 20-plus different artists, all ranging from different styles such as blues, rock, New Orleans funk and hard rock/metal to name a few.

Rhodes would meet Eaton at a local Battle of the Bands in 1999. Upon discovering a mutual love and passion for the same bands — most notably The Beatles — they become fast friends and bandmates, playing in several bands together throughout the next few years. In 2004, after having exhausted many musical ventures, Eaton and Rhodes began playing with Louis Occhiline, Eaton’s friend.

Occhiline was born into a large musical family, growing up with a band that was comprised of his four uncles. At 17 he would pick up the bass and take an interest in the instrument. With there being a shortage of bassists in the local music community, he learned the basics of the instrument, which would lead to the formation of his band, Frequency Response, formed by Eaton and Occhiline while still in high school.

The band split in early 2004, but during this time Occhiline developed his musical style by tapping into the bass styles of Jack Bruce of Cream, John Entwistle of The Who and Paul McCartney.

Since their formation, Well Dressed Wolves has released five EPs and continues to perform many shows throughout Arizona. June 2021 marked 17 years since the band’s formation. The group is currently at work on a new EP and their first record.

Contact Main Stage in Cottonwood or email Gabriel Rhodes at rhodes_gabriel@yahoo.com for more information.

The event is also on Facebook as 2021 Rhodes Summit Review: In Memory Of Danny under the Events page.

The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office is searching for two runaway juveniles, missing from Rimrock since Thursday, Dec. 16. Endera Brown, aka "Indy" is a 15-year-old white girl with brown hair and brown eyes, standing 4 feet 11 inches tall. Winter Cherry is a 13-year-old white boy with blond hair and blue eyes, standing 6 feet tall.

On Sunday, Dec. 19, Cottonwood police responded to shots fired in the area of the 900 block of South Fourth Street. Initially officers were unable to locate anything. Officers remained in the area and were approached by woman wearing pajamas and no shoes. She ran to officers in a frantic state and made statements about someone chasing her with a gun.

On Wednesday, Dec. 8, Yavapai County Community Health Services and the Arizona Department of Health issued a joint release announcing that the first confirmed COVID-19 infection caused by the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in Arizona was recently found in Yavapai County.

So far infections caused by the Omicron variant, a mutation of the novel coronavirus first detected in South Africa, have been detected in 30 other U.S. states.

A look at the new stories that shaped the Verde Valley in 2021.

A witness in the 1200 block of E. Gila Street heard what he described as four to six gunshots at 12:11 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 6. The witness also believed the vehicle involved to be some type of passenger car.

The big news events that shaped Camp Verde, Rimrock, Lake Montezuma and Beaver Creek in 2021:

A suspect, 33-year-old Jonathan Kip Medford, who allegedly assaulted a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer Tuesday, Feb. 15, in the Forest Road 525 area was arrested in Jerome the afternoon of Wednesday, Feb. 16.

Clarkdale Police Department responded to a fatal single-vehicle ATV rollover accident on Forest Service Road 493 in the Blowout Wash recreation area on Saturday, Feb. 19, at 1:40 p.m. A 15-year-old teen from Payson was pronounced dead at the scene. Another 15-year-old Payson occupant was transported by ambulance to Verde Valley Medical Center for non-life-threatening injuries.

COVID-19 can’t keep a good con down. With the success of such superhero films as “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “The Batman,” it has been a great time to be a comic book fan. Comic book and pop culture conventions are once again popping up on the local scene. The Verde Valley Comic Expo is one such local event that has surely been missed. It’s been three years since young and old alike could dress up as Thor, Grogu aka Baby Yoda, Pikachu and their favorite Dragonball Z characters. That all ends this Saturday.

Playwright and poet Oscar Wilde opined in his 1889 essay that “life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Wilde believed that art changes our perception of life. According to Cottonwood artist and animator Leo Beltran, life is his inspiration.

At approximately 10 a.m. on Monday, April 18, Prescott National Forest crews responded to a reported wildfire south of Prescott near Mount Union. The Crooks Fire is now burning 600 acres and sending smoke northeast into the Verde Valley.

After coming face-to-face with a firewall that could have burned down his entire farm during the 37,296-acre Backbone Fire 10 months ago, Steven Krystofiak real­ized something needed to be done in his congressional district.

Cottonwood Police Chief Steve Gesell announced Tuesday, May 3, that he was quitting his campaign for Arizona House of Representatives in Legislative District 1.

Surrounded by paint­ings in one of the only Ukrainian-owned galleries in Sedona, Nataliia Beliak wiped away her tears as she recalled the days before she fled her hometown of Malyn, Ukraine, with her two children.

Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue teams and partners located the body of Donald Ernest Hayes, 74 of Prescott Valley, who had been missing on Mingus Mountain since last Friday, May 13.

Cottonwood City Council voted 6-1 against hiring an outside consultant to determine how and if to fix problems at the Riverfront Water Reclamation Facility.

Many council members suggested during the discus­sion at the May 3 meeting that the decision is the beginning of a tentative process to close the beleaguered facility.

The motion would have spent close to $90,000 from the Wastewater Budget on the consultant. After a discussion of the history and problems with the plant, Councilwoman Debbie Wilden made a counter-motion to not spend the money.

Councilman Doug Hulse voted against the motion.

Inadequate Facility

According to Cottonwood Utilities Director Tom Whitmer, the Riverfront Water Reclamation Facility had its genesis in 2008. By 2011, the contracted firm PLC put together a proposal in the range of $15 million, signifi­cantly higher than the projects $8 million to $9.5 million councilmembers and city staff initially estimated spending.

The then-council canceled the contract with PLC and “began stripping components off of the original plant that was conceived for the Riverfront area,” Whitmer said.

In 2014, council contracted with Felix Construction with a guaranteed management price of $10.4 million.

Whitmer said he was “drug into the project in 2015 to try and find a solution for disposing of the effluent.”

Whitmer said the vision was to create a state-of-the-art plant powered mainly by solar panels with an educa­tion center and a STEM education component.

Whitmer said the plan was to release the A-plus-rated water into the Verde River, which is cleaner than the river water. The problem, he said, is that water that clean is actual harmful to the marine life and invertebrates in a natural river so the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality denied the plan.

ADEQ also told the city that the recla­mation plant could not irrigate Riverfront Park and nearby areas due to potential contamination of the Verde River.

Whitmer said running pipes to irrigate other areas, such as the Cottonwood Kids Park and Cottonwood Middle School gets costly when piping costs $125 to $200 per linear foot and was initially not the plan.

So the city drilled a test injection well next to the plant to recharge the aquifer and discovered the well went into a confined aquifer system, i.e., one under pressure. The well could inject five gallons per minute, or about 7,200 gallons per day, but as the plant produced 288,000 gallon of effluent per day, it would require injecting 200 gallons per minute.

There were also questions about where to irrigate, if that was the solution. ADEQ has strict rules on calculating water credits for adding water back to an aquifer, determining how water remains in the base aquifer without flowing out, such as seeping into a waterway down stream, meaning that by irrigation such credits would be lost.

The plant opened in 2019, but the components of the plant — the UV storage system, turbidity monitoring system, filtration system — were essen­tially operating on timers and not in sync with each other. Additionally, during the stripping down process between 2011 and 2014, the plan wasn’t built with a dual filtration system, just a single one, and no advanced oxidation system. The UV and disinfection systems were added in 2017 and 2018 as “an afterthought,” Whitmer said.

The total cost wound up closer to $13 million or $14 million, Whitmer said.

One of the problems since the opening is that the plant ceases operations for one to two hours every night.

Whitmer added that the plant failed to produce A-plus-rated water through the AeroMod Sequox Plus treatment system.

According to the agenda, “In just the last year, staff has had the manu­facturer out no less than half a dozen times and there is rarely a week that goes by that staff isn’t on the phone with the [AeroMod] manufacturer. To date the manufacturer has yet to come up with a solution that enables the plant to operate effectively for more than a couple of days before another issue occurs resulting in the quality of reclaimed water deteriorating below compliance standards.”

“We started calling around to other places where they had this similar type plant, the AeroMod system, and in the process of doing that we found out that everybody that we talked to was also having the same problems,” Whitmer told council. “Fortunately for them though their permit was for B quality water as opposed to A-plus, so they can meet the B quality, but they can’t meet the A-plus with what they’ve got there without some serious modifications.”

Right now, Whitmer said, water treated at Riverfront goes through lift stations No. 3 and No. 4 up to the Mingus waste­water plant and it treated a second time.

With all these issues and problems, the question Whitmer put before council was to “award an engineering services contract for an amount not to exceed $89,487 to Hazen and Sawyer for the assessment and evaluation of the Riverfront Water Reclamation Facility.”

Council Discussion

Responding to a question from Councilman Tosca Henry, Whitmer said that a second plant like Riverfront isn’t necessary in the next 20 to 30 years, but that the Mingus plant will need to be expanded at some point to handle an increase in wastewater.

“So we ended up with a $14-million sprinkler system that doesn’t work every day,” Councilman Michael Mathews said.

Whitmer told Henry and council that the plant handles 0.98 million gallons per day for the city’s 12,000 residents, with a capacity of 1.5 million gpd, possible 1.6 million gpd following refurbishments. With an expansion, it could handle up to 2 million gpd, when the city nears build-out and has a population around 20,000 to 25,000.

Whitmer added that at the time Riverfront was built, it was a good time to look at a second plant. The Mingus plant had only been treating 1.2 million gpd, and the city was producing 0.8 million gpd.

While the population has increased by about 800 residents since 2010, water usage has slowed. When the city purchased private water companies in the area, customers were using 3,600 acre feet of water, which fell to as low as 2,400 acre feet and is now around 3,000 acre feet.

“I’m not interested in throwing good money after bad,” Henry said. “I’m interested in stopping the bleed now.”

“I absolutely agree; it’s common sense in my book,” Wilden said.

“I’m in the same position: Stop the bleeding, shut it down, step back. It was just — it’s bad from beginning to end and I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” Mathews said.

Whitmer said that shutting it down is cheap, but formally decommissioning the plant would not be free, as there are costs associated with that through ADEQ.

Whitmer told Councilman Doug Hulse that the equipment in the facility could be repurposed or auctioned off, but the main building would likely not be torn down as it could still be used as “an excellent site for meetings and conferences.”

“Are we sure I can’t make the motion for a field trip to shut the valve off?” Councilwoman Helaine Kurot asked. “I see no reason to keep putting money into this. I think we’re better off just cutting our losses.”

City Manager Ron Corbin reminded council that the motion is only about the contract, not whether to keep open or close the plant, which could be deter­mined at a later meeting.

Hulse voted against the Wilden’s motion to not pay for the consultant, saying the money is a “drop in the bucket” compared to what had already been spent and that he would like to know the exact problems from an outside consultant.

Wilden and Mayor Tim Elinski both said the city could conduct such an inquiry at any time, should council decide later it is worth the effort.

Christopher Fox Graham can be reached at (928) 282-7795, ext. 129, or by email to editor@larsonnewspapers.com