Stephanie Neal / www.supersuckers.com

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Take this long weekend and submerge yourself in four decades worth of Tucson music, nationally renowned out-of-town acts and the best in under-the-radar indie films. In the biggest event Club Congress will host all year, music veterans like the Supersuckers and the Bob Meighan Band are returning to Tucson, joining the best of new local music and rising national acts like Okkervil River and the BellRays.

Who: The Supersuckers' lead singer and guitarist.

Age: "I'm pretty old."

Quickly: The Supersuckers have a song called "Goin' Back to Tucson," off the group's 1999 album, "The Evil Powers of Rock and Roll."

One lyric goes: "Going back to where I once belonged."

Talking to Spaghetti, though, you get the feeling the band never really felt that way.

It's tough to argue the Supersuckers' late 1989 move to Seattle, becoming one of the early signings of the famed Sub Pop record label and developing a cult following that exists today.

The group returns to the HoCo Festival, ready to "rock your pants off."

Plays: 11:30 p.m. Friday on the Class of '87 stage.

"It just got handed down to us. It came on a certificate in the mail, I believe from the rock 'n' roll gods, and we've hung it proudly on our mantel ever since."

"We're pretty much a Seattle band now, but we do pine for our time in Tucson somewhat. We definitely enjoyed it there. We have fond memories of living and growing up there."

"We thought we'd move there and be the best band that Seattle's ever seen. 'Who's Seattle? What's Seattle got?' you know? That was our thinking at the time. We had no idea that there was a vibrant scene going up here already. And we thought we were going to go up here and blow everybody's mind."

"I don't know that we would have achieved what we've been able to achieve by moving here. We just didn't see things the way we wound up seeing them when we moved to Seattle. We didn't see it as 'You can do it your own way, you can do it yourself.' Although bands in Downtown Tucson were doing that, we didn't really see that. We grew up on the East Side."

"Yeah. And the fact that we could wear our leather jackets year-round."

"It should be good. We're expecting it to be awesome. We're expecting nothing less than awesomeness."

"I think in the end we're a Tucson band that moved to Seattle."

Who: Singer and guitarist for the Bob Meighan Band.

Age: 56.

Quickly: From Tucson via Phoenix and begun in 1972, the Bob Meighan Band combined a variety of music styles, including rock, classic country and R&B, drawing upon artists like The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and Jackson Browne.

The band eventually signed to Capitol Records and moved to Los Angeles. It continued on through the early '90s, when it broke up.

It hasn't played onstage as the the Bob Meighan Band since then . . . until now.

Plays: 9 p.m. Saturday on the Class of '77 stage.

"We formed that band in Tempe, Arizona. . . . We scouted a few cities, and Tucson just seemed to have so many opportunities to play per the size of the town. It was kind of unbelievable. It was like on every corner there was a bar with a band. The other thing was, we were all hikers and outdoor guys. . . . We were really attracted to the Sonoran Desert. So we moved and boy, that was kind of it. We felt at home here."

"There were a lot of good, high-quality bands. There were in Phoenix, too, but this scene was real different. The scene here was closer to what we liked, which was a combination of rock with country and blues."

"I think that there was. . . . Everybody was listening to one another, and there were so many bands playing. . . . For the size of the town, we were astounded."

"It was huge. In those days, that was the only way to do it. There were no indies. You either got signed by a big label, and there were few of them, or you didn't get a record out. . . . For the millions of bands that existed, to get one of those deals was highly, highly, highly coveted. And I might add, highly stressful. The thing that struck me about it was, you had your entire life to write your first album and six months to write your second. . . . For me, though, it was a childhood dream."

"I live in Phoenix and I've been here for 15 years. I'm in the field of behavioral health."

"(Club Congress entertainment director) David Slutes talked me into it. He seemed to have a good idea, and I appreciated his understanding of that period of Tucson. . . . I work in the medical field and I run into doctors all the time who went to the U of A. They're real straight, respectable, wealthy guys now, and they go, 'Yeah, man, I can remember, I passed out at the Pawnbroker watching you guys. It was great.' They still got the hippie-party thing in them somewhere, or at least they remember it."

Who: HoCo Festival co-director.

Age: 33.

Quickly: Toubassi premiered his documentary "High and Dry: Where the Desert Meets Rock 'n' Roll" at Club Congress' first HoCo Festival three years ago.

He's also the president of the Los Angeles-based Upstairs Film multimedia production company and in charge of the film portion of the HoCo Festival.

Toubassi said he's excited about the entire film lineup, including the roller-derby documentary "Hell on Wheels," "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" as scored by Friends of Dean Martinez, and short films like "Move Me."

Toubassi will also be premiering a music video he did for the local band Love Mound.

"Our focus is on music-related content and films, as well as films and filmmakers from the Southwest. The 'Southwest' being Austin to L.A."

"We have a selection committee that reviewed the films and they were rated. And we narrowed down and picked films from that. We tried to get a wide range of film types, but since the film festival really started with "High and Dry," music films have really dominated the lineup."

"Yeah, when we're getting the films, we're definitely looking at the bands in the films, but sometimes that works out, sometimes that doesn't. . . . Really, the festival is the past, present and future of the Tucson music scene and now the film scene, too."

"We got a lot of great submissions and we wish we had more time to have more films. So I'd like to see it grow so we can have more films. . . . Just having more bands and venues I think would be great. I just see it being in more theaters and more time slots."

Who: Drummer for the Weird Lovemakers.

Age: 39.

Quickly: You know HoCo Festivals mean a lot to Schumacher.

He met his wife, Johanna, when the Weird Lovemakers played the first HoCo.

The Weird Lovemakers were a wild punk band back in the mid-'90s that has released four full-length albums, as well as appearing on several compilations.

Schumacher still lives in Tucson, but he plans on moving with his wife back to his native Australia at the end of this year, making this weekend the last time the Weird Lovemakers will take the stage . . . probably.

Plays: Midnight Sunday on the Class of '97 Stage.

"That was in 1994. That was in the days of the DPC (Downtown Performance Center); it's now the Mat Bevel Institute, but they don't really have rock shows there anymore. I was talking with (guitarist) Jason (Willis) the other day and we kind of wanted to call that the "Superchunk" days of the music scene. What I mean is it seemed like all the local bands kind of had this Superchunk ideology. The sort of DIY, where nobody wanted to be on a major label. . . . The DPC really supported that scene. . . .

"It was fun times; there were lots of bands. . . . There were also lots of house parties in those days, before the whole "orange sticker" thing really got going.

(In Tucson, police will affix an orange sticker or "red tag" in the front window of a house deemed unruly; the notice must remain visible for 180 days.)

"Now orange stickers have killed rock music in Tucson....Then again, I don't get invited to house parties anymore because I'm the 'creepy old guy.' "

"A little weird, a little nostalgic. I've played several 'last shows ever,' so I don't think it has any sadness. It's more glee: one more time around the merry-go-round."

"Surprises. . . . surprised that a bunch of old guys can get up there and embarrass themselves one more time. Maybe that's the biggest surprise of all."