Caliente

Indie pair in Tucson to sing for change

Indie singer-songwriters Kristy Krüger and Danya River are trekking 14,000 miles in the next handful of weeks in the name of political change. The duo's "Swing State Tour," which started on the East Coast last week and swings into Tucson's Plush on Monday, is more of a voter-registration drive than a music tour. In a phone interview last week from a tour stop in Michigan, Krüger said she hopes the duo will register a handful of voters at each show. Krüger and River are among dozens of independent artists touring the country this fall and registering voters along the way. It's a concentrated movement that Krüger acknowledges is more pro-Democrat than Republican. "It's not anti-(President) Bush," the jazzy funk rocker clarified. "I'm not anti-Bush. I'm just not voting for him." The Swing States Tour will hit coffeehouses, small clubs and college campuses in the so-called battleground states - places where the presidential vote could swing in either direction. Krüger, a Texas native raised in a politically conservative household, said she is hoping to reach young voters and those who were undecided in 2000. Krüger confessed that she didn't vote in 2000. The 29-year-old said she was a member of the Nirvana generation whose attitudes straddled the line of complacency and indifference. Then the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks happened, and Krüger found herself rubbing her head in confusion at the news reports. "I was listening to NPR, and they mentioned Osama bin Laden, and I didn't know who he was," she said. "It was a wake-up call that I didn't know anything." Krüger has spent the three years since keeping abreast of world events and politics. She said she's far from an expert, but she has learned to recognize "a gut feeling that it's just a mess right now." Hence her current mission, which she and River, whose music leans toward pop-rock, are financing themselves. The pair are paying the bills along the way through ticket sales and the kindness of strangers who have taken the women in, have fed them and have even given Krüger a free haircut recently. River kicks off Monday's concert with her Ani DiFranco-esque folk-pop rock. Krüger follows with her upbeat, funky jazz-rock. In between sets and after the show, the pair will have forms available for those who want to register to vote.