JAVA Dec '18 issue

Photo by Von Jackson
naturally allow the reader to experience the lives of its characters with both
grace and brutal honesty. Semi-autobiographical in nature, Spent Saints afforded
Smith an opportunity to travel all around the United States doing readings for a
growing array of fans.
As a follow-up to his acclaimed first novel, Smith has partnered with the United
Kingdom’s Eyewear Publishing to put out Tucson Salvage: Tales and Recollections
from La Frontera in 2018. This book is a collection of Smith’s Tucson Weekly
column of the same name that garnered a liberal amount of attention in its own
right. Smith captures a lyrical portrait of Tucson, speaking volumes about the
lives of some of the city’s most interesting and often heartbreaking citizens.
Smith and his wife, Maggie Rawling Smith, have partnered to bring these stories
to life in film, as well. Rawling Smith, a Phoenix native, is also a writer, but most
of her experience has been in screenwriting and working behind a camera; she’s
also a longtime music fan. The power of their union is palpable, and Maggie
clearly appreciates her husband’s ability to bring these stories to life through
words as much as he appreciates her ability to give them visual form in film.
On Sunday, November 11, the duo screened Rawling Smith’s documentary at the
Valley Bar in Phoenix to an excited audience. The film features five stories from
Tucson Salvage and will be screened at several film festivals in 2019.
We caught up with the Smiths over the phone to learn more about their story,
where they came from and where they are headed. It’s quite a tale indeed.
JAVA: So how did the two of you meet?
Brian Jabas Smith: I was living in Tucson, and I got a call out of the blue to edit
her novel. That’s how it happened. She was living in Los Angeles, and I just
moved back to Tucson. We started talking, and we got her hired on to do all the
publicity for Spent Saints, which was a major coup because she’s amazing at that, and
we just sort of fell in love. It’s like I always say, “The cook always gets the waitress.”
The human equation probably goes something like this: Life itself (the act of
being alive) is multiplied by struggle and divided by fear, stress and possibly
addiction, before adding a dash of joy, a dollop of heartache and a smear
of inevitable pain, all before whatever karma you deserve does its thing.
Between birth and death there are work, sleep, the potential for procreation and
hopefully a fair amount of creativity and play. And with hard work and luck, there is
the possibility of success.
There is also love, and for this we play our roles in the equation. And if we are even
luckier, we get our fair share.
No one documents lives, mathematical and otherwise, like Brian Jabas Smith. Many
of us in the Phoenix area know Smith from his “pre-Jabas” days as a writer and
musician. The fifty-something Tucson native penned multiple columns for Phoenix
New Times and fronted well-received bands like The Pills, Gentlemen After Dark and
Beat Angels before moving eastward to work for the Detroit Metro Times and then
returning to Arizona in 2015 to settle again in Tucson.
During the last three years at home in Arizona, Smith has been prolific. He published
his first novel, Spent Saints & Other Stories, in 2017 on Ridgeway Press. It is a
sublime combination of disturbing, harrowing, beautiful and inspiring stories that
JAVA: Was there a romantic feeling there from the beginning, or did that
develop over time?
BJS: Well, I didn’t know this, but when Maggie was 16, she’d sneak in to see
Beat Angels shows in Phoenix. I had no idea. Now that I’ve done the math, I
remember seeing her there on the all-ages side of the venues, all wide-eyed and
nervous.
Maggie Rawling Smith: (Laughs) Actually my book is centered (on a club) not
unlike Long Wong’s, which is why I wanted Brian to edit it, and it is written from
the perspective of the youngest kid in the room. And he was a musician, so it
worked out.
JAVA: Did you have Brian in mind all along to edit?
MRS: I didn’t even know he was editing until one day on Facebook he posted it,
so I was like, aha.
BJS: When I moved back from Detroit I was hurting. I had no money. I was
hustling for work. You know how it is.
JAVA: I do. What is the title of your book, Maggie?
MRS: The Most Incredible Wings.
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