By Christopher Stahelin A profile of one of Santa Fe’s street...

By Clara Hittel/Photos by Christopher Stahelin I am provided with hot tea and guided outside to the shed, amidst small patches of snow still clinging to the high-altitude chill. Within the odd structure that sits apart from Paul Groetzinger’s idyllic mountain home is the studio of Mesa Recordings. Groetzinger apologizes for the mess, while I decide that a variety of instruments scattered around the floor and dangling ominously from shelves overhead is exactly how a recording studio should look. He sits at his desk and I settle in by the space heater. Paul Groetzinger is a member of two well-known Santa Fe bands—D Numbers and Detroit Lightning—as well as a DJ and solo artist known as Feathericci. He is also now one of the founders of Mesa Recordings. I met the astoundingly friendly Groetzinger when I went to see Detroit Lightning play at the Cowgirl last week. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was the same Grateful Dead cover band I had the pleasure of stumbling upon at Totemoff’s—the bar on the slopes of the Santa Fe Ski Basin—a few weeks ago. Beats on the Basin is a regular winter occurrence, it turns out, presented by Hutton Broadcasting and benefiting the Adaptive Ski Program. Groetzinger and fellow Connecticut-born band mate Ben Wright, who have been playing music together since they were 14 years old and are both members of D Numbers and Detroit Lightning, run sound for every Beats on the Basin show. They are very busy men indeed. “I really like having a diverse musical life,” Groetzinger shares. “It makes me feel complete to do a bunch of different things. We’d sunk into the D numbers thing really heavily for many, many years and it’s nice that we’re all at...

By Clara Hittel/Photos by Christopher Stahelin     Jake Trujillo sits on a bench at the edge of the room observing a heated(ly comical) debate on the preservation of the lesser prairie chicken between state Rep. James Roger Madalena,  D-Rio Arriba, and state Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Chaves. After some staggeringly unprofessional questioning and a representative’s impersonation of a chicken, House Memorial 21 passes—“A memorial requesting that local officials support local efforts to preserve and protect the lesser prairie chicken and oppose its listing as “threatened” pursuant to the Federal Endangered Species Act”—and Trujillo slips from the House. Photographer Chris Stahelin and I later find him looking down at us from the second floor balcony. We wave at each other, and then the House Majority liaison disappears from the balcony in order to come down and speak to us. I first met Santa Fe-native Jake Trujillo in 2008. He was playing guitar and singing an original composition at Meow Wolf’s old location off Second Street. I thought he was a very impressive songwriter, and after that I saw him everywhere I went like he was a character in a comedy about a small town—the character that seems to work in every shop and café. (Note: Trujillo actually has worked in many cafés around Santa Fe.) This is why I was not surprised to find him working at the New Mexico State Legislature. “I got pretty lucky in the grand scheme of things—I got a pretty cushy job,” he grins. This year is Trujillo’s fourth at the Legislature—a job he says simply fell into his lap. He deserves it, even if it’s only temporary. “…It was always harder…to go back to barista-ing after working at the Roundhouse,” he admits. “Being a barista can be hard...

By Charlotte Martinez/ Photos by Christopher Stahelin It’s all about timing and planning for the unexpected. That’s the movie business for you. The sky is clear at 3:30 p.m., Feb. 24 on the Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus. The Screen, SFUAD’s independent movie theater and my work place, has a sidewalk leading to the entrance and though the concrete is cracked and dusty, I feel like I’m passing Hollywood’s red carpet. There’s a lot of excitement the day of SFUAD’s Oscar Night, but like I said, the movie business isn’t predictable. Here at the Screen, Oscar Night means a live stream of the 2013 Academy Awards for students and faculty of the Film Department. In addition, this event premieres the Film School’s first Shoot the Stars production, two student-made films featuring big name actors Wes Studi, from Avatar, and Canadian actor Luke Kirby. My red carpet disappears, however, when I’m told we’re running 20 minutes behind. Peter Grendle, manager of the Screen and professor at the Film School, strides in with his usual short-breathe grin (I’m convinced he runs everywhere). I tell him our last movie will let out 20 minutes late. He says he knows and we make a plan. It’s 3:45 p.m. I smile at the gathering audience and promise that they’ll be let into the theater soon. There’s some confusion as to when the student films will begin. “We’re playing it by ear,” I say. This turns out partially true. For the first 30 minutes my ear stays glued to the theater’s closed doors, behind which Peter struggles to stream cable to both the Screen and the monitor down the hall in Studio C, where the Oscar party begins. This party is legit! Red carpet, decorations, paparazzi, finger...

By Nick Martinez/Photos by Christopher Stahelin “Hell is other people,” the famous line from Jean Paul Sartre’s classic one act about three damned souls psychologically torturing each other, serves as the perfect coda for the play. Ironically enough, it also serves as the perfect antithesis to SFUAD’s current production. Even though the show was opening on Feb. 15, senior Corbin Albaugh, the show’s director, graciously allowed me to sit in on their most recent rehearsal. My only knowledge of the play before hand was through brief summaries on the Internet and conversations I’ve had with Albaugh in previous days, so I was going in blind. Albaugh called for his small crew to take their positions, because today they were going to run through the entire piece straight. Taking the stage first was junior transfer student Michael Phillip Thomas as the coward Crodeau. “At the top of this play Crodeau built up this view in his mind that was really manly and macho, which you and I do everyday,” said Thomas. “Through this plays process you see him stripped of that, and he’s really this scared coward of a man that in every turn in life ran away.” Thomas certainly played Crodeau in this way, as his acerbic monologues would not be out of place in a Brett Easton Ellis novel. Joining Thomas on stage later was sophomore Chloe Torblaa as the scheming Ines and freshmen Tristine Henderson as the seductress Estelle. “The show is about three way dynamics and that’s kind of the way the world works,” said Torblaa about the show. The threesome breezed through the show without any mishaps to my untrained eye, and the show climaxed with Torblaa’s character Ines delivering a gleefully psychotic rant to Thomas’s Crodeau. “That’s why Ines is...

Walking up the stairs in the lobby of the theatre building, Senior performing arts major Corbin Albaugh and I exchanged pleasantries. Albaugh for the past week was in preproduction for the Weckesser Studio Theatre production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s classic No Exit, which he is directing. “This is the first time I’ve ever directed and I’m going into this pretty much blind other than having a decent all around knowledge of the play,” said Albaugh. “So this is a massive learning experience for me and at this point in the process I love it. It’s fantastic.” Seeing Albaugh’s excitement, I thought he had achieved a lifelong dream. “I wouldn’t say I’ve always wanted to direct,” said Albaugh. “One of the things that I would like to accomplish in my senior year is to stay out of my comfort zone as much as possible.” Albaugh’s comfort zone is an ever changing beast. Back in Iowa, in junior high, Albaugh auditioned for a model and talent agency. They liked him so much that they booked him a trip to New York for the International Models & Talent Association (IMTA), where managers and agents flock to find fresh clients. “So long story short, I did some contests, did some exhibitions, got hooked up with a management team that flew me to LA where I auditioned for two years for film and television. I ultimately got cast in a bit part. Have you ever seen the movie ‘Mr. Woodcock’?” I did, in fact, remember Mr. Woodcock, a 2007 comedy starring Seann William Scott and Billy Bob Thorton. It was a critical bomb but that could hardly be attributed to Albaugh’s small role as one of the gym students harassed by the title character. “That happened and that was an...