Center for Biological Diversity
BECAUSE LIFE IS GOOD

Protecting endangered species and wild places through
science, policy, education, and environmental law.

For Immediate Release: October 25, 2004

Contact:
Julie Miller, Publications & Outreach Director, Center for Biological Diversity (520) 623-5252 x. 303
Diane Rapaport, Katie Lee publicist, Jerome Headlands Press (928) 634.8894

Event Information:
What: Katie Lee performance of slideshow “Love Songs to Glen Canyon”—a benefit for the Center for Biological Diversity
When: Wednesday, November 17, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Anjali Studio, 330 E. 7 th St., one block west of Fourth Avenue
Tickets: $10 general/$8 for Center members.

Tickets on sale by phone and in person at three Tucson locations:
Antigone Books, 411 N. Fourth Avenue (520) 792-3715
Reader’s Oasis, 3400 E. Speedway (520) 319-7887
KXCI Community Radio, 220 S. Fourth Avenue (520) 623-1000
Tickets also on sale (WILL CALL only) at the Center’s website.

Katie Lee — Leading Lady of the Mighty Colorado — to Perform
Tucson Benefit for Center for Biological Diversity

TUCSON —Anyone who has ever experienced the delight of seeing Katie Lee perform knows why she receives standing ovations.

Any other artist might pale against the majestic backdrop that is the subject of the fabulous Katie Lee Show: the once-wild Colorado River and Glen Canyon, the lost sanctuary once freely traversed by the river along its path to the Grand Canyon further southwest. But it is the fabulous Katie herself who takes her audience on a wild ride. Whether she is singing, shouting, or reading from her books, she proves that no one is ever too old to be outrageous and fight the good fight for disappearing wilderness.

A Tucson native and living legend, the author, musicologist, folk singer, storyteller, actress, songwriter, photographer, filmmaker, activist, poet, and river runner Katie Lee was born in the Old Pueblo in 1919. Katie returns to Tucson Wednesday, November 17 to perform her slideshow “Love Songs to Glen Canyon” as a benefit for the Center for Biological Diversity, the Tucson-based nonprofit endangered species advocacy group, at 7:30 p.m., Anjali Studio, 330 E. 7 th St.

The show, based on Katie’s book All My Rivers are Gone, pays tribute to the singularly beautiful landscape and paradise lost she knew as one of Glen Canyon’s foremost explorers before the horrifying event she terms the “damning” of the Colorado in the early 1960’s—when her exquisite Eden drowned under 500 feet of water behind Glen Canyon Dam.

Katie’s show encompasses much more than a presentation of her stunning photographs of the Canyon. Her performance is part poetry and part politics, with a little bit of folk gathering around the campfire thrown in for good measure. The grande dame of Western singers and environmentalists, Katie will draw from the collection of songs she wrote while exploring the Colorado, and she will sign her books and CD’s—including her latest book, Sandstone Seduction.

Katie Lee is one of a handful of men and women who knew the 170 miles of Glen Canyon very well. She made 16 trips down the river, even naming some of the side canyons.

“My trips through Glen Canyon and the river that ran through it changed my life—gave me an understanding of myself, my talent and its limitations, taught me about intimacy and the value of observation,” the Hollywood actress turned river activist has said.

“Together they resurrected my spirit and melted my heart with their beauty, showed me time was not my enemy, and with their power to entertain, mystify, and nearly kill me, diluted my ego to its proper consistency. For all my wandering the Glen gave me roots as tenacious as the willow along its banks.”

Today, Katie remains a tenacious advocate for freeing the Colorado and restoring Glen Canyon, a cause to which she has devoted heart and soul for 40 years.  She speaks to audiences around the country about her love affair with the Canyon, what we’ve lost in its burial by water, and why we should miss it.  She is one of the Southwest’s most outspoken environmental activists, taking up the torch Ed Abbey and David Brower left burning when they died.

As Terry Tempest Williams wrote in Wild Earth, “In so many ways, this woman embodies the power and tenacious beauty of the Colorado Plateau. Her spitfire intelligence and red rock resolve provides us with an individual conscience that we would do well to adopt. She is a joyful raconteur, a woman with grit, grace, and humor. She is not afraid to laugh and tease, cajole and flirt, cuss, rant, howl, sing and cry. Katie Lee is the desert’s lover. Her voice is a torch in the wilderness.”


The Center for Biological Diversity is a Tucson-based non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of endangered species through science, advocacy, education and law. The Center has over 10,000 members, many of whom reside in the Southwest, and maintains offices throughout the western United States. Since its founding in 1989, the Center has won Endangered Species Act protections for 335 imperiled plants and animals and 43 million acres of habitat.

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