This past Saturday, Lola’s Saloon hosted the fourth installment of Up To Eleven Entertainment’s Fuzzed Out! Fest. The day-long, riff-tastic soiree featured nine stoner/psych-rock bands from North Texas and beyond. The core of the lineup, Fort Worth’s Southern Train Gypsy, Dallas’ Wo Fat, and Portland’s Ape Machine, hasn’t changed from 2013’s initial Fuzzed Out!, and was joined this year by Dallas’ Mothership (playing the fest for the third time), a pair of Fort Worth heavyweights, Duell and In Memory Of Man, Crypt Trip from San Marcos and San Diego’s Great Electric Quest.
My original review of the show began with four paragraphs about the evening’s headliner, Portland’s Black Pussy. I went on and on about the controversy surrounding the band’s name, the hoopla that lead to it’s appearance at the 35 Denton Music Festival being cancelled, and the band member’s “we don’t give a fuck if you are offended by the name, you are a party pooper” attitude. In the end, I decided it just isn’t worth running. The band simply isn’t very good, something the crowd at Lola’s figured out quickly, as the number of different shirt designs available for purchase at the band’s merch table (15) was barely outnumbered by people left watching the five-piece 20 minutes into its set (25 or so), and wasting all of this space talking about the band is probably just what its members had in mind when they chose that stupid band name.
I suppose the cause for the thinning crowd could have just as easily been Mothership kicking the shit out of the room with its psych-metal boogie. The Dallas trio always seems to find a way to break away from its tireless touring schedule to play a couple of Fort Worth shows every year. Singer-bassist Kyle Juett is one of the most charismatic frontmen in metal, constantly urging fans to let loose and have a good time while he and the rest of his band, his brother Kelley Juett on guitar and Judge Smith on drums, take the audience on a ride fueled by ’70s riff-laden prog-rock.
Fuzz blasting doom-rockers Wo Fat took the stage before Mothership and delivered 45 minutes of Black Sabbath-on-purple-drank-meets the-Southern California- dessert-sludge rock. Wo Fat doesn’t do anything fast. The Dallas three-piece takes its time, building groves slowly before exploding into “fuck, I forgot earplugs” guitar solos.
The biggest crowd of the night (possibly, as I was up front for most of Mothership and forgot to survey the room during the set) belonged to hometown boys Southern Train Gypsy. Singer Matt Leslie had the crowd eating out of his hand while he and his bandmates delivered their signature ZZ Top-by-way-of-Clutch southern-style heavy rock.
In the end, the show seemed to be a massive success. The main room at Lola’s was busting at the seams at multiple points of the evening, spilling out onto both patios, and the bar lines were several people deep most of the night. Fuzzed Out! has come a long way from 2013’s maiden voyage at The Grotto, and it doesn’t seem to be losing any steam.
