I’m writing this in the late morning of Tue, Nov 3, and I’ve set aside my phone, even though I’m waiting for a couple texts to appear in reply to questions I need to complete this piece, a weekly column that is supposed to promote local music. I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to think about anything today, a date also known to many as Election Day, and that’s because for a decade, the velocity of Trump World’s grifting and grievance-mongering has thrummed in my brain like the malfunctioning fluorescent lights in a horror movie. Everything carries this awful, unending frequency. The first content served to me this morning was a video of a Ukrainian soldier recording the ghostly, whooshing, high-pitched whine of the Russian drones flying above him, and the sound seems like a physical analog to the mental state of never not thinking about this shit.
I tried to think about something else. Last week, Marc, guitarist for the Larry Byrds, sent me a text about some CD Baby fuckery that affected the release of their new single. Essentially, the distribution company sent “White Noise” to the profiles of the wrong artist, then couldn’t determine who that artist was. Forty-five days later, after reaching out to Spotify and Apple Music, the Larry Byrds were able to have “White Noise” finally appear in their profiles on those apps. In other news, Flickerstick frontman Brandin Lea’s other formerly-on-hiatus band, Jetta in the Ghost Tree, has a reunion show at The Cicada on Saturday with hard-rocking headliners the Royal Sons. But organizing my thoughts about those events and others — oh, yeah, and also the Fort Worth Songwriter Festival is at Tulips during the back half of next week — feels impossible, like trying to corral a box of Kix spilled onto an air hockey table.
As a distraction, I went to the bank earlier on a superfluous errand, passing houses with Hinojosa and Talarico signs, as well as a pickup emblazoned with the emblem of the Three Percenters militia movement. The pickup pulled up next to me on the right at a red light. Across the intersection and farther down the street, orange traffic poles shunted the right lane into the left, and when the light turned green, the truck blasted forth like a bull out of a rodeo chute. Plodding along a quarter mile behind it, I watched the pickup wait until the last possible moment to merge.
Courtesy the Larry Byrds
That vehicle/sticker combo reminded me of a couple of large, elegant, midcentury houses I used to walk past in Crestwood, back when my address was an apartment complex on White Settlement Road and that neighborhood lay between me and the Trinity Trails. One of these houses was festooned with an increasingly faded Gadsden Flag, and the other’s lawn housed a Trump sign that its installer had protected from vandalism and/or unsolicited removal with a wreath of barbed wire. Of the driver of that truck and the owners of those houses, I have to ask: What are y’all so afraid of? Who would dare tread upon you, Gadsden Flag Guys of the world? During the three years I lived in that ZIP code, the streets of Crestwood — a neighborhood largely though not entirely full of mansions — were riddled with potholes. I tried to drive through there this past summer, and I was foiled by the labyrinth of Buyers Barricades that defined the torn-up, verboten pathways.
In the parking lot of the bank, I waited as a different pickup double-parked over a handicap spot so that it could reverse into a slot next to the one I aimed for. Its significant stickers: Mercy Culture on the rear windshield and an expired inspection sticker on the front. What advice does Pastor Landon Schott have for that guy? The truck was of a recent vintage, and the sticker expired in April. What’s up with that? What’s going on with you, driver of † = Mercy Sticker Truck? Is it the economy that’s kept you from spending $80 to get your tag renewed? Or is it because renewing your registration feels like yet another dumbass chore in an ocean of equally urgent dumbass chores, all of which require an amount of mental effort that is difficult to summon because all our brains — no matter the sticker on your rear windshield or the sign in your yard — are just fucking fried?
I came to a red light at the very bottom of a six-stoplight cycle on the way home, and I re-read Marc’s text, which said “White Noise” is about “the politeness of dead-end day jobs, consumerism, and the fleeting moments of escape.” Like, for example, when you’re at a long light! But there is no escape. I opened Instagram hoping to see a reply I’d been waiting for. The windows arrayed over my homepage wriggled with political-influencer invective; AI-generated, obvious do’s-and-don’t’s for pug care; hardcore bands I’ll never get around to listening to; and people playing well-known basslines I’ll never have the chops to mimic. The drone-whine in my brain jumped in pitch and intensity, and I tossed my phone, happy to see it bounce into the space between the passenger seat and the door. For a couple more minutes, I tried not to think about anything.
Royal Sons
8pm Sat, Nov 7, w/Jetta in the Ghost Tree
at The Cicada, 1002 S Main St, Fort Worth. $14.86-$20. 21+.
Fort Worth Songwriter Festival
w/Tom Jenkins, Bob Livingston, Jesse Spradlin, Kylie Hernandez, many others Thu-Sun, Nov 12-15, at Tulips FTW, 112 St. Louis Av, Fort Worth. $13.97-$156.79. 817-367-9798. All ages.
