Friday March 12
Denton, Texas’s NX35, originally a panel for Denton bands at SXSW, celebrated and produced a formidable first in what one could only hope becomes more in-town annuals March 11-14. I had attended the first Denton-anchored event and was experiencing this bloated annual with every bit of awe and elation as, I expect, those who had put it together must have also felt.
I grant that I was not likely as overwhelmed as they, but what I watched in my two days of the conferette was every bit the product of the myriad Facebook statuses I had read from organizers over the past year. Those statuses were my peek behind the wizard’s curtain. I read statuses used to corral the volunteers for the 130 plus band event, those that expressed frustration, exhaustion, or excitement. I read petty but honest board threads of posterior wound toward the band line-up, and I read both exasperated and controlled responses to that thread.
This year’s NX35 was indeed a success born of hard work and impressive community collaboration, though those stories are already being told and by much better informed writers. For my money, a mere $65 for four days of all-access entertainment, the story is of an annual attendant, a fan, his perspective and observations.
I drove into Denton from Lubbock, Texas, by way of 114/380, and I posit that a “hub city” in Texas without a connection to I-35 reveals a rather exaggerated and flimsy nomenclature. Anyhow, after dealing with car trouble upon entering the city and missing Steve Albini’s daytime interview—we followed it through Twitter updates from the side of the road—my girlfriend and I finally caught a ride to the Denton Record Chronicle building where wristbands could be claimed.
There were two volunteers wearing the black-with-white-print NX35 staff T-shirts that would become a common sight everywhere we walked, adding that the girl staff of J&J’s Pizza turned these into an impressive tube top-ish ensemble. Once we had claimed our bands from the scrambling volunteers, we walked out into 70-degree weather, forced by a small bluster of wind not enough to distract but enough to note.
Walking up Hickory toward the Square, just past Industrial, a street that is home to Dan’s Silverleaf, we passed a canopied Camel-blue outpost surrounded by a youthful crowd regaled in red and gray camouflage wife-beaters, thrift store tennis shoes, and the occasional, necessary blonde with the one hot pink scythe of bang whipping in front of her face.
We stopped a little past that to look through the program, which I can say was evidence that lessons had been learned from the first in-town event. Last year’s NX35 boasted glossy print programs with full color photographs and advertisements. This year’s was a much thicker paged program, printed on a more standard stock of paper with more standard, seemingly personal PC printers.
From where we stood, though, it was decided that the best attack plan was to eat and grab a beer. We were watching our budgets, as we had just paid a $75 dollar tow fee into town and had no clue what to expect for the impending car repair. The obvious choice from previous experience was J&J’s Pizza, for a reasonable $5.50 slice (two, really) and a $1.50 Schlitz. Joining us at the table was Mike West, lead guitar/vocals for Curvette. It was difficult to plan and presented us with the bind one finds oneself in at such an event. There are going to have to be some casualties, some missed shows. Our personal plan was to see The Jakeys at Sweetwater, The Angelus at The Hydrant, Record Hop and Health at The Boiler Room. As we walked out of J&J’s, dusk had begun to settle.
We were 45 minutes from the night’s shows to get started at 8 p.m. We walked across the square and found Sweetwater. The show was to be on the covered patio and indeed was. At the side and entrance doors were more volunteers checking wristbands. Residents without wristbands had open reign of the inside bar but were not allowed onto the patio. Table seating was available as we got there early, observing seats being arranged and sound being prepared by Brent Best of Slobberbone.
As more attendants entered, the feeling was one of anticipation and expectation. Large bulb, assorted color, Christmas lights were strung across the ceiling and added a near-tropical, warm atmosphere to the patio, which was a little far off from the grungier, more clubish rooms I knew we would experience. The patio had sufficiently filled to seating capacity by the time The Jakeys took stage.
Worth noting and especially here is that Michael Constantine McConnell of the Farrago’s Wainscot staff leads this Irish/Scottish influenced band. What we heard in that set was a seemingly interesting performance as an introduction to the heavily indie-influenced line-up of NX35. The Jakeys are worth noting to the extent of proving the diversity of the NX35 line-up. Here is a band of no less than seven performers playing extremely loose and raucous Irish tunes impressively informed by The Pogues, Iron Maiden, and respective other bands the performers are a part of including Warren Jackson Hearne and the Merrie Murdre of Gloomadeers and Pinebox Serenade.
After that packed performance, we were out into settled night accompanied on the Square streets by groups of other attendants rushing to the next club to catch any of a large selection of acts be it The Angelus (our choice) at the Hydrant, Mount Righteous at Andy’s, Jupiter One at Dan’s Silverleaf, etcetera, etcetera.
It was my first time to go into The Hydrant, a narrow coffee shop with clean, plush-looking booths to the right, three-deep and red. I couldn’t immediately figure out where music would be seen or set up. Still, I admit the coffee was a welcome dose after the initial rounds of beers we were already deep into. We found the narrow stairwell entrance at the back of the room where we appropriately ascended to hear The Angelus, a band boasting songs both dark and epically choir-swelling in intensity.
The audience was initially sparse, a few scattered pursuivants with their own styles of thick, black-rimmed glasses, denim jackets, and some ratted out hair. Specifically, I remember two characters who set their chairs directly in front of the band’s set-up, the one on the right, closest to lead singer, Emil, handing him a free iTunes card to “Hey, give us a listen man.” These characters, as The Angelus moved into damning guitar strikes accompanied by sleigh bells and Emil’s Morrisonesque vocals, head banged in an endearing and equally humorous, syncopated, fanboy rapture and were crowded by others by the third song.
We trekked next to The Boiler Room, where we experienced the imagined out-of-the-door line to the underground venue for Record Hop. So, here we can just kind of play out a sped-up stop-motion sequence where we’re moving finally into the door at which point a chipmunkish music on fast-forward in a walkman kind of squeal becomes soundtrack as the schedule was messed up and Record Hop had started early. Here, instead of ascending, you descend a staircase into a large basement room that is darkly lit. It’s actually quite nice. This was one of the most packed shows we saw all night. Still, I am happy to report that at every venue we attended fans got to the bar and back to the show as fast as possible, making access and procurement a torrentially fluid process.
After the Record Hop show, we rejoined at J&J’s to meet a friend and long-time musician of Denton, Warren Jackson Hearne. Shows were scheduled to end at midnight. At 12:15, we took our act to Dan’s Silverleaf, where apparently head organizers of NX35 and community musicians had decided to all meet for the closing of day 2. It was a great experience, kind of family reunion meets “Hey, hey, look over there. It’s . . .” and “What are you doing in town? Oh, NX35, right?” And to that extent, not entirely inappropriate to quickly nod Old Testament like with a few names. Included in the crowd was Justin Collins and Steve Hill of Burnt Sienna Trio, Chris Flemmons of The Baptist Generals and founder of NX35, Ashley Cromeens and Scott Porter of Record Hop, Warren Jackson Hearne, Tamara Cauble of Telegraph Canyon and Polyphonic Spree, Robert Gomez, Scott Danbom of Centromatic, and Mike Seman of Shiny Around the Edges, just to name a few.
So, that first of days for me encapsulated the energy of a music community playing host to fans both close to home and those from out of town. There was no business we went to the entire day where we did not see a NX35 volunteer staff shirt. There was no gig that did not boast a sardined audience. There was ne’er an ear that had not rung, ne’er a threat of sobriety.
