Way, way, way back when I was booking for The Lonelies, I quickly fell into a little group of musicians who quickly became (and still are) some of my best friends. Our little group performed on the same stages, ventured out to each other’s shows, spent many a night bummin’ smokes and drinking too much. When I think back to those days, those bands, those musicians, those friends, I always smile. There are still certain songs, songs from each band, that bring tears to my eyes to this day.
There is to be a reunion tomorrow night. A reunion of, what I like to call, my bands. The only really, really, really, really crappy glitch that done sprung up, is that John Donovan can’t make the trip from New Jersey. So my longtime wish for a Joyful Sinners reunion is now back on hold. However…
Hey there,
So – you may have gathered from the title of this email that something’s up – so here’s the short of it:
The Americanos are reuniting. One night. Friday, 12/7 at Club Dada. Midnight. We’ll be playing after Trainwreck.
For some of you, this will evoke a “What the @#$*!” response. As in, “I can’t believe it – I didn’t know they even talked to each other any more. I thought they ended on a sour note. I didn’t know it was 2003. Our pets heads are falling off!”
For the rest of you, this will evoke a “What the @#$*?” response. As in, “Who are The Americanos? Why should I care? And how did I end up on this all-forsaken email list in the first place?”
So – if you identify with the first response – this email is for you. The rest of you are welcomed to hit delete now if you’d like. I’ll harbor no ill will. I understand.
I am not a man of brevity, nor of guarded emotions. This email will be long. It’s a story – a personal history of four guys, four Dallas musicians who happened into each other, and while not really a history of Dallas music, it’s important nonetheless to some of us.
So – if you’re still reading – put your slippers on. Grab a glass of whatever. Get comfortable. And thanks in advance….
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The Americanos started taking shape around September of 2001. I answered an ad looking for a guitarist for some band called Chris Gonzalez and The Americanos. It sounded cool to me. Good band name. The bands that were listed as influences were all bands that I liked. Amazing, I thought. Coming off the heels of a tough band experience in College Station that had me considering selling my guitar and hanging it up for good, I was looking for anything to save me from that.
I called on the ad one day from work, and talked to Chris for a few minutes. He sounded like a nice guy, and said he wanted to put together a band that would do half covers of bands he liked and half original songs. I wasn’t really into the covers thing, but I didn’t have a lot of options at the time, so we arranged a time for him to come by my place and play a few songs.
I remember him pulling up in his red car and thinking, for some reason, that we were gonna get along. I just had this feeling. So we jammed on a few cover songs. It went well – he played good tunes and he had a really expressive voice. Then I asked him to play a few originals. And bam – the deal was sealed. His songs were amazing. Fun. Heartfelt. Poetic. He was everything I’d ever looked for in a band mate. He must’ve felt the same, because before you know it, we were auditioning bass players and drummers for an all-original songs band.
We were fortunate to stumble upon Trae Doss early, who Chris knew from his day job. Trae was a phenomenal singer, and better yet, he played bass on purpose. He wasn’t just a frustrated ex-guitarist. He took the lead on arranging our vocals, and the harmonies in the songs that we’d all heard from day one began to take shape.
Then, after a few months of knocking around town, Jarad Brown came into the fold. A trained drummer. Solid as a metronome, but a lot funnier and more inventive. And the exact temperament we needed. The Americanos were born.
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We started booking shows, and playing around town, and quickly realized that it would be an uphill fight. There were so just many good bands in Dallas to contend with. Bands that you’d never want to follow on stage, because how could you ever measure up? I remember sharing bills with Sorta, and Deadman, and The Lonelies, and Midlake, and feeling like I wanted to run home and write songs that good – but also at the same time feeling like ours would never – could never – measure up. These were guys were raising the stakes.
Then there were bands like Trainwreck, and The Joyful Sinners, and Slick 57, Sparrows – bands that were equally as inspiring, but guys who more than anything would ultimately come to be known as great friends of ours. Guys we could confide in, could drink with. Guys we’d hang out with even if we weren’t in bands at all. Guys we’d drag our brother out to see, watching through the window in the cold February snow outside the Boar’s Nest on Greenville Avenue because we couldn’t afford the cover, only to realize that the band – Trainwreck – would become our closest friends in the years to come (and most certainly would’ve let us in for free).
These guys were always there with a word of encouragement when we needed it and, more often than not, an empty barstool when, truthfully, we probably didn’t need it. But we sat down anyways.
At the same time, The Americanos started to grow together as a band. Snap shirts appeared out of nowhere (remember, this was 2001, when you couldn’t buy them at The Gap). Ratty t-shirts materialized out of thin air. Haircuts and shaves were sorely needed, but never seemed to happen. Blue jeans and Converse All-Stars became a badge, a rite of passage. Hell, we used to even give each other grief about not wearing the same color Chucks to a gig. No one wants to be “that band”, the one with the color-coordinated shoes. It was chick stuff, sure – but it was a bond for us.
Rehearsals turned into clubhouse time. We probably only practiced a third of the hours, and spent the rest listening to old records, talking about bands, about life, and about our dreams. We were becoming brothers, in the truest sense of the word.
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Dallas. Fort Worth. College Station. Austin. Tulsa. Stillwater. Houston. Terrell. Even a truly memorable show in Maypearl, Texas with Collin Herring – the closest I’ve ever been to an all-out, Old West bar fight – with some crusty old cowboys, too much sh*t talking, too much sawdust, and too much homemade whiskey from a strangers flask.
Every step along the way, we made friends. Friends that came out to see the shows. People that just happened to have the fortune (or misfortune, as it may have been, depending on the night) to stumble into an Americanos tent revival. Our loved ones that supported us every day behind the scenes and during shows where no one else came to see us. Without these people, it would’ve disintegrated far sooner.
But people kept coming back to shows. Perhaps for the songs…or the energy on stage…or the contagious feeling of good times being had by all. Heck, it might’ve just been good drink specials. I don’t know – it might’ve been a combination of everything in between. Whatever it was, every night had the possibility to be the greatest night of our lives. And that was a great feeling.
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So when I think back on The Americanos, it’s through a similar lens as the one you view graduating from college, or moving away from your hometown for the first time. It’s melancholy, but not born of pain. It’s of a time passed, a moment gone by, and one that will always been seen through the hazy lens of memory as one of the best times of your life. It was innocent. Passionate. It was the sense that anything, and everything, was possible. Was reachable. It was hope.
The thing that kills me the most though, to this day, is that it ended poorly. There’s an old story about The Eagles, where it’s rumored that after their last show, every guy boarded a different plane home.
To a lesser extent, that was us.
We played our last show on July 3rd, 2003, at Club Dada. It was amazing. Raw. Heartfelt. Passionate. A celebration and encapsulation of everything good we’ve ever done, everything we could’ve been. Everything we were leaving behind.
And that was it. We got in our cars, headed home, and didn’t talk for years.
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Over Labor Day weekend this year, Carter Albrecht was shot and killed.
Like many Dallas musicians, Carter was important to us. Not just because he was inspirational to watch, but because Carter made us feel like we belonged. I remember vividly an afternoon when we’d played a radio show for this small little station off Ross Avenue (I have no idea what it was, only that it took place in a house surrounded by characters you’d see in The Wire), and afterwards we headed to Muddy Waters for a drink.
Muddy Waters was closed, but Carter was there, setting up the bar, and he let us in early. He fired up the jukebox, let us fill it up with songs, and served us drinks. And we talked. Carter on one side of the bar – us on the other. And trust me – the symbolism wasn’t lost on us.
That afternoon, talking to Carter, we felt like we’d been made. Carter Albrecht, the proverbial Don of the Dallas music scene, was granting us an audience. And – amazingly (to us) – he knew of our little band. He’d heard the songs. And – get this! – he liked us, even going so far as to give us constructive criticism for how to make it better. We were awestruck, and walked out of there feeling like all the hours spent writing songs and rehearsing and trying to get better weren’t for naught.
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When I heard of Carter’s passing, I was crushed. I thought of all the times we’d talked, of the times I’d been privileged enough to have him play on my first solo record, and of that day at Muddy Waters, when The Americanos were nothing more than potential. And I thought about my brothers I’d lost along the way.
Buoyed by the inspiration he’d given us all those years ago, I picked up my phone. I called Chris, and Jarad, and Trae, and told them how much I cared for them. That no matter how things were left, I loved our time in The Americanos. And that we never know when someone’s going to leave us, that we don’t always have a chance to say goodbye, or to lay to rest past grievances. And how, more than anything, I hated how such a great period in our lives was often first remembered in a negative light.
I wanted us to get back together. Not forever, because we’d all moved on into what we were meant to become. We were in our right places. But I wanted to reset a past wrong. To end on a positive note. To celebrate what we had. Even if it was just for one night.
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Which brings us to our bill with our old compatriots Trainwreck at Club Dada this Friday, the scene where we ended all those years ago.
This show will be a celebration. A family reunion, if you will. It’ll be a flashback to 2003, for sure – there will be distortion and country rhythms and vocal harmonies that probably aren’t as tight as they used to be.
But it will be a tribute. To the times we shared. To the promise of youth. To Carter. To the hundred of other bands we shared stages with that inspired us to be better, play harder, live truer, to care more. And a tribute to each other.
While not by blood, these are my brothers. I’m honored to get to share the stage with them one more time.
I hope you’ll join us for a night of good times.
The Americanos
X meets Wilco? A dream combination for fans of roots-inspired, punk-spirited rock, and one that somehow congeals in Dead Rock West.” – Ventura County Reporter
