a great revival… when inspiration strikes

In September of 2016, I had one of the last solo art shows I would have until last June. It was at a then new trendy coffeehouse where the owner/roaster/barista would passionately talk to you about the value of adding just 3% more Columbian to the blend he was thinking about calling Don’t Drive Angry (yes inspired by Groundhog Day) blend. Full disclosure, we owned and ran a coffeehouse in our greenhouses for many years and I too had, (have, ha) opinions on coffee. After the show, I had a late dinner with one of my best friends (and wonderful artist) Jean, and her husband, Isaac, at a sushi place (pretty sure it was the Old Market location of Blue as the coffeehouse was just a few blocks away). I do remember smiling at the menu because they had a special Husker (beef) sushi on the menu as it is Nebraska).

After dinner, we walked around the Old Market, dressed in its autumn charm and bustling with the night sensations of the city, the scents of wood fire grilled pizza mingle with PBR and sweat (PBR being the hipster beer of choice for a few years there, before the banquet began), a busker’s tenor sax blends with another’s a cappella rendition of Ring of Fire, and the laughs of a passing group of high schoolers taking photos together in an old phone booth, too drunk 20-somethings holding on tight as the petal pub guy drove them around on his bar on wheels, and then… a sign from my college days stood before us: Homer’s

It had been years since I had been there. It was a frequent stop when I was in school in Lincoln. A whiff of nag champa plus paper and ink and vinyl. Brown paper grab bags of cds sat near checkout, the walls were covered in band and gig posters, band t-shirts, and Nebraska shirts, a LOCAL bands section, zines , a few comics and toys. And the music coexisting in all the sections MF DOOM (always ALL CAPS) to Ministry, Mozart to Modest Mouse, My Bloody Valentine to Method Man.

Something down the aisle caught my eye…booths with headphones and wait, what? A listening station with new releases and staff favorites! It had been a while since I’d been to an actual record shop, I’ve since remedied that – another long standing favorite is Wax Trax in Denver, and be sure to check out Grapefruit in Omaha too, just a block or two down from Homer’s. It’s a very cool indie record shop with things you’ll not find anywhere else.

The first cd I see on display at the listening station ​is by an old favorite, Toadies – Heritics. I didn’t realize they had a new album and was excited to check it an acoustic album from a band I had listened to since college.

The opening track, Belly of a Whale was the first new song I’d heard from them in a while. It was the Toadies, dark tinged but catchy work I’d expected from them, but with some mandolin and keyboards mixed in. The new arrangement of Tyler stood out right away and the banjo on Possum Kingdom may have made it more sinister. The horns on Backslider, a favorite song from Rubber Neck are an addition I still love.

The percussive, slow build of Rattler’s Revival awakened some rattling in my brain. A few years before, I’d sent out an email asking old friends and aquaintences for rememberances from the Satanic Panic from my small, rural Nebraska town. I recieved one Satanic Panic adjacent story – a tale about a Pentacostal camp and people speaking in tongues. While the finished tale doesn’t deal much with speaking in tongues, this moment was the birth of Rattlesnake Rodeo. I purchased Heritics, and one of DOOM’s Metal Finger’s Special Herbs albums (volume 3 maybe?).

That night, after playing a sort of exquisite corpse game with friends, I scrawled wrote out notes of what would someday become Rattlesnake Rodeo.

Soon after this night, life got kind of wild for me and, like a lot of my work from that time, I would pick it up from time to time to work on, but never finish it…until recently, when I got the first short story from Grand Lake Tales finished.

Why Grand Lake Tales? My hometown of Alliance, Nebraska (home of Carhenge) was originally called Grand Lake. Apparently in 1888, when the railroad superindent wanted the town to have a shorter name, he said Alliance and it has been named that since then. Alliance and the railroad have been intertwined since the start.

Back to the Toadies for a moment before I leave you for now. A few years back, I was able to see Toadies live with the Reverand Horton Heat (an amazing perforance). Toadies played the entire Rubberneck album that night and then some other fan favs. They closed the album set with two huge floor tom drums for I Burn, and it really did feel like a great revival as the entire crowd sung along with the drum beats. The energy of that moment is something I kept in mind when writing the character of Reverand Corwin and the way the crowd reacted throughout the story.

Until next time, stay safe out there