I hope this email finds you well. Or high. Or somewhere far off from where I’m sitting in my post trip depression, a violent snapback that always occurs when I get back from being out on the range. Violent is the key here: My meditation streak is broken. My Vibes are *shattered*. We’ve got a lot to cover in this one. It’s really for the heady folks. I’m doing my best Thompson. How would Trungpa have handled this? Last week was practice: this week it’s the real deal. From here on out too, we’re going to do substacks about the songs on the record. They’ll be interwoven with stories from the week or so, but it’s all headed towards the final stretch. This Friday at the Floodwater bandcamp we’ll be putting up a vinyl preorder. It would mean a lot to us if you preordered it there , even if you intend to buy one later, because it would help us recoup some cost for the vinyl that we can put right back into more merch for June 7th. You also will likely get it early, as we’ll ship it the day we get it or if you’re in Minneapolis we’ll deliver it by hand to you (We’ll make a big show of it). This Friday is also the release day for our Video/Single for Goth Girl Dream House. It’s gonna be a good day, and lord knows I need it. Let’s roll back the clock one week. Let us lock in. Let us travel back in time. We’re already in the home stretch…
The Sprout and the Bean
Thursday:
We’re staying at an infinity hotel. While checking in, the concierge tells us to be wary of interdimensional tears on the elevator up. Apparently, they’ve had issues with pregnant women falling through the Y axis and arriving at the moment they are giving birth. The hotel rooms are situated in between folded time space so that they can fit into downtown Austin. They are kept surprisingly cool. Despite my father’s initial wariness about staying here, I remind him we got the insurance package that covers “Electron Unzipping” in case one of us accidentally steps in the others shadow. We’re assured by the concierge that all of the rooms come with soft lighting.
I drive them up towards 35, then back down S Congress. This is my favorite street in the whole city. A photo won’t do it justice. You come up over a hill, then roll down the two lane thoroughfare with the capital of Texas at the end of the road. It’s been rainy so far, and it won’t let up the whole weekend. We eat Wagyu Beef burgers at Hopdoddy, and decide to play a Punch Buggy style game but with Ford Bronco’s. We all have a bruise on our legs before we even leave South Congress. On the way around town, we spot one of those god awful Cyber Trucks. This one does need a photo to do it justice.
We head into downtown and past all of the venues we have come to love. We stop in at Voodoo Donuts and get ourselves a dozen for the weekend. 30 bucks for a dozen donuts seems like a lot to my Dad, but when one comes with Bacon on top and another is a spitting image of the classic pink donut from The Simpsons (I also pay for it) he’s sold on the idea. The donut shop might be the only place on this whole street that you can’t get beer at. The wall on the way out of the door is the largest neon stars and stripes I’ve ever seen. At night , when you’re so high you can see the Brazos from the line, I’m sure it just bleeds down into your corneas. You won’t escape the flag down in Austin, but it’s a good reminder that your freedom is part of your karma. You can’t run from the fact that you are an American in this town. It’s part of the landscape here. It’s part of the dharma of this trip.
be sure to Keep Your Balance
Before we landed, I meditated on the plane and thought of only positive thoughts for the ride. I actually have a flight time playlist I listen to any time I need a pick me up, and every time we head down there. Check it out here. We watch the draft in the hotel later that night, and everything seems to be already sliding away…
Stubbs:
Friday we look at apartments. Well, just the one. The first one we saw was already perfect for what we wanted. But a problem with our ID’s means we can’t put a deposit down yet and that was my only goal for this weekend. It’s a thorn in my side, so I drive 10 minutes north to End of an Ear and almost blow 400 bucks on this Sleep bootleg. Remember them from last week? Either way, it’s deflating. This is not the day I lost my meditation streak, that would be tomorrow, but this is the catalyst for most of the weekends ebb and flow. All I need is a place in this big city to call home, and the one we found was perfect. It’s even a cool style, with a first floor garage that connects to a second floor 2 bedroom overlooking the Texas outback. Yahweh…
That night we go to Stubbs’s to see Briscoe. For the Midwesterner used to the warm indoor gig, Stubbs must seem like something out of a movie. A long lawn with 6 bars collide with a big sail of a stage, where almost every spot in the yard is a good sight line. The cowboy hats and boots are out for this one, and the overhead DJ is playing all my favorite country songs. We get not just Jason Isabell doing THE song, but also an Austin classic, and of course we heard some Sturgill in there (He’s back, after all.) It’s one of the top 5 favorite things about this city: I’m never somewhere where I hate the music being played. The record stores in this city, the bars, the gigs, they all have their finger right on the dial. Khruangbin is often playing here, which shouldn’t be surprising since they are from Houston, and I even heard some Shuggie Otis inside the Hopdoddy. Just think of all the time I’ve wasted hating on the music playing inside Momo Sushi. Yahweh…
Briscoe is killer live. Their recorded stuff is a little too clean for my tastes, but live in their hometown they are a party. Everyone joins in on the chorus’s, theres a fair bit of square dancing going on, and the phones! Almost entirely absent after the first 5 minutes of music. People really get into the moment here. You never know who those videos are for anyways. You can find 2000s DVDs with flip phones out at the rail, how could you even view those if you wanted to? With a microscope? We’re all alive in this moment with Briscoe, getting a bonus round of the chorus at the end of The Well. Check out this video, for real, to get a pure shot of 100% liquid Good Vibes.
Far Out Lounge, Austin Psych Fest:
Ok, wait before we begin here let’s back up a moment. We travel 1 hour north to Temple on Saturday morning listening to Buck Owens, just to get another round at Buc-Ee’s. It’s a mitochondria of BBQ, beer, truck stop trinkets, and small time fudge enthusiasts. The bathroom line isn’t even long because there are 40 stalls. There’s 70 gas pumps. There is a sandwich with 4 types of meat, two pig one cow and one chicken. They are selling fishing gear, trucker gear, Longhorns gear, Cowboys gear, Buc-Ees gear, gear with the beaver on the back and sides, 9 different styles of Coke, 12 different flavours of Iccee. A big cooler with the beever drinking a Lone Star on it. A metal sign from the Vibes Palace that just reads “Hook ‘em, Horns!”. It’s loud and it’s bright and you can’t hear the in store music over the sounds of the meat counter orders reaching into the 500s. We get honey roasted cashews, peanut butter dipped pecans, chocolate chip cookie dough, Cosmic Pops (Whatever that means) in two flavors Cherry Soda and Root Beer, a few sandwiches, a few bags of beef jerky, a large Water of Life Iccee, and three cups of banana pudding. We are sufficiently full in our inventory. We are nearing encumberment. We have the questing items we need for Austin Psych Fest.
The band I was really there to see Saturday was Tokyo’s Minami Duestch. On the same label as one of my all time favorite live acts, Kikagaku Moyo, they did not disappoint. Roaring 40 minute set comprised of 4-5 songs of just jams. Rolling smoke drum lines and heavy bass pouding licks make up the entire inside of your ear canal. You can tell they are from a different country, and by the end you’re convinced they came from a different planet. Just check out their bassist. Look at him dig:
I even got a chance to stop off later, a block down the road, at Ramen Tatsyua during a dinner break. It’s this ramen chain in Austin that serves pretty good noodles, and the location on E 6th is like a samurai Dojo garden on the outside. This location is a lot more tame, but shares the same premise: You’re seated just like you would be in Japan. You get placed somewhere determined by the cashier, and you make friends with the people around you. Now I know your midwest brain is kicking in: “I don’t want to talk to someone I don’t know while I’m eating.” “I just want to enjoy my food in silence.” “That’s so awkward, what if I get paired up with someone I don’t like?” Fear not , my dungeon crawlers, for it’s hard for anyone to feel nervous while you’re enjoying some of the best noodles of your life. In the end, don’t we just all talk about the same old stuff at dinner anyways? All we could come up with was what noodle we got. What beer we picked. What band we’re most excited for at Psych Fest.
At least you’ll get to learn a new name. Toshiro on the wall makes you feel right at home, if you’re in the crowd who knows who he is. And if not, there are plenty of patrons who will regale you with the Chinese born Japanese actor of a generation who starred in nearly every film by the legendary Kurosawa. Get your mind right, it’s just ramen!
Back at the festival, the sun hangs low in the west Texas skyline as the alchemists come out to play. They hoist huge glass bowls onto projectors, mix potions of blues and yellows, and start mini fireballs in their palms to heat the liquid. Standing directly above it gives you Spice-like visions. I see a Dragon’s nest , with 5 eggs of different colors, the big blue one starting to crack and roll towards the middle of the Satsang. The sounds of All Them Witches ramps up 50 yards down field where they are covered in melting, mystical light. Right when the sun disappears, they rev up their amplifiers and crush any feeling of regret for a lost day. We still got the entire night ahead of us.
A long , busy Texas highway stretches before you. Even at midnight, 35W (Yes, the same 35W that takes you around here) is a 4 lane roller coaster. Nobody drives slow here: “We all got too much livin’ to do”. It’s a rubber meets the road kinda town. Far Out Lounge is down the way from Downtown, and after we make it back into the city we find our way to the oldest blues club in Austin. The night is just drifting…
Antone’s Nightclub:
We find ourselves in Antones, the birth place of Austin Blues legends such as Muddy Waters, BB King, Stevie Ray Vaughn , and Gary Clark Jr. I slip into the back during the Original Pinnettes, a true New Orleans big band. They slide around the stage with big smiles, big chorus’s , and never once let you go. We come to this place for a midnight show unlike any other: With Thee Sinseers. Thee Sinseers are an LA Band with a perfect recreation of the 50s soul sound, and you have to hear it live to believe it. Joey gets right up behind your heart before he starts knocking down the door. It’s like a B&E on your Heart Chakra. His heart is broken, and he wants to make sure yours is too. Rummaging around in your memories, he finds the one that got away. The one that kept you up at night. The one you spent a road trip with. And forces you to consider with yourself what you could really need in life. Show me a bit of your world, and I bet you’ll see a bit of Thee Sinseers in it.
They do this incredible little duo where they play two songs, both “The oldies on the radio” and in the second half bust into this Spanish song I’ve never heard. The crowd erupts. Deep in the crowd you can hear people hollering for the verse that’s about to come. The guy next to me documents everything they do on Youtube, and was able to get this whole thing for your enjoyment. Don’t forget; we belong together… I don’t think I’ve ever been so out of the loop on a song before. I took me completely by surprise. I felt a crowbar at the padlock on my heart, and Joey ripping the bar clean off it’s hinges as he airs out the rusty inside. We dance long into the night. We beg for an encore, and it gets so bad that the band has to come back out and remind us that they will be at the merch table if we wanna chat. I ride home in a daze. I take a long bath at 3 am, wishing there wasn’t a final chapter to this story. It’s already Sunday, and I feel like I have nothing for the story. It’s been disconnecting me from my spiritual practice, yet deeply fulfilling at the same time. I missed meditation today, but didn’t I live harder than I had been the past few months? How would Trungpa have handled this? I fill up the bathtub with hot water and lay for 30 minutes drifting in and out of time. I hope it all comes back to me when the time is right.
The 13th Floor:
Panic. A rush of adrenaline on the last day in the city. We head down to vintage row and there’s a pop up shop getting rained out. I step into Antone’s Record Store, which may be the best place in the city to get a 7”. I found some singles from Buck Owens, Janis Joplin, and Skeeter Davis. And again, the in store music is the perfect fit for a rainy sunday morning. I pick up a copy of the new Thee Sinseers record , as I’m still floating on the vibes from the night before. Crate digging at Antone’s records is intense. This isn’t the stacks for normies: Country music has actual history here. These vinyl may have been sitting here for 4 decades. Never seen a better “Texas” section. It’s all there, you just have to reach out and grab it.
After a brief nap, we hit South Congress again for a trip to our favorite sushi restaurant on the planet Lucky Robot. Ariel gets 3 Ginger Clouds , and I suck down two whole pots of Texas Dream tea. The steam from my cup is welcomed into my mouth, and every roll that is delivered to the table is slowly consumed with thoughtfulness. Mindfulness is key at Lucky Robot: Each time you put a new piece of fish in your mouth, it’s like being hit by a bus. All the way down to the Lil Sesame Seed.
I’m headed out to find my head. Or find a way out of my head. Alone too, nobody was willing to join me for this journey. Let’s run the quest : Visit the 13th Floor for the Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band album release show, and after the show is over at 3 am, return to the hotel to pack up and leave for our flight at 6am. Then head from MSP back to my hometown of Anoka to pick up the Corgi from my parents house, then drive from Anoka back to Minneapolis. I take a gummy and drink a red bull and I’m off. the Lyft is driven by Moses. He parts the Red River.
Let me be frank; The 13th Floor may be my favorite room on planet Earth. It’s like if the Vibes Palace was a venue. It’s like the inside of my own head was made 3 dimensional. We’re all drinking Lone Star and listening to Dead Meadow. I’m the first person in the door at 10pm when the show opens. The corner ahead of the stage is set up for a liquid light show, and the merch table is cornered by a full vinyl turntable set. Everyone is smiling. I went alone and still made friends, which I’m told I’m good at. I get a chance to talk to Nolan before the show. He says he’s happy with how the album turned out, and I asked if I should listen to the album after the vinyl comes to my door or before on Spotify. He says, “We’ll play most of it tonight.” and I promise myself I’m not going to take any video’s and be totally there in the moment. But I always film this section of Seahorse Retreat because it’s beautiful as hell. It’s like a Kmart vaporwave tape came to life right there on stage.
I met Bert Hoover , who I had seen the day before playing at Psych Fest, and asked him if Quest for Blood was any good (I just picked it up at the fest the day before). Poking around the bar, I’m meeting people from Virginia. Boston. San Francisco. I’m the guru for the Gorge. Many of these same people will make their first pilgrimage to the Gorge this September to see King Gizzard play it for their first time. I remind them that they have to go, and that no other place like it exists. It’s truly one of a kind. I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess. I remind them, “If this gig goes well, they’ll do another one. and another one. and another one. and then , you never know, you could have decades with your favorite band at the most stunning amphitheater in the world. And your kids can come, and your yearly vacations can be planned around 3 days in heaven with “the boys”. You just have to go and have a good time, how hard is that?”
I meet up with my doppleganger. If you haven’t heard yet, I have a clone of myself living in Austin already. His name is also Dillon, and he goes to UT for economics. We met on Instagram after I kept seeing my own name pop up in the comments of Levitation event posts. The older photos of him look even more like older photos of me. He plays in a band called Grocery Bag that really is the exact same music I would have made at his age. I’ve been telling my coworkers that he is my cousin. Although you have to admit, the resemblance is close enough to be cousins. You’d never believe it, you go to a new city and the first person you run into is yourself from another reality…
San Francisco. I talk to the guy from Cali, Devin, on what it’s like living in San Francisco right now. He says he lives about 3 blocks from Haight-Ashbury, which I tell him is where I would have moved to if I picked it. I told him Austin sold me on the move, and he says he doesn’t blame me. He wants to move to Austin too. All the psych bands play San Francisco, and even though the neighborhood is a Hippie Tourist Trap he still loves it to death. I felt compelled to just include what Hunter S Thompson said about it, as it’s one of the best things I’ve ever read. It still makes me tear up to this day. Maybe I’m just a dream that someone is having at Golden Gate Park, after taking too much LSD and falling asleep before the peak…
San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
This poster is the rarest in the room; It’s of the 2016 Austin Psych Fest that got rained out. Cancelled. Rejected. Brian Wilson was supposed to headline, playing Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys in it’s entirety. But the Fest never came to be; and this poster was never sold. It’s a reminder of wonderful vibration, that maybe happened in an alternate timeline, a show that was too powerful to ever have occurred in this time space.
After Nolan Potter’s set, I work up the courage to talk to the group at the corner of the bar. Every time I’m in here, this guy is in here too. I’ve seen him every time I’ve been in Austin , but never had the time to talk to him. And right now, the only place I want to be is here in this bar. His bar, it turns out. He says his name is Jake Garcia, and I’m here face to face with one of the founders of the Austin Psych Fest. One of the members of Austin’s own Black Angels. I tell him to his face, “The things you guys do for this community is why I’m moving here in September. This is probably my favorite room on Earth. You cultivated a special sort of growth in this room that can’t be easily replicated, a safe haven for the psychonaut, a finger on the dial of modern soul searching, a zen garden for the pilgrim.” He smiles wide, and says, “I’m hoping Texas is home for you.”
2am. A gong is banged as the lights slowly start to come up. All at once, the screens around the bar start to drain like an hourglass. Suddenly, Plantasia plays at double speed. When the album comes to an end, the room will be closed for the weekend. I make some final rounds, finish my beer, I say goodnight and good luck to Nolan and Bert and the DJ, I purposefully duck the bartenders who are herding high patrons out onto the street. By the time 2:30 rolls around, the only people left inside are the band members and other than them, I’m the last person out the door…
Coming Back:
It was
When I close my eyes, I am standing outside the 13th Floor. I am here while I am getting an E-bike rented. I am here while I am floating in between the quiet buildings in downtown, after all of the bars have let their people float along to fill their lungs. I am here while the bike turns down the frontage road, and I ride through the dark with nothing but the pale white light of the front bulb to guide me. I’m not afraid. I am here while I am waiting for the elevator, I am here while taking off my shoes, I am here while changing into my next set of clothes. It’s always here, in the same place. After having been to the temple, and back again, I go by car to the airport where I was held up in line at TSA. And all the while, after all this time, it was as if nothing was happening what so ever. I was staying in exactly the same place. Timeless, spaceless, this quality in me while I’m flying to MSP. I listen to the new Nolan Potter album, and I’m with my guru. My back is flat against the wall of the cave. I am here while we walk from the baggage claim back to the truck. And I am still here, while I watch the fog of Minneapolis spring envelope me, I am still here in this place. It was as if there was no book left you did not already know the ending to. The flatness of this void , empty , nothing. I am here while we turn off of 35W, the same 35W we avoided down there, and onto 65. It was all here while I watched my hometown come back into frame. I had been there almost my entire life. These same 6 roads. I am here passing Coon Rapids, where I had had my teenage rebellion. I am here while we pass the Walmart I worked at ten years ago. I am here while we pull down the Memorial Drive my parents new house sits on. I am here when we see the Corgi again for the first time in 5 days and she looks so excited to see us. I am here when I start the car up , and pull it out of the drive and load the dog food bag into the trunk. The fog is thicker up here, and I am all still here. I am here when I purposefully go the long way back to Como, past the high school I went to , past the road my childhood home sits on, past the highway my truck stalled on when I was in the worst period of my life. And I’m still here. That awareness never leaves me. It’s surreal to see how far it really was from me. Those long nights watching fuzzy transmissions of Austin City Limits way past my bedtime, where I met some of my favorite music for the first time on TV. Those dreams first came from a screen, I won’t let myself forget. I am here while I drive all the way down 65, as it turns from my childhood town into my adulthood town. And past Momo Sushi, past Anna’s place, turning left towards Como, turning left down my block and into my driveway. I am here when I leave all our belongings in the hallway, and I climb into bed a solid 8 hours after our journey began. It was all here, present in this moment, and as I know this feeling will end. This timeless experience will end. I am mourning the death of this headspace. It was with me for only so long. I am here while I wait for some time to unpack, and play the 7” records I got at Antone’s. I am here when Ivy picks me up for band practice, and we talk briefly in the car about my trip. I am here when I get to Sam’s and unpack the bass, bust out the new tunes, I am here while I sing every song without missing any words. I am here while we wrap things early, and I am here on the ride home while staring out at the city that was once familiar but now seems so strange in comparison. I am here while I walk up the steps of 1703. I am here when I slide into bed next to my wife, the corgi, and the sesame seed. I am here knowing I will lose this time. I am here with my back against the wall of the hallway. I dream of dragons, and the 13th Floor, I dream that I haven’t had anything to do with the town I came from or the high school I went to. I’m a born again dreamer. I’m not really sure if you’re dreaming me or I’m dreaming you. There’s barely any breath in between the time I close my eyes and the time I see the faces again. The smiles. The waves. The water. The deep.
And then I wake up.