Denton, 2.15.2025

We froze our asses off to see Smothered play their new album Dirty Laundry at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. It was worth it.

Weather forecast predicted temperatures in the 50s and I didn't bother to obsessively follow the hourly 'cast the way I usually do. Had I done so, I'd have worn a couple more layers, maybe a scarf. (As Smothered frontwoman Taylor Watt said early on, while trying on some fingerless gloves that wound up not working out, "Fuck Punxsutawney Phil.") 

On this occasion, I was accompanied by my wife, who'd heard Dirty Laundry while I was reviewing it, looked up from what she was doing, and said, "Who's that?" (a trademark of quality around mi casa). So she was there with me, similarly attired, but luckily remembered we had a big quilted blanket in the car for emergencies, and was okay with standing in front of the outside stage wrapped in it. Bless her.

(Watching the musicians dealing with what they described as "a wind tunnel" on the stage, my mind drifted back to Christmas Eve 2003 at a community center in Midway, Texas, with Lady Pearl Johnson's BTA Band. The outside temperature was 25 degrees, and it was colder inside the building because the person who was supposed to turn on the heat earlier in the day had forgotten to do so. We sat shivering, watching folks stick their heads in and leave, until finally Ray Reed said, "We've got to play for 30 minutes or we don't get paid." I remember jumping around more than I usually did on that gig, and all the tempos being really fast. My shaky memory says I played with gloves on, but I don't think that would have been possible.)

The theme of the show was "Hands in pants." To their great credit, the musicians in Smothered played through their album, front to back, like a well-oiled machine. Starting the set with a feedback exorcism, they blazed through Watt's engagingly complex compositions, the rhythm section of bassist Mal Frenza and drummer Raegan Smythe negotiating frequent tempo changes and dynamic shifts, guitarists Watt and Zach Palmer playing intertwining lines with contrasting tones and textures.

Watt is slight but mighty. She engaged the audience while retuning between songs, cracking jokes, telling stories, talking shit, encouraging the crowd to move around and successfully soliciting audience participation on one song. For the release show, the band was giving away free T-shirts. I got one that says "Smothered is the best band in the world." On this night, I'd say that was truth in advertising.

Because we were lurking by the bar trying to stay out of the cold until the headliner, I missed Blonde Parts' set, but second band Chell On Earth was something special: raging punk energy, played with Lower East Side grit and fronted by a transwoman with in-your-face attitude and palpable star quality. I'd dig to see them again.  

We also observed that the action at the bar was different than what we remembered from when the Wreck Room in Fort Worth (RIP) was our second living room. Young folks today don't drink as much as the ones we remember: mostly beer, nobody's pounding shots, two food trucks outside (the excellent Render Texas Delicatessen and Curry Truck, which makes the best version of its eponymous dish that I've ever tasted). It's a change for the better.

The vortex of chaos emanating from the Christofascist regime in DC, the depredations of DOGE, and the daily torrent of bullshit have a lot of us on our heels, but looking at the faces of the crowd in the freezing cold at Gloves, I was reminded that the human spirit still exists, it will be what it will be, and as it said on the back of one of Smothered's other T-shirts, "War is not peace. Freedom is not slavery. Ignorance is not strength." We forget at our peril. One of the best nights ever.