Denton, 1.21.2026

As North Texas prepares for what's predicted to be the worst winter storm since 2021's "Snowpocalypse" (when people froze to death in their homes after power failed), I toddled up to li'l d to play improv with randomly selected collaborators at Joan of Bark Presents' Improv Lotto at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. All to benefit the worthy healthcare charity Denton Music and Arts Collaborative. Because musicians and artists need healthcare, too.

I honestly haven't been feeling the music much of late, what with the non-stop torrent of traumatic news since the first of the year. The Trump regime's wars on Venezuela, Minnesota (including the ICE assassination of Renee Good), and next, perhaps, Greenland (although the demented dodderer in the White House appears to have backed off, for now, he still insists that the US needs to buy it from Denmark -- while the rest of the world shakes its collective head, and our erstwhile allies rapidly recalibrate for a global reality without the US as a reliable partner) have got my head focused on things other than music. But I determined to somehow make a go of it, since receiving event curator Sarah Ruth Alexander's invitation to participate, and figured something would suggest itself, as it almost always does.

Improv Lotto master of ceremonies Aaron Gonzalez drew names from a hat for a quintet, a quartet, a trio, and a duo, and I found myself teamed with the great terpsichorean Sarah Gamblin (with whom I last performed as a member of HIO at the Houston Fringe Festival in 2011), multimedia artist Kristina Smith (Spiderweb Salon), and steel guitarist Joe Snow (who'd just played a songwriters contest with 19 performers). 

We had brief conversations before the first set. Joe would take stage left, I'd take stage right, and Kristina would be positioned in the middle, leaving as much stage as possible for Sarah. Kristina and I both had ICE on our minds; I'd recently replaced the "Hands Off!" button on my guitar strap with a "No ICE" one, and had my purple whistle I'd gotten from my Bridge Brigade comrade Deb Guerrero on Tuesday in my pocket. Kristina had brought some ICE-related text. Perhaps more premeditated than is usual for improv, but I figured we'd be creating in the moment, even given that intention.

The first set was by a quintet comprising guitarists Will Kapinos (Dim Locator) and Julio A. Sanchez (Heavy Baby Sea Slugs), bassoonist Victoria Donaldson, violinist Holly Manning (Chris Welch), and Sarah Ruth on voice and small instruments. They wove a web of intertwining melodies, each player coming to the fore at different times. I particularly enjoyed the sonorities of bassoon and violin, and the contrasting approaches of Sanchez (moving big slabs of sound) and Kapinos (filling in the details).

Photo by Kavin Allenson.

When it came time for our set, I plugged in my shit, set my amp volume at what I deemed a reasonable level (gain on 1, master just above 1), checked my pedals (same three I've used since I was a teenager: fuzz, wah, and phase), and waited to see what developed. Kristina used her tabletop bass and software to create an enveloping wave of sound while reading ICE stories into a heavily treated mic, while Joe ran his steel through a couple of tables' worth of F/X. I discovered early in the set that in the environment where I was, with the amp mic'ed and other ambient sounds, activating fuzz and wah together immediately produced feedback, which I attempted to use the wah to control. At intervals, I blew blasts from the whistle into the vocal mic, and made a vocal interjection during a break in Kristina's reading.

Later, Sarah told me that the unremitting barrage of sound made it difficult for her to find a way into the piece. The brief snippet of video I've seen so far belies that; as always, she was adept at finding the flow of the music, even when it caused her distress. She did most of her moving on the floor, where I couldn't see her, but late in the piece, when she ascended to the stage to interact with the sheets of paper Kristina had discarded after reading them -- lining them up and stepping from one to the next like a child playing sidewalk games, reclining on the floor and covering herself with them as if seeking protection from the unremitting drone -- she provided a striking visual analog to ICE's assault on innocents. 

At a certain point, Sarah left the performance area, and after a moment, Joe started packing his gear. I turned my guitar volume off and stood silent and immobile for another moment, then started tearing down. Still, the drone persisted -- like the creeping sense of dread we've all been living under. Finally, Kristina shut it down, and we were done.

Third set was by a trio of Suzanne Terry on wooden xylophone and two double bassists (Double! Double! Bass! Bass!) -- the seemingly ubiquitous Ryan Williams and free jazz-improv stalwart Aaron Gonzalez. The bass tandem (with Williams running his instrument through a battery of effects, including a sampler) was unmatched in its heaviosity, and the contrast between their monolithic sound and the light, agile sound of Terry's tuned percussion was highly engaging.

The task of batting cleanup was left to the duo of vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Melanie Little Smith (Wenepa) and hand drummer Aswad Bryant. Smith began the set by announcing "I'm ready to rock," and the performance that ensued proved that it was no idle boast. Bryant attacked his drum pads like an aggressive rock drummer with a big kit, bringing arena rock dynamics to an "experimental" stage. Over the top, Smith vocalized and provided accents and counterpoint on a variety of percussion instruments and tabletop guitar. Bryant occasionally switched to a staticky, electronic sound, which only made the "natural" drum timbres more impactful when they returned. The two made eye contact as they reached agreement it was time to end, and we all heaved a collective sigh of satiety and release.

February will bring not one, but two Joan of Bark shows at Gloves. On February 2, the North Carolina-based duo Okapi will headline a card that also includes a trio of Michael Meadows, Kourtney Newton, and Luke Robinson, and solo sets by Aaron Gonzalez and Sarah Ruth. On February 11, your humble chronicler o' events will be returning with a trio featuring Darrin Kobetch and Kavin Allenson, which I have unimaginatively dubbed SDK. The rest of the bill remains TBD, but y'all save the date anyway. 

Kris Davis and the Lutoslawski Quartet's "The Solastalgia Suite"

It's long been my belief that our poor stewardship of the planet is the defining issue of our time, and we keep creating other emergencies that take our eye off the ball as Earth's habitability by us continues to diminish. Canadian-American pianist-composer Kris Davis makes such ecological dread the focus on her new album, an eight-part suite for piano and string quartet, performed with Poland's renowned Lutoslawski Quartet. The title The Solastalgia Suite comes from a term coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht to refer to "a form of homesickness while we are still at home" -- a form of "[grief] for the landscapes and ecologies we knew."

"I see the changes when I go back home to Canada," says Vancouver native Davis, and I can remember back in the '80s when the Canadian parliament was debating whether to sell glacial ice to the parched American Southwest. The glaciers are gone now, and states like mine are taxing their already overstressed water infrastructure by building AI data farms that consume millions of gallons of water. So the theme of Davis's new piece is timely and hits close to home.

While her compositional ambition hasn't been as expansive as her contemporaries Ingrid Laubrock and Mary Halvorson's, she has alternated relatively straight jazz work with her own trio and Dave Holland's quartet with more experimental ventures (the bass clarinet heavy octet Infrasound, her hip-hop adjacent work with Diatom Ribbons). Her influences include composers Luciano Berio, Olivier Messiaen, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and a commission from Poland's Jazztopad Festival provided the opportunity for this collaboration.

A jarring and turbulent "Interlude" raises the curtain with a mood of edgy unease. "An Invitation to Disappear" offers a gentler and more ruminative response, skirting despair with the barest vestiges of hope, transitioning seamlessly into "Towards No Earthly Pole," where the composer's prepared piano dialogues with spectral strings. "The Known End" opens with Stravinsky-esque slashing strings, to which Davis responds with her most fervent playing here. 

The elegiac "Ghost Reefs," inspired by Davis's compositional studies with AACM eminence Henry Threadgill, laments the passing of coral reefs destroyed by warming ocean temperatures, while the echolalic "Pressure and Yield" depicts a planet in seismic disturbance. "Life on Venus" evokes a chilly alien landscape -- but there is no Planet B. "Degrees of Separation" concluded the suite on an unsettling note, reminding us of the interconnection of all life on Earth and the importance of environmental justice to the survival of us all.

Kris Davis continues to surprise us with the scope of her art and her willingness to take on new challenges. This stunning new work speaks clearly to our historical moment, and makes a strong case for her place among the most creative musicians of her generation.

Things we like: ST 37, THC Trio, Thomson/Flaten/Cameron

It seems frivolous to be writing record reviews at this moment, but I'm phone banking for a candidate tonight or I'd be going to the demonstration in Dallas. Justice for Renee Good.

Who knew that the best preparation for living in the 21st century would have been reading lots of dystopian sci-fi in the 20th? The British sci-fi scribe J.G. Ballard, who saw the limits and perils of technology as clearly as its possibilities, is the inspiration for Ballardesque, the latest release from the long-lived (formed 1987) and prolific Austin-based psych rock combo ST 37. With a sound that combines the echo-laden mysterioso of Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd and Roky Erickson's 13th Floor Elevators with layers of lysergic guitars (three, count 'em!) to rival Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company's in their prime, driven by the relentless forward motion of SL Telles' bass and ex-Roky side muso Lisa Cameron's drums, ST 37 creates a dense wall of sound over which Telles declaims Ballard's prescient visions of our own dystopian moment. The gestalt of the band's sound proposes a model of community that may be our own best hope of surviving this age of daily negative surprises.

Cameron had an extremely productive year in 2025. She also kicks the traps in THC Trio, a sterling outfit that also includes ace Austin improvisers Joshua Thomson (Atlas Maior) on alto sax and Jonathan Horne (The Young Mothers, Water Damage) on guitar and 6-string bass. Saw these three shred the night sky at The Wild Detectives in Oak Cliff last March, opening for Mike Watt's MSSV, and this eponymous cassette release on Personal Archives captures a broader spectrum of the unit's sound, from explosive opener "Dropping the Hammer" through the more ruminative explorations of "Health and Sufficiency," the cathartic crash 'n' thump of "Hollandaise for Strings," and the cavernous soundscape "Saint Helena." Horne's metallic dissonance and Sharrockian skronk collide agreeably with Thomson's piquantly poignant Ornettitiude (heard to best advantage on closing tour de force "A Barbaric Yawp"), and Cameron keeps the forward motion flowing, leaving space for her collaborators to organize their thoughts. It's a cleansing sonic bath that'll shake the cobwebs out of your synapses. THC Trio will be at Full City Rooster in Dallas on January 15. You owe it to yourself.

On the summer solstice of 2024, Thomson and Cameron teamed up with the estimable and prolific Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten (The Thing, The Young Mothers, (Exit) Knarr) to spontaneously compose a piece in front of an audience at an Austin record store. The owner dug it so much that they released it on vinyl under the rubric Live at Love Wheel Records. The piece opens with an example of the cymbal-driven feedback Cameron's been playing with for years. Flaten joins the conversation with arco harmonics while Thomson blows a few tentative tones. The bassist responds with pizzicato flurries as Thomson plays short bursts of notes. Cameron careens into polyrhythmic space as her collaborators up the intensity. Flaten and Cameron spar while Thomson comments, then the bassist cues a change of direction with a tortuously walking line. At any given time, any player can lead; the three listen and respond in the moment the way the best improvisers do. When they finish after just over half an hour, when they've said all they need to say, you can almost hear the audience exhale before erupting into applause. Creative music exists in moments like this. Get you some.