It had been a minute since I released anything new but it finally happened…The Hollow Men is out in the world, careening its way thru space & time…and mostly the YouTubes. Go check it out. Its a wild ride. 

I woke up on the morning of February 15, 2021 to the power being out and several pipes in the house having burst overnight thanks to the king hell winter storm that rolled in. It was well-known that a big storm was coming, and I prepared as best I could--wrapped exposed pipes & even cut the water to the little shack I rented in the back yard from the main house--but to no avail. Complete disaster. The power came back on 70 hours later. I finally got hot water restored a full 3 weeks later. It was quite the ride.

So that's where the idea for the song came from, and lyrically it's not much. A whole lot of repeated lines. Writing it was easy enough, and it being 2021, with live shows still very slowly ramping up again in Austin, we started messing around with it in Todd's home studio. It wasn't ever meant to be a serious project because once we started toying with drum machines and synths, it was clearly not a typical Memphis Strange song. So we'd play with sounds for a couple of hours and leave it alone to work on other songs, revisiting it every few months (more like once a year probably) until we finally said enough is enough, it's as done as it's gonna get. Maybe even overdone. Hard to say after so long. That was in the spring of 2025. I went to Montana from June to October and then a few weeks ago it dawned on me that the 5-year anniversary of the storm was approaching. Seemed like the perfect time to put the song out. And why not make a video? How hard could that be? 

Kinda hard, it turns out. But with the help of my fearless if semi-autistic robot interns, it only took about 40 hours of feeling like a complete moron moving things around on a computer screen, pacing back & forth, cursing the entire idea, starting over a few times, and blankly staring at the ceiling wondering what contest in hell I'd won. But it's done, and the guys in the band liked it enough to green light the release, so it's out there now. And maybe more importantly it's out of my head. 

I like it. It was fun to record the song and it was fun and challenging to make the video. Not sure if I'll do another or not. I'd rather do just about anything over sitting in front of a computer screen. But we are nearing the finish line on several new recordings and I did have to subscribe to CapCut to unlock most of the effects I used on the animation, so never say never I guess. But I need a little break to go fishing. And I'm still wrangling the summer schedule into something that makes sense. And I've got seeds I promised to start for my sister's garden. 

I probably need a few more robot interns. 

Here we are, on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, slowly thawing out from a rare winter storm in Texas. There was a brief panic, pandemonium in the streets and in the aisles of our local and venerable HEBs, those bastions of Texan-American consumerism, as men and women, no doubt psychically scarred from the colossal ratfuck of the Great Snowpocalypse of 2021, scrambled to hoard packaged goods, pre-cooked meals, bottled water, and yes, toilet paper. Ted Cruz fled the state, as he tends to do when the weather threatens that a political leader might just have to provide actual leadership, almost certainly for the beach again. This time we were told it was to Laguna. Honestly, I can’t blame him. I wanted to flee, too, and would have, were I not dog-sitting for an amigo wise enough to plan a trip to Costa Rica before he started a new job.  

All of which is to say, it’s cold. And I hate the cold. But having a few days to sit around not doing much but pace the halls and listen to music, I did get deep into reflecting on the music and mythology of The Grateful Dead, as I attempted to synthesize Bob Weir moving on to the Great Jam in the Sky.

Back when I was dabbling in journalism I made a conscious decision to veer as far away from writing about music as I possibly could, mostly because it hurts my brain to try to put into words something which to me can only be heard and felt. Naturally, I joined the sporting press, where I didn’t have to think too hard to spit out 1500 words about how a game played out, the glory and failure, the bungled coaching decisions, etc and so forth. It was easy and carefree, just jot down a few thoughts about what happened to whom, where, why and how. Journalism 101, dammit! Pretty basic stuff. Having a sports column in a newspaper was fun, though, in that I could and quite often did piss people off with my opinions. Not a week went by without someone calling the publisher demanding my firing. Who the hell was I to write about how evil George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were in the goddam sports section? Visceral outrage. Good, clean fun.

That was a long time ago and I’m not the angry idealistic kid I was back then. Now I’m an angry adult, but the idealism was gang raped out of me a long time ago, by a society and culture at war with itself. Talking about my own music is hard enough. Writing about it feels almost impossible, other than the purely technical stuff about what we did in the studio or the circumstances that led to a song being written. To talk about the Dead with any one not on the bus… hell, I might as well staple my balls to the carpet. I know, because I tried. Not to staple my balls to anything mind you… although one time I did drive a staple through my thumb. I was in 6th grade and my mom was talking to someone on the phone and saw me do it, right in front of her. Not that I was doing it intentionally. I didn’t think there was a chance in hell a staple would actually go thru my thumb meat and close but that’s what happened. My mom dropped the phone and drove me straight to my dad’s office, where he pulled a staple remover out of his desk and grabbed my hand. Up until the point he pulled the staple out, there had been no pain. Zero. Just a tremendous building pressure from the blood around the staple that had gone into the meat and closed. He gave it a good yank and it came right out, followed by a spray of blood like something from a horror movie, which I thought was pretty funny considering it was just two tiny holes in my thumb. Once that pressure was released and the blood started flowing, that’s when the pain came. At any rate, he made a phone call and sent me across the street to a doctor and I got a tetanus shot.

My point was that I’ve tried talking about the Dead to people who aren’t into the Dead and it’s a waste of time. Not everything is for everyone, and I get that. I actually like that. I can say, though, that for nearly 30 years, the vast majority of friendships in my life have a love of The Grateful Dead in common. No small thing. And now Bob Weir is gone, and one more link in a great cosmic chain is broken. The music will never stop though. Again, no small thing. He was a hell of a guitar player. My god. Go listen closely to the jam on Tennessee Jed from the run of shows they did in Europe in 1972. Jerry and Phil are going wild, of course, but the stuff Bob is doing underneath… hot damn it blows my mind. I’m glad he started to get some well-deserved praise in his later years, after all the years of jokes about the little shorts and summer shoes. And let no one forget his brief foray into the culinary arts, with the short-lived but no doubt tasty Weir’s Otherworld Snake Oil sauces. Bobby-Cue!

I really wanted to go see the Dead when they came to St Louis in 1995, as that’s as close as they got to Stillwater, OK but my mom wouldn’t let me. A month later, Jerry was gone. That’s the way it goes. Thank goodness they had the foresight to record the shows. Becoming a Deadhead and collecting and trading tapes, and then CDs… man, that’s something these kids today will never know. Pretty wild. Kinda sad. But the music is alive and that’s what matters. I sound like an old man. Sometimes I even feel like one.

If you get confused, listen to the music play…

Adios, Bob. Thanks for the tunes. 

Here it is, October 13, 2025 and I'm staring down my last handful of shows here in Montana before making the trek back to the sweet sunny southlands of Texas and Oklahoma. Like a migratory bird, when the weather starts talking, I listen and fly south for the winter. Montana does feel like a home away from home at this point, after 13 years of coming up here to play music every summer. I've stayed longer and longer each year, partly because Texas summers can suck it, partly because booking shows around Austin gets harder and harder for my bands, and partly because I'm willing to admit I've become a full-fledged trout bum. Waking up in the morning and hitting a trout stream for a few hours before going to play a show in the evening is a tough gig to beat. Living in a van down by the river ain't so bad when the rivers are this glorious. Nevertheless, I find myself yearning for some of those native Texas fish, the Guadalupe bass and Rio Grande chichlid. And I need some saltwater, too. Hoping to get down to the Texas coast and catch a few as soon as possible. 

Looking forward to spending some time with the fam, too, on the way back, and then during the upcoming holiday season. Hoping Stillwater doesn't get an early season freeze before I get there so I can reap some bounty of the last gasps of the 2025 garden we planted in the spring. I planted a whole bunch of new pepper varieties and it'll be time to make a batch of new hot sauces. I just might be looking forward to that as much as catching some different species of fish. Still need to land a big fall brown trout here in the next 2 weeks, though. First things first…

Musically, I'm trying to wrap my head around getting back in the studio. We've got a bunch of stuff at various levels of completion and I guess we should maybe finish them off. I don't know. I haven't written anything new in awhile but there's no shortage of material that's been sitting on the backburner, some of it for years, and I still don't hate it, so maybe we'll see what we can do with some of it. 

This ole world keeps on spinning, though, and as long as it does I'll just sit here and watch the river flow. Or whatever. Every time I think it couldn't possibly get any weirder, it does. Maybe that's exactly how it's supposed to be. Good to focus on things like gardens and making hot sauce and fishing and trying to make pretty sounding things in the studio with your pals. 

OK for now,

JD

I make a lot of notes on my pocket supercomputer. Like, a LOT. Some of them are ideas for songs, some of them are grocery lists. I've had a running one I started several years ago, sort of a New Year's resolution type thing, with some big goals for the year ahead and some smaller things I need to do… a big ole sprawling To Do list. Every year, I manage to cross a few things off the list but I end up adding a lot more. And when the new year rolls around I just change one number. 2022 becomes 2023 becomes 2024 becomes 2025… This year, one of the goals was to update this stupid website and write more here on this blog. And we can see how that's turned out, can't we? I have a suspicion part of my aversion to it lies in the term “blog” itself. I hate it as a word. And I don't particularly care for sitting down in front of my laptop and doing much of anything. Sending out booking emails feels like winning a contest in hell, for instance. Nevertheless, here we are.

All of which is to say, I'm having a fine summer and I hope you are, too. I've been in Montana since the end of May. It's been fantastic. The fishing and time in nature has been good medicine. The shows have been swell. I took a couple weeks off in early August and went down to Colorado to play a few shows and visit family. Nice little mini vacation in what has always felt like a working vacation anyway. I've got 2 months left up here and then it's back down to Oklahoma & Texas for the fall/winter. I'm really looking forward to playing some rock & roll with my bands again after months of this solo folk singer nonsense. Need to suck it up and get to work on firing off booking emails. 

You probably need a band for an event, don't you???

I routinely get asked where I stay when I'm here in Montana, by the tourists filing in and out of Yellowstone, by the bartenders at the venues, by guys at the fly shop who begin to recognize me because I'm in there way too often buying flies to replace the ones I get stuck in bushes and trees and the occasional trout that breaks me off. And they all look at me strangely for a few seconds when I say “I live in a van down by the river…” but after those initial seconds they all, without exception, say something along the lines of “that's so awesome/you're so lucky/I wish I was doing that.” And I say, well, you can just do things. But they're right, it is awesome. And I am lucky. 

But maybe it's not luck?

Anyhow, where DOES the time go? If you think too long about the nature of Time, its passage, how we measure it, etc & so forth, you'll go insane. And you'll waste a lot of time. This summer has flown by. This whole year has. Every year seems to go by faster and faster. I was talking about it with my dad a couple weeks ago and he said "Son, you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait til you're my age…" Of course, this is the same guy who, when I turned 24 another lifetime ago, said he didn't think I'd make it that far. And I'm still not sure if he was joking. Either way, though, barring some radical advances in medical technology, I can't really imagine reaching his venerable age myself. Not being fatalistic, either. Really it's just that my leg hurts and it has me feeling like an old man every single day, hobbling around, silently cursing the body breaking down on me. It's my fault though. I wiped out on the rocks on the riverside in early June. Probably cracked my shin, according to the good doctor Steffan May, but by the time I complained about it to him, it was already 2 months later, and not much could be done at that point. So, carry on with a hitch in the giddy up, old man. There are fish to catch. And maybe I'll get a robot leg one of these days, in the not too distant future. 

Ok, I'm gonna go send out some booking emails now. The Dango needs work in the cold months. And these blog posts simply do not pay the bills. Maybe I'll write more in 2026. Who knows? Probably not, but then the future is largely unwritten. Hoho. Indeed.

See ya when I see ya…
JD

2025. Year of the Snake. Let's do this…

I'm slowly shaking off the holidaze here in South Austin, Texas. Got in some good family time with my people in Oklahoma. Started some seeds for the garden. This time of year always gets me thinking about planting seeds and what might grow in the weeks and months ahead… if I don't forget to water & fertilize. A few of the seeds are musical in nature, and if I can come up with the fertilizer (funds), I just might finally finish some new recordings. Pretty slow on the show front here in Central Texas, so if you need a song & dance man, hit me up! Otherwise, I reckon it's time to get cracking on booking Summer ‘25 in the mountains. Feels like Montana’s almost always calling.

Books I've read recently and am more than happy to recommend: "Dalva" and “Julip,” both by Jim Harrison. I think I can finally say I've read all of Harrison's prose works. On to the poetry. Maybe. Not gonna lie, I like stories more than poems. Even though I write songs more like poems than stories. That's a pretty good new year's resolution, huh? Write some dang story songs. Indeed…

I liked the new Nosferatu, too, as far as movies go. I thought it was visually stunning, even if it's a bit of a tired ass worn out story at this point. It's a good vampire movie though. Worth seeing in the theater rather than at home. Other than that, I haven't had much of an attention span when it comes to watching things. I don't have Netflix or HBO or any other streaming service. Disney has completely ruined the childhood joy of Star Wars for me, so they can go to hell. I've watched a few playoff football games and am officially and completely not stoked about the Super Bowl. This former sportswriter finds sports just kind of dumb these days, even though I still enjoy some games for the sake of the game.  

And don't worry, I've been catching fish, too. The white bass run ought to be kicking off around here any day now and I plan to catch a few…

Ok for now,

JD

Like the fella once said, time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. It's Labor Day and this is the first I've actually hopped on the ole laptop since I tried to write up a little July recap. Thankful, I suppose, for the phone computer in my pocket that helps me keep my calendar straight, pull up maps as needed, and send messages to friends back home harrassing them about all the fish they aren't catching? Why do I even need a laptop in these last days of 2024 anyway? I can do pretty much everything from my phone. Everything except edit this website that is, and I hardly ever do that. Obviously. I'll ponder that on my drive to West Yellowstone this afternoon.

As for the August recap… some quick highlights were dynamite fishing on the Missouri River (not with actual dynamite, mind you. I'm not a complete and total savage. Not yet anyway.), catching big trout on tiny flies, as well as finally getting the hang of fly fishing on mountain lakes and catching some big trout in the process, too. Some shows were better than others, with my personal favorite being last weekend at the Murray Bar in Livingston, where I was joined onstage by my old bandmate Steffan May. We hadn't played a show together in close to 20 years. Wild. Again, fruit flies like a banana… It was a great night. Local legend Todd Wester sat in for the 2nd set on stand up bass and we tore the place up. Fun to make music with other humans. These solo shows get kinda boring from time to time.

It appears there will be more music made with other humans, too, because word on the street is that Cornbread is coming to Montana. I don't know whether to laugh or cry or both or just soil myself in fear and loathing. I'm not sure Montana is ready. I know I'm not. Nevertheless we persist or whatever. Once more into the fray… 

As for what else September holds, I'm most excited about scooting over to Washington for some shows in the middle of the month. Had a few cancellations, so not as many shows as I'd like, but the silver lining is more time to explore, especially up on that Olympic Peninsula. Pretty stoked about that. Less stoked about the need to buy another non-resident fishing license, but the world is not a perfect place. 

Onwards thru the fog, eh?

July went by in a blur up here in Big Sky Country. Boots on the ground at the end of June, just in time to catch the mythical salmonfly hatch on a few of the famous Montana rivers, and the fishing lived up to the hype. I hooked the biggest trout of my life, again and again. Did I land all of them? Absolutely not. The first week, I didn't even have a net, and that cost me a few fish. I'd get them in right to my feet, getting a good look at them, but they'd break off as I'd try to hold my rod high and reach down to grab the fish, or, to be more honest, to fumble with my phone to try to snap a pic to taunt my friends. Angler of the Year, indeed. Seasoned guides will tell you that most fish are lost in the first 30 seconds of hooking a big fish, or in the last 30 seconds before landing it, and it's true from my experience. I'd say I landed less than ⅓ of the big trout I hooked into. Probably closer to ¼. Definitely made some mistakes trying to overpower a few of them, letting some get downstream of me in swift current, etc. Some of these trout are seriously wily critters. And I suppose they've got to be to survive in these wild ass Montana waters, with eagles and ospreys and otters and bears and such always trying to eat them, in addition to the Okie angler trying to take their picture to let his friends know he can outfish them any day of the year on any body of water.

So yes, the fishing has been fun. The weather has been interesting. Late June/early July was cool and rainy. Then it got hot. Real hot. There were 3 straight days where it was hotter up here than it was back home in Austin. Smoke from the fires in Canada and California rolled in, and there were some smaller fires burning closer that thankfully have been contained. But August still awaits, so everyone is hoping for cooler temps and more rain.

The shows have been good. Took a hot minute to get back into the groove of playing solo acoustic. My fingerpicking was rusty. Keys that I used to do some songs in no longer feel right. Some arrangements feel stale. So, adapt & improvise, right? Indeed. Finding the songs that connect with the crowd night after night is one of the more interesting challenges a folksinger faces playing for mostly tourists hellbent on beating the crowds into the national parks in the morning, or getting on the river before everyone else. I've been coming to Montana for 12 summers now, and its fascinating how the dynamics of the tourism industry work. We'll leave the anomaly of 2020-2022 aside for now, but every town I'm in, I take note of whether or not they have hotel vacancies and how many business have Help Wanted signs in the windows. 

Now here we are (or here I am anyway) it's the last day of July, I miss playing with my bands but I'm having a blast roaming around this big beautiful state, singing songs & fishing my tail off. August should be more of the same and as always, I'm grateful for this life and being able to do what I do the way I do it. I'll check in here again eventually, but as much as I hate to admit it, Instagram is probably the best bet to follow along with the action from home. Come find me @johnnydango, and I'll see ya on the river…

Pretty quiet spring around Austin. Played some fun shows but mostly worked in the studio and went fishing with pals. Pretty stoked about some new tunes we've been chipping away at and should have some new music to release in the fall. Summer dates for Montana are up, and I'll be heading out to Washington for a few shows in September. Haven't been out there since the Before Times, so I'm looking forward to that. Never been to Port Angeles. Gonna have us a time. And by us, I mean me, because it's another solo acoustic summer. Might bring along an amp and electric geetar just to change it up and get weird. But that's more stuff to lug around, and as a chronic overpacker, I'm really trying to travel light this time around. Hope to catch a few of y'all up in the North Country. Last summer was epic will be tough to beat, but I'm sure gonna try…

Indeed. We had a wild time playing a sold out show at Gruene Hall last weekend with our pals Uncle Lucius. I'm so happy to see all the good things coming their way. Hopefully they're making enough of that gravy to keep those damn wolves away, eh? Hoho. 

We've been having a fine old time in the studio lately, too, both with The Stinking Roses and The Memphis Strange. Should finally have some new music for the folks coming out soon. Really happy with how it's sounding. 

Hard to believe Summer 2024 is already on the horizon, but it is, and I'm currently deep in the booking process for the annual migration to Montana. After last summer's mini-disasters with the van and guitar, on the heels of the previous year's deer-induced totaling of the previous van and emergency surgery in Bozeman, I'm looking forward and praying for a semi-tranquil summer of good tunes, good hangs, and good fishing.