Listening to “Dig A Pony” and waiting for Bill Miller’s

You watched that “Let it Be” documentary? There’s something jarring and somehow comforting about watching George and Paul bicker over songs that have lived in my psyche for so many years. They seem so tiny and so gigantic, tinkering with the gospel as it were—writing in that kind of sand which turns to the strongest stone.

Starting back in the early 1980s two strange adults wrote me in some other kind of sand, as haphazardly and nearly as intuitively perhaps. But, what’s there in the way of song at the heart of this terrible jumble of symbols and side quests?

I’ve only learned how to turn away out of exhaustion and how to imagine less than nothing as a way to curb the fear of mere nothing. I played baseball as a kid just because I really believed in the wild Jesus that could walk bloody from my dad’s beating heart any day—if I could just pray for the fences.

I wish his mom never made him pitch those Mickey Mantle cards.

Favorite San Antonio Songs/Releases of 2024

Buttercup joins Garrett T Capps and NASA Country on stage at Stable Hall
in January 2024 (photo by Emerson Ocean)

Mexstep - The Eagle (single)

When El Profe speaks, wise San Antonians know to take notes. Here, he reminds us that when culture devalues nature, Madre Tierra teaches the fortitude to challenge it and the patience to wait it out. This bonkers beat was made by Principe Q (Selena’s nephew y’all), and I’m told we can expect a more extended release from the pair in the new year.

Volcán - Ojos Bellos (single)

With only its second single this side of the pandemic, Volcan delivered a silken cumbia soaked in longing and sexy horns. Every new song the band releases becomes a favorite, and this gem is no exception.

Nicky Diamonds - Perdido en La Salsa (album)

Nick is such a charismatic and disarming artist, with the ability to exorcize deep emotion with his vocal delivery and—this one’s even harder—to conjure stories with his guitar. As a songwriter and performer, whether with Lonely Horse or Nicky Diamonds, he stays remarkably intuitive at avoiding cliche; his vibes are sincerely mystical, refreshingly lacking in irony and cynicism. All pain is transmuted into absolution or damn near it. This is a truly beautiful album.

Elnuh - blue + b.s (singles)

Probably my actual local top two of the year right here in these two gnarly singles—the band continues to perfect its stretched out and gorgeously dramatic brand of new school grunge-gaze. I know I’m not the only one who already can’t wait for Elnuh’s next one.

GTC + NASA Country - Everyone is Everyone (album)

The exact space country crew that we deserve has delivered again with its finest, most fully-realized and cohesive slab of krauty and far-outie songs to date.

Buttercup - Texas Sun (unreleased)

IYKYK. I can’t wait to hear this one on record. Go watch the band’s most recent Live at Studio E performance to dig it.

Combo Cosmico - En Limbo (single)

If GTC and his boys make space country then Combo Cosmico must make space cumbia. This deconstructed and reconstituted banger is just my latest favorite episode in this band’s ongoing deep space odyssey.

Los Juanos - Fin del Mundo (single)

Tejano bedroom dream pop rock is not something that I knew I needed to exist. Pero, like, wow.

Girl in a Coma - those 2 new ones from the Rah Rah Room show (unreleased)

I was there. I heard ‘em. Be excited about what 2025 may hold on the new music front from our beloved GIAC.

Mr Pidge + Shoshy - Hey Lover (Country Version) (single)

A perfect and unexpected tear-in-your-beer delight from resident experimental jazz chameleon.

Andria Rose - Chica Favorita (single)

All the sultry, gauzy, low-key goodness you could want from SA’s favorite post-Lana Latinx r&b powerhouse.

Dishonorable mention (Austin):

Ramsay Midwood - Manchaca Eyeball (Live at Sam’s Town Point) (album)

This groovy, rootsy live album from ATX music scene lifer Ramsay Midwood really blew me away this year. It’s like an audio chicken fried steak. Fat free. Organic.

taos thanksgiving

lively gray thoughts clean thyme and mint
piñon patience ground worship in sprinkles
and sparkles just the same if you attend it
or don’t

    a gorge illusion gash gnarled earth open to
    possible stars’ song or other extreme propositions
    coyote laugh tangled in the sage

        love is the warmth the light and the truth and
        everywhere requires attention to how the land
        suffers us in our quest to somehow invent it

pueblo mist will invigorate joy over any any armageddon

or other such european fantasy

    only no discovering ululating ghost stones of
    cosmic oneness with these thick hands of ego muck
    and imagined logic like machine grind to build what why

        seekers found in sacred lake gasping for air
        boots in the muddy bottom growth escaping
        instead of really looking through the mirror
        of actual windows of nature of quiet
        of rather obvious no-self if painful

forgiveness is just taking after the wind blow
the way spring has learned to treat winter
never ever calling it a metaphor or pretending that life isn’t life isn’t life

    wisdom therefore is the acute knowing
    of forgetting
    to remember all the more

        that’s where the family starts asleep in silly
        light tinted through with campfire and forever
        to only wake up eternally without abandoning
        a single dream or tiny being — in that embrace
        that always original consciousness of thanksgiving that doesn’t cease

viral—communion + benediction

turn of darkness eating its tail
the whisper of black hole total pull
cosmic flush and strobe 

stanzas are powerless, but motor hard

destiny’s choreography demands oblivion 

grave lockstep at the eternal shut door 

in el paso del norte a false star glares

a real mountain—autobiography of earth

this land is intimate with joy and plague

when it rains in cd juarez it rains here

sky like soul heeds no borders

soil like body will exhaust and submit

viruses too lack respect for imaginary lines

elemental hope and terror both defy language 

the first time we made love in a pandemic

it wasn’t less transcendent than usual or more

which is to say—it was utterly transcendent 

nights we’re watching star wars with Emerson 

she wonders at the dark side of the force

i’m happy we haven’t taught her religion

troubled that she’s had to learn oppositionally

there’s a universe in any regular home

it’s not that far from here to infinity really

this same storm ever rages creates & destroys

having not a single worry about the economy 

there’s still the hungry and the oppressed 

death doesn’t care if you can count to a billion

no point living if life’s split into mine and yours

can you still hear the music from this prison?

i guess rapunzel’s tower must’ve had a stellar view

the bright side is best seen in dark places

it’s just that there’s stubborn light in everyone 

and there’s space here for what we’ll be next

unimagining us since animal innocence

counterpointing the lie of competition—hope 

unfastening the spirit from the passion of stuff

mending all the fascist bruises and the blues

to dance like wild children—physical and free

entranced to deliver the plenty to the many 

that’s got to be something worth catching 

while we run from prison in a spreadsheet

from being counted and labeled into shame

obviously a stuck fool trusts a prevailing wind 

a bully reads the stars from his pocket knife

lost to a sharp science gleaning via explosion 

or there’s the ignorance of the chosen cowboy

forever roiling like the universe he can’t forgive 

a giant sadness that grows from small fear(s)

best wishes for expropriation with love xoxoxo

proletarian dictatorship and all that—until

we might drown the dictatorship in our hearts

be serious about never being serious again—

having to labor and fret over maybe mattering

was never a way to live