The Ties That Bind
This week's groove: A recap of Happy Heat Road Trip and a new era of the Society for Preservation of Texas Music with new board members.
There’s a through line in Austin, a thread, and Thursday night it threaded through The Yard. We staged the very first Happy Heat Road Trip. Scam Likely documented the event.
Road Trip brought together two dozen artists spanning six — six! — decades of Austin creativity.
House of Lepore‘s Gothess Jasmine and Nicotine brought us into their world, a world under attack.
Barry Underhill illustrated how a legendary Austin club, the Vulcan Gas Company got its seed money, walking through the connections from a single co op and the guerrilla capitalism that resulted.
Punk pioneers The Dicks took us back to the 80s, and the Texas origins of the queer community’s fight against the religious right.
Multi-hyphenate artist Sayang and legendary Austin funk band Extreme Heat laid down "Just Friends" by Musiq Soulchild.
Road Trip brings us all together. Gives us the space to articulate and define who we are. To live in community. To lift each other up. It was a magical evening. We’ll do it again.
Visuals for “Leftovers” by Sayang
Digging Into The Roots
The fall issue of The Journal of Texas Music History drops this week with the wild Watts-to-Wichita Falls-to-Austin story of glam rocker and Black Rock Coalition advocate Bevis M. Griffin. There’s also an examination of Robert Earl Keen's early career and an introduction to Michael Schmidt's digital humanities project Local Memory.
Co-editor Jason Mellard, who’s also joining the SPTM board,invites you to reach out for a free copy or subscription by emailing txmusichistory@txstate.edu. A digital version will be released later this year.
Community Leaders Join The SPTM Board
The nonprofit that helps support Happy Heat, The Society for the Preservation of Texas Music, is excited to welcome its new board members.
Ross Ramsey
Ross Ramsey co-founded The Texas Tribune in 2009 and served as its executive editor until his retirement in 2022. He wrote regular columns on politics, government and public policy. Before joining the Tribune, he was editor and co-owner of Texas Weekly. He did a 28-month stint in government with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Before that, he reported for the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Times Herald, as a Dallas-based freelancer for regional and national magazines and newspapers, and for radio stations in Denton and Dallas.
Tracy LaQuey Parker
Tracy LaQuey Parker is currently Senior Vice President of Business Development for Parker Solutions Group. Previously she worked for Cisco Systems in the Chief Technology Office and also founded the UTeach Institute at the University of Texas. She is active in the community and is a member of several boards, including the Texas Tribune, the Texas Foundation for Innovative Communities, the Permanent Legacy Foundation, and Advisory Councils for UTeach and the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas. As one of the Internet's early evangelists, Tracy LaQuey Parker wrote two of the first best-selling books about the Internet: The Internet Companion (Addison-Wesley, 1992, foreword by Vice President Al Gore) and The User’s Directory of Computer Networks (Digital Press, 1988). She was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2017.
Abby Rapoport
Abby Rapoport is the publisher and co-founder of Stranger’s Guide. Abby spent the first portion of her career as a political reporter, covering Texas politics for the Texas Tribune, the Texas Observer and then The American Prospect. Her work has also appeared in Glamour, The National Journal and The New Republic. Prior to founding Stranger’s Guide, she served as Acting Publisher for the Texas Observer and currently chairs the Texas Democracy Foundation.
Jason Mellard
Jason Mellard is the Director of the Center for Texas Music History and Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Texas State University. He co-edits the Journal of Texas Music History, authors and hosts the This Week in Texas Music History radio shorts on KUT/KUTX, and is series editor for the John & Robin Dickson Book Series in Texas Music History with Texas A & M University Press. He is the author of Progressive Country: How the 1970s Transformed the Texan in Popular Culture (University of Texas Press, 2013) and contributor to the books Pickers & Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas (Texas A & M University Press, 2016), Daddy-O's Book of Big Ass Art (Texas A & M University Press, 2020), and It Can Be This Way Always: Images from the Kerrville Folk Festival (University of Texas Press, 2021).
Vicky Andres
Vicky Andres is the Editor of Happy Heat and senior art director at Arts+Labor. Vicky’s recent work includes title design for the upcoming Richard Linklater film Hit Man. She also designed the opening title for the Netflix show Twentysomethings: Austin, the visual backdrops and event design for the Austin Film Society Texas Film Hall of Fame, and the updated logo for Arts+Labor. Vicky also headed art direction for the 2022 SXSW film How We Found Our Sound, a collaboration with Texas Monthly and The Society for the Preservation of Texas Music. Vicky has worked with commercial clients such as Epson, Capital One, Icy Hot and Facebook, and in 2019 was named as one of the AAF Dallas’ 32 under 32.
Finally, a special note of thanks to outgoing board members Lonnie Cooper and Bill Bentley. We’ve worked together to build the SPTM, along with former board members Tom Mason and Louis Black, for nearly a decade and we’re excited to bring in new blood and new expertise.
We hope to preserve, interpret and document our culture in a variety of ways, from feature films like Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Groove to the experimental theater of Happy Heat. A plan that’s both simple and ambitious.
Thank you for joining us on the journey.
Happy Heat is an invitation to slow down and find the groove. To ask who we are and what we want life to be in our shared city.