San Antonio Current - October 16, 2024 by Chava Communications

7TH ANNUAL 7TH ANNUAL

DIA DE DIA DE LOS MUERTOS LOS MUERTOS

CELEBRANDOLASMISIONES CELEBRANDOLASMISIONES

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2024 | 3-10P.M.

Mission Marquee Plaza, 3100 Roosevelt Ave. San Antonio, TX 78214

Procession & Blessing Community Altar Live Music

Food Interactive Art Workshops Catrina y Catrin Contest

Special Film Screening featuring “The Book of Life”

SCAN TO VIEW EVENT DETAILS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Publisher Michael Wagner

Editor in Chief Sanford Nowlin

General Manager Chelsea Bourque

Editorial

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Sta Writer Michael Karlis

Contributors Abe Asher, Bill Baird, Ron Bechtol, Danny Cervantes, Macks Cook, Amber Esparza, Brianna Espinoza, Dalia Gulca, Anjali Gupta, Colin Houston, Kiko Martinez, Mike McMahan, Kevin Sanchez, M. Solis, Caroline Wol , Dean Zach

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Chastina De La Pena

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in this issue

Issue 24-21 /// October 16 - 29, 2024

35 Feature Beer Bash

The San Antonio Beer Festival returns with suds and lucha libre

07 News

The Opener News in Brief

Outcry Over Security

Residents at San Antonio’s Opportunity Home request emergency relocation after Victoria Plaza murders

Cityscrapes

If you’re dissatisﬁed with San Antonio City Hall, feel free to express that in November

13 Calendar

Our picks of things to do

Approved auditor info as required for public notices per section 50.011(1)(e), F.S. Circulation Veriﬁcation Council

Certiﬁcation:

19 Arts Scary Scribe

Acclaimed San Antonio horror author Johnny Compton releases Devils Kill Devils

Weird Science

San Antonio artist Leigh Anne Lester’s strange botanical universe comes to light in ‘Vain Fictions of Our Own Devising’

29 Screens

Cyber Hex

Olivia Grace Applegate explains how Succubus speaks to ‘modern problem of online dating’

36 Food Bitter Truth

San Antonio breweries still ﬁnding success despite spate of closures

Liquid Lifeline

Can the Brew City initiative help save struggling Texas craft-beer producers?

Michelin Contender?

San Antonio’s Domingo get a place in the upcoming guidebook, but it could beneﬁt from ﬁne tuning

34 Music

In the Can San Antonio’s Buttercup to recreate unconventional video performance from 20 years ago

X Marks the End Groundbreaking LA punk act bringing farewell tour to San Antonio’s Empire Theatre

Practicing What They Preach

Testament may not be in the “Big Four,” but the thrash pioneers are still touring 40 years on

Critics’ Picks

On the Cover: It’s October and time for our annual Beer Issue! Read on as we delve into the troubles faced by the city’s craft-beer scene and highlight the SA Beer Festival. Cover design: David Loyola.

Jaime Monzon

A DAY TO BE BRAVE

– Save the date –Friday, November 1st | 6-9pm

2800 Broadway, SATX 78209

Special Performances • Mobile Testing Onsite Art • Photobooth • and More!

Enjoy food, drinks, vendors, DJ, & a panel discussion between youth with informative narratives such as living positive, dating, and stopping the stigma.

#BraveSouls #OperationBrave #DayToBeBrave #IAmBrave

RSVP FOR YOUR FREE TICKETS TODAY!

*While Supplies Last For more info call (210) 644-1555

That Rocks/That Sucks

HA GoFundMe has been launched to assist the mother of a year-old child killed in a dog a ack last week. Jiryiah Johnson died shortly after he was a acked by three pit bulls owned by his babysi er, 36-year-old Heather Rodriguez. Rodriguez had reportedly left the home prior to the a ack and put her 13-year-old daughter in charge of watching Johnson. Rodriguez has been arrested and charged with injury to a child by omission and other crimes.

San Antonio is the safest major city in Texas — but that may not be saying much.

A new study conducted by WalletHub found that despite the Alamo City ranking as the state’s safest major metro, it’s still less safe than the average U.S. city. Of the 182 cities reviewed by WalletHub, SA ranked 129 for safety, beating Austin, Dallas, and Houston. It trailed smaller Texas cities including Brownsville, Amarillo and Grand Prairie, though.

Eighteen candidates running for Congress in Texas haven’t accepted the legitimacy of the 2020 election, an analysis by the nonpartisan watchdog group States United Action has found. The most visible of those candidates is U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican locked in a tight race for re-election against U.S. Rep. Colin Allred. Of the 18 candidates cited in the report, 15 voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election.

HA new era has arrived for H-E-B: the iconic San Antonio-based grocery chain has begun accepting Apple Pay and other tap-to-pay options at its area stores.

H-E-B has said the option will be available across Texas in roughly a month. In addition to Apple Pay, Alamo City customers will also have the option of paying with Google Pay and Samsung Pay. Customers will also be able to use tap options on credit and debit cards. — Abe Asher

Ginning up hurricane conspiracies with the MAGA crowd

Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.

As residents of Florida and other states suﬀer from the devastating consequences of hurricanes Helene and Milton, far-right pundits have once again become locked in a debate whether God or weather-control machines are responsible.

Shortly after Helene slammed into the Gulf Coast, William Koenig of the conspiracy-prone evangelical site World Watch Daily theorized that it, like other deadly hurricanes was a result of the Almighty’s wrath. Because, of course, “Israel’s enemies were preparing their scathing anti-Israel speeches to the United Nations General Assembly while the Biden administration was continuing to work on an Israeli-Hamas ceaseﬁre deal.”

Koenig further claimed “the four costliest hurricanes in U.S. history all corresponded to

White House pressure and action regarding Israel’s covenant land.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to ﬁre oﬀ batshit claims that Democrats have weaponized the weather and sent hurricanes to slay God-fearing, Trump-loving Southerners.

After Hurricane Helene claimed the lives of at least 33 people in her home state of Georgia, the MAGA Republican made the online claim that “they” use cloud seeding to unleash weather disasters. Later, she clariﬁed that the “they” she was referring to was federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Anyone who wades through far-right social media will see that both claims have plenty of proponents. Scary numbers, in fact.

Here’s a novel idea: If assclowns on the right fringe are truly concerned about the devastation brought on by hurricanes, perhaps they should channel their energy into something to help those aﬀected — like donating time or money to the Red Cross.

Or here’s yet another novel idea: Quit pretending climate change caused by human beings isn’t worsening these catastrophes. —

Sanford Nowlin

“When I meet voters across our district, the thing I hear most people ask me is ‘are we going to debate?’” They want to hear from you,

and they deserve to hear from their representative and know that they have an alternative choice.”

— Democrat Kristin Hook in avideoclipsenttoheropponent, U.S.Rep.ChipRoy,who’sso far refused to debate her.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign — which ended more than eight years ago — is declining to tell federal regulators what it plans to do with $32,000 it has left in the bank. The Federal Election Commission asked the campaign to clarify its plans for the remaining money. Rather than specify, the campaign’s treasurer took the unusual step of telling the FEC the agency has no authority to make such inquiries.

Bexar County Commissioners Court last week approved a plan for the San Antonio Missions to build a new stadium downtown. The court voted 3-1 to approve the plan, which is expected to cost $160 million. San Antonio City Council has already approved

the plan, but the team’s ownership group still must come to terms with San Antonio ISD to purchase a 2.3-acre plot of land it wants to build the facility on.

San Antonio’s firefighters’ union will oppose Proposition C, se ing up a ballot-box showdown next month with a business-backed political action commi ee that supports the measure. Prop C would eliminate tenure and pay limits for the city manager that were passed comfortably in 2018 — and placed on the ballot by the fire union. Under the current rules, the city manager may serve no more than eight years and make a salary no higher than 10 times the lowest-paid full-time city employee. — Abe Asher

ASSCLOWN ALERT

Shuttertsock / Philip Yabut

Outcry Over Security

Residents at San Antonio’s Opportunity Home request emergency relocation after Victoria Plaza murders

BY MICHAEL KARLIS

After the murders of two tenants earlier this month at the Victoria Plaza Apartments, residents said they’re fed up with the lack of security and plan to request emergency relocations out of the complex.

Victoria Plaza, a public housing site located in the Lavaca neighborhood, is operated by Opportunity Home, formerly known as the San Antonio Housing Authority.

“It’s a government-funded trap house,” said one Victoria Plaza resident, who asked to remain anonymous due to safety concerns. “Prostitution, drugs, whatever. It’s all up in there.”

Residents told the Current security has long been an issue at Opportunity Home but the murders of Nick Martinez, 59, and Donnell Sterling, 52, are the last straw.

“We’ve been complaining about safety for years,” the resident said. “The oﬃce doesn’t do anything.”

The San Antonio Tenants Union has sent emails to the Current raising safety concerns at Opportunity Home properties since at least 2022. Despite the entity receiving a $117,256 Emergency Safety and Security Grant from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development earlier this year, a lone Texas Lawman security cruiser was the only security spo ed at the Victoria Plaza Apartments this week during a trip to the property.

“As an affordable housing organization, we rely on the San Antonio Police Department to keep our city and communities safe,” Opportunity Home told the Current in an emailed statement. “We assist in addressing resident concerns by requesting patrol officers for our communities, providing local SAFFE officer information, and encouraging emergency calls to 911 when there is a threat,

which should be all residents’ ﬁrst form of communication during a security emergency.”

Even so, Victoria Plaza residents told the Current that it’s been months since they have seen SAPD cruisers patrolling the area.

Tragedy at the Plaza

Martinez’s body was discovered inside his Victoria Plaza apartment on Oct. 1. Police say he died of sharp force injury.

Sterling’s body was discovered only three days later. He died of a gunshot wound to the head.

SAPD on Oct. 7 arrested and charged Daniel Gonzalez, 35, with murder in connection with Sterling’s fatal shooting. Although Gonzalez is considered a person of interest in the death of Martinez, he’s not yet been charged in that case at of press time, police said.

Maureen Galindo and long-time San Antonio housing advocate James Hamilton — a resident at Opportunity Home’s Lewis Chatham Apartments — a ended the public housing authority’s Oct. 9 board meeting to raise concerns about safety at its properties.

“Residents are afraid,” Hamilton said at the meeting. “These people want to be comfortable and enjoy their lives, and feel safe and not have to worry about somebody coming in and doing something to harm them. I was told Opportunity Home can’t aﬀord security, but the cost is we’re paying is with our lives. We’re dying.”

Victoria Plaza tenants aren’t the troublemakers. Instead, they blame overnight guests.

“It’s not the public housing residents that are the reason for the crime,” Galindo said. “It’s because of their vulnerability that they get targeted for crime, and it leaks into the surrounding community.”

Indeed, murder suspect Gonzalez wasn’t a Victoria Plaza resident but an “unauthorized occupant who was allowed entry into the building by several other residents,” Opportunity Home told the Current in a statement.

Despite resident complaints of unauthorized occupants, Opportunity Home maintains that its staﬀ conducts monthly home visits to check for unapproved guests, among other things.

Tenants also told the Current that their security concerns at Victoria Plaza include a broken front door.

Even though Opportunity Home installed a new key-fob entry system at the complex, during a visit by the Current, the door could be easily opened if pushed with enough force.

Opportunity Home told the Current that the key-fob door “is currently operational” as of Oct. 11.

Beyond Victoria Plaza

However, Opportunity Home’s security issues extend beyond the conﬁnes of Victoria Plaza, according to residents.

During Opportunity Home’s recent board meeting, Hamilton alleged that a man with a gun chased him out of the

authority’s Lewis Chatham apartments in 2020.

“This board said there wasn’t enough evidence to support that it even happened, even though the guy that did it got arrested and sent to prison,” Hamilton said.

Meanwhile, people experiencing homelessness have repeatedly trespassed into Opportunity Home properties to ﬁnd a place to sleep, Galindo told the Current

Opportunity Home declined to answer the Current’s speciﬁc questions about crime rates and deaths at its properties, only writing that the authority continues to collaborate with SAPD.

“Security patrols are synchronized with the crime statistics and are conducted on a daily basis and evaluated by the Opportunity Home Security Department to address pa erns of crime, as well as individuals associated with crime incidents,” Opportunity Home said in a statement. “All calls for police service are reviewed daily. The Security Department coordinates all information with property management to implement mitigation strategies that address the calls for service (CFS) and crime incidents.”

Victoria Plaza residents said they’re done waiting around for Opportunity Home to address their security concerns. But with more than 100,000 San Antonio residents on a waitlist for housing assistance from Opportunity Home, an emergency relocation seems like a long shot.

“There’s nothing positive about this place,” one Victoria Plaza resident said.

Michael Karlis

If you’re dissatisﬁed with San Antonio City Hall, feel free to express that in November

BY HEYWOOD SANDERS

Over the past few months, San Antonio City Hall hasn’t provided an impressive demonstration of how our public officials, both elected and appointed, make decisions. At the same time, the November election will provide local voters with a rare opportunity to express their views on the city government’s performance via a half-dozen city charter changes on the ballot. Those looking for reasons to question our city leaders’ a ention to the greater good need look no further than the great rush to push through a deal — one made out of the public eye — to finance and build a new downtown ballpark for the San Antonio Missions, precisely where developer Graham Weston had sought to build it almost a dozen years ago. Despite all the time in the world to involve the larger community, the deal was specifically crafted to avoid the necessity for a public vote, unlike both the Alamodome and the Frost Bank Center. The deal itself was remarkably generous to Weston and the rest of the Missions ownership, with the city footing almost 80% of the cost.

But wait! According to some of our more thoughtful City Council members, the deal won’t involve real tax dollars. Instead, it will be financed with “tax increment” dollars that will come from all the new development Weston Urban has promised to build around the stadium. But those new tax dollars could have been used to boost the city’s overall tax base, aiding every property owner in the city. Or they could have been employed for a different project of greater public benefit, perhaps one we could vote on. But, no, it appears Weston is des-

tined to get the deal he wanted.

What Weston also wanted was to displace the residents of the Soap Factory Apartments, which will be demolished as part of the development plan. One would assume Mayor Ron Nirenberg and other officials — so commi ed to building affordable housing and increasing our limited stock — would make it a point of offering Soap Factory residents financial help in moving and finding new homes. Nope, that wasn’t part of the deal — at least not initially. They would be on their own.

For Weston Urban, the Soap Factory was a dump. For its residents, it’s a rare aﬀordable place to live in the center city. And when neither the developer nor the city staﬀ seemed to care, those residents protested. With the help of community organizations including the Texas Organizing Project, the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center and COPS/Metro, the residents managed to get a $500,000 fund — a pi ance — for relocation aid.

Not our public leaders’ ﬁnest work.

Then there’s the grand San Antonio International Airport expansion project. Seemingly desperate to get more of the nonstop ﬂights regularly demanded by the city’s business lead-

ership, the deal for new terminal space neatly advantaged Delta and American while leaving Southwest — the airport’s single largest carrier with some 37% of its passenger volume — in aging and crowded Terminal As.

Nirenberg and senior city staff somehow failed to recognize that Southwest could simply not sign a long - term lease, making the entire multibillion dollar project financially questionable. Southwest then sued the city, and a public he said-she said ensued. While it’s not clear what the full story is, what’s clear is that the mayor and city staff bungled a major deal.

Finally, there’s “Project Marvel,” the grand scheme to build a new Spurs arena downtown, likely coupled with a new entertainment district, a convention center expansion, a big new hotel and maybe even a cap over U.S. Highway 281 and I-37 to connect the “Marvel” to the Alamodome. Yet again, the whole approach of our city leaders is to keep the public in the dark using nondisclosure agreements. Those agreements, by the way, apply to details on the exact scope of the project, on the cost, on how that cost would be ﬁnanced and even on whether we’ll actually have the opportunity to vote

on it. Then there’s the larger question: does a new arena downtown and everything else make any sense?

Public oﬃcials in other cities have balked at picking up the tab for sports team owners. Voters in other places have made clear that they prefer other priorities for public spending. Other cities have genuine public information and engagement on major projects. Not here.

San Antonio voters will face a set of proposed city charter changes at the bo om of the November ballot. Propositions A, B and D involve the ethics review board, updated charter language and city employee political activity. Proposition C would undo the limits on the city manager’s tenure and pay that the voters approved by 59% in November 2018, neatly reversing the previous vote. Proposition E would boost the pay of the mayor and council and provide for regular increases, while Proposition F would increase council terms from two years to four. Make it a point to think about and cast a vote on each of those propositions, considering your own assessment of how the council and city manager have made these deals and policy choices.

FRI | 10.18SUN | 10.20

D.L. HUGHLEY

While some high-profile stand-up comics eschew politics and polarizing discussions of race — Gabriel Iglesias or Jerry Seinfeld, for example — D.L. Hughley isn’t afraid to go all in. Speaking during the final night of the Democratic National Convention, the comedian and actor went full blast on GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump for remarking that he didn’t know Vice President Kamala Harris was Black. “I guarantee you Kamala has been Black a lot longer than Trump’s been a Republican,” Hughley quipped. And after Janet Jackson went viral for airing similarly absurd questions about Harris’ race, Hughley took the singer to task in a tweet mocking her extensive plastic surgery: “It's a li le ironic to question whether someone is black while you're breathing through the nose of a white woman!” Li le surprise that after his run with the ABC/ UPN sitcom The Hughleys and his performance in The Original Kings of Comedy, CNN tapped the comic to host its D.L. Hughley Breaks the News show. The comedian’s afternoon radio program The DL Hughley Show is nationally syndicated in more than 60 cities thanks in no small part to his ability to riff on the topics of the day — even if he upsets a few people while doing so. Tables $80-$320, 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. Friday, 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club, 618 NW Loop 410, (210) 541-8805, improvtx.com. — Sanford Nowlin

SAT | 10.19

FILM

GHOSTBUSTERS:

FROZEN EMPIRE

Grab your proton pack and prove that you “ain’t afraid of no ghost” with a free outdoor screening of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire at Mission Marquee Plaza. In this crowd pleaser, the most recent installment in the well-worn supernatural comedy saga, the discovery of an ancient artifact awakens a sinister, frigid force. Ghostbusters new and old are called to battle, laying their lives on the line to rescue the world from a second ice age. Bringing together familiar and fresh on-screen faces, the ﬁlm appeals to nostalgic adult fans of the franchise as well as kids who have yet to get in on the fun. Moviegoers are encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs and blankets for seating and their own picnic dinners. Snacks can also be purchased from food trucks onsite. Pets are welcome to attend. Mission Marquee’s Family Film Series, presented in partnership with Slab Cinema, will continue through Nov. 16. A schedule of screenings is on the Slab Cinema website. Free, 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19, Mission Marquee Plaza, 3100 Roosevelt, (210) 212-9373, slabcinema.com. — Caroline Wol

THU | 10.24

FILM

NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR

Although an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) is widely considered the first vampire film. Shot with a single camera, the film is a scrappy but efficient example of German Expressionist cinema. Large sections of the score, originally composed by Hans Erdmann and performed by an orchestra at the film’s premiere, have been lost over time. Only partial adapted suites remain. New versions and recordings of the missing portions have famously been a empted by composers and musicologists alike, including experimental Dutch composer Jozef van Wissem’s version for electric guitar and chorus of extinct songbirds and the Louisville Orchestra’s former composer-in-residence Sebastian Chang’s version inspired by classic Hollywood film scores. This year, San Antonio’s Ray Palmer, the Whale (Kory Cook and Eddy Vazquez) and Dan Carillo will perform a live score one night only at La Zona in a not-tobe-missed single serving treat for the senses. Harvey McLaughlin will provide a pre-screening performance. $10 Suggested donation, 8 p.m., La Zona, 337 W. Commerce St., (210) 212-9373, slabcinema.com. — Anjali Gupta

Shutterstock / Eugene Powers

OCT 26TH ¡ FREE ! OCT 27TH

GIRL IN A COMA LA SANTA CECILIA

SON ROMPE PERA SANTIAGO JIMENEZ JR.

ERICK Y SU GRUPO MASSORE CHENTE BARRERA Y TACONAZO

Jesse Borrego Y TribÚ PIÑATA PROTEST SUNNY SAUCEDA

EDDIE & THE VALIANTS Mariachi Campanas de América Sun Day

Guadalupe Dance Company Mariachi Las Alteñas Sexto Sol

Vanita Leo Pop Pistol Alicia C Grupo Frackaso Mariachi Valquirias

Los Juanos Chavela Juan & Armando Tejeda Tallercito de Son

Sonora Hechicera San Antonio Parks & Rec DANCE PROGRAM

Poetry by

eddie vega Amalia Ortiz Anthony The Poet Tomás Castillo-Roque Diamond Castillo-Roque

nicho sonido music for grieving and healing

dj despeinada dj mexisentialism dj ed saavedra dj joanna chills dj chuco garcia dj texas papi dj nandez dj consentida dj lenyrd spynrd & tex mex mike

PRESENTING SPONSORS

TITLE SPONSOR

EVENT SPONSORS

FRI | 10.25

PERFORMANCE

JENNY BROWNE WITH THE AGARITA CHAMBER ENSEMBLE

There’s a storied and beautiful history of classical music intertwining with poetry. Rachmanino wrote pieces using Pushkin’s poetry. Schubert did the same with excerpts from Goethe’s Faust. The lapidary quality of the two forms complement each other, like two jewels in a setting. This month, the ever-inventive Agarita Chamber Ensemble will collaborate with San Antonio poet Jenny Browne, whose elegant and moving work will undoubtedly mesh with Samantha Bennett on violin, George Nickson on percussion, and the lush setting of the Betty Kelso Center at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. Free tickets are available two weeks prior to the show at eventbrite.com/e/agarita-jenny-browne-tickets-1014766292297. Free, 7:30 p.m., Betty Kelso Center at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, 555 Funston St., (210) 536-1400, sabot.org.

— Neil Fauerso

SAT | 10.26

SPECIAL EVENT

DOGTOBER FALL FESTIVAL

With its full-day lineup of animal-themed autumnal activities, San Antonio’s Dogtober Fall Festival is a one-stop-shop for pet lovers. A endees are sure to bring home tail-waggingly terrific memories — and maybe pick up a new fourlegged friend along the way. The pictured dog, Brennan (Animal ID A725030), is one of some 200 animals who will be up for adoption at the Oct. 26 event hosted by San Antonio Animal Care Services (SAACS). This year, SAACS is rolling out its Passport 4 Paws program, which allows prospective pet owners to bond with shelter animals by taking them through an agility course, pumpkin patch, Puppicino bar and other on-site a ractions. Adopted pets will be sterilized, microchipped and vaccinated before leaving the premises. Trainers, veterinarians and other experts will be present to answer any questions a endees — whether first-time adopters or seasoned pet parents — might have. Dogtober also promises an abundance of entertainment options that suit any member of the family, regardless of age or species. Take in a dog-trick show, a end a “Puppies and Pilates” class, visit the “Furtune Teller” or peruse a marketplace of more than 40 local vendors. A pet costume contest will kick off at 2:30 p.m. with online pre-registration required. Free, 11 a.m.-7:30 p.m., San Antonio Animal Care Services, 4710 State Highway 151, (407) 207-4738, visitsanantonio.com. — CW

SAT | 10.26SUN | 10.27

EVENT

12TH ANNUAL MUERTOS FEST

Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday celebrated worldwide. The multi-day event centers around family and friends gathering to pay respect to loved ones who have passed on. While some scholars insist that the tradition has pre-Columbian roots, others a ribute the festival entirely to Medieval European allegories of life and death such as Danse Macabre and Catholic observances including All-Saints Day. Día de los Muertos is, very likely, an amalgam — a manifestation of syncretism, which represents elements of Indigenous, Mestizo and European cultures, much in the same way Haitian voodoo uses Catholic saints as vehicles for the many deities carried to the Americas by enslaved Africans. In San Antonio, Día de los Muertos is celebrated all over town including Muertos Fest at Hemisfair Park, which features a combination of ofrendas, or altars — including the largest open altar exhibition in San Antonio — and a procession that includes alebrijes (skeleton puppetry), people-powered ﬂoats, mobile altars, live poetry and music. Día de los Muertos celebrates the bridge between the living and the departed in a vivid, ethereal celebration of life that is a thrill to behold — or join. Free, 12 p.m.-9 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday, Hemisfair Park, 630 Nueva St., muertosfest.com. — AG

Courtesy Photo Agarita Chamber Ensemble

Jaime Monzon

Courtesy Photo San Antonio Animal Care Services

SAT | 10.26MON | 10.28 SPORTS

SPURS VS. ROCKETS

Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich echoed the sentiment of many Spurs fans when discussing the team’s new point guard Chris Paul on media day. “I have despised Chris for many years,” Pop told reporters. As a member of the Clippers, the league’s longtime Point God ended San Antonio’s last title defense with a heartbreaking bank shot over the outstretched fingers of Tim Duncan. After a five-season playoff drought and back-to-back campaigns with just 22 wins, Paul’s veteran presence bodes well for a young Spurs team with eyes on the post-season. In his 20-season career, every franchise Paul has played for has improved their record in his first season with the team — and by an average of almost nine games. With Rookie of the Year Victor Wembanyama projected to take another leap after a strong showing at the Olympics in Paris, optimism abounds. Wemby and the Spurs tip off another home campaign with consecutive games against the rival Houston Rockets, one of Paul’s former teams. $37 and up, 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Monday, Frost Bank Center, 1 Frost Bank Center Drive, (210) 444-5140, frostbankcenter.com, Bally Sports SW-SA. — M. Solis

ONGOING

SPECIAL EVENT

SISTERS GRIMM GHOST TOURS

Lauren Swartz, a 12th-generation Texan, and her husband James Swartz launched Sisters Grimm Ghost Tours in 2011. A year later, the couple released The Haunted History of Old San Antonio, a best-selling book about the darker side of the Alamo City. In 2016, they opened up Sisters Grimm Oddities Parlor inside what may be Texas’ most famous haunted hotel: the Menger. While their roster of tour destinations varies with each nightly expedition, attendees can count on a historically informed, genuinely unnerving yet enjoyable encounter perfect for the Halloween season. The Sisters Grimm o ers both family friendly — age 13 and over — and adult experiences for tourists and locals alike. Check website for dates, times, pricing and ticket availability for the Menger Hotel Dinner and Ghost Tour, the Haunted History Ghost Walk and the Ghostbus Tour schedules. Prices vary, Menger Hotel, 204 Alamo Plaza, (210) 638-1338, sistersgrimmghosttour.com. — AG

SOMETHING THE LORD MADE

There's a trove of shockingly good HBO films made about real events and real people. The triptych of Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian, Phil Spector and Joe Paterno, the compelling chronicles of the 2000 and 2008 presidential elections and the confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas, all are simultaneously comforting mid-level dramas and relatively historically accurate. Something the Lord Made (2004) carries on this tradition by telling the lesser-known story of the two men — one white, one Black — who invented heart bypass technology. Featuring excellent performances by Alan Rickman and Yasiin Bey under the assured direction by journeyman Joseph Sargent, who directed Taking of Pelham One Two Three — perhaps the greatest New York City film of all time — Something the Lord Made succeeds as both a chronicle of 20th century American racism and a fascinating untold story of ingenuity. A lively Q&A will follow the film. Free with registration, 6 p.m., Li le Carver Civic Center, 226 N. Hackberry St., (210) 724-3350, saaacam.org. — NF

This Country © Labayka Films

Scary Scribe

Acclaimed San Antonio horror author Johnny Compton releases Devils Kill Devils

BY MAX BOOTH III

San Antonio author Johnny Compton scared the world last year with the release of his Bram Stoker Award-nominated debut novel The Spite House .

The book offered a modern take on the classic haunted house story that Publishers Weekly called a “tense work of gothic horror” that examines “how anger, grief and trauma can strengthen bonds of familial love.”

This autumn, Compton returned with a new offering for fans of all things spooky: Devils Kill Devils. Guardian angels, vampires and — yes — devils — await readers

daring enough to explore the new work.

To celebrate the release of Devils Kill Devils by Tor Nightfire, we chased Compton down in the midst of a busy book tour for a quick interrogation.

Devils Kill Devils is available now wherever books are sold.

First, thank you for taking a break from your current book tour to speak with the Current. How’s the tour been so far? Any particular highlights?

A woman in Boston complimented by saying, “You’re really messed up.” That was great.

Speaking of Boston, I got to see “the skinny house” there, a rumored Spite house and the first one I read about, inspiring me to write the book that’s given me these opportunities. Even better, it is directly across the street from a 365-yearold cemetery, and had I known that previously, I definitely would have included that in The Spite House .

Your debut novel came out February 2023. A year and a half later, your sophomore novel, Devils Kill Devils, has finally hit shelves. Walk us through the differences between releases you’ve experienced.

This tour took me to a few more places and festivals. I went coast to coast and was gone from home for about 12 days straight, which was notably longer than the tour for the first book.

The marketing felt different in a sort of neutral way. Obviously I’m no longer a “debut” author, so there are other expectations that come with that, and I’m presented in a different way. I’m getting more

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Courtesy Photo / Johnny Compton

opportunities this time to talk about the book, or to be in conversation with others who have books upcoming. And I feel far more comfortable in settings where I get to have those conversations now than I did when I debuted.

Nowadays, there seems to be a demand for writers to focus on sequels. Everything needs to be a franchise. Devils Kill Devils, on the other hand, feels like it couldn’t be more different than your first novel. Was this an intentional strategy on your end? Were you pressured to pump out a Spite House sequel?

stories are more fully formed, but I have at least 20 other ideas I’d like to write as well. And, for me, it’s always a little more exciting to write something new than revisit what’s been written.

Let’s dig a little deeper into Devils Kill Devils. By my understanding, you had the idea for this book before writing The Spite House. Is that right? What’s your go-to pitch for the premise?

Yep, I’ve had the bones for this idea, at minimum, for about 20 years.

My go-to tagline is, “What if your guardian angel was a devil in disguise?”

The longer pitch is: A young woman named Sarita has had a guardian angel all her life, and has never had cause to distrust him. That changes when her “angel” beats her husband to death on her wedding night, making her rethink what this being actually is, why he’s been protecting her and who in her family could be next.

Devils Kill Devils contains some gnarly vampire stuff. What was the research process like? Any particularly strange vampire trivia you regretted not being able to work into it?

around to yet, but once I find the story they’ll fit in, I’ll be eager to deploy them.

For Devils, I was able to dive into some Texas lore more so than history, whereas with The Spite House, it was the other way around. I was also able to draw inspiration from some people I know here in San Antonio, with my mixed Black and Mexican-American protagonist, and her white in-laws that have a variety of feelings about her, from the expected to the surprising. I was able to draw on things I’ve seen, heard of and lived through in Texas for those characters.

Who are some other Texas horror writers you’d like more local readers to know about?

Fortunately, I didn’t receive any pressure from the publisher to write a sequel or spinoff. I know that franchises are popular and have a lot of potential to be more lucrative, but I don’t have any imminent interest in writing similar stories. I had a fourbook plan in mind to write a range of horrors — four completely different books to open my career. So far, I’m halfway through and working on book three, and I’ve luckily had publishers who are on board with the objective.

I do have some sequel ideas in my pocket that I would like to write when the timing is right and the

The research was fun and layered, and there were a lot of things I wish could have stayed [on], but I understand why it was shaved. There are these weird types of vampires with pointed tongues. Also the fact that you can be turned into a vampire just by having a “big cat” jump over your corpse. Both are a little too odd, probably, to be kept. I also wanted to work in a coffin full of blood, which is something I read about a vampire sleeping in. Maybe some other time.

How would you say Texas has inspired your writing, especially with this latest novel?

There are a lot of weird, creepily cool, terrifying and unfortunate things about Texas, and being a horror writer that gives me a lot to be inspired by. I really enjoy introducing settings that not only defy expectations that people outside of Texas might have of the state, but even preconceptions that locals may have. There are stories I’ve collected from little out-of-the-way towns that I haven’t come close to getting

I’d like to highlight Celso Hurtado (The Ghost Tracks), L.P. Hernandez (In the Valley of the Headless Men), Tonia Ransom (the Afflicted audio-thriller podcast), John Baltisberger ( Whispers of the Dead Saint) , RJ Joseph ( Hell Hath No Sorrow Like a Woman Haunted ) and Wrath James White ( The Ecstasy of Agony ). There are plenty of others, of course, from acclaimed and more well-known names like Joe Lansdale and Gabino Iglesias to writers on the horizon like Agatha Andrews — more famous for her She Wore Black interviews, but whose novel-in-progress I’ve had an early look at and is going to turn heads.

In honor of spooky season, could you recommend your top three haunted house novels and your top three vampire novels?

For haunted houses, The Elementals by Michael McDowell, Hell House by Richard Matheson and The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons. For vampires, Salem’s Lot, Octavia Butler’s Fledgling and Let the Right One In .

Caveat: The Haunting of Hill House is very likely the best haunted house novel, but it doesn’t feel as much like a “spooky season” book to me. Somewhat similar to how the film Thirst by Park Chan-wook is an extraordinary vampire film but not something I’ll probably put on in October. Maybe it’s just me, but I like for my Halloween horrors to have a certain tone. [That said, Let the Right One In ] might break the “rule” I just established about tone.

Courtesy Image / Tor Nightﬁre

arts

Weird Science

San Antonio artist Leigh Anne Lester’s strange botanical universe comes to light in ‘Vain Fictions of Our Own Devising’

BY BRYAN RINDFUSS

Head-scratching moments are par for the course when Louisiana-born, San Antonio-based artist Leigh Anne Lester starts explaining her distinctive work.

A brainy amalgam of drawing, painting and sculpture, Lester’s creative endeavors explore such heady topics as

genetic modiﬁcation and the myriad consequences of human intervention on Mother Nature. Simultaneously representational and abstract — a feat within itself — Lester’s projects are easy to appreciate on an aesthetic level but contain layers of meaning that can be far from obvious.

Intriguingly, a large percentage of

Lester’s oeuvre is based on three pieces she created more than a decade ago. The germinating seed, 2010’s Hunting Art Prize-winning Mutant Spectre is an intricate graphite drawing one might describe as Frankenstein’s monster in botanical form. Adding colored pencil to the mix, its next of kin — 2013’s Mutant Generate — comprises two botanical drawings stacked on complementary layers of drafting ﬁlm.

With those three drawings as her key source material, Lester zooms in, distorts and transforms her own subject ma er into entirely new works. In addition to digital processes, Lester employs the classic art-class activity of blind contour drawing to add organic layers of distortion.

Curiously reminiscent of DJ culture,

these sample-driven remixes of her own work are in heavy rotation in the Ruiz-Healy Art exhibition “Vain Fictions of Our Own Devising,” her ﬁrst solo show since 2019.

“I started doing blind contours because my natural tendency is so anal that I cannot seem to go wild,” Lester explained during a gallery visit. “[They’ve] made the work looser and richer. … And now I’ve even started to do blind contours of the blind contours. So it’s becoming even more removed.”

During the packed opening reception for “Vain Fictions,” Lester passed out stickers reproducing a stark black silhoue e of one of her botanical drawings. When quizzed about the design, she was quick to cite German polymath

Bryan Rindfuss

arts

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his concept of urpflanze. Developed during the 18th century, Goethe’s theory posited that all plants could be traced back to a primordial specimen. Although long debunked, urpflanze fits well within Lester’s bizarre, botany-driven narrative — so she embraces it.

Another historical ﬁgure that interests Lester is Leonhart Fuchs – a 16th-century German botanist who published an inﬂuential book of 500 detailed woodcuts of plants.

“Fuchs’ herbarium stayed relevant for like 500 years,” Lester said. “People just kept copying his prints of plants. But every time somebody copied one, it became further away from the actual details — which I love. It’s so much a part of what this body of work will eventually become. I’ve said this a bunch of times, but I do see [my process] as a slow-motion animation of how these things get further and further removed. … [And] I like the idea of kind of building my own language.”

Although she’s perhaps best recognized for her masterful graphite drawings, Lester increasingly pushes her work into the sculptural realm. Echoing snippets of information extracted and abstracted from Mutant Spectre and Mutant Generate, her latest work incorporates cutout wooden shapes and drafting ﬁlm in a variety of forms — some featuring botanical elements drawn in graphite and others based on blind contours that she paints, cuts out and drapes like lacy cobwebs. Thanks to strategic lighting, the combined materials cast otherworldly shadows — an important aspect of her work that’s reﬂected in her Instagram handle: cellsmakeshadows.

“Cellsmakeshadows touches on the importance I put on shadow in my work and how it builds volume in the pieces when they are lit properly,” Lester said. “They become ﬂeetingly more three-dimensional through lighting.”

The melange of materials at play in “Vain Fictions” also blurs lines between mediums and materials.

“Just to throw yet another idea into the mix, [this work also questions] what is drawing, what is painting, what is sculpture,” Lester added. “Technically this is a sculpture … but when you lay it on the ground, it’s a drawing. But it’s also a painting.”

That gray area is also evident in her new piece Proclamation of Nature — a family tree-like network of drawings exquisitely framed by woodworker

Jonathan Davis of Iron Moos Co. — and the presence of what appears to be blue painter’s tape a aching layers to surfaces.

“I originally used it just to tape things up to see where I wanted them,” Lester said. [I ended up liking] the punctuation of the blue … but it wasn’t archival.” Lester’s solution to that conundrum entailed recreating the eﬀect by painting archival linen tape cerulean blue and then cu ing it out

in jagged shapes that mimic the way paper tape tears oﬀ the roll.

“I call it builder’s tape [because] I like that it touches on construction — and for me — the construction of nature,” Lester said. “I’ve told this story 15 times,

but it makes me so happy. My framer Jim Yarborough — he’s this beautiful Texas gentleman who says ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’ and ‘yes ma’am’ — said, ‘Darlin’, do you want me to take that painter’s tape out of there before we frame this thing?’”

When asked if she ever goes oﬀ script to create something unrelated to her early work, she paused brieﬂy before marching over to a suite of drawings.

“This is still relevant, because it’s about obliterating the image,” she said of the series, which began during her 2015 Berlin residency facilitated by Contemporary at Blue Star. “When I was in Berlin, I became kind of obsessed with the rubble mountains. … Huge bunkers were just blown to smithereens. They couldn’t remove them all so they kind of let nature take over and they eventually became parks. … My work is about building up layers … and [this] was a gigantic manifestation of layering [and] the palimpsest idea. The history is still there, underneath.”

In keeping with her other work, the entire series is drawn from the same source.

“This is all the same image,” she explained. “I did an original blind contour of two things I found on one of the rubble mountains in Teufelsberg: a tree stump, a leaf. … I made the leaf larger than the actual tree stump, [to illustrate] the interplay of the shortterm and long-term. … I’m [exploring] the cultural history of Berlin, but also of nature and destruction of humans, destruction of nature. As colorful as it is, it’s the most in-your-face I’ve ever been.”

Unsurprisingly, Lester even found a way to tie her Berlin series back to Mutant Spectre and Mutant Generate by a aching scraps of botanical data in the form of abstracted wooden cutouts.

Focusing on an older drawing in a corner of the gallery, Lester pointed to a speciﬁc corner and playfully ordered, “Pay close a ention to this root ball!” before circling the room to ﬁnd it in all its various mutations. Amusingly, even she wasn’t 100% certain about every place — or every way — it appears in “Vain Fictions.”

“Usually I can identify what [everything] is taken from,” she said. “But I swear to God, sometimes I have no idea. … I mean, even I’m confounded.” “VAIN FICTIONS OF OUR OWN DEVISING” Free, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday through Oct. 19 Ruiz-Healy Art, 201 E. Olmos Drive, (210) 804-2219, ruizhealyart.com

Courtesy Image / Leigh Anne Lester

MLeigh Anne Lester’s Hunting Art Prize-winning drawing MutantSpectre.

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Cyber Hex

Olivia Grace Applegate

explains how Succubus speaks to ‘modern problem of online dating’

BY KIKO MARTINEZ

Actress and San Antonio native Olivia Grace Applegate doesn’t consider herself the biggest fan of the horror genre, but she’s starred in a few of them over the last decade.

“I’ve been in a lot of scary movies, but I’m not the target demo,” Applegate, 32, told the Current during a recent interview. “I don’t like ge ing scared.”

Even so, Applegate, who now lives in Austin, hopes plenty of horror heads that will give her latest ﬁlm a chance to terrify them, especially this Halloween season. In Succubus, she plays Sharon, the estranged wife of a man named Chris (Brendan Bradley), who begins to video chat one evening with a mysterious woman (Rachel Cook) he meets on a dating site.

As the night gets darker, Chris becomes more fascinated with the woman on his laptop and considers visiting her when she invites him over. Can Sharon save her husband before an unspeakable evil overtakes him?

During an interview with the Current, Applegate, who a ended San Antonio Christian School as a kid, talked about her own experience with an online dating app and how studying philosophy in college beneﬁts her as an actress.

Succubus is currently streaming on digital platforms.

How often do you come back to San Antonio?

I don’t have any family in San Antonio, but a lot of friends — some of the dearest people in my life — are from there. I love San Antonio. I was there last year. I try to go semi-regularly. I love going to the River Walk, and just love to visit my friends and go to my old neighborhood. There’s some really delicious Tex-Mex there.

Did you go to college in Texas?

Yeah, I went to UT-Austin. I was in a liberal arts honors program. I ended up graduating early to move out to LA, so I think I ended up graduating with a bachelor’s in philosophy and a minor in theater.

Has philosophy helped you break down your characters as an actress?

Yeah, I think what’s cool about philosophy is that it teaches you how to think critically. I think that’s good for anything. As an actress, you need to get into the psychology of each of your characters. So, having those skills and a

sense of how you think and how others think is really helpful. Philosophy is so internal and so personal. Theater [acting] and movie making is an intensely collaborative act.

What did you think when you read the script for Succubus?

I thought the script was excellent. I’ve read a lot of genre scripts, and it was so well wri en. It really spoke to this sort of modern problem of online dating and the internet, and this sense of like, “Could there be something be er out there?” There seems to be more options, so people tend to feel less satisﬁed. I think the ﬁlm really speaks to that. I thought it had a nuanced message.

Do you hope audiences ﬁnd a deeper meaning to the ﬁlm, or are you cool if it just creeps them out?

I want both, honestly! It’s a really entertaining movie. If you leave and you’ve been entertained, then I feel like that’s a win. But I do think it has some depth. Art is subjective. I feel like my experience of the ﬁlm and what I take away from it could be diﬀerent than what you take away from it. I think they’re both equally valid.

Have you ever tried online dating? Every relationship I’ve ever been in, I’ve met the person in-person, which is really great. I feel like I’m becoming a bit of a unicorn in that way. But I recently, for the ﬁrst time ever, tried a dating app. The psychology of swiping through people, I don’t like that feeling. Also, so many of my girlfriends have horror stories they’ve shared with me.

Well, if someone sees Succubus, they might swear oﬀ online dating altogether.

(Laughs.) At least for men, it’s a cautionary tale. I mean, I think [dating apps] can be great. I also have friends who met the person they’re spending the rest of their life with on a dating app. So, I don’t think this is a movie that’s saying, “Don’t get on an app!” But I think it speaks to this very human thing of wondering if there’s something be er out there and being tempted by that possibility and being tricked.

What was it like sharing a set with someone in full demon makeup?

So fun! Rachel was so sweet. I remember one of the days where she had to be in her full get up, and she was such a good sport about it. She was drinking smoothies because it’s hard to eat with all that makeup on. I remember, we were shooting in Montana in this beautiful valley, and we got this behind-the-scenes video of her frolicking through the ﬁelds in her demented state. We all had a good time with it.

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BEER • FOOD • MUSIC •

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SAN ANTONIO BEER FESTIVAL

Beer Bash

The San Antonio Beer Festival returns with suds and lucha libre

BY SANFORD NOWLIN

Texas’ largest single-day beer festival is back with a bang. Not to mention a piledriver, a powerbomb and a headlock or two.

In addition to tastings from more than 100 breweries from around the globe, this year’s San Antonio Beer Festival will feature a lucha libre stage with 14 colorful and acrobatic wrestlers. Food, live music, exclusive keg-tapping experiences and other activities will round out the full day of fun.

Presented by grocery giant H-E-B, the San Antonio Beer Festival will take place Saturday, Oct. 19, at downtown’s Crocke Park. The gathering, founded in 2005, oﬀers visitors a chance to sample from more than 300 premium and craft beers, ales, ciders, seltzers, hop waters and non-alcoholic beverages.

The 21-and-up festival beneﬁts the San Antonio Food Bank.

“Over the past 19 years, this festival has grown to be the largest beer fest in Texas, largely because of our local partners, team and our partnership with the San Antonio Food Bank,” said Cassandra Wagner, marketing director of Chava Communications, the Current’s parent company and the festival’s organizer.

“We’re excited about the changes this year, like the lucha libre stage, so many new brews and varietals, even non-alcoholic beers. It’s truly a fest that everyone can enjoy, and we look forward to the 20th year next year!”

In addition to unique cask-conditioned ales, one-of-a-kind collaborations and an innovative array of craft-brewed creations, this year’s San Antonio Beer Festival will feature food trucks, food booths and local vendors. A endees are free to bring lawn chairs or blankets and stake out comfortable spots to enjoy the festivities and fall weather.

For the ﬁrst time, the San Antonio Beer Festival will include a stage featuring lucha libre, the Mexico-originated form of professional wrestling known for its vibrant masks, outsized personalities and high-ﬂying acrobatic maneuvers. Bouts will take place on a dedicated stage from 2-4:30 p.m., and wrestlers will stick around to meet the crowd and sign autographs.

Also new this year is an H-E-B-sponsored keg-tapping experience. A endees will get the opportunity to enjoy ﬁrst tastes from freshly tapped kegs of hard-to-ﬁnd specialty beers and ales. The tappings will take place at noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Limited VIP tickets, general admission-plus tickets that include early entry, and regular general admission tickets are now available.

VIP doors open at noon with general admission doors opening at 2 p.m. Admission will continue until 6:30 p.m.

In addition, VIP ticketholders will receive a goodie bag including a T-shirt and a tumbler, and they’ll have access to a Real Ale VIP area. The VIP zone will feature specialty beers from

Blanco-based Real Ale along with catered food from Lucy Cooper’s Texas Ice House. Tickets and more information are available at sanantoniobeerfestival.com.

$45-$110, noon (VIP) and 2 p.m. (general admission) Saturday, Oct. 19, Crocke Park, 1300 N. Main Ave., sanantoniobeerfestival.com.

Find more food & drink news at sacurrent.com

Jaime Monzon

food

Bitter Truth

San Antonio breweries still ﬁnding success despite spate of closures

BY TRAVIS E. POLING

Depending on who you ask, San Antonio’s craft-brewing scene is in the middle of a beerpocalypse with not enough people supporting their local brands or it’s becoming a mature market with a mix of successes and failures akin to the restaurant industry.

The city’s two largest breweries, Alamo Beer Co. and Freetail Brewing Co., rely heavily on sales to bars, restaurants and retail stores — and both are for now up for sale or looking at restructuring to stay alive. Scrappy Black Laboratory Brewing Co. also is shopping its assets after a switch in focus from beer to hard seltzers wasn’t enough to move the needle on sales.

So far this year, Second Pitch Brewing Co. closed despite national achievement on the awards circuit for its beers, media darling Weathered Souls shut down this summer after not landing a new equity partner and 11-year-old Busted Sandal Brewing Co. threw in the chancla this month.

“The headwinds are real, and it’s tightening the margins for breweries,” said Ma Gacioch, staﬀ economist for the Brewers Association, which represents the nation’s independent brewers.

Those headwinds include higher costs for ingredient, labor, rent and transportation.

Just the same, “We expect macroeconomic forces to swing back around,” Gacioch added.

That’s small comfort to entrepreneurs who had to give up on a dream or were passionate about purveying craft beer from the brewhouse to the taproom.

But San Antonio’s had far more openings than closures over the past decade and a half. In late 2008, Freetail opened its original brewpub at Loop 1604 and Northwest Military Highway after years of Blue Star Brewing Co. operating as the only surviving brewery.

Now, there are 21 breweries in Bexar

County, ﬁve in the Boerne area, four in New Braunfels and two around Seguin.

In that same period, there have been just ﬁve brewery closures, although three of those unfolded this year.

Branchline Brewing ceased operation in 2017 and Issla St. Brewing folded as the city was emerging from the pandemic.

Breweries that depend heavily on getting their beers out of the taproom and into the broader market through self-distribution or a third-party distributor are facing greater struggles. Consequently, more are shifting to taproom-only sales or adopting brewpub-restaurant

models. Some are starting out that way from the beginning.

All of the breweries that opened in San Antonio in 2023 were onsite-only models, as were 95% of all brewery openings across the U.S., Gacioch said.

Over the past decade, the number of Texas breweries grew from 96 to 445, according to the Brewers Association. Across the state, taproom and brewpub models performed be er than those distributing their beer into a crowded market.

“Some breweries might not think it worth the eﬀort to ﬁght for tap space,” Gacioch said.

Cautious path forward

Indeed, Busted Sandal lost 90% of its taps across the region after a much larger company promoting more brands bought out its local distributor, according to a social media comment on the brewery’s closure announcement. The loss was quick too, happening after just three months.

“Sad to say I know of other local breweries having these tough talks and decisions!” Busted Sandal co-founder Mike Diccico told a well-wisher on Facebook. “Imagine a business where your rent and supplies and utilities and services all around your business

BBQ COOK-OFF

can continue to rise, but you just hold strong in the cost of your good or service or risk [losing] your highly valued customers. That’s the beer business. The ONLY people that make money in the beer business are the distributors. Glad we got away from that but not soon enough.”

In its shift away from relying on outside sales, Busted Sandal expanded taproom hours at its Fredericksburg Road brewery, opened a taproom in Helotes’ Old Town area and launched a third outlet for its beer with a saloon in Kerrville. Half-price pint Wednesdays and the addition of artisan pizzas in recent months weren’t enough to keep the doors open.

Breweries including Gather Brewing Co. in Universal City, Southerleigh Fine Food & Brewery at The Pearl and Dos Sirenos in Southtown all started with a chef-driven food menu that enabled the businesses to draw on more than just those seeking craft beer.

the restaurant industry. In the past decade and a half, the number of breweries ballooned from about 1,500 across the country to nearly 10,000.

While industry observers will argue about whether it was a bubble bound to burst, the ultimate test came with the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. Although some breweries were resilient enough and had suﬃcient capital to pull through, others were saddled with rents in arrears and loan debt they couldn’t repay.

In 2023, the number of new breweries grew by 11%, and the rate of breweries closing hit 6%, according to data gathered by the Brewers Association. Nationally, restaurants typically open and close at a rate of about 9% to 10% annually.

“Rather than a dying [brewing] industry, we’re seeing a maturing industry,” Gacioch said. “They are still making loans [for new breweries], because, as an industry, banks think of it as a proven business strategy.”

Wild Barley Kitchen & Brewery was always going to be a brewery, but its owners didn’t want to make the mistake of growing too fast. What started as a food truck serving up sourdough bagel sandwiches and pizzas moved to a brick-and-mortar restaurant with an expanded menu. Last year, once on solid footing, the business started serving its own beer.

That said, even the longest-lasting breweries are feeling the pinch. The new economic pressures come after they weathered recessions, a pandemic and early consumer resistance to craft beer and its bold ﬂavors.

“We would grow, wait a li le bit and see what happens,” then do it again for each step, said Wild Barley co-founder Holland Lawrence, former head brewer at Ranger Creek Brewing and Distilling. “We didn’t want to overstep our means.”

Lawrence thinks that cautious approach kept the brewpub from being ﬂa ened by the pandemic. Instead, it grew as people returned to old habits.

“I think people are dialing into what they like to do again,” he said. “I’m seeing more people ge ing together for meetups outside their homes than before.”

One thing Wild Barley’s owners don’t want to do is discount their beer when they dip their toe into self-distribution waters next year. Food costs have increased, and Lawrence said his price for brewing grain recently hit $1.10 a pound, up from 42 cents a pound in 2019.

Survivor story

From a statistical perspective, the craft beer world is becoming more like

“It’s like starting all over again in 1996,” said Joey Villarreal, owner of Southtown’s Blue Star Brewing Co., Texas’ second-oldest surviving brewpub. Blue Star Brewing struggled multiple times, sometimes relying on revenues from a bike sales and rental shop that started inside the brewpub. Blue Star beers also are sold at other outlets owned by Villarreal’s Joey’s Inc., which includes Joe Blues across the parking lot from the brewery, Joey’s on the St. Mary’s Strip and at a kiosk just below the food court at North Star Mall.

“As craft beer was starting, when you look at the headwinds today, it was nothing compared to what the pioneers were facing in the 1980 and 1990s,” Gacioch said. “The industry has been here before.”

Eugene Simor, founder of Alamo Beer Co., which has its own line of beers and produces several other alcoholic brands, is less convinced. He recently placed Alamo up for sale and is looking at a restructuring to survive.

“There are some bright spots, but I haven’t seen them,” Simor said. “There will always be a spot in people’s hearts for the local pub. I just hope that there will be locally brewed beers available to drink.”

Liquid Lifeline

Can the Brew City initiative help save struggling Texas craft-beer producers?

BY ADAM DOE

As Texas weathers a storm of craft brewery closures, Mad Pecker Brewing could be the next to go.

“We might not make it through the month,” Jason Gonzales, owner of the Northwest San Antonio brewpub, told the Current.

Mad Pecker produces about a dozen beers in-house and also oﬀers pizza, sandwiches and burgers from its kitchen. The business opened during 2015’s craft-brewery boom, when the industry grew 16% nationwide, according to the Brewers Association.

However, since the pandemic, Mad Pecker and its 11 full-time employees have struggled to keep the taps ﬂowing. Its slump comes as high-proﬁle Alamo City beer operations Busted Sandal Brewing Co. and Weathered Souls Brewing Co. recently closed due to economic pressures.

“Coming out of COVID, we haven’t been able to generate the revenue,” Gonzales said. “There’s a lack of people coming through the door.”

The Texas Craft Brewers Guild launched a program this spring which it hopes can oﬀer a lifeline for Gonzales and other struggling brewers across the state.

The guild’s Brew City, TX initiative works to promote craft breweries as tourist destinations and encourages municipal governments to help bolster the businesses, oﬃcials with the trade association said. Through the program, the guild can help organize craft beer events and provide municipalities and breweries with marketing, public relations and press materials.

The Texas Craft Brewers Guild also can connect cities to entrepreneurs looking for space to expand or open a brewery.

To date, 30 Texas cities have paid the annual $350 fee and joined Brew City, TX. That far exceeded the guild’s expectations, according to Executive Director Caroline Wallace.

“Boerne was the ﬁrst city to join,” Wallace said. “We got a lot of emails from small towns that wanted a brewery.”

The guild helped organize Boerne’s Bock Walk in May, a promotional event for the six breweries based in the town north of San Antonio. Boerne and New Braunfels are the closest Brew Cities to San Antonio, with Austin being the largest Brew City so far.

“Most Brew Cities are small and midsize communities,” Wallace explained.

Big cities slow to join

The guild contacted the City of San Antonio, Visit SA and other destination-marketing organizations to get the Alamo City on board with the program. While Wallace said she’d love to see SA take a more active role in promoting its breweries, she acknowledges that it may take a while before big cities take a shine to the eﬀort.

Mad Pecker’s Gonzales said he sees how the Brew City initiative could help promote craft-beer tourism. However, it’s likely too late to help his business, he said.

“There needs to be a lot more done locally,” Gonzales said. “It’d be nice to see something from the city.”

He pointed to a tourism commercial paid for by the Houston suburb of Conroe as an example of something a city can do to promote its craft-beer businesses.

“In the commercial, you see all the breweries in Conroe,” Gonzales said. “The City of Conroe put that together.”

Too little too late?

Mad Pecker has raised beer prices nearly 20% since Gonzales opened it nine years ago, but the brewing side of the business still isn’t making the kind of money it should. Part of the problem, he acknowledges, is that the Culebra Commons shopping center, ﬁve

minutes down the road, has opened chain restaurants that have cut into his customer count.

“When we opened there was no Stone Werks, no Bubba’s,” he said. “It’s hard to compete with restaurants.”

Gonzales is weighing whether to end brewing operations and operate solely as a restaurant. He also could scale back the beer-production side of the business to improve the bo om line.

“If my survivability meant I had to close the brewery and operate as a restaurant, I would do that,” he added.

While brewery openings are still outpacing closures nationwide, according to data from the Brewers Association, Wallace of the Texas Craft Brewers Guild said costs are becoming prohibitive for many brewers around the state. That’s especially true in big urban areas where land is more expensive.

“Breweries that opened 10, 15 years ago have had their rent raised a couple times,” Wallace said.

Adam Doe

Flix

Michelin Contender?

San Antonio’s Domingo may get a place in the upcoming guidebook, but it could beneﬁt from ﬁne tuning

BY RON BECHTOL

The vaunted Michelin Restaurant Guide began life as a marketing ploy to sell tires through culinary tourism, but it’s since taken on a life of its own. So coveted are the tome’s star ratings that chefs have reportedly commi ed suicide at the mere suspicion of losing one.

After ﬁrst appearing in New York in 2005, the French-originated guide is now coming to Texas — though not without cost to the ﬁve major cities to be investigated. As the Current reported in August, San Antonio’s tourism-promotion group ponied up $270,000. Now, Texas Monthly has published a list of restaurants in each city they suspect may be targets for Michelin’s inspectors. For San Antonio, it’s something of a head scratcher.

Here’s the list: Blu Prime Steakhouse, Bohanan’s, Brasserie Mon Chou Chou, Clementine, Cured, Domingo, Ladino, Mixtli, Pharm Table, San Taco, Shiro, Silo 1604 and Silo Prime. Stalwarts such as Bohannan’s might seem right up Michelin’s alley, but, among others, I was surprised to see Domingo, located inside downtown’s Canopy Hotel.

I hadn’t been to Domingo. Now I have.

Though Michelin doesn’t mention ambience in its current criteria, it has implicitly ﬁgured into past ratings. On this front, Domingo scores big with its retained historic walls and cistern, its soaring exterior space, its views of the cypress-lined San Antonio River. There’s nothing else like it.

Service has also been important for the guide. I arrived for a 6:45 p.m. reservation, theoretically indoors since it was easily 95 degrees. However, I was led to a table in a crowded outdoors. I couldn’t help but ponder whether a star rating would ma er to casually dressed tourists or families sporting strollers, or whether it might scare some away. Especially if they perceived a star to mean higher prices.

Menus arrived promptly, along with an immediate query about drinks.

The compact wine list is adequate, but the bar’s cocktails appeared to have ambitions. Fortunately, the drinks also arrived quickly, helping to assuage the slight and the heat.

I don’t need to have either of the cocktails again, though the Chili + Cucumber delivered what was promised: spiced tequila, blood orange liqueur and chili-dipped cucumber. The Jalisco Standoﬀ — a pairing of tequila, mezcal y mas — was oddly bland and murky. Michelin in mind, an expressed swath of ruby grapefruit peel might have helped both visually and livened up the taste.

Domingo’s appetizers offered our first plated look at the restaurant’s purported “modern tribute to South Texas cuisine.” The skillet cornbread’s flavors of zucchini, cheddar and green chile were good, if sweet — a sensation further enhanced by a scoop of honey bu er. Apparently we South Texans have a sweet tooth.

The halibut ceviche had another kind of issue: the ﬂavors again were good, but the normally sturdy halibut seemed soft and co ony, and the dish needed more citrus. It also begged for an accompaniment — maybe not the traditional saltines, but a Guide-worthy riﬀ on something crackery.

The entrees were ordered separately, and that alone should have guaranteed their arrival at an appropriate time. But no. When they appeared, there was a mad rush to ﬁnish the ceviche, then to ﬁnd space … all because the table was too small to accommodate it all. Apparently, Domingo doesn’t believe in pacing or diminutive plates.

Nor does it believe in sides. There are none listed, and there are eﬀectively none on the entrée plates. What you see on the menu is what you get. Mostly.

If you examine it closely, the menu description of slow-roasted pork shoulder might suggest cochinita pibil, but that Yucatec Mayan slow-roasted pork dish gets no mention. Do they think us not sophisticated enough?

Domingo’s is actually a pretty classic rendition. The mound of pulled pork is robustly flavored, the mari-

nated onions tart and on-point and the paper-wrapped corn tortillas are both fragrant and pliant. Can we just call a cochina a cochina, though?

Other presumably modern entrees include green chile and chicken enchiladas and Baja ﬁsh tacos.

The Braised Short Rib came from the menu’s Signatures section, and the boneless beef itself was hard to fault. It was also huge and served atop a oncetrendy bean puree loosely married to tomatillo and studded with lardons — a Michelin-y word for cubed bacon. Beauty was not this plate’s strong suit, and mas-modern habanero “ashes” got lost in the shuﬄe, but perhaps points can be given for stick-to-your-own-ribs qualities.

I’m amused by the thought of a proper Michelin inspector tucking into the restaurant’s toasted chile brownie with Mexican vanilla ice cream. It’s served in a small skillet, perhaps for South Texas creds, and the decorated ice cream topper, more cajeta than vanilla, is bowl-sized. An accompanying pepita bri le was sadly ﬂaccid, and the chile heat was hard to detect.

But taste wasn’t the reason much went unconsumed. Perhaps size is another deﬁning South Texas characteristic.

Michelin’s Texas awards are set to be announced on Nov. 11 in Houston. I may have to eat the above words. But I don’t have to change my mind.

DOMINGO RESTAURANT IN THE CANOPY HOTEL

123 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 615-0600, domingorestaurant.com

Hours: 6:30-10 a.m. and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 6:30-10 a.m. and 11 a.m-11 p.m. Friday, 7 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5-11 p.m. Saturday, 7 a.m.3 p.m. and 5-10 p.m. Sunday

Dinner entrees: $19-$58

The skinny: Domingo touts itself as “a modern tribute to South Texas Cuisine,” and there are some nods in this direction. But most offerings are lightly updated, if at all. Indeed, many need fine tuning. Big flavor and generous servings aren’t issues, however, and dishes such as the braised short rib on bean puree will fill both the bill and belly. A skillet-served brownie generously capped with ice cream will satisfy even the sweetest of sweet teeth.

Ron Bechtol

In the Can

San Antonio’s Buttercup to recreate unconventional video performance from 20 years ago

BY STEPHANIE KOITHAN

Long-running San Antonio artpoprock band Bu ercup is known for staging unconventional performances. Over the years, the trio has performed on a ﬂoat, in a dive bar at 7 a.m., as mannequins in a window and on a bed in their pajamas.

For one of the more memorable shows, its live performance was shown on tiny convex TVs at the bo om of four oil drums for a show called Bu ercup in a Can. Now, 20 years later, the group will recreate the approach for an event it’s calling Can/Cant, scheduled for Monday, Oct. 28, at La Zona Art Everywhere Popup Gallery.

Like last time, Bu ercup will place TVs inside 55-gallon drums, and the crowd will be prompted to mill about the containers to see small, isolated segments of the live show. Also like last time, the band will play its set on premises in an undisclosed location.

Bu ercup is comprised of singer Erik Sanden, guitarist Joe Reyes and bass player Odie. The band has been producing what NPR called “jangly art rock for the left side of the brain” since 2004.

The act’s ﬁrst canned performance was in its early days. The process of hooking up the notoriously ﬁnicky technology and what Sanden described as “making it work right up to the moment” was captured in the documentary Goodbye Blue Monday by Charlie Roadman with camera assistance by Adam Lyons.

Speaking with the Current, Sanden said he didn’t realize it had been 20 years since the iconic performance until he purged an accumulation of stuﬀ in the band’s practice space, including DVDs of Goodbye Blue Monday.

Odie, who also plays in NASA Country with Garre T. Capps, salvaged the DVDs from the garbage. Noticing the date on the sleeve, the members of Bu ercup realized the anniversary was coming up.

Odie spearheaded the project to recreate the performance, even obtaining grant money from the city to make it happen, according to Sanden.

Unlike last time, when the project came together for a chaotic couple of weeks, the band has been laboring over the process over the past few months.

“I’ll be able to get sleep the night before,” Sanden said. Sanden pointed out that he and documentarian and collaborator Alejandro De Hoyos have been driving around on bulk

pickup days to gather old TVs.

Instead of the four TVs used last time, Bu ercup will have considerably more this goround. On one particularly fruitful scavenging expedition, they picked up seven TVs in one day.

Even so, the TVs can’t be more than 14 inches wide or tall or they won’t ﬁt in the oil drums. The band plans on activating the entire space at La Zona by utilizing other types of containers, including coﬀee cans, in unexpected ways.

Sanden said he originally got inspiration for the performance from artist Bill Viola, who created a piece in which a TV at the bo om of a trash can displayed video of him sleeping.

The band also owes a debt to artist Chris Burden, Sanden noted. Unbeknownst to a endees at one of his gallery exhibits, Burden hid in an on-site loft the whole time, hoping that his presence would somehow be felt and imbue the space with an uncanny feeling.

Bu ercup took this alchemy of inspiration, but ﬁltered it “through pop rock, taking a band’s performance and dissecting it,” Sanden added.

Need to perform

For Bu ercup in a Can, each TV showed a live feed from a separate camera, trained on a separate band member. Cameras periodically zoomed in on someone’s foot, hand or mouth, isolating body parts. The desired eﬀect was to make the performance feel “alien, distant and voyeuristic,” Sanden explained in Goodbye Blue Monday.

“We were interested for a long time in how we can change how you listen to a band,” Sanden said of Bu ercup’s unconventional approaches to live performance. “We wanted to provide diﬀerent kinds of shows. We thought this could be a way we could fracture the experience.”

Sanden said performance has always superseded almost everything for the band. For example, it released the Bu ercup in a Can DVDs before dropping its ﬁrst album. When live shows dried up during the pandemic, so did Sanden’s desire to write music.

The singer-guitarist said he sees music as a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid, composed of writing the song, recording the song

and performing the song.

“They feel like separate things but if you take out the performance, the whole pyramid falls apart,” he said.

Sanden added that he loves to perform and feed oﬀ the crowd’s energy. Performing on radio shows, for example, makes him even more nervous, because of the absence of an audience.

Of course, that begs the question why someone who craves an audience connection would deliberately alienate and separate his band from its audience via video screen.

“Maybe there’s some perverse ﬂagellation, because it does sort of hurt me,” Sanden said.

Though much of Can/Cant will repeat elements of Bu ercup in a Can, things have changed over the past two decades — something the band will acknowledge with this reprisal.

“Since we did this 20 years ago, we’ve lost a lot of people in our friend circle and our band circle,” Sanden said.

De Hoyos’ wife Monica will make an ofrenda in one of the barrels since the performance is so close to Día de Muertos, which is also Sanden’s birthday.

“We are doing this thing that’s slightly preserved in amber,” he said.

Though Sanden doesn’t know how many people a ended Bu ercup in a Can, he remembers notable a endees.

“Ram Ayala came, the owner from Taco Land. That made me feel so good because he was someone you really didn’t see outside of Taco Land,” Sanden said. “So for him to shut it down and come to our thing on a Monday was really special.”

Just because Bu ercup has done its “canned” performance before doesn’t mean it’s not without technical risks. The band has procured most of the necessary gear but still needs to test some of it out.

“I’m pre y conﬁdent in our ability to respond to an emergency but not conﬁdent there won’t be one,” Sanden said. “We don’t know exactly what will happen, and that’s part of our artistic process.”

$20 suggested donation, 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 28, La Zona Art Everywhere Popup Gallery, 337 W. Commerce St., (210) 225-3862.

Josh Huskin

music

X Marks the End

Groundbreaking LA punk act bringing farewell tour to San Antonio’s Empire Theatre

BY DAVE GIL DE RUBIO

The music industry is at an interesting juncture where plenty of bands that have been around for decades are embarking on farewell tours.

Add X to that category.

The storied Southern California punk band is not only releasing Smoke & Fiction, its ninth and likely ﬁnal studio album, but it’s also embarking on its last tour, which stops Saturday, Oct. 19, at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre. Jimbo Mathus will open.

But ask founding member and vocalist Exene Cervenka, and the idea of a farewell tour is less about ending on a speciﬁc date and more about slowly retreating from being a rock band on the road.

“The ﬁnal tour means we’ll play until we can’t play anymore,” she said in an early July interview. “That might be 2025 or that might be 2026 — I have no idea. The thing is that we’re booked until the end of 2025, and then we’re booked until the end of May 2026. Everybody does these farewell tours that last for years — Elton John, Cher, The Go-Go’s. Everybody does these farewell tours, and what it means is we’re ge ing older and it’s ge ing harder. People think we’re going to play ﬁve more shows and then we’re done. We have never ever stopped touring. We play all the time. Plus, you can’t retire from music, you can only quit.”

The decision for X to pack it in comes at a curious and rather productive juncture of a band that’s been active since 1977, when Cervenka, vocalist-bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D.J. Bonebrake came together. In 2020, the band released its eighth studio album, the Rob Schnapf-produced Alphabetland, the group’s ﬁrst studio eﬀort since 1993’s Hey Zeus! But before the group had a

chance to hit the road, the pandemic hit. And while X may have avoided the recording studio up to that point, the band had consistently been on the road.

For the quartet, not recording was a ma er of economics, especially given the changing state of the music industry.

“We didn’t think we were going to make Alphabetland,” Cervenka explained. “I’d been badgering them to make a studio album for 15 years, and everyone always said no. And that’s because we’d lose money because we didn’t own our records and Spotify doesn’t pay anything. It would just be free on the Internet, so why bother to spend $50,000 making a record just to give it away? But then we got possession of our old records and hooked up with Fat Possum [Records]. We have the licensing and own everything, so it made it that we could do this now. Then we did Live in Latin America, and it proved to them that we could make a record and people would buy it.”

For Cervenka, hooking up with Schnapf (Beck, Ellio Smith, Booker T. Jones) to produce both Alphabet-

land and Smoke & Fiction proved to be a wise move for X. Not only was it easier for this second go-round, but Schnapf proved to be the ﬁrst consistent hand behind the boards since X’s early days working with Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, who oversaw the band’s ﬁrst four seminal albums.

“We did both albums at the same studios,” Cervenka said. “It was a li le easier because Alphabetland was just us trying to put stuﬀ together, and we were doing some old songs and just trying to see if we could even do a record. I knew we could. But, yeah, we know how to do this. We went into Sunset Sound, recorded for four days and got everything we needed. We were ahead of schedule, went over to Rob’s with all our stuﬀ and never had to se le, because we sang and played it until it was right. It was easy. It reminded me a lot of the early days with Ray Manzarek, because Rob is a lot like him in that he’s super positive, super intelligent, super creative and artistic. And while he has really great suggestions, he doesn’t change the band or the sound. He just wants me to sing like me the best I can.”

With a passel of new songs to draw from, X will dip into a deep song canon that’s led to trimmed-back set lists due to aging fan demographics.

“We’re going to play different old songs different nights because we have two new albums, really, so we can’t play only the old songs,” Cervenka said. “We’ll play six or seven songs from the last two records -- this one and the one before. In the old days, we’d get two or three encores, because kids wanted more. Now our audience is older and they kind of want to go home. We put on a great show. We play for an hour and 15 minutes and we’ll do an encore. But if there’s something people want to hear, we hope we’ll play it, but we can’t always. We’ll give it our best, as always, to play a great show. I enjoy that time on stage more than anything. The stuff around it is a little harder than it used to be, but I don’t really care. You get dressed up and sing. What more do you want out of life?”

$39-$70, 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, Empire Theatre, 226 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 226-5700, majesticempire.com.

Kristy Benjamin

Practicing What They Preach

Testament may not be in the “Big Four,” but the thrash pioneers are still touring 40 years on

BY MIKE MCMAHAN

Rock fans know the “Big Four” of thrash metal: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax.

But a host of other thrash bands bubbled up under the household names who became the four horsemen of the extreme metal scene — many that rocked just as hard and brought new twists to the genre.

One of the most successful undercard bands, San Francisco’s Testament, will hit San Antonio’s Aztec Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 19, with support from Kreator and Possessed.

We talked to Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick via Zoom from Maplewood, Minnesota, where the band was playing a gig that night.

More than four decades after Testament’s formation, things are rolling along smoothly. The band is working on a new album slated for release next year, and Skolnick is excited about how the record sounds. The tour also is going well.

And why shouldn’t things be stable? Though Testament weathered a number of lineup changes since its classic ’80s era, two key elements have (mostly) stayed in effect: vocalist Chuck Billy’s catchy shouts and Skolnick’s distinctive guitar harmonies and phrasing.

Indeed, Testament is Skolnick’s life’s work. He was just a teen when he joined — around the same age when he took lessons from legendary axe slinger Joe Satriani. Now Skolnick finds himself entrenched in middle age with legendary records under his belt.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Do you have a good memory that you can share about Joe Satriani from back in the day?

He wasn’t well - known at the time. He was known as the teacher who taught the teachers. I had taken lessons with a couple other local guitar players who were very good. Their teacher had been this guy I kept hearing about, a very serious musician named Joe. It was like going to a classical piano lesson. There was focus, there was discipline. You’re there to focus. You’re going to come up with a plan and improve as much as you can. A lot of people couldn’t handle that. It was the San Francisco Bay Area. There’s a very relaxed culture out there. They pride themselves on being laid - back. I actually knew musicians who had studied with him. [They said] I shouldn’t take lessons from him because it’s too serious. To me, it was exactly what I needed.

If one Testament album could survive in a post-apocalypse bunker, but only one, which should it be?

That’s funny. I would probably say the second one, The New Order. Just because, for some reason, most of those

songs are very popular with fans, and the set list always has something from that record. We try to represent as many records as we can. It gets more diﬃcult with each album you put out, because you can only squeeze so many songs into a set list.

Practice What You Preach was the follow-up to The New Order. Why do you think that one resonated more with people outside the thrash scene?

Well, I think by the time we did Practice What You Preach, Headbangers Ball was on MTV on the weekends, and they would just play metal videos. And a year or two before, it was really kind of a fringe show with a cult following. By that time, it really started to catch on. And by then, Testament had a relationship with MTV. They had played the “Over the Wall” video, the “Trial by Fire” video. So we weren’t trying to break into MTV. We already had a couple of popular videos. When we sent them “Practice What You Preach,” it was a no-brainer. They just immediately put it on. I think that deﬁnitely helped.

There was a lot of hype around that record because it was recorded live in the studio, something not a lot of bands could pull oﬀ. Do you think that helped as well?

I think it certainly helped. I was pushing for that, just because up until then, it felt like the live shows had this energy. As good as the records were, we’d come oﬀ of a tour and just think, “Oh man, I wish we could record now, because we sound like a well-oiled machine.” So, with that album, we were working on the songs way in advance and just wanted to sound like we were on tour. We had actually been on tour a lot, even though we weren’t playing any of the new songs. We were pre y dialed in and able to capture some of that energy. Wait, headbangers, there’s more. Visit the Current’s website at bit. ly/4dMOEbw to ﬁnd out why Skolnick left Testament then came back, whether his jazz playing comes through in the band and who could potentially replace Slayer in the Big Four.

$53-$111.50, 6:50 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, The Aztec Theatre, 104 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 812-4355, theaztectheatre.com.

Courtesy Photo Nuclear Blast Records

critics’ picks

Wednesday, Oct. 16

Buena Vista Social Orchestra

Buena Vista Social Club gained international attention in 1997 by collecting elder statesmen from Cuba’s musical golden era of the 1930s until the Caribbean country’s communist revolution. Though many in the lineup have since passed on, trombonist and original member Jesus “Aguaje” Ramos has kept the ﬂame alive under the Buena Vista Social Orchestra moniker. The group brings together melodic Afro-Cuban jazz, impassioned vocals, impeccable technical mastery and heartfelt joy. $39$149, 7:30 p.m., Charline McCombs Empire Theatre, 226 N. St Mary’s St., majesticempire. com. — BB

Friday, Oct. 18

Bombasta, El Dusty

Corpus Christi’s Latin Grammy-nominated producer and DJ El Dusty is joining forces with San Antonio’s “barrio big band” Bombasta for a night of shaking asses while elevating the masses. The two acts are longtime collaborators, having recorded tracks together, and El Dusty mixed and mastered Bombasta tracks in his PRODUCE studio. Get ready for a majestic blend of cumbia, hip-hop, big band and puro good times. $20, 8 p.m., Stable Hall, 307 Pearl Parkway, StableHall.com. — Stephanie Koithan

Badﬂower, Slothrust, Missio

Los Angeles-born, Nashville-based Badﬂower is

rocketing up the charts with its song “Detroit.” The alt-rock quartet’s early incarnations date back to 2008, but the band caught a buzz in LA a few years later thanks to former NSYNC member Lance Bass. Badﬂower’s post-grunge sound has spun o buzzy hits such as “Heroin” and “Ghost.” Missio is an opener worth making an early arrival for. $48-$92, 7 p.m., Aztec Theatre, 104 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 812-4355, theaztectheatre.com. — DC

Y La Bamba, Kiltro

Y La Bamba is the multilingual project of Mexico City’s Luz Elena Mendoza. By turns, her band is a melding of dream-pop, driving corridos, intricate vocal harmony and dense rhythmic interplay. It’s Latin American music for the future and deﬁes easy categorization through joyous embrace of the musical moment. Y La Bamba has released records on Sub Pop and been featured on NPR, showing that for all the group’s eagerness to push boundaries, it’s listenable and accessible. $22.50, 8 p.m., 502 Bar, 502 Embassy Oaks, Unit 138, 502bar. com. — BB

Jon Dee Graham, Mitch Webb and the Swindles

Jon Dee Graham has been making compelling music for decades. By starting with ﬁrst-wave TX punk band the Skunks, then moving on to seminal cow-punk band the True Believers, Graham has earned his place in the Texas music pantheon. Hey, he played with the Clash

at the Armadillo World Headquarters, for crying out loud! Over the course of 10 solo records, Graham has earned a regional reputation as a songwriter capable of delivering incendiary live performances. Later in the evening, SA’s own Mitch Webb will deliver his impeccable take on Texas garage, blues and country with the aid of his stellar Swindles. $10, 8 p.m., The Lonesome Rose, 2114 N. St. Mary’s St., thelonesomerose.com. — BB

Saturday, Oct. 19

Morris Day and the Time

Anybody who’s seen Prince’s classic 1984 movie Purple Rain knows Morris Day and the Time can absolutely tear up a dance ﬂoor. Concertgoers should expect the same. Day is still knocking out crowds with infectious mega-grooves and a supremely tight band. $49 and up, 7:30 p.m., Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St., majesticempire.com. — BB

Wednesday, Oct. 23

Willie Nelson and Family, John Baumann

Willie Nelson is bringing his musical family back to the venue where he ignited his musical revolution after leaving Nashville. The signs outside Floore’s Country Store still advertise Nelson’s early ’70s residencies from the time he lived on a ranch in Bandera. $79-$250, 7 p.m., Floore’s Country Store, 14492 Old Bandera Road, Helotes, liveatﬂ oores.com. — BB

Friday, Oct. 25

Billy Joel, Sting

How does a Friday night with the Piano Man and the Tantric Guru sound? Billy Joel and Sting — both Rock & Roll Hall of Famers — are bringing legendary musical catalogs to town for what’s reportedly their only overlapping show. Joel’s earned his reputation thanks to ’70 classics such as “Piano Man” and “Big Shot” and a string of ’80s hits, including “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Sting’s setlists have featured a balance of his work with the Police and solo standards such as “Englishman in New York” and “Fields of Gold.” $59.50-$399.50, 7 p.m., Alamodome, 100 Montana St., (210) 207-3663, alamodome.com. — DC

Sunday, Oct. 26

Macy Gray

Macy Gray’s raspy voice, eclectic style and Grammy-winning single “I Try” helped make her damned near ubiquitous around Y2K. It also didn’t hurt that she was featured in movies at the time, including the Tobey Maguire Spider Man movie. The Ohio-born Gray has battled drug abuse over the years, but she keeps her neo-soul sound alive through her touring and collaborations such as her recently released single “I Am” with Big Freedia. $48-$159.30, 7 p.m., Aztec Theatre, 104 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 812-4355, theaztectheatre.com. — DC

Courtesy Photo Empire Theatre

Buena Vista Social Orchestra

“Dog Daze”--bone across and canine down. by Matt Jones 2024 Matt Jones

Across

1. Nearly boils, as water

7. “Drugs are bad, ___?” (“South Park” line)

11. Sea-___ Airport

14. Bruce Springsteen’s “Greetings from ___ Park, N.J.”

15. “Arrested Development” star Michael

16. Unexpected

17. e most fortunate member of the Scooby Gang?

19. Rank under cpl.

20. Last part of “Aida,” e.g. 21. Broadway star McDonald

23. ___ apso (small terrier)

26. Footwear with spikes

29. Meal component?

30. Half a Robert Louis Stevenson title character?

32. “I’ll just pop out for ___ bit ...”

33. What a ag made up of green, white, grey, and black stripes represents

34. Battery terminal, for short

35. Old sitcom’s new chance?

37. Bite-sized Chinese dishes

39. ___-Lytton Fiction Contest

42. Map section

44. Birthplace of Albert Einstein

45. “Much ___ About Nothing”

46. “Free Willy” creature

48. Instructions before weeping?

50. Comedian ___ Lina

51. Completely reliable

53. John on the May ower

55. Bit of a giggle

56. Tra c sign verb

58. Pre x meaning “upon”

59. Vegan block for Laura Ingalls Wilder?

65. Hairstyling stu

66. Shredded

67. Stewed fruits

68. NPR’s Shapiro who hosted the latest season of “ e Mole”

69. Booty

70. Quaking trees

Down

1. “Do the Right ing” pizzeria owner

2. Fort Collins sch.

3. “Doctor Odyssey” network

4. Haas of “Inception”

5. University that doesn’t allow alcohol

6. Pt. of DOS

7. James of “X-Men” movies

8. Ale container

9. Braz. neighbor

10. “Get Yer ___ Out” (Rolling Stones album)

11. Direction to put in laundry, in some machines?

12. Like most paid streaming accounts

13. Music holder in a tower, once

18. Stock market peaks

22. Rental truck brand

23. Mutual fund charge

24. Comedian Kondabolu

25. Super-spicy pepper?

27. CEO, for instance

28. Lacking force

31. Joker portrayer Cesar

36. Scrapyard scourers

38. Chinese zodiac animal

40. Nurse Jackie portrayer Falco

41. “Hot To Go” singer Chappell

43. No. on a business card

44. Bovine milk source

46. “High School Musical” director Kenny

47. Ebert’s partner a er Siskel

49. Trying (for)

52. Back-to-school mos.

54. Slacken

57. Daytime TV host Kelly

60. Sudoku section

61. Old Notre Dame coach Parseghian

62. Number ___ Observatory Circle (current residence of Kamala Harris)

63. Boggy land

64. Letters on some battleships

Answers on page 29.