BY ANTHONY MARIANI
SCREEN
STUFF
LAURIE JAMES
BY KRISTIAN LIN
Congrats to former Ranger and current MLB Hall of Famer Adrian Beltre. BY OZZIE GARZA
MUSIC
Crisp roots rockers
Sheprador are on the “Take.” BY STEVE STEWARD
INSIDE
By Anthony Mariani
Snikt! Flick
Fighting
By Kristian Lin
By Steve Steward
Anthony Mariani, Editor
Lee Newquist, Publisher
Bob Niehoff, General Manager
Ryan Burger, Art Director
Jim Erickson, Circulation Director
Emmy Smith, Proofreader
Michael Newquist, Regional Sales Director
Jennifer Bovee, Marketing Director
Stacey Hammons, Senior Account Executive
Tony Diaz, Account Executive
Sarah Niehoff, Account Executive
Julie Strehl, Account Executive
Wyatt Newquist, Digital Coordinator
Clintastic, Brand Ambassador
CONTRIBUTORS
Christina Berger, E.R. Bills, Jason Brimmer, Buck D. Elliott, Juan R. Govea, Patrick Higgins, Laurie James, Kristian Lin, Cody Neathery, Wyatt Newquist, Steve Steward, Teri Webster, Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue, Elaine Wilder, Cole Williams
EDITORIAL BOARD
Laurie James, Anthony Mariani, Emmy Smith, Steve Steward
With
By Laurie James
Vital Signs
Don’t believe the hype. Fort Worth proves music is not “getting worse.”
BY ANTHONY MARIANI
Non-classical, non-jazz music — or pop — is too easy to make, and non-classical, non-jazz music is also too easy to consume.
This is why music keeps “getting worse,” according to Rick Beato. The veteran multi-instrumentalist, producer, and educator with 4.33 million subscribers on YouTube recently posted a two-part, or “two-act,” 12:42-minute vlog in which he claims pop music continues failing us like so many Texas energy providers. And when Rick busts out the kitchen faucet to illustrate his 0.002 cents on streaming, you know he means business.
And the business he means flows mightily. A new RIAA report says that the music industry creates $170 billion in annual value to the U.S. GDP while supporting 2.47 million jobs and generating $9.08 billion in export sales. In Fort Worth, a 2023 look commissioned by the visitors’ bureau found that our music “ecosystem” produced and maintained 6,018 jobs, representing a total output value of $531 million and a total Gross Value Added (GVA) of $333.3 million. The report adds that live music is our greatest strength. Our greatest weakness is our meager support, financial and otherwise, for musicians.
Indie-rock Fort Worth singer-songwriter Denver Williams recalls that during his time in Austin, “there was a foundation that provided mental health care for musicians. That doesn’t only improve the life of the receiving person. It ripples out into the world. It changes everything. And that’s not just for artists. Everyone should get dental and mental health care, but many artists are self-employed, and that stuff is hard to come by.”
Our neglect can be attributed to a few factors, notably and quite possibly one we see in the mirror every day. As attendance to mega-concerts broke records the past two years, dozens of independent venues across the country, including a few here, closed, proving that a lot of us still have the appetite for live music — but only if it’s cozy and/ or every note has been tattooed on our gray matter.
We love to witness our security-blanket songs performed onstage as much as we love to own or stream them. Seventy percent of the music market in the United States is old music, and old music consistently outsells new tuneage by a wide margin.
“We are in a moment of nostalgia culture, which makes it extremely hard to have monetary success as an independent band,” said Mandy Hand from Fort Worth pop-rockers Big Heaven. “That can be seen even in feature movies and television shows, which use 40-year-old pop hits rather than new music, all the way down to the free outdoor events in the suburbs that hire tribute acts. Time was that Fort Worth could hold a free outdoor event and feature live independent music. I hope we can get back to that.”
The phenomenon of looking back tenderly undoubtedly affects how the powers-that-be view new artists and songs. Taking a chance on an unproven talent requires a species of willpower that Sony, Universal, and Warner would likely rather apply to transforming young, unschooled listeners into new fans of this still lucrative, can’t-kill-it old music. Those Black kids on YouTube deliriously freaking out over hearing Led Zeppelin or Van Halen for the first time probably have no idea they’re just gratifying The Man. I can’t say I blame them. Baby Boomer Bullshit, as one of my jagoff friends nastily calls classic rock like Led Zep and VH, represents some of the greatest music ever written, and as Triple-B lover Rick Beato argues, new mainstream music isn’t exactly helping itself.
Bane Joseph Cook
Big Heaven’s Mandy Hand (second from right):
“We are in a moment of nostalgia culture, which makes it extremely hard to have monetary success as an independent band.”
bubblegum, just to start — have been turned to stale bread by this overarching fear. Folks like me need a way forward. Just clicking “play” on that precisely 200-song-long Baby Boomer Bullshit playlist, stocking up on ammo, bottled water, canned peaches, and tuna, and hunkering down seems cowardly.
The answer is in Whitney: “The children are our future.”
Rick Beato’s two reasons why “… Music Is Getting Worse” come from a breezy, decidedly not-unwelcome anti-Man stance.
I had just watched Ricky B. go off on the blandness and homogenization of contemporary songcraft as I hit “play” on my Rush playlist, grudgingly. My son revolted. “Please, not them again, Dad.”
It was a random weeknight, and my 12-year-old and I were hanging out in the main bedroom like we normally do before my family and I make dinner. We were essentially killing time before reheating our leftover chicken-fajita tacos, with homemade tortillas courtesy of A. — he’s probably the only cat I know who can throw three TDs and no picks at flag football in the morning, then come home and whip up macarons and sourdough bread at lunchtime. As I was tactfully avoiding work by reclining on the IKEA chaise and texting friends, A. lay on the bed with his iPad doing the usual. Chatting with his school buddies or kvetching over Project 2025 (no joke). And like every other hang session, we were about to endure another one of my same-ol’ same-olds when he spoke up. Rush had soundtracked our past few chillouts. My favorite childhood band serves as a soft, warm, comforting, occasionally screechy balm when life gets crazy and I can’t shake the inevitable decline of Western civilization and the irreversible death of the planet. To me, not hitting “play” felt right. More than right.
“You know,” I said, “I’m actually pretty tired of Rush, too.”
A. scuttled over to me. “You need some new-school hip-hop!”
I groaned. I’d heard my son’s “new-school hip-hop” accidentally before. BigXthaPlug, Polo G, BossMan DLow — they’re all repetitive, chintzy, bleeped out, and dreadfully same-y, and a lot of these dudes don’t even bother to rhyme. They just kind of yell-talk at you.
What came out of A.’s iPad now wasn’t that.
What came out of my son’s device was … not half bad.
To a fluttering, melancholy flute figure and an unfussy trap beat, a man’s voice mumbled, “Percocet / I’m outta Percocet / Percocet / I’m outta Percocet / Represent / Gotta represent / Chasing chick / Never chase a [bleep] / Mask on / [Bleep] it, mask off.”
I looked at A. He looked at me. I smiled. “Who is this?”
A. launched himself to his feet. My knees creaking, I slowly pocketed my stupid
phone and even more slowly joined him in the middle of the room. And we danced. And like all million-and-one of our previous getdowns, I rehashed my same three go-to moves from high school (a lazy Cabbage Patch, the NKOTB legs thing, and the Running/Lightly Jogging Man) as my cool not-so-little guy went bonkers, his 5-foot-6 wacky inflatable tube man’s body getting high and getting low, his sinewy limbs roving all around like he’s trying to swat flies away from everybody’s full plates while playing soccer with 20 balls. I can always just die happy here with him, me and my boy grooving.
Big stepping to the gloomy, psychedelic vibe, I had to grab A.’s attention again. “Bro, who’s singing?”
My son glanced at his iPad. “It just says ‘Future.’ ”
I’d heard the name before — probably via some magazine or blog, or an ad — but never his music. His aggressively detached delivery toying with the beat beneath the ethereal woodwind took me someplace else, maybe to a big city at night, seated alone in the dark in some high-rise apartment, breathing in the twinkling lights outside, the concrete towers guarding me. I loved it. It almost made me tear up. And vomit.
A terrible thought wrenched me: Is there other great music out there that people like me are missing because we’re too heavily depressed and hobbled by politics, the climate, work, parenthood, and pineapple on pizza to hear it?
And there was more, worse: Would most of us even have the bandwidth to enjoy any new music if we came across it? Either through our earphones or in person? If aliens beamed me down into the middle of a blistering set by a local indie-rock band at its peak at The Cicada, the Boiled Owl Tavern, Tulips FTW, or any other independent venue in town, would I be able to delight in the sounds and sights without worrying about all the stuff that normally spleens me like politics, the climate, and all the rest of that noise?
Rick Beato doesn’t talk about our deteriorating bandwidths or life’s general suckiness when each phenomenon deserves its own feature-length documentary. They’re two huge reasons why most of us aren’t consuming music the way we may have in the past. As the meme goes: If you’re not worried, you’re not paying attention. All of my favorite genres, all of my snuggly ol’ blankies — Baby Boomer Bullshit, old-school hip-hop, grunge, straight-ahead, musicals, and MTV
The ease with which a large chunk of non-classical, non-jazz music is concocted these days means that anyone — even 12-year-olds like A. (rap name: Ice Cold) can, through computerized legerdemain, produce passable versions of traditional songs. This filler clogs the market, effectively burying “real” tunes.
Reason 2: Music being too easy to consume equals listeners ending up accepting some or more of this filler. More accurately, we popularize a lot of it because it’s served up by charismatic figures dressed in visual or biographical finery. Accepting or embracing filler only leads to more of it, an ouroboros starving to death or an infinity loop of dung.
The science backs Rick up. Studies say new music’s blandness and homogeneity owe to a lack of “harmonic complexity” and “timbral diversity.” Technology (surprise) is mostly to blame. Social platforms like TikTok have forced the average ambitious artist to think shorter, louder, blander. Tunes must be snappy and easily digestible, and loud, with no hooks — strong melodies may interfere with our good times blasting bad guys onscreen or studying, painting, working out, folding laundry, whatever. The catchiness, it burns! Science also says the lyrics to most mainstream songs are so repetitive and generic, the average listener whose gray matter has not yet turned to beef jerky cannot form any lasting bond with them.
Pop still dominates the market thanks to one factor: kids. Like me when I was growing up, with my untied Reebok high-tops (one black, one white) and my Powerslave concert T, Ice Cold and his contemporaries gravitate toward broad strokes: loudness, repetition, sheen. And as long as we keep hatching tweens and teens, whose undeveloped palates can’t discern New Kids on the Block from Johann Sebastian Bach, crappy or undercooked music will continue to flourish. It’s been this way forever.
It definitely was this way back when Rick Beato was young. In “… Music Is Getting Worse,” he cleverly compares the average price for a streaming subscription with how much an album cost in his Baby Boomer Bullshit era. They’re about the same. The difference is that one affords you only several songs by the same artist while the other offers you almost the entire history of recorded music anytime you want it, and this, Rick feels, cheapens the overall listening experience. I can’t honestly disagree. Buying a lone LP all those years ago was magical. With the spare change I earned busing tables at Lombardozzi’s, I was able to snag about one used record every two weeks. Sometimes I’d
take home a platter based only on the cover art and (familiar) name. Whatever it was, it was an investment, and as an investment, it demanded I seek dividends from it. With my headphones coiling into the sleek, silver Panasonic family hi-fi, I lay on my NFLlogo-sheets-covered bed listening carefully while following along with the lyrics and/ or reading the liner notes, every word, even if the tracks left me wanting. I only recently realized this was as good as consuming music was going to get for me.
“I’m old enough to remember when people would line up at record stores to be the first to snag a midnight release of a new album or camp out at a ticket office to be first in line to get concert tickets,” said Mikey Frenchtoast from the 817 Riot Grrrl band Ex-Regrets. “Music was important enough to do that. Now, it’s become a disposable commodity, and, to me, it feels like it’s only important to other musicians and a few of our friends.”
In the paraphrased and locally famous words of beloved rootsy Fort Worth singer-songwriter Carey Wolff: Now, it’s just broke people giving other broke people money.
I still had to bring some of that old-school vinyl romance to my daily listening life. There’s something weird and desperately sad about folding laundry to “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” “The End,” “Supper’s Ready,” “La Vie en Rose,” “Acknowledgement,” “Atlantic City,” “Feeling Good,” “A Day in
the Life,” Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Secret Touch,” “Deacon Blues,” “Heading Out to the Highway” (so what?), and all the dozens of other unqualified masterworks dear to me. They demand my complete reverence and undivided attention, and that’s what I give them by skipping them for later, optimally when I’m alone and can drink in every note (and some strong Earl Grey) in peace.
I’m not saying Rick is categorizing non-major-label material as filler outright. He’s just showing that he hasn’t dug deeply enough into the market. If he had, he would have realized that major labels tell only half the story. The other, better half swells with progressive, novel sounds — it’s what the mainstream is influenced by. I know this because what I hear coming out of Fort Worth is just as progressive and novel as what commercial radio and our screens try to sell us nonstop.
Yes, most of Rick Beato’s thesis goes down smooth. You may even find yourself occasionally at the mercy of your inner caveman, tottering with a cudgel poised over your pedal board or laptop and grunting, “Ooog, technology bad!” My chief complaint with the vlog is that in all his handwringing, Beato (perhaps willfully) ignores an entire, massive segment of easily the most culturally pervasive artform on the planet. And this missing ingredient is what local scenes like Fort Worth’s have subsisted on and produced for decades.
I don’t blame him. Rick is simply a product of The Man. In all the rags — and podcasts and subreddits and YouTube videos — even passingly interested in pop music, most of them focus only on mainstream
more than a third of the entire delicious circle. That’s a wealth of records that may never go beyond their local communities but that are still important and worth analyzing in clickbaity vlogs to millions of viewers.
output, the stuff spoonfed to us by multibillion-dollar conglomerations via nearly every radio format; nearly every mainstream magazine, newspaper, and podcast; and via nearly every incidental platform (movies, TV shows, commercials, bars/restaurants/ clubs). To Rick Beato and his counterparts at Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The A.V. Club, The New York Times, NME, and elsewhere, independent or underground music barely registers, which is not just a tiny oversight. Globally in 2020, indie artists released more than 9.5 million tracks, eight times major-label artists’ 1.1 million. In the Financial Times, a former Spotify chief economist wrote that everyone should “be watching this industry as a living demonstration of what happens when barriers to entry fall. The pie definitely grows, but the number of creators wanting a piece of it grows even faster.”
In terms of labels, the largest piece of said pie belongs to the indies at 35.74%, or
In “… Music Is Getting Worse,” Rick Beato might have been better off simply saying, “Baby Boomer Bullshit-influenced music is dying out,” to which I would have replied with, first, “Welcome to 2001,” and, second, “You should probably get out more.” “… Music Is Getting Worse” came to me in a text thread I share with two buds back home, and I put off replying to Jeff and JC until I had watched the video enough times to start muttering to myself like Aqualung. As Rick’s tale unfolded, the gray-pompadoured, clean-shaven, small-chinned bro getting nostalgic about saving grunt-work pennies to buy vinyl when he was a kid (I feel ya, paisan), I thought a few times about how much different our worlds are, mine and Rick’s and also mine and Jeff and JC’s. Here in Fort Worth, the independent, underground music scene still cooks — there’s almost as much stellar rock, hip-hop, pop, and Americana now as there was 20 years ago when I first landed in town. Up where Jeff and JC live and where the three of us grew up, Pittsburgh, there’s never been much of a local scene at all. Our hamlet’s two greatest pop exports are a short-lived MTV pet (Donnie “Love Is Like a Rock” Iris) and a fantastic math-rock outfit no one below the Mason-Dixon Line has likely ever heard of (Don Caballero). My guess is that Sixburgh, baby, is not alone in this aridity. That still
doesn’t mean local, independent, underground musics do not matter or are somehow lesser. They’re there. We may just all be too beaten down by harsh, unforgiving reality to seek them out or support them. Rick et al. ignore them for one obvious reason. As with politics, all-important access to cultural shapers comes at a price.
The key for us may be to think — and feel — younger. Cue: Whitney. Which could be as easy as popping into a new venue on a weekend with a wad of dirty Hamiltons in our back pockets or letting our 12-year-olds choose our pre-dinner-hangs music.
As A. and I moved our bodies semi-rhythmically in the main bedroom, my sweet son once again expressed how much he really wants to go to “a rock show,” a bona fide concert, when last I’d checked, the only interesting acts coming to North Texas are Baby Boomer Bullshit artists. As much as I adore Santana, the Counting Crows, Deep Purple, and Yes (all Dickies), and Weezer (AAC), and The Roots and Jane’s Addiction (both Toyota), and Journey with Def Leppard and Steve Miller (Globe Life), and as wonderful as I think they’d all make for a first live throwdown for my boy, I just can’t swing it right now. I’m too stressed for the traffic and crowds, too cranky and broke for the prices, and just too un-young for all of it. I’m also maybe too woke? Seeing Future coming to the AAC in late August, I Googled him. Brah, it seems, is a womanizer and a deadbeat. Pass. I’d much rather save the 100 bucks I’d have spent on two Future concert tickets and apply that to my kid’s flour, butter, and baking powder budget.
Anyway, I bet A.’d be better off at a much less populated show, like at The Cicada, the Owl, Magnolia Motor Lounge, Tulips, or some other local spot — if he didn’t start getting drowsy at 10 p.m. sharp. I don’t even know if we’d be able to catch anything other than soundcheck before my son’s eyelids would begin to droop. (Thank you, Friday on the Green, for always starting at a god-fearing hour.) I’m also not sure his sensory-divergent self would be OK when smacked with the loudness attendant to a real rock concert, at a local venue or an arena.
The box office shows that millions of us don’t have that problem. The clamor for Taylor Swift, Metallica, Madonna, U2, Kenny Chesney, Coldplay, the Eagles, Nicki Minaj, and all the other arena- and stadium-filling acts who rolled across the globe the past two years has not gone away, and as we keep snatching up big-ticket tickets, we shamelessly scoot right past all our independent venues. The booking/managing platform Amptup says these repositories for sometimes catchy, sometimes dissonant sounds might be ultimately doomed by “a lack of standards around booking performances, high rent loads for venues, and fan lifestyle evolutions,” namely the “Netflix effect,” a sour mélange of “people now accustomed to staying on the couch, the shift to work from home, and budget constraints.”
The Cicada’s John Stevens, with wife and fellow co-owner Tyler Stevens: “In terms of being able to provide a great place for musicians and artists … I think we’ve had amazing success in our short time being open.”
Despite the loss of Lola’s, The Post, and Twilite Lounge, a handful of local addresses friendly to independent, underground, original music persists. Some are even percolating.
Since opening in March 2023, The Cicada has been doing “pretty well,” said John Stevens, who co-owns the Near Southside venue with wife Tyler Stevens. “Obviously, some weeks are better than others, depending on the bookings, but [it’s] growing more and more steady.”
With an SRO capacity of 150, The Cicada hosts live music three to five times a week. Success, John said, “is a relative term. Of course, like any other bar/venue, our success has to be measured in sales. Without revenue, we can’t keep the lights on and the doors open. Pretty simple. However, in terms of being able to provide a great place for musicians and artists to come play and create, building a clientele that loves to come enjoy great music and art, and building what we hope to be a home away from home for everyone in our community, I think we’ve had amazing success in our short time being open. Growing each day!”
The Boiled Owl always hosted occasional shows but brought in more right after the pandemic as a way to keep live, local, original music going, said owner Autumn Brackeen. Putting on two to four gigs a month, she said, has been “going really well. … With us being selective, we’re showcasing bands we really love.”
Taking a gander at the crowd is one way Brackeen measures success, “how many people are coming to see the band,” but “obviously, our sales are the way we measure it as well, and since we don’t charge a cover, usually sales are much better on our live music nights.”
Because the Magnolia Avenue-located Boiled Owl is a community tavern, Brackeen doesn’t want to run off her regulars with cover charges or too many shows, and Jon Carney feels similarly about his spot right down the street, the Chat Room Pub. You’ll never pay a cover at a Chat Room show.
“We’re kind of at a point where we’re not a live venue — that is crystal clear — but a lot of people like playing here,” he said, “and I’m going in this direction. A lot of my friends’ bands love playing here, and — again, clearly — it’s a built-in crowd.”
In Fort Worth, indie-rock and country/ Americana artists have a few homes. Based on some stories I’ve heard/read, it’s rap,
punk, and metal that need help. While Haltom Theater does a splendid job with Pantera-influenced, devil-horns-up rock and Growl Records regularly showcases punk, neither locale sits within Fort Worth city limits — with the Haltom in Haltom City and Growl in Arlington. And, troublingly, there really hasn’t been any outlet for rap since Lola’s closed. Since the genre is the most streamed (nearly 10.5 billion-with-a“b” tracks) and Fort Worth is the 12th largest city in the country, it’s bizarre that of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Top 25 cities in size, we may be the only one without a legit, steady place for rap/R&B/hip-hop.
Hand, recalling Big Heaven’s first time back onstage post-lockdown, at Growl, said, “It was a good show, but the scene definitely felt different. Gutted. The shutdown changed a lot of people’s habits forever.”
The Cicada, the Owl, and sometimes the Chat, plus MML, Tulips, the Ridglea Theater, Tannahill’s, and a couple other indie-friendly spots now benefit from the vast number of Fort Worth artists like Big Heaven, Denver Williams, and Ex-Regrets who either woodshedded during the lockdown to develop new songs or lineups or who ramped up writing and gigging after masks became optional. Royal Sons, Summer Dean, Henry the Archer, Cut Throat Finches, Hotel Satellite, Claire Hinkle, Arenda Light, Averi Burk, Spring Palace, Cory Cross, and quite a few others continue writing and performing regularly. With the days of humping it to earn a big, fat label deal long gone, success assumes different shapes for different artists.
“We would all like to make a lot of money and be famous rockstars, right?” Ex-Regrets’ Frenchtoast said. “At least that’s what 20-yearold me thought when I started taking writing and playing music seriously, but now that we are all in our late 30s and early 40s, just being able to continue writing songs, recording and releasing those songs, and being able to play shows is satisfying enough. We play our music because we have to, and if it ends up costing us money to do it, then so be it.”
Indie-rocker Williams also keeps grinding out of pure love for the craft.
“Every year or so for the last two decades,” he said, “I’ve had to shed the skin of what I previously thought success was. In the present, I feel successful. Every creative moment is a success. Being alive is a success. I think increasing capacity for acceptance and gratitude would be a reasonable goal for me — man, to stop wanting what they’re selling and to be of service in a manner compatible with my own rhythm. That sounds like what I want.”
Big Heaven’s Stephanie Benjamin sees the concept of community playing a large part of whatever success may mean to her and her bandmates.
“I gauge success by high turnout, new faces, and those moments you look out into the crowd and you see others singing along to the songs you’ve written,” she said. “Success is also collaborative work with other bands, such as [defunct Fort Worth label] Dreamy Life’s Group Therapy albums. And, honestly, I hate to say it, but we all know it’s true: Success would be so much sweeter if venues paid bands better.”
Money and “fame” have never been the point, Frenchtoast added. “My advice to other independent artists is to do it because you love it. Even if you are putting out songs that a few people listen to or you play shows that a few people attend, still keep doing it anyway because it fulfills something within you. Make friends with other bands and support the small venues in your area. Being a part of that community is special, and the memories will last longer than any money or fame ever will.”
As an oldice who escaped his Rust Belt backwater two decades ago, I now have friends/fellow escapees across the country, and when I rave about Fort Worth’s music scene to them, past and present, they look at me as if I said everyone in Texas builds their own furniture and butchers their own meat. My out-of-town pals, their eyebrows raised, not so subtly say, Why would anyone bother making music outside their bedroom or friend-filled patio when you can just listen to Led Zeppelin IV for the 9 millionth time?
As “worse” as mainstream music is allegedly getting, we’re probably as much to blame for its terribleness as quantized beats and AutoTune. If money talks, then we’re saying — screaming — that we want more “old” music, and I can easily see why. With democracy about to die, the planet on fire, a new mass shooting every week, and scores of other terrors, life is frightening. The familiar, the known, the loved — these qualities steel the bond between us and the songs (or films or writings or paintings) that soothe our beleaguered souls best. We also may be so resistant to new music because opening ourselves to never-heard-before sounds requires patience and non-passive engagement, and our bandwidths are simply tapped, our patience gone. Everyone’s burned out.
Roughly one in three U.S. parents say parenting is stressful “most of the time,” according to a 2023 report by the Pew Research Center, and in another 2023 report by another agency, nearly 60% of 722 working parents surveyed feel they suffer from “parental burnout.”
Work is also crushing us, all of us, not just parents. One report says that about 82% of U.S. employees are at risk of burnout this year and that “only half of employers design work with well-being in mind.”
Gen Zs and millennials may be the worst off. Not only are they working more and earning less than every previous generation, but they also came of age during times of unprecedented collective trauma (9/11, mass/ school shootings, social media). So much incremental stress, anxiety, and possibly real psychological or physical damage make straying from the known and familiar — from the songs we don’t skip to the people we text back immediately — a major undertaking.
And when Zs and millennials look back for comfort, it’s not to music (or cinema or literature or visual art). They go to video games. A 2022 study says that more than half of Zs feel gaming just makes them feel better.
“I game for nostalgia,” one young woman told The Guardian, adding that it “eases my mind and lets me escape into a continued on page 7
Juan R. Govea
different world. [It’s] an excellent stress- and anxiety-reliever.”
Video games: also not going to local shows.
Wrapping up our mini-disco, A. and I hugged out our mutual yet charming embarrassment and hit the kitchen for them-there tacos.
Busting moves with him to Future and a couple other mumblecore rappers was the best I’d felt about music in a long time, and it wasn’t even the beats and melodies themselves that I was particularly jazzed about. It was the cosmic community the trippy sounds engendered between my son and me. I couldn’t deny it. The vibe turbocharged my brain.
Inspired, on my long drive back from the office the next day, I clicked No. 2 on my preset dial. Once my favorite local outlet for new, progressive, mostly non-major-label music, KXT hasn’t touched my ears in years, not surprisingly since around the time of the pandemic, when my bandwidth and patience began to fray into the scuffed, knotted bundle of strings it is now. Aside from some Baby Boomer Bullshit, this KXT experience teased out a smile on my heart. Nothing wowed me into Shazaming it, but I didn’t feel attacked by anything, either.
Small steps. And I’ll keep stepping right into the Ridglea Theater on Friday for a show by Heretic Klick, an ICP-ish rap duo (facepaint and all) from Arlington by way of *checks notes* Lubbock. My goal is twofold. 1.) I want to experience live music outside what I normally dig — to rattle my comfort zone a little and to support the entire scene, not just my favored (indie-rocking) retreats. And 2.) I’d also like to rebuild some of my bandwidth. And that’s not going to happen if I keep lounging at home, doomscrolling, rattling my fist at clouds, and whining, crying, and writing whiny columns like this. I don’t anticipate joining Juggalo Nation Friday, but just to be sure, I’m eyeing that Hotel Satellite/ Cut Throat Finches gig at the Chat the following night. Downbeat is at the oldice-friendly hour of 7 p.m. Hey, ho, let’s go.
Now’s the time to take those non-giant steps. Seeing live, independent, underground music, especially if it’s outside your favorite genres or locales, and purchasing new or new-to-you music (hopefully also local) inveighs against the night, against the death of democracy and the planet, against your more simplistic, less brave, and, I’m going to say it, most boring self. By breaking out of our fetal positions at the foot of the couch, the glow of the Netflix logo from the TV nearby bleeding red across our tear-strewn faces, we will declare, “You shall not pass!” to the gloom. Burnout, schmurnout. Go grab that ring.
One part of combating the universal malaise, shifting perspective targets the root cause: ourselves. Taking inventory of our mindsets and assumptions may allow us to distinguish between the changeable aspects of our lives and the truly fixed ones. Two things I know I can switch up are my environment and my routine, which is why I’ll see you all
at the Ridglea Friday for some sweet, sweet Lubbock Juggalo action.
At the same time, I’ll also be effectuating another burnout countermeasure. For an hour or so, I’ll be able to reduce my exposure to stressors by burying my doomscroll device in my back pocket. Along with eating healthy (mostly), sleeping well (sure), and exercising (meh), keeping my phone a safe distance from my face, even if only temporarily, will constitute the best self-care I can think of right now. I can already feel my bandwidth and patience growing just thinking about it. And the Ridglea. What a cool, unconventional conventional place. We should all check it out more often.
One guy who could use a trip or five to his local castlelike indie venue is Rick Beato. In a user comment on “… Music Is Getting Worse,” @lefty7744 says, “There’s still good music being made. You’re just not looking past the Top 10 billboards and think that this is representative of all the music made nowadays.”
@zsoltbartus169 also has thoughts. Music is not getting worse, they say. Rick is “just looking for it in the wrong place.”
Chewing on “… Music Is Getting Worse,” I can’t help imagining Rick strapped to a highchair whining about the creamed peas being jammed down his throat when he could simply just unsnap himself, drive to the supermarket, buy a T-bone, and slap it on the grill out back. Ex-Regrets’ Frenchtoast implicitly agrees with the commenters. “Music, in general, has not changed. There are still a lot of great local bands all over the world, and with the internet, it’s as easy as ever to find [them] if you know where to look.”
Surf the streaming services. Pick up the local alt-weeklies. Tune into college radio (KXT and KTCU here — our once beloved KNTU is all crotch-rock now). Ask clever friends for recommendations. Put down the TV remote, use those creaky joints to stand up from the couch, and start heading out to the highway. Or the streets, for you urban dwellers.
“There are a lot of younger acts that are really doing the work to get out of town and get seen,” said Big Heaven’s Hand. “It would be cool if the younger bands and the longer-running local bands had more contact and acquaintance with each other. I’m thinking specifically of what [Fort Worth production company] TRND MUSIC is doing. As much as possible I go to those shows … to support and get to know them.”
Hand also says she enjoys events by Hear Fort Worth and Amplify 817, two government-adjacent programs, plus the Near Southside’s live series Lost ’N Sound. “I think the Fort Worth scene is small enough that all of these players should collaborate more.”
Maybe Rick’s car is in the shop. Maybe his Wi-Fi is iffy. Or maybe Rick Beato is so ensconced in his national-media bubble, he’s forgotten about the independent underground. Like every other cultural tastemaker, he probably sees only what he wants to see, and I say this with all respect: All national media exchange coverage for access, and all well-moneyed companies eagerly play along.
Exceptional artists are out there, Rick and Jeff and JC. You’ve just got to unstrap yourself from the highchair first. l
STUFF
Beltin’ Beltre
Celebrating the former Ranger third baseman’s induction into the MLB Hall of Fame.
STORY AND PHOTO BY OZZIE GARZA
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Going to Cooperstown is every baseball fan’s Field of Dreams.
It is to me since I journeyed to Upstate New York to witness the induction of Texas Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre into the Baseball Hall of Fame, perhaps the best-known sports shrine in the world.
Only 1% of all the players who have donned a Major League uniform have this honor bestowed on them.
On Sunday, Beltre was joined by players Todd Helton (Colorado Rockies) and Joe Mauer (Minnesota Twins) plus manager Jim Leyland as they all became part of the exclusive fraternity.
The festivities began Saturday as dozens of Hall of Famers took part in the annual Parade of Legends. Thousands of spectators lined the town’s Main Street to greet and cheer the legends.
An estimated 25,000 baseball-loving fans converged on the small village whose population numbers fewer than 2,000. The town has only one traffic light. Its residents boast that it’s “a drinking town with a baseball problem.”
media, he thanked everyone: his agent, managers, coaches, trainers, clubhouse staff, and even media members who helped him during his 21-year Major League career also playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, and Boston Red Sox.
Beltre had high words of praise for the Rangers organization, where he spent his last eight years and quickly became a fan favorite.
“The support I got from the Texas fans was unbelievable,” he said. “They accepted me from Day 1. They never once booed me, and for that, I will always be grateful. Like they say, everything is bigger in Texas, and you showed me big love.”
It was like a Rangers reunion as several of Beltre’s Texas teammates joined him in Cooperstown, including Elvis Andrus, Robinson Chirinos, Nelson Cruz, Ian Kinsler, Colby Lewis, Mitch Moreland, and David Murphy. Also in attendance were fellow Hall of Famer Pudge Rodriguez and former Rangers general manager Jon Daniels, who brought Beltre to Texas.
During Beltre’s illustrious career, he was a four-time All-Star, five-time Gold Glove winner, and five-time Silver Slugger and is the only third baseman in MLB history with more than 3,000 hits and 450 home runs.
Despite all his accomplishments, he had one more challenge, and he admitted it to the media in Cooperstown. “I don’t like to speak in public.”
Beltre had practiced his speech in front of his wife and kids and said he was nervous. It didn’t show on Sunday as he spoke in front of thousands of fans and did a marvelous job speaking in both English and Spanish.
The talented, baseball-loving Beltre, who was signed at age 15 by the Dodgers and made his Major League debut at age 19, expressed his great appreciation to the late Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda for believing in him.
“Baseball was my passion, and it blessed me with countless opportunities,” he said. “And the best part is I loved it. I love baseball, and I had so much fun playing the game.” l
Later, speaking to the English-speaking
Prior to the parade, the four Hall of Fame inductees were made available to the media. Beltre addressed the Spanishspeaking media first, many from his native Dominican Republic. He expressed his gratitude for the support he received from his fellow countrymen early in his career. The slugger became the fifth Hall of Famer from the Dominican Republic, joining Juan Marichal, Pedro Martinez, Vladimir Guerrero Sr., and David Ortiz. He believes a sixth person will join them soon when Albert Pujols becomes eligible in 2028.
Ozzie Garza has been writing about baseball and the Rangers for more than 25 years. He is a frequent contributor to the Fort Worth Weekly
Adrian Beltre is the only third baseman in MLB history with more than 3,000 hits and 450 home runs.
On view through August 25
SCREEN
Heeling Factor
Deadpool and Wolverine’s bromance is finally consummated in this sugar-high superhero saga.
BY KRISTIAN LIN
In the original Deadpool, the titular hero (Ryan Reynolds) gripes about the X-Men series: “Those timelines are so confusing.” Now, though, they’ve rejiggered the timelines so that Deadpool teams up with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and not the same Wolverine who died at the end of Logan. It doesn’t exactly take a genius to see that the eternally grumpy John Logan would be a dream comic pairing with Wade Wilson, who has a deep-seated need to make a joke out of everything. They tried to make something like this happen with Josh Brolin in Deadpool 2, and while Brolin isn’t a bad comic actor, Jackman is nimbler and more responsive, and that’s one reason why this third installment is such a hit.
The opening credit sequence does have Deadpool trying to dig up the Wolverine from Logan, with bad results. Our bulletproof Canadian is having a full-fledged mid-life crisis after being rejected by the Avengers, and when he finds out that the government bureau in charge of the superhero universes is planning on destroying his world along with all his friends, it cues his search for a Wolverine in another timeline who can help
him save his world. That in turn kicks off a montage of Deadpool being killed in various ways by various Wolverines (not all of them played by Jackman). Eventually he and the worst Wolvy, a drunk and a loser who wears the yellow Spandex that the original X-Men film rejected, get tossed into a netherworld called The Void.
The Void is a funny dystopia, and not so much because its wasteland terrain gives the movie a chance to parody the Mad Max series. No, what makes this place worth spending time in is the fact that it’s an exile land for superheroes and supervillains who’ve been deemed surplus to requirements. This occasions a boatload of cameos from superfolk whom I haven’t given a second thought to in the last 20 years. Director/co-writer Shawn Levy showed in his last film Free Guy that he could play around with the Disney/Marvel intellectual properties without the jokes turning stale or cheesy. Occasionally the movie references overload here,
but it’s worth it to see big stars taking up old roles or new ones. Also, The Void is ruled by Charles Xavier’s twin sister (Emma Corrin), who has his superpowers but is also evil, and she makes a sneakily formidable supervillain as she probes both Deadpool’s and Wolverine’s deepest fears and insecurities, at one point impersonating Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) and telling Wade that nobody needs him.
It can be hazardous casting actors who are longtime friends opposite each other, as they can coast through scenes on the assumption that their real-life chemistry will automatically translate to the screen. It’s a testament to Reynolds and Jackman that they’re both sharp whether they’re bitching at each other with real hostility or facing their own private demons.
Inevitably, there’s a sequence where they fight each other, and Deadpool turns to the camera beforehand and says, “Grab your special sock, nerds. We’re about to give everybody what they want.”
Later, when they truly become a team, their realization of how much they’ve come to need each other is actually moving.
Deadpool’s original collection of friends doesn’t have a great deal to do here, which is too bad because the whole movie is about him trying to save them and finding purpose in being around them. The running subplot about an ugly dog who melts Deadpool’s heart (and its owner, whom he instantly hates) doesn’t accomplish much, either. Still, Levy executes an impressive side-panning one-take shot as our heroes kill their way through an army of Deadpools and manages to steer the proceedings through potential rough spots. Strange how the hack director behind Cheaper by the Dozen and the Night at the Museum movies has risen in my estimation recently. The partnership of Reynolds and Jackman has been teased endlessly during the past eight years, and it would have been easy for the final product to be underwhelming after all that. Instead, Deadpool & Wolverine delivers a much-needed shot of energy to the whole Marvel series. For that, Deadpool gets to call himself “Marvel Jesus.” l
Hugh Jackman is grossed out while Ryan Reynolds bonds with an exceptionally ugly dog in Deadpool & Wolverine
Photo by Jay Maidment
Deadpool & Wolverine
Starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. Directed by Shawn Levy. Written by Shawn Levy, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells, and Ryan Reynolds. Rated R.
(detail), 1913, oil on canvas. Lent by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The John R. Van Derlip Fund. © 2023 Artists Rights Society
Willem and Jan Dermoyen, after Bernard van Orley, The Advance
the Imperial Army and Counterattack of the French Cavalry Led by King Francis I (detail), c. 1528–31, wool, silk, gold, and silver thread. Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples
DRINKING LOCAL
Corazon y Alma
Promotional Feature
La Pulga Spirits was established by three natives of Fort Worth - Sarah Castillo, a renowned Ft. Worth restaurateur (Taco Heads, Tinies Mexican Cuisine, Sidesaddle Saloon); Andrew De La Torre, a club proprietor and the overseer of the Northside Fort Worth open-air market; and Stephen Slaughter, a local entrepreneur and real estate developer.
Our brand originated at the community’s open-air flea market known as La Pulga. Enriched with cultural diversity, La Pulga has been a hub and an introduction to the Northside of Fort Worth since the 1940s. A cherished spot for many, it stands as one of the oldest flea markets in the United States, making it the ideal home for our brand.
Agave matures slowly, taking about eight years. Our skilled jimadors meticulously select and uproot only the
Blue Weber Agave plants with the best sugar content. Using a precise tool called a coa, they remove the leaves to expose the plant’s core, the piña.
Following hand-chopping, our piñas undergo cooking in a blend of an autoclave and horno brick ovens for uniform cooking. They are then crushed using a roller mill to extract the agave nectar.
The resulting blend is left to ferment for three to six days, distilled, and occasionally aged in wooden casks.
Our La Pulga Reposado ages for a minimum of two months, while our Reposado typically matures for 7 months.
Crafted in the traditional manner, La Pulga spirits are handmade without any additives, concentrates, or artificial coloring – just the essence of blue agave and the spirit of the land.
This National Tequila Day, opt for a local, additive-free choice!
The Texas nonprofit World Fandom aims to educate the public about animation, cinema, costume design, dance, gaming, music, and other forms of traditional and popular art and culture through member gatherings and public events. This year, World Fandom brings its annual AnimeFest/GameFest to Tarrant County at the new Loews Hotel & Convention Center (888 Nolan Ryan Expy, Arlington, 682-318-2810) from noon Thursday to 3pm Sunday. Meet actors and participate in cosplay, gaming, panel discussions, and more. Adult daily tickets start at $50, and weekend passes are $60 at AnimeFest.org.
Meaningful Conversations
Fort Worth, a group looking for “the deeper truths that unite us,” is hosting an event called In Search of True Friendship at
The Dock Bookshop (6637 Meadowbrook Dr, Fort Worth, 817-457-5700) from 7pm to 9pm. The spiritual perspective of the Bahá’í teachings on the subject will be discussed, as will practical ways to build a like-minded community. While there is no cost to attend, please RSVP via Eventbrite.com.
Tap dancing has found me again. For my musings on the subject, look for “I’d Tap That” on FWWeekly. com. For an experience IRL, attend the Tap Now: Summer Tap Workshop at Arts Fifth Avenue (1628 5th Av, Fort Worth, 817923-9500) from 9am to 5pm. There will be 45-minute classes at different skill levels and with various instructors throughout the day. Classes are $25 each (you can also take two for $45 or three for $65), tap lunch is $10, and the tap talk and film at the end of the continued on page 22
World Fandom brings its AnimeFest/GameFest to Arlington Thu-Sun.
Courtesy AnimeFest.org
EATS & drinks
‘Dopest’ Way To Do Good
Taste Community Restaurant’s proposed expansion continues their quiet, grace-filled mission to feed everyone.
Taste Community Restaurant, 1200 S Main St, FW. 817-759-9045. 9am-2pm Sun, Tue-Sat.
BY LAURIE JAMES
Influencer and fighter — and famous food lover — Keith Lee dropped into Tarrant County earlier this year to do what he does best. The MMA featherweight has slammed
and hammerfisted his 15 minutes of fame into much longer by regularly shining a light on family-owned, small restaurants in TikTok segments. I ignored this whole happening partly because Lee took to his platform to ask for help picking places, which I think is lazy. Is his Wi-Fi down? There are at least three foodie groups already amateur-reviewing everything in the 817, and for the love of all that is holy and deepfried, this publication has been producing a food-forward Best Of issue every year since the late 1990s. However, my cynical heart grew three sizes the day Lee pronounced Taste Community Restaurant “the dopest” eatery of any kind he’s “ever seen.” In a massive generosity smackdown, the fightin’
foodie also made a $4,000 donation to the organization.
Taste is a nonprofit combating hunger with grace and dignity. Their philosophy is based off Psalm 34. Anyone can eat there, and diners pay what they can afford. If $100 per sitting doesn’t put you in the red, you are supporting other diners’ meals. It’s the definition of paying it forward.
Chef Jeff Williams and wife Julie Williams founded Taste in 2017. Jeff ran an IT business, which Julie said “comes in handy” when we chatted recently. Jeff was also a chef at Central Market Cooking School, and Julie’s sales and marketing experience has definitely also been useful.
This year, Taste will expand into a second location, this one in Arlington, near UTA, Arlington High School, and the Levitt Pavilion. The location is also about a mile from THR Arlington Memorial Hospital. A grant from the Amon G. Carter Foundation is helping, and the Williamses have raised around $2.6 million of the nearly $3 million needed to rehab the old city building into a 100-seat restaurant with a production kitchen and a classroom.
In 2017, a Weekly food reviewer was captivated by the creativity in Taste’s kitchen. Not only can people in need enjoy a really lovely three-course meal of their choosing, but this concept is a model for extending the resources of full-time kitchens and shelters. Over the last seven years, Taste has expanded services to include culinary job training and apprenticeships, which means that people with limited experience can become experts and find jobs that pay a decent wage.
The problem of food insecurity is broad and deep. Thirteen percent of Tarrant County residents don’t have enough money left at the end of the month for their food budgets, and up to a third of people who don’t have enough to eat make too much money to qualify for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) –– among them are some of our school employees and active-duty military personnel. The Williamses estimate that 200,000-plus people have dined at Taste since its inception.
The restaurant launched a series of celebrity chef fundraising dinners in 2019, which unfortunately dwindled during 2020, continued on page 17
Keith Lee (left, pictured with co-founder Julie Williams) said Taste is “the dopest restaurant I’ve ever seen.”
Everyone’s welcome at the Taste Community Restaurant. Pay what you can — or a little extra.
Eats & Drinks
but the event geared back up in June. So far, chefs Jon Bonnell (Bonnell’s, Waters, Jon’s Grille, Buffalo Bros.) and Juan Rodriguez (Magdalena’s, the forthcoming La Coqueta) have made magic and food philanthropy in the Taste kitchen. This week, Kevin Martinez (Tokyo Café, Yatai Food Kart, Heirloom Garden Café) continues his community-building generosity with a BYOB dinner. Unlike regular dining at Taste, tickets (starting at $150 per couple) must be purchased in advance at TasteProject.org/event.
Julie said the celebrity chef dinners provide a level of support during summer, when there’s historically a surge in dining. Since 2020, more school districts are providing year-round meal service for children, but as Julie said, “As a parent, your kids can eat, but you don’t eat with them.”
Taste sees an uptick of families dining together in the summer. The chef dinners help support nutritious meals that may actually increase diners’ healthy food choices ––veggies, whole fruits, fewer refined grains, and less processed or fried food. Taste’s current seasonal lunch menu includes carne asada, ahi tuna, a chicken fattoush appetizer, elote salad, and a peach tart for dessert.
And Julie called the Arlington location
Taste Celebrity Chef Dinner w/Kevin Martinez 6pm-8pm Fri at Taste Community Restaurant, 1200 S Main St, FW. $150 per couple. 817759-9045. TasteProject.org/event.
on North Cooper Street “perfect” for the organization’s mission.
“We’re walking distance to UTA and to the hospital,” she said. “We’d originally looked at some locations on campus, but we wanted to serve the broader community, and this would be easier off campus.”
The original Taste is walking distance from the Hospital District on the Near Southside, which is something that Julie says is an important consideration for their client base.
Beloved PBS icon Mr. Rogers famously said that when we see tragedy, “look for the helpers.” It speaks volumes when three busy Fort Worth chefs leave their own establishments to promote another restaurant. Bonnell and Rodriguez are known for their generosity among the food folk in town, and Martinez spearheaded an effort to prep and serve 48,000 meals to displaced food workers during the dismal COVID spring of 2020.
With a “soft spot” for Chef Williams, Rodriguez said that he and his team “are just trying to do something special” for Taste. Chefs from Sanford House and Café Americana in Arlington are set to take their turn in the Taste kitchen over the next two months.
If you want to be a “Taste Bud,” or volunteer, the restaurant is still fundraising for the last parts of their capital campaign. Visit
TasteProject.org to give now –– an Arlington donor is currently matching donations for the new location. Because Taste depends on volunteer effort, Julie said recruitment for the Arlington location can start right now in Fort Worth.
“Sign up to train [at TasteProject.org], and the system will walk you through a series of videos,” Julie said. “It’s all online training, and then you shadow another person for a shift.”
Volunteers as young as age 14 can become Taste Buds, and Julie said that families with children as young as age 12 can volunteer together as part of the “dopest” restaurant that Keith Lee has ever seen. l
continued from page 15
Volunteer with Chef Jeff Williams (center) to be a “Taste Bud” at the Fort Worth location.
Taste’s forthcoming location will serve the second largest city in Tarrant County.
ATE DAY8 a Week
Here are eight great food and booze activities in North Texas this month and next. It’s shaping up to be a delicious July and August!
BY ELAINE WILDER
Thu, Jul 25
White Rhino Coffee (three Tarrant County locations), the community-focused cafe offering breakfast sandwiches, craft coffee made with White Rhino beans roasted here in North Texas — the company was founded here, after all — and housemade pastries, has added a Seasonal Summer Sips & Pastries menu available now thru Tue, Aug 27. Summer drink options include an almond-apricot latte and a summer berry lemonade. An almond-apricot loaf, summer berry pop tart, and cookies-and-cream cookies are part of the tasty food menu.
Fri, Jul 26
Summer is the busiest time of year for Taste Project and its Community Restaurant (1200 S Main St, Fort Worth, 682-233-1255), the local nonprofit devoted to feeding the less fortunate. Due to an uptick in needy customers, Taste is hosting a series of fundraising events. For the first Celebrity Chef Dinner 6pm-8pm, award-winning Chef Kevin Martinez (Tokyo Cafe, Yatai Food Cart, Heirloom Garden Cafe) will prepare a multicourse meal. Tickets start at $150 on Eventbrite.com. This event is BYOB. For additional Celebrity Chef Dinners and fundraisers, visit TasteProject.org/Events.
Wed, Jul 31
Enjoy a 50% discount on chicken wings during Wing Wednesdays at Pour Decisions (2800 Bledsoe St, Ste 200, Fort Worth, 682-203-0726) 5pm-midnight thru Wed, Oct 2. The offer is valid for six-piece, eight-piece, or 12-piece orders, plus all party packs (except fries) are $5 off.
Sat, Aug 3
Grab that slide rule and koozie (and a bunch of napkins). Rahr & Sons Brewing (701 Galveston Av, Fort Worth, 817-810-9266) wants to take you back to school. As part of BrisketU (10am-1pm), a BrisketU-Certified Backyard Pitmaster will teach the art of smoking, including trimming techniques, rubs and prep, meat and wood selection, smoke profiles, fire management, timing, and slicing the end product. The cost is $139 per person at BrisketU.com.
From noon-6pm, support local Black-owned businesses at the Taste of Black Fort Worth: Food Truck & Vendor Edition at the Samaria Baptist Church (4000 E Berry St, Fort Worth, 817-536-6421), where you’ll be able to sample food from all over North Texas. Admission is $5 for adults, and kids get in free.
Sun, Aug 11
20 soul food vendors from North Texas, Austin, and Houston will participate in the Fort Worth Soul Food Festival at Eventos Licon (8629 Camp Bowie West, Ste 8629, Fort Worth, 817-944-4606) from noon to 4pm, presented by Chow.Tyme Bakery (@ Chow.TymeBakery). Enjoy candied yams, fish, fried chicken, funnel cake, greens, oxtails, pork chops, tacos, turkey legs, and vegan options. The vendor market offers accessories, bath and body items, health products, jewelry, menswear, and more. Tickets are $49.99 on Eventbrite.com.
Today is also the day for the Fort Worth Community Market, which happens every second Sunday of the month. This one falls during back-to-school time, so come stock up on fruits and veggies at the South Main
MicroPark (105 S Main St, Fort Worth, @ HoneySuckleRoseEvents) from 11am to 4pm. Along with 50 booths of handmade/ homegrown items from area artisans, this family-/pet-friendly event also has a pop-up bar serving cocktails, plus food trucks, face painting, and live music. There is no cost to attend. Free street parking and paid parking in several lots are available. Carpooling is always recommended.
Sun, Aug 15
Now thru Thu, Sep 12, Restaurant506 at the Sanford House (506 N Center St, Arlington, 817-861-2129) is hosting a series of cocktail classes called Pick Your Poison. My pick is today’s Mojito Class from 6pm to 7pm, as that sounds the most refreshing to me. Experienced bartenders will guide guests through making the perfect mojito. Along with the newly learned tips and tricks, sample drinks, and light snacks, you will receive a recipe to take home. Tickets are $35 at TSH-Events.com.
White Rhino Coffee has created a Seasonal Summer Sips & Pastries menu available now thru Tue, Aug 27.
Enjoy a 50% discount on chicken wings during Wing Wednesdays at Pour Decisions.
Handmade and homegrown items from area artisans and growers will fill the Fort Worth Community Market on Aug 11.
MUSIC
Sheprador’s Hot ‘Take’
Mixing
a little
Springsteen
and
R.E.M.,
the new band of longtime musicians has a lot of love to give.
BY STEVE STEWARD
Garrett North wasn’t sure what took him so long, but in January 2024 at the age of 32, after two decades of playing music, he booked his first studio session to flesh out a demo he’d made of a single song. Six months later, that demo turned into him fronting a full band with a whole set’s worth of material which debuted in the headlining spot at The Cicada in late June. Tiny Giants and Vacation Dad handled the opening slots, and the club was full. Sheprador played like they’d been at it for years rather than a few studio sessions that grew into regular rehearsals over a few months, and I felt like I’d seen Fort Worth’s next don’t-sleep-on-them band.
North said that when he booked time with Mark Randall and Nick Tittle at Blackstone Recording Studio on the East Side in January, “I had this new tune that I’d recently written, kind of a bare-bones, three-chord cowboy song called ‘Take.’ And from there, that’s where the whole thing kind of took off.”
For nearly a decade, North, a drummer and guitarist, had the concept of the band and its name (shared with his dog Waylon, a shepherd/Labrador mix, or a Sheprador), but he’d never released any music. “Part of that was never really having the people around to rehearse and write with in a live setting.”
He did have experience playing with others. Like many local musicians — a good chunk of the Texas Gentlemen comes to mind — North honed his chops playing drums at church.
“I’ve been playing drums since I was 10,” he said, “and I did that for most of my life into my early 20s, playing church gigs for money … but I’d never really played in bands. None of my friends were musicians, at the time. Nobody I really hung out with played music. But I’ve always been a songwriter, playing guitar and writing stuff by myself. … It’s always just been a thing I’ve done for me, and that’s how [Sheprador] started. I always wanted to make a legit record, just for myself. I enjoy playing music. I enjoy recording.”
North said he’s spent a ton of time watching music documentaries heavy on in-studio footage, and he wanted to turn his vicarious experience into the real thing.
“I’ve always wanted to do that, kind of get in [the studio] and see what happens,” he said, “and that’s what occurred in January. I came into [Blackstone] with a song that was pretty rough and didn’t really have a sound or a direction for it, and then [Sheprador’s Jordan Dyer] laid down this keyboard part with a Rhodes sound, and I thought, ‘Oh, this kind of sounds like an ’80s thing.’ ”
After finishing that song, North said, “I noticed it sounded an awful lot like the stuff I was writing eight years ago, when I was doing a lot of home recordings after work and on weekends. So, I kind of unearthed those demos that I had on my computer, and those ideas have now turned into songs that we’ve recorded.”
North said that about a month before he went into the studio, Dyer, whom he knew from various Near Southside live music/ drinking establishments, coincidentally reached out to him looking to collaborate, “to do some keyboard work or drum work, just looking to record with people,” North said. He hadn’t yet booked the Blackstone session, but once it was scheduled, North called Dyer, who “came in, and we ran through the song. I showed him the chord changes. We spent some time getting a keyboard sound, let that marinate, and then when we got locked into that Rhodes sound. It opened a lot of possibilities.”
North’s only direction: “I didn’t want it to sound country at all.”
Though the track might have started out with “cowboy chords,” “Take” sounds far
closer to R.E.M. than Townes Van Zandt. Its mid-tempo velocity comes from studio-drummer Nick Tittle (Arenda Light) and bassist Aaron Haskin (Dead Vinyl), with guitarist/ keyboardist Eric Webb (Cut Throat Finches) complementing Dyer’s keys and North’s guitar.
On “Take,” North and his band package a lot of soul-searching and a big singalong hook in the kind of chorus-and-reverb-guitar texture that carried Bruce Springsteen to the heights of his late-’80s power, boosted to maximum wattage in the choruses by Katie Robertson’s and Claire Hinkle’s backing harmonies. The combo of Blackstone engineer Mark Randall’s production and Jordan Richardson’s mastering at Electric Barryland in Justin gives the song major Big Single energy. If you tuned into KTCU or KXT and heard “Take” — or “Exit/In,” the other Sheprador song North released recently — you might wonder if it was a deep cut from Tunnel of Love.
Like the Boss’ voice, North’s is comfortable in a lower register. On “Take,” he contemplates the difficulties inherent in a relationship, and his low notes make the melancholy in his melody stand out like the grain and whorls in a piece of polished oak.
“It takes a little heart,” he sings, his voice sounding like a warm blanket offered as a prelude to bad news. “It takes a little effort on your part / And it might take a while / Take some of the shine out of your smile.”
North said his songwriting is rooted in sadness. “I think I write about painful things, coming from feelings of hopelessness, but I try to write in a way that helps me come to terms with all that.”
North, a father, is present to life’s rampant dangers and despair, but having a child has softened his viewpoint a little.
“I think the way I look at the world has changed,” he said. “I do feel more hopeful about life. I have to. I have to show [my daughter] that there are good things in the world, and I try to write to show that there’s a lot worth living for. Even …,” he chuckled in the way one might after escaping some ominous scenario, “even when that thing that’s worth living for doesn’t go the way you were expecting.”
For now, one of those positive motivations is finishing a full-length.
“We’re not that far into the recording for the album,” North said, “but we’ve got most of the songs written. … Before, all the songs were demos I’d done myself, and I thought it would be a solo project with me playing all the instruments, but now we’ve been writing as a band, and that’s been interesting. … It just happened in such a way that it got better with every session, adding that other ear, that other skill set.”
Sheprador hopes to release the album early next year.
“Honestly,” North said, “I didn’t have any intentions of playing shows, let alone go on the road … but … we have several [concerts] lined up. Part of being in a band around here is that you see the same bands at the same places every five weeks or so. I want to get out to Denton and Dallas, Austin, wherever we can go.”
With songs as good as “Take” in their set and a live debut that left the crowd amped and excited for Show No. 2 (which, as it happens, is at the Double Wide in Dallas on Saturday, Aug. 17), Sheprador’s road looks wide open. l
Sheprador’s Garrett North: “I’ve always wanted to … get in [the studio] and see what happens, and that’s what occurred in January.”
Sheprador’s debut performance, at The Cicada, displayed the polish of a veteran band.
LEGAL NOTICE
SUMMONS BY PUBLICATION, CARE AND PROTECTION, TERMINATION OF PARENTAL RIGHTS, DOCKET NUMBER 23CP0065PT, Trial Court of Massachusetts, Juvenile Court Department, COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, Berkshire County Juvenile Court, 190 North Street, Pittsfield, MA 01201. 413-443-8533. TO: William Evans, Father of Josiah Nathan Delph dob: 02/27/2008 born to Christine Elizabeth Delph in Oak Harbor, WA: A petition has been presented to this court by DCF, seeking, as to the following child, Josiah N Delph, that said child be found in need of care and protection and committed to the Department of Children and Families. The court may dispense the rights of the person(s) named herein to receive notice of or to consent to any legal proceeding affecting the adoption, custody, or guardianship or any other disposition of the child named herein, if it finds that the child is in need of care and protection and that the best interests of the child would be served by said disposition.
You are hereby ORDERED to appear in this court, at the court address set forth above, on the following date and time: 09/27/2024 at 11:00 AM Other Hearing
You may bring an attorney with you. If you have a right to an attorney and if the court determines that you are indigent, the court will appoint an attorney to represent you.
If you fail to appear, the court may proceed on that date and any date thereafter to a trial on the merits and adjudication of this matter.
For further information, call the Office of the Clerk- Magistrate at 413-443-8533. WITNESS: Hon. Joan M McMenemy, FIRST JUSTICE, DATE ISSUED: 07/03/2024, Mary Gallant-Cote, CLERK-MAGISTRATE.
day is free. To register or learn more, visit ArtsFifthAvenue.org/tap-summer-workshops.html.
This week’s your last chance to catch the spellbinding Surrealism and Us, “the first intergenerational show dedicated to Caribbean and African diasporic art,” at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (3200 Darnell St, Fort Worth, 817-738-9215). Many Caribbean and Black artists, evidently, gravitated toward the movement. Some to make a statement. Others to channel the universe or the universal mind. Even others to do some Voodoo. Museum hours are 10am-5pm TueThu, 10am-8pm Fri, and 10am-5pm Sat-Sun (the final two days). Tickets are $16 daily, except for Free Fridays, at TheModern.org. Anthony Mariani
Along with getting heavy rotation on KXT with the track “Talkin’ to Myself,” Sarah Shook & The Disarmers also do one of my personal favorites, “Fuck Up.” (Cleary, I didn’t hear that on the FM dial.) Shook also produced Fort Worth native Izzy Ryder’s debut Nashville album, Barefoot and Brooding, which dropped in May. Sarah Shook & The Disarmers play with Frankie Leonie at The Cicada (1002 S Main St, Fort Worth, @the_cicada_ftw) at 8pm. Tickets are $16 on TixR.com.
Weekly folk both love and hate Tuesdays equally This day is when we put this bad boy to bed every week. The press deadline means something
different today. The issue at hand — or paw, as it were — is our second annual Creature Comforts animal-oriented edition. From head to tail, this issue will cover our favorite zoo animals, the Fort Worth Herd and Fossil Rim anniversaries, pet care tips, pet food resources for those in need, and much more. Business owners, show off your animal magnetism and reach our readers right in the furry feels next week. The rest of you, well, drop a line and say, “Meow!” To submit ideas or to reserve space, start by emailing Marketing@FWWeekly.com.
Did you know there’s a religious holiday today?
Nor did I. Actually, it’s tomorrow, but if you go to the slumber party in Granbury tonight, you’ll be there bright and early on Thu, Aug 1. Early agriculture-based groups like the Celts celebrated the first harvest of the season at Lughnasadh, also known as “Loaf Mass Day” by the first Christians. Wiccans use the names Lammas or Lughnasadh for the first autumn harvest festivals, one of eight annual “sabbats” on the Wiccan Wheel of the Year. Open Hearts Yoga Sanctuary & Crystal Boutique (616 Fall Creek Hwy, Granbury, 817-910-8445) is celebrating with a Pagan ceremony and all-night party featuring a performance by world/folk-fusion rocker Daniel Katsuk starting at 6pm, followed by a potluck dinner at 10pm and something called an “overnight gong bath” at midnight. Then at 6:45am, enjoy sunrise yoga. Tickets to the Overnight Lammas Celebration are $55, or $44 per person for groups of two or more. Bring your own blankets, pillows, and such if you’re staying the night. For more details and ticket info, see the event page at Facebook.com/ OpenHeartsCrystalBoutique/Events.
By Jennifer Bovee
World/folk-fusion rocker Daniel Katsuk will perform at the Overnight Lammas Celebration in Granbury on Wed, Jul 31.
CLASSIFIEDS
CLASSIFIEDS
BUY / SELL / TRADE
CAR DONATIONS
Donate your car, truck, or SUV to assist the blind and visually impaired. Arrange a swift, no-cost vehicle pickup and secure a generous tax credit for 2025. Call Heritage for the Blind Today today! 1-855-503-1501
CATTLE BARN FLEA MARKET
Made In America! Lots of new and older merchandise, including hard-to-find items! Come indoors to shop and enjoy cold AC with all your favorite dealers! Every Sat & Sun 9a-5p 4445 River Oaks Blvd
STUCK WITH A TIMESHARE?
Wesley Financial Group, the Timeshare Cancellation Experts, has over 450 positive reviews and has completed over $50 million in successful timeshare debt/ fee cancellations. Get a free consultation and free info package and learn how to get rid of your timeshare today. Call 844-511-2581
EMPLOYMENT
CHEBA HUT
Cheba Hut has open interviews on Tuesdays from 9am to 9pm. “Join the dank side!” 1217 8th Ave Near Southside
HEALTH TRAVEL
ACCOMMODATIONS
According to the New York Times, the following companies have said they would cover travel expenses for employees who need reproductive health services not available in Texas: Airbnb, DoorDash, JP Morgan Chase, Levi Strauss & Co, Netflix, Patagonia, Reddit, Starbucks, Tesla, and Yelp. Additionally, NowThis has listed the following companies also offering the same assistance to employees: Amazon, Apple, BuzzFeed, Citigroup, Comcast, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Lyft, Mastercard, Meta, Microsoft, Paramount, Sony, Tesla, Walt Disney Co, Vox Media, and Zillow. (JMB, FWW)
HAVE A LITTLE FAITH
CELEBRATION
COMMUNITY CHURCH
Located at 908 Pennsylvania Av (817-335-3222), CCC has services on Sundays at 10am. Want to check out a nonjudgmental, inclusive church at home before attending in person? All services can also be viewed on YouTube (@CelebrationCommunityChurch130).
POTTER’S HOUSE
Join the Potter’s House of Fort Worth (1270 Woodhaven Blvd, 817-446-1999) for Sunday Service at 8am and Wednesday Bible Study at 7pm. For more info, visit us online: www.TPHFW.org
HEALTH & WELLNESS
DENTAL INSURANCE
Physicians Mutual Insurance Company covers 350+ procedures. This is real dental insurance, not just a discount plan. Do not wait! Call now! Get your FREE Dental Information Kit with all the details! Use code 6258 when you call or visit online.
Dental50plus.com/FortWorth
1-888-361-7095
LIFE INSURANCE
Up to $15,000.00 of GUARANTEED Life Insurance! No medical exam or health questions. Cash to help pay for funeral and other final expenses. Visit Life55Plus.info/ FTWorth or call Physicians Life Insurance Company today! 844-782-2870
LIFE LINE SCREENINGS
According to the American Heart Association, stroke and Cardiovascular disease are leading causes of death. Screenings can provide peace of mind or early detection! Contact Life Line Screening to schedule your screening. Special offer: 5 screenings for just $149. Call today! 1-833-636-1757
PET HEALTH
Need a FREE Spay/Neuter? Texas Coalition for Animal Protection has clinics near you. Schedule an appointment today. TexasForThem.org Call 1-833-636-1757
HOME RESOURCES
AC TUNE-UPS
American Residential Heating & Cooling. As temps outside start to climb, the season for savings is now. $49 cooling or heating system tune up. Save up to $2000 on a new heating and cooling system (restrictions apply.) FREE estimates. Many payment options available. Licensed and insured professionals. Call today. 1-877-447-0546
BATHROOMS
The bathroom of your dreams in as little as 1 day. Limited Time Offer - $1000 off or No Payments and No Interest for 18 months for customers who qualify. BCI Bath & Shower. Many options are available. Quality materials & professional installation. Senior & Military Discounts Available. Call Today! 1-866-913-0581
GENERATORS
Prepare for power outages today with a home standby generator. There is no money down and low monthly payment options are available. Call for a FREE quote before the next power outage. 1-844-887-3143
LEAF FILTER
Eliminate gutter cleaning forever with LeafFilter, the most advanced debrisblocking gutter protection. Schedule a FREE LeafFilter estimate today. Ask about 20% off the entire purchase. Plus, 10% senior and military discounts are available. Call 1-877-689-1687.
METAL ROOFS
Replace your roof with the best-looking and longest-lasting material: steel from Erie! Three styles and multiple colors are available. Steel is guaranteed to last a lifetime! Limited-time offer: $500 Discount + Additional 10% off Installation (for military, health workers, and first responders). Call 1-888-778-0566.
WALK-IN TUBS
Safe Step. North America’s #1 Walk-In Tub. Comprehensive lifetime warranty. Top-of-the-line installation and service. Now featuring our FREE shower package and $1600 Off for a limited time. Call Safe Step today. 1-855-868-0192
MIND / BODY / SPIRIT
HANNA in HURST
Get out of the heat & feel better fast! Professional in-office massage. No outcalls. (MT#4797) 817-590-2257
MARCELLA’S TOUCH
Marcella offers alternative healing therapy Monday to Friday, 10am to 6pm. by appointment 10am-6pm. “Call me to schedule your session!” 817-657-4290
Planned Parenthood Of Greater Texas
We’re not going anywhere. We know you may be feeling a lot of things right now, but we are here with you and we will not stop fighting for YOU. See 6 ways you can join the #BansOffOurBodies fight on FB @PPGreaterTX. For more info, go to: PPGreaterTX.org
PUBLIC NOTICES
TDLR Complaints
Any Texans who may be concerned that an unlicensed massage business may be in operation near them, or believe nail salon employees may be human trafficking victims, may now report those concerns directly to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) by emailing ReportHT@TDLR.Texas.gov.
SERVICES
DIRECTV
Get DIRECTV for $64.99/mo for 12 months with the CHOICE Package. Save an additional $120 over the first year. The first 3 months of HBO Max, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, and Epix are included! Directv is #1 in Customer Satisfaction (JD Power & Assoc.) Some restrictions apply. Call 1-855-966-0520.
DISH Network
Get 190 Channels for $59.99! Blazing Fast Internet, $19.99/mo (where available). Switch and get a FREE $100 Visa Gift Card. FREE Voice Remote. FREE HD DVR. FREE Streaming on ALL Devices. Call 1-855-701-3027 today!
DORRANCE PUBLISHING Book manuscript submissions are currently being reviewed. Comprehensive services include consultation, production, promotion, and distribution. Call for your FREE Author`s Guide or visit DorranceInfo.com/ FTWorth today. 1-866-256-0940.
EARTHLINK
Highspeed Internet Big Savings with Unlimited Data! Fiberoptic Technology up to 1gbps with a customizable plan. Call 855-767-0515 today!
SUBMISSIONS
We’d Like To Hear From You! Do you have thoughts and feelings, or questions, comments, or concerns about something you read in the Weekly? Please email Question@fwweekly.com. Do you have an upcoming event? For potential coverage in our listing sections, including Ate Day8 a Week, Bulletin Board, Big Ticket, Crosstown Sounds, or Night & Day, email the details to Marketing@fwweekly.com.
Texas Commission on environmenTal QualiTy
NOTICE OF RECEIPT OF APPLICATION AND INTENT TO OBTAIN AIR PERMIT (NORI)
PROPOSED AIR QUALITY PERMIT NUMBER 176766
APPLICATION RPower LLC, has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for: Issuance of Permit 176766
This application would authorize construction of an Electric Generating Unit located at 455 Sansom Boulevard, Saginaw, Tarrant County, Texas 76179. This application is being processed in an expedited manner, as allowed by the commission’s rules in 30 Texas Administrative Code, Chapter 101, Subchapter J. AVISO DE IDIOMA ALTERNATIVO. El aviso de idioma alternativo en espanol está disponible en https://www.tceq.texas.gov/permitting/air/newsourcereview/ airpermits-pendingpermit-apps. This link to an electronic map of the site or facility’s general location is provided as a public courtesy and not part of the application or notice. For exact location, refer to application. https://gisweb.tceq.texas.gov/ LocationMapper/?marker=-97.353167,32.855&level=13. The facility will emit the following contaminants: carbon monoxide, hazardous air pollutants, nitrogen oxides, organic compounds, particulate matter including particulate matter with diameters of 10 microns or less and 2.5 microns or less and sulfur dioxide.
This application was submitted to the TCEQ on June 27, 2024. The application will be available for viewing and copying at the TCEQ central office, the TCEQ Dallas/Fort Worth regional office, and the Saginaw Public Library, 355 West McLeroy Boulevard, Saginaw, Tarrant County, Texas beginning the first day of publication of this notice. The facility’s compliance file, if any exists, is available for public review in the Dallas/Fort Worth regional office of the TCEQ.
The executive director has determined the application is administratively complete and will conduct a technical review of the application.
PUBLIC COMMENT. You may submit public comments to the Office of the Chief Clerk at the address below. The TCEQ will consider all public comments in developing a final decision on the application and the executive director will prepare a response to those comments.
PUBLIC MEETING. You may request a public meeting to the Office of the Chief Clerk at the address below. The purpose of a public meeting is to provide the opportunity to submit comments or ask questions about the application. A public meeting about the application will be held if requested by an interested person and the executive director determines that there is a significant degree of public interest in the application or if requested by a local legislator. A public meeting is not a contested case hearing.
After technical review of the application is complete, the executive director may prepare a draft permit and will issue a preliminary decision on the application. If a draft Air Quality Permit is prepared, a Notice of Application and Preliminary Decision is required and it will then be published and mailed to those who made comments, submitted hearing requests or are on the mailing list for this application and will contain the final deadline for submitting public comments.
OPPORTUNITY FOR A CONTESTED CASE HEARING You may request a contested case hearing if you are a person who may be affected by emissions of air contaminants from the facility. If requesting a contested case hearing, you must submit the following: (1) your name (or for a group or association, an official representative), mailing address, and daytime phone number; (2) applicant’s name and permit number; (3) the statement “[I/we] request a contested case hearing”; (4) a specific description of how you would be adversely affected by the application and air emissions from the facility in a way not common to the general public; (5) the location and distance of your property relative to the facility; (6) a description of how you use the property which may be impacted by the facility; and (7) a list of all disputed issues of fact that you submit during the comment period. If the request is made by a group or an association, one or more members who have standing to request a hearing must be identified by name and physical address. The interests the group or association seeks to protect must also be identified. You may also submit your proposed adjustments to the application/permit which would satisfy your concerns.
The deadline to submit a request for a contested case hearing is 30 days after newspaper notice is published. If a request is timely filed, the deadline for requesting a contested case hearing will be extended to 30 days after the mailing of the response to comments.
If a hearing request is timely filed, following the close of all applicable comment and request periods, the Executive Director will forward the application and any requests for contested case hearing to the Commissioners for their consideration at a scheduled Commission meeting. The Commission may only grant a request for a contested case hearing on issues the requestor submitted in their timely comments that were not subsequently withdrawn. If a hearing is granted, the subject of a hearing will be limited to disputed issues of fact or mixed questions of fact and law relating to relevant and material air quality concerns submitted during the comment period. Issues such as property values, noise, traffic safety, and zoning are outside of the Commission’s jurisdiction to address in this proceeding.
MAILING LIST. In addition to submitting public comments, you may ask to be placed on a mailing list to receive future public notices for this specific application by sending a written request to the Office of the Chief Clerk at the address below.
AGENCY CONTACTS AND INFORMATION. Public comments and requests must be submitted either electronically at www14.tceq.texas.gov/epic/eComment/, or in writing to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Office of the Chief Clerk, MC-105, P.O. Box 13087, Austin, Texas 78711-3087. Please be aware that any contact information you provide, including your name, phone number, email address and physical address will become part of the agency’s public record. For more information about this permit application or the permitting process, please call the Public Education Program toll free at 1-800-687-4040. Si desea información en Español, puede llamar al 1-800-687-4040.
Further information may also be obtained from RPower LLC, 24 Waterway Avenue, Suite 1460, The Woodlands, Texas 77380-3292 or by calling Mr. Tony Mente, SVP Applications at (262) 409-5273.
Notice Issuance Date: July 8, 2024
ERNIE DAY III (Third Annual)
See It’s Earnie on Saturday, July 27th at Southside Preservation Hall (1519 Lipscomb St, FWTX). Tickets are $15 on Prekindle.com.
COWTOWN ROVER
Are You Road-Trip Ready?
With our handy pick-up and drop-off services, having your car checked out could not be easier. Get ready for summertime. Call today!
3958 Vickery | 817.731.3223 www.CowtownRover.com
LEGAL NOTICE
Greetings and salutation this is a notice for the private trust of the house of Foster. I
Executor Foster, Rush Author Give notice of the Grantor RUSH AUTHOR FOSTER and Trustee Foster, Rashond Shakon representing STTAARR HOLDING
The Gas Pipe, The GAS PIPE, THE GAS PIPE, your Peace Love & Smoke Headquarters since 4/20/1970! SCORE a FREE GIFT on YOUR Birthday, FREE Scale Tuning and Lighter Refills on GAS PIPE goods, FREE Layaway, and all the safe, helpful service you expect from a 51 Years Young Joint. Plus, SCORE A FREE CBD HOLIDAZE GIFT With-A-Buy thru 12/31! Be Safe, Party Clean, Keep On Truckin’. More at thegaspipe.net
Handyman Available in Tarrant and Parker Counties. Household projects, painting, yard work etc, I CAN HELP!
Providing honest, dependable work at a fair price! Call or Text today for a FREE estimate. Chris 817-495-3017
HANNAH in HURST
Get out of the heat & feel better fast! Professional inoffice massage therapy (MT4797). No outcalls. 817-590-2257
ONE BITE & YOU’LL KNOW!
Send 100% guaranteed, delivered-to-the-door Omaha Steaks! This package comes with 8 FREE Burgers! Call or visit online and mention code 76946ATS. Order The Classic Cookout Collection! ONLY $129.99. (mb) OmahaSteaks.com/OneBite2728 1-855-404-9674
EMPLOYMENT
Wabtec US Rail, Inc. seeks Texas Mining Manufacturing Finance Manager in Fort Worth, TX to drive working capital improvements in AP management and inventory strategies. Telecommuting permitted. Apply at www. jobpostingtoday.com Ref #22239
EMPLOYMENT
Wabtec US Rail, Inc. seeks Lead Supplier Quality Engineer in Fort Worth, TX to interface with Suppliers and internal Supply Chain to implement quality improvements. Telecommuting permitted. 30%-50% of domestic and international travel required. Apply at www.jobpostingtoday.com Ref #10205
HISTORIC RIDGLEA THEATER
THE RIDGLEA is three great venues within one historic Fort Worth landmark. RIDGLEA THEATER has been restored to its authentic allure, recovering unique Spanish-Mediterranean elements. It is ideal for large audiences and special events. RIDGLEA ROOM and RIDGLEA LOUNGE have been making some of their own history, as connected adjuncts to RIDGLEA THEATER, or hosting their own smaller shows and gatherings. More at theRidglea.com
EMPLOYMENT
American Airlines, Inc. has openings in Ft. Worth, TX for: Analyst, Pilot Planning and Analysis (Ref. 2210): Resp for support’g Crew Workforce Plann’g leaders & operationally focused teams to understand & improve operational reliability & enterprise cost. Team Lead, IT Digital User Experience (Ref. 1839): Resp for collaborat’g w/ leaders, biz analysts, project mgrs, IT architects, tech leads & other developers, along w/ internal customers, to understand needs & develop solutions accord’g to biz reqs. Sr. Analyst, Data Steward (Ref. 2353): Resp for communicat’g directly w/ biz units to understand their biz problems. Sr. Test Automation Engineer (Ref. 2163): Resp for creat’g test automation framework us’g Selenium Web Driver to run test cases in multi browsers & platforms & to perform UI test’g w/ Selenium Web Driver. Infrastructure Engineer (Ref. 2248): Resp for both traditional & cloud-based infrastructure implementations based on designs from infrastructure architects. Sr. Developer, IT Applications (Ref. 2247): Resp for participat’g in all phases of the sw dev lifecycle us’g best practices in Agile. Analyst/Sr. Analyst, Revenue Management Development (Ref. 1772): Resp for utiliz’g statistical analysis, simulations, predictive model’g, or other analytical methods to analyze information & develop practical solutions to biz problems. Sr. Data Scientist - Technical Operations (Ref. 2063): Resp for apply’g machine-learn’g & statistical techniques to help solve Technical Operations challenges. Sr. Developer, IT Applications (Ref. 2283): Resp for leverag’g cutt’g edge technology to solve biz problems at American Airlines by participat’g in all phases of the developm’t process from inception through transition, advocat’g the agile process & test-driven developm’t, us’g object-oriented developm’t tools to analyze, model, design, construct & test reusable objects & mak’g the codebase a better place to live & work. To learn more or to apply send inquiries &/or resume to Gene Womack via email: Gene.Womack@ aa.com. Please include Ref # in subject line. #LI-DNI
ADVERTISE HERE Email stacey@fwweekly.com today!
