Well, the votes have been tabulated, all 5,000-plus of them, and we have our winners, but we won’t be announcing them until an event next weekend for nominees and their plus ones only. (The after-party will be open to the public. We can feed only so many mouths. And Budweiser makes only so many gloriously blue bottles of Bud Light Platinum.)
The last day of voting in our 18th Annual Music Awards was Sunday, incidentally, the day of our sprawling 48-band festival in the West 7th Street corridor. If you weren’t there, you missed a solid six hours of fantastic performances, $2.50 Bud Lights (and the priceless Bud Light girls), lots of sweat, lots of drunkenness, and some welcome awkwardness. Reservoir’s regulars didn’t seem to know what to make of the excellent, progressive indie rock unfolding right beyond their chicken breast sandwiches (hold the mayo), and at the Trinity River Tap House at 8 p.m., Squanto ran off more than a few confused faces, which, of course, utterly confused me. I understand that Fort Worth is no New York City, and the fact that Fort Worth is no New York City is why most of us prefer Fort Worth to gleaming, beautiful, dynamic metropoli, but c’mon. How often are you going to get to see a skinny white guy with a ponytail create an unholy but deliriously intriguing racket with only a microphone and a board of electronic gadgets? Never, that’s when. So put on your big boy pants and broaden your G.D. horizons.
To the folks who left, all I can say is you missed one helluva show. When Squanto, a.k.a. Rickey Wayne Kinney, finished, he was greeted by a standing ovation. See, New York City? Some of us hayseeds “get” it.
Anyway, I saw a couple other mind-blowing shows, and I’m glad everyone seemed to have a good time. Do I have any recollection what happened after 9 p.m.-ish? I do not. That I was able to Uber it home is truly a Local Music Christmas miracle. (Note to self: Go back to Lola’s Saloon and pay your motherhunchin’ tab!) I drank so much on Sunday, my hangover didn’t hit me until Tuesday afternoon. But that’s what the Music Awards Festival is all about: celebrating the dynamism of the Fort’s dynamic music community.
By the numbers: In addition to 48 bands, including Quaker City Night Hawks, The Unlikely Candidates, Son of Stan, Pinkish Black, Oil Boom, and Jetta in the Ghost Tree, we had about 5,000 people click through throughout the day, according to our trusty business manager. Through the sale of our compilation album, we raised nearly $600 for our charity sponsor, Lena Pope, an 80-year-old Fort Worth nonprofit organization devoted to family counseling and early childhood education. Take a listen at fortworthweekly.bandcamp.com/album/frequencies-vol-6.
And I’ve got to give a shout-out to my Weekly peeps for helping put out a top-quality product, again, especially associate publisher Michael Newquist, aforementioned biz manager Bob Niehoff, and our production team of art director Ryan Burger and art manager Scott Latham. Thanks, most of all, to the sponsors, the Weekly volunteers, and the bands that didn’t make the ballot but that keep doing what they’re doing just ’cause. You’re not on there because you suck. You’re not on there because we haven’t gotten to know you yet. Stalk us at facebook.com/FortWorthWeekly. We love you too.
Contact HearSay at hearsay@fwweekly.com.
