Author Archive
MusicSpeak @ Lit Hop 2024
Saturday, August 24
MusicSpeak
EV | SARAH RUTH | CLANCY MANUEL
STEFAN GONZALES | AARON GONZALES
2-4pm @ Lucky Dog Books
10534 Garland Rd. (East Dallas)
EV | SARAH RUTH | CLANCY MANUEL | STEFAN GONZALES | AARON GONZALES
Stefan Gonzalez is a drummer, vibraphonist, percussionist, and vocalist featured on over thirty musical releases; their music groups have toured with throughout North America, Mexico, Canada, Colombia, Portugal, Switzerland, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Sardinia, Poland, Russia, France, Denmark, and Austria. Having been raised in avant-garde jazz and in an overall creative household, Gonzalez rebelled through the often visceral and cacophonous expressions of punk and grindcore, only to re-discover and officially fall in love with jazz in their late teens. They studied drums with W.A. Richardson, Alvin Fielder, and Ronald Shannon Jackson and are best known for playing in their defunct family free jazz trio, Yells at Eels, with their late father, the world renowned trumpeter, Dennis Gonzalez, and their older brother Aaron Gonzalez on bass. The trio had a 22-year run. The Gonzalez siblings have a long running grindcore duo known as Akkolyte since1998 and still perform sporadically. Additionally, Stefan and Aaron have played as the joint rhythm section for many groups including Luis Lopes Humanization 4tet (with Rodrigo Amado), Fire Life Trio (with Danny Kamins), Unconscious Collective (with Gregg Prickett), Curtis Clark Trio, Trio No Mas (with Mars Williams), and The Chadbourne/Gonzalez Collusion (with Eugene Chadbourne). Other acts worth mentioning are Gonzalez’s long running industrial solo project turned duo, Orgullo Primitivo (with Abbas Khorasani), Ingebrigt Haker Flaten’s international supergroup The Young Mothers (with Frank Rosaly, Jonathan Horne, Jawwaad Taylor, and Jason Jackson), Denton psychedelic thrashers Heavy Baby Sea Slugs, the Dennis Gonzalez Legacy Band, a trio with Wendy Eisenberg and Damon Smith, and North Texas avant-garde jazz powerhouse Trio Glossia (with Joshua Miller and Matthew Frerck). Other collaborators and past groups include Alvin Fielder, Joe McPhee, Mars Williams, Maria Valencia, Famoudou Don Moye, German Bringas, Sabir Mateen, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Sarah Ruth, Assif Tsahar, Alex Coke, Tatsuya Nakatani, Remi Alvarez, John Dikeman, Michel Doneda, Rob Mazurek, Itzam Cano, Gabriel Lauber, Elliott Levin, Dan Clucas, Jandek, Mike Watt, Asukubus, Imperial Slaughter, Just Another Consumer, and many more.
Aaron Gonzales is a member of the illustrious Gonzales music family. D Magazine refers to the family as an “institution.” He primarily plays upright bass and has been publicly performing since he was a child. He and his brother began their own bands when they were in middle school. He has collaborated on numerous projects with his brother, Stefan—and like Stefan, he grew up performing with Yells at Eels and has toured the world with his own music and has dozens of recordings. He is also an actor, performance artist and multiple appearances as stage accompanist and actor for Matthew Posey’s Ochre House Theatre. Gonzales past appearances also include a Darius Safavi production The Numerology of Money.With Greg Prickett and Stefan Gonzales, he created Unconscious Collective, a daunting side project with the intention of unsettling your musical horizons with theatrical tribal costumes and spoken word interludes. The “Collective” invoked ancient musical realms and inspired contemporary improvisation channeling punk, free jazz, funk, blues, and metal. It was one of WordSpace’s most memorable concert presentations. The police thought so too and tried to shut it down. But Gonzales claimed his aesthetic rights. The police gave up and let the audience enjoy. Be prepared for expanded sensibilities in his articulation of music-speak.
EV is the stage name for Alicia Borman. She was born in Claremore, Oklahoma at a Native American hospital to the sound of tribal drumming and chanting over the loudspeaker. As a young child, her mother would take her along to a piano jazz bar in Tulsa while the waitstaff brought her Shirley Temples. Alicia was allowed to sit in the adjoining restaurant space, and peek through the open doorway while her mother took turns singing Jazz standards and show tunes. Encountering singing and music in this space ignited a spark deep inside her. Alicia studied Fine Arts at Oklahoma State University, but realized the poetry she had been writing since middle school were actually songs. That long embedded spark grew into a blazing desire to sing in public. Alicia moved to Dallas in 2003, and has been writing songs and performing all over North Texas for the last twelve years with her three piece Avant-Rock band, Atom & EV. She also has booked small cultural events since 2015, including for Top Ten Records. You may also know her from her production work on Avant to Leave This Planet, Run With Scissors, and Caustic Beats. She also occasional sidelines as a Novelty Music DJ. EV is one Dallas’s most interesting new songwriters and performers.
Sarah Ruth is the stage name of Sarah Ruth Alexander. She is a multi-instrumentalist, performer, music instructor, radio producer for Tiger D on KUZU 92.09 FM, co-curator for Molten Plains music series. She a recording artist with multiple albums, including God Made My Soul an Ornament. Her musical collaborations include productions with Aaron Gonzales and Greg Prickett. Sarah Ruth expands the notions of music and poetics with stunning soundscapes and atmospheric improvisations.
Clancy Manuel hosts this event. She is the media chair for WordSpace, a DJ, staging and musical director for multiple DFW productions, including the Fort Worth Modern Museum and performance artist Laney Yarber.
Some of the Dharma @ Lit Hop 2024
Friday August 9
Some of the Dharma
Isabella Russell-Ides | Karen Minzer | Rod Russell-Ides
7-9pm @ Oak Cliff Cultural Center
223 Jefferson Blvd, Dallas, TX 75208
Isabella Russell-Ides will perform selections from her newly-released book Ova: Collected Works 1972-2024. She is the embodiment of the trickster feminist dakini and maestra of shapeshifting writing styles, a genre masher, poet, playwright, and author of two novels of speculative fiction —White Monkey Chronicles (International Book Award Finalist, Jemma Award) and The Godma’s Daughters (International Book Award, Visionary Fiction, Indie Reader Notable Book of the Year.) Her breakout book of poems, Getting Dangerously Close To Myself, is a landmark in the Austin poetry performance scene of the 1980s. Her first play, a country western musical, Nashville Road, premiered in Austin, Texas at Center Stage on Sixth Street (co-written with Rod Russell-Ides.) She has also received critical acclaim for her works, Leonard’s Car (“Outstanding New Play”, 2009 Nora’s Playhouse, NYC,) Fortune Cookie Smash (2007 Best of Fest, Frontera.) She is noted for the poetic and heightened language of her texts. More recently, her two-woman show, Joe & Louisa (in which the character Jo March bargains with her author, Louisa May Alcott) won a 2019 DFW Critics Forum Award for Outstanding New Play. Coco & Gigi, her existential and feminist take on Waiting for Godot, won the 2008 DFW Critics Forum Award for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Ensemble. Her breakout play, Leonard’s Car, plunges into the deeps of a mother on the verge (“Outstanding New Play” 2009, Nora’s Playhouse, NYC.) She is noted for the poetic and heightened language of her texts.
Rod Russell-Ides is a landscape artist, musician, songwriter, novelist and poet—a former Dharma Broad. His music collaborations include Kenny Withrow of New Bohemians and Paul Simon (The.) He was born on a hospital gurney in Oklahoma in 1946. He grew up in Kansas until his father sent him to prep school in Connecticut thus ending his life as a cowboy. His family exploded when he was fourteen and he had to re-invent himself in the middle of nowhere in the great American tradition, a talent he has pursued ever since. At various times he has been a go cart and motorcycle racer, a Mad Man, a rocker in Texas, a composer, a garden designer (rodrussellides.net), a landscape sculptor, and author of a ground breaking memoir Sparky and the Dipshit. His work as a sculptor has carried him to the wilds of Alaska. He designed and built the largest man-made waterfall in the state. In France, he studied and mapped the Grotto of Lourdes to replicate it in Texas for the Archbishop of Houston. He lives in Dallas with his wife, Isabella Russell Ides.
Karen X aka Karen Minzer is a writer/poet/wanderer, published by the Austin Sun in the 70s, Paris Records in the 80s, Wowapi in the 90s, and Lamar State University’s anthology of Texas Beat Poets in 2018. Minzer was born in the mid-1900s and went to high school in an obscure Texas town. She rode horses and did country chores. She moved to UT Austin and gravitated into the leftovers of the SDS publishing scene. #Another flop of a revolution. In 1975, she moved to Dallas and collaborated in art escapades while working for Roxy and Judy Gordon’s graphics company. One day after the fly-by-night Yippie Smoke-in at City Hall, she discovered the poet Robert Trammell reading poetry at Old City Park–across the street from her home at the historic (grungy) Ambassador Hotel. She was the only audience member. Reading poems to an empty room became a life-mission. Instead, Minzer became a punk band lyricist-shouter with The Panics and toured sketchy clubs. #EnoughAlready. She produced Dial a Poet Television for Cable Access TV and archived the work of dozens of writers from all over the USA. Beginning in 2005, she staged the poetry pageants Dharma Boards I-IV. In 2010, she became executive director of WordSpace, curated hundreds of visiting and local writers, washed the dishes and took out the trash. #NeverEnough. She is co-recipient, with Dee Mitchell, of the 2015 Dallas Observer MasterMind Awards. Minzer earned a PhD in Humanities from The University of Texas at Dallas and an MFA from Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics; there, she once studied with Allen Ginsberg & good friends.
ARTSPEAK @ Lit Hop 2024
Janet Chaffee and Benito Huerta with Sandy Bates Emmons
Saturday, July 27
6-9pm @ Bathhouse Cultural Center
521 E Lawther Dr 75218
ABOUT JANET CHAFFEE: “My Current Work Is An Intuitive And Playful Exploration Of Abstract Composition, Color And Nature. The Initial Drawings for this work are derived from found rock formations along the border of California and Mexico, as well as, the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains. I also draw from found lace work. The lace is found both regionally and abroad, including locations in Germany, Italy and Cuba. In these paintings, I use a narrow range of dry pigments, beeswax and oil paint. Both materials and imagery are combined in layers recomposing landscape and nature to suggest metaphorical connections between the thrill of making and my awe for nature. Calcium Carbonate, one of the the dry pigments used, is a common compound comprising three elements—carbon, oxygen and calcium. It is found in pearls, seashells, limestone, in streams and lakebeds throughout Texas and the midwestern United States. Mica, another dry pigment, is found in the southeastern United States and is used iin various products from electronics to paper. This combination of imagery and material allow me the opportunity to intuit process, chance and discovery of unforeseen possibilities while making the work. The fluidity and stillness of the wax allows for the work to expand and explore implicit movement. Each encaustic painting becomes the custodian of past moments in time.” Janet Chaffee is originally from Denver, Colorado but has lived in Texas most of her life. She earned her BFA in painting from The University of Texas at Arlington in 1999 and received her MFA in painting from Texas Christian University in May 2002. After graduating, she taught drawing at TCU, UTA, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and has been in several individual as well as group shows throughout the state of Texas and New Mexico. She has been recognized with numerous awards for her work and has collaborated with Benito Huerto on an exhibition for The Art Museum of Southeast Texas. In 2006, she was awarded The Murrin Family Award for an exhibition held at The Fort Worth Community Arts Center. During the summer of 2010 she was awarded a “Once Upon a Time” Grant from Trinity Valley School of Fort Worth to attend the residency, Atelier Hilmsen in Germany.
ABOUT BENITO HUERTA Benito Huerta’s works are included in the public collections of the Menil Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Albuquerque Museum of Art, the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, the Sheldon Museum of Art in Omaha and the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, to name a few. Huerta is the retired co-founding editor of theTexas art magazine Artlies, the retired director of the Gallery at the University of Texas at Arlington, curator of many exhibitions around the country, and participant in numerous public art commissions throughout Texas. Huerta’s work derives visual influence from many sources. From his ethnic background, history, art history, pop culture, movies, and books, he assimilates and interprets information into unique pictorial energy. Huerta’s subtle command of intellectualism mixed with his visual vocabulary demonstrates his maturity as a communicator and artist. Benito Huerta was selected for one of the public art commissions at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, International Terminal. He has completed public works for the Mexican-American Cultural Center in Austin, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Station Design Project, having created work integral to the architecture for the Richardson Station, and the Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority Light Rail Station Design Project’s Medical Center station. The Dallas Center for Contemporary Art awarded Huerta with its Legend Award.
Sandy Emmons will introduce and facilitate a discussion between the artists. Emmons is an environmental activist, animals empath, gourmet chef, arts writer and supporter. She grew up in South America and has traveled extensively. She lives in Waxahachie with her husband, the painter Andy Don Emmons.
Roxy and Judy Gordon Fest @ Lit Hop 2024
Saturday, July 13
6-9 pm @ Top Ten Records
338 Jefferson Blvd in the 75208
Joseph Flaten | Roderick Richardson | Veronica Pamindanan | Michael Helsem | John Slate | Chris Merlick | Insecto-Ray Orchestra | Opalina Salas
“Roxy Gordon” By Robert Trammell (From Hot Flashes #2 – January 1986)
The first time I met Roxy was when he & I were doing a reading together at 500 Exposition about 5 years ago. That night he read a longish poem “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night, Alive As You Or Me,” a real angry, hostile bit of writing & I assumed that was who Roxy was. I was prepared not to like him. That was stupid of me. My own work is at times violent & it really puts me off when people think therefor I am. Maybe I am, maybe Roxy is too but we both exorcise those demons mostly thru our writing (but the gun is real). As it turned out Roxy and Judy are about the most generous people I’ve ever met. They are honest and direct.
I’ve come to respect them both. I’ve also become a fan of Roxy’s no nonsense writing style. I learn from him & his work (he also paints & draws), am provoked & inspired by him to write from the heart as he always does.
Starting young, in 1963 he won a Talpa-Centennial High School Letter Jacket for writing. He may be the only person to have ever been so honored in Texas.
At the U. of Texas he was editor of Riata, the school’s literary mag. Soon after graduation he wrote Some Things I Did (Encino Press, Austin, 1972), made some money & got some notoriety. The book had a lot to do with his living on the Ft. Belknap Indian Reservation in Northern Montana. Roxy is a Breed, part Choctaw. His work often reflects that heritage. In the ‘70s he published, edited & wrote for the small but influential monthly mag Picking Up The Tempo. Lots of his friends (Townes Van Zandt, Butch Hancock, Billy Joe Shaver, Richard Dobson, Jimmy Gilmore & the Lubbock-by-way-of-Fresno Terry Allen) still write songs. That makes sense cause, till now, this state has sure turned out better songwriters than poets. In 1984 Place of Herons Press published Breeds, his most important collection/book. In 1985 Judy Gordon started her Wowapi Press & published his most recent book Unfinished Business. He has had work in Greenfield Review, Omaha Rainbow, The Sun, Art Magic (which he published) & Earth Power Coming.
Roxy & Judy have been building a kinda Comanchero camp/house/enclosure near Talpa. They call it the HouseUp. They spend as much time as they can out there but still have to make a living in Dallas. They grew up together & both of their families still live there. Judy’s father runs an old-fashioned ranch & traps game. While we were visiting he trapped, skinned & gave me the pelt of a Ring Tail Cat. He can only get $3 for them. They are sent to Russia & made into mittens. Roxy nailed it to a board, cured it with formaldehyde. It’s on my hall wall next to the rattlesnake skin to remind me as Roxy & Judy always remind me that Dallas is just a stopping place on their way back home to Coleman County.
Roxy and Judy Gordon Fest 2024
Joseph Flaten | Roderick Richardson | Veronica Pamindanan | Michael Helsem | John Slate | Chris Merlick | Insecto-Ray Orchestra | Opalina Salas
Joseph Flaten is a writer, actor and vocalist who grew up in a family of Dallas artists and their friends as extended household. These included Roxy and Judy Gordon and their sons Quanah and JC Gordon. As a child and into his teen years, Flaten performed in numerous Dallas productions, such as stage work with Laney Yarber, Caravan of Dreams, and worked with directors Kenneth Anger and James Hong. He performed Giving up the Farm, Part 2 Skincare in Roxy and Judy’s living room. After graduating from University of Texas he moved to New York and continued his film work, appearing in films by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation). Flaten also appeared in Caouette’s All Flowers in Time, starring Chloe Sevigny. The film was showcased at Cannes. He’s also been featured on The Sopranos, Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, and a Tribeca Film Festival selection, directed by Dallas native Ash Christian. In 2009, he moved to Asia to merge his performance and writing skills with global business. In Bangkok he joined a gospel-soul choir to benefit tsunami orphans and sang at the Aksra Theatre, sponsored by the US Embassy, later traveling with the choir throughout Thailand. On Ko Samui Island, Flaten collaborated with Peter Dougal at the Den of Dionysus Theater to create and perform in original multimedia stage performance. He is committed to honoring the legacy of Roxy and Judy Gordon as part of his essential Dallas arts roots. He is pictured here with Quanah Parker Gordon (1991.)
Roderick Earl Richardson was born on February 28, 1972, and grew up in Calvert, Texas. Richardson graduated from Tarleton State University in 1995 with a BS degree in Mass Communications and minors in English and journalism. He has worked for several newspapers, including The Big Spring Herald, The Palestine Herald-Press, The Kilgore News Herald, and freelanced all across Texas. In 2001, Richardson left his career in journalism in 2001and moved to Arlington, Texas. However, his passion for writing never faded, and around 2006, he began performing at poetry open mics and slams all over the DFW Metroplex. He is the author of two chapbooks, Caterpillar Blues and Day by Day and co-wrote Points of View with Devorah Titunik. His poems and short stories have appeared in Mad Swirl and DFW Poetry Review.
Veronica Pamindanan is a poet, leader, event planner and more. She has been writing since elementary school and performing since she was eighteen. Pamindanan teaches creative writing and performs in Dallas schools. She writes on religion, Filipino heritage, and American culture. Pamindanan hosts a monthly open mic in the DFW area. She strives to be an outlet for upcoming artist and hopes to use her talents to touch others on a national scale.
Michael Helselm writes “m. h. was born in dallas in 1958. shortly afterwards, fish fell from the sky” for his promo bio. WordSpace would like to add that Helselm is a seminal collaborator and contributor to the Dallas poetry scene and author of many books. Some are in “constructed” languages, such as Esperanto. He was co-creator of what might be considered Dallas’s first grassroots poetry festival, the Eisteddfod. It took place in the 80s at the Bath House Cultural Center. A bit younger than the Gordons, but in the stir of some of their literary mixes.
Chris Merlick and his Duchampaphone. Merlick is a visual artist, musician and performance artist. For Roxy and Judy Gordon Fest, he brings his iconic Duchampian found-object bicycle wheel sculpture and morphs it into a captivating musical device. Literally spinning out beats and songs with true Dada-esque fervor and mad invention! Merlick is the artistic director of Top Ten Records nonprofit site. He has performed in numerous Dallas bands and on citywide galleries and stages. In May 2024, Merlick appeared with Lithium Xmas at the Starck Club 40th Reunion Party at the Kessler Theater—another one for the history books.
Insecto-Ray Orchestra features the immensely talented Marco Villalobos and his awesome musical partner Werner Heimlich, They are a neo-psychedelic mutant jazz spoken word disco dance band constantly overstepping musical boundaries and endlessly improvising and experimenting. This is only possible and intriguing due to the virtuosity of the players and their immense talents. Get ready!
John H. Slate has presented multiple Salons for WordSpace at Dee Mitchell’s home. “Confessions and Revelations of a Teen Punk Fanzine Editor” was an uber-entertaining evening of powerpoint, handouts and reconteurship relating to his years in Austin as a teen punk zine editor and some commetary on his appearance in the iconic film Slacker. Other Salon topics he’s tacked for WordSpace include “Outlaw Poetics” featuring the work of Bonnie Parker, Candy Barr and others. Slate is the archivist for the City of Dallas, where he is responsible for historic city government records in the Dallas Municipal Archives. Slate is the author of “Lost Austin,” in the “Images of America” series. “Lost Austin” records some of the city’s rich and unique history and most of the images depicted in the book are of seminal Austin places and institutions that no longer exist but that played an important role in shaping Austin’s special character. He is also the author of “Historic Dallas Parks” and “Dealey Plaza.”
Opalina Salas is a poet, performer, and founding host of the popular Poets on X+ reading series. She lives and creates in her beloved Dallas Oak Cliff neighborhood. Her collaborative performances include Tejana Cosmica, a feminist spoken word trio and plays synth/sampler in Your Loving Son, a spoken word duo with poet Carlos Salas. She is the former co-owner of Oak Cliff Notes bookstore, editor of the femme lit zine, Let It Bleed and a regular contributor to The Mad Swirl, an online literary forum. Salas has been featured in numerous literary festivals, including the Texas Beat Poetry Festival, Forest Fest, and New Orleans Poetry Fest. Her 2019 book Black Sparrow Dress (MadSwirl, 2019) garnered critical acclaim.
