I have worked as a fright car carman/welder for approximately seven and a half years. When I began, I was technically just a welder. I performed structural repairs on the bodies of the cars though my main job involved cutting and welding the inspection ports on tank cars for the purpose of qualifying the tanks for continued service. Today I have one those cushy union protected inspection positions. I still perform a bit of welding but nothing compared to when I first began. Those early days taught me all the rules and regulations I needed to know to perform the safety inspections on trains before their departures. Most of the railway companies ignore a large percentage of these rules and gamble on an hourly basis that the FRA won’t catch neglected defects. Although, the fines levied for these infractions are so small, they don’t present a credible detriment to a company that makes $24 BILLION in profits every year. I don’t have a whole lot of pics of my job but I thought I’d share a little here.

My last bit of blog writing is music related and it proved damned therapeutic. So what the hell, let’s do it again. This time regarding something contemporary as well as something in a far different hemisphere of genre.


I discovered Fust on the All Songs Considered list of best songs of 2025. With anything that is truly good, it took a a couple of listens for me to hear what is actually good about “Spangled,” the first track on Fust’s newest collection Big Ugly.


When I did finally hear what makes it good… damn it’s really good.


When one speaks of the songwriting behind Fust, one is speaking exclusively of Aaron Dowdy. I don’t know from what Faulknerien/McCarthyien Appalachian mud hill this cat rolled down to get here but he’s got the makings of genius.


At first listen, “Spangled” struck me as a throwback track, sounds layered in the mimic of ‘00s alt-country, a genre that produced (along with metric tons of unmitigated garbage) some of today’s greatest folk rock tunes and songwriters, Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams among them. If you had played this tune for me and fibbed its release at around 2006, I would have believed you, shocked that I had never heard of it.


To be sure, I am hyper-jaded with such sounds. When I performed and wrote songs in this vein, the genre went by many names, Texas Country, Red Dirt Music, Alt-Country, etc.. With very few exceptions, the cookie cutter lost its edge and eventually lost its shape. Which is one of the reasons I waxed skeptical on my first run through “Spangled.” Sonically, there’s nothing groundbreaking here. The vintage amp accompanied by twin melody fiddle work. Tight high-hat vs quiet snare snap beats. Understated but solid bass flow. All hallmarks of the better examples of the genre. And all of it—to my relief—executed to perfection, nevertheless, recorded in way I am generally unfond of, crisp, flat, and void of ambience. Yet the caliber of the songwriting craft displayed here makes me forget that I hate this style of engineering.


Aaron Dowdy—whose voice comes in as if José González moved to Appalachia solely to become a hillbilly alcoholic—has written a song that had to creep around in my head before I truly recognized just how exceptional “Spangled” is as a composition.


There lies a disjointed narrative within “Spangled.” Wrought with alcohol, death, euphoria, desperation, yearning, injury, aimless religiosity, this song bleeds everything Southern plus a healthy dose of things American in general, including the title, a word not generally used unless announced between the words “star” and “banner.” And Dowdy drives that point with continued hammer strikes in somewhat random places in the lyrics. It’s utterly beautiful in context.


The other constant in the lyrics is the number(s) 3-0-5. Once it refers to a hospital room, then a Virginia highway, and then a state (or municipal) precinct. The way Dowdy uses these three syllables is a wonder to behold, constructing a frame of reference across three different scenes, using the mantra as a through line.


But what is the line? What is the story? Are we jumping forward and backward, backward and forward? It seems each listener can design the story for themselves. We have a hospitalization (or is it the memory of one? a birth? a trauma?) then an incident on a bridge (vehicular accident or maybe a suicide or even still a simple drunken appreciation of the view from it) then we’re in a drainage/septic ditch wishing the rain would take us away. It’s a clinic in angular psychedelic poetry like nothing I’ve heard in music since songs on Joe Henry’s album Trampoline.


Even as Dowdy’s relaxed delivery and top of the beat phrasing sets up a certain mood, he has moments of sheer lyrical gymnastics, which—once one dives into other offerings in the Fust catalog—seems to be a staple of the writer’s art. Some lines stand out as flourish against chords and changes. Such as “I feel like a sparkler/That’s been thrown off the roof.” Or “Wondering who’s the god of that sky?/Who’s the god of memory?”


In closing, I have to say this is as perfect a rural rock tune as any that could be written today, especially in a genre that has been left for dead by most intellectually curious listeners. At one point in time, we thought James McMurtry might have a shot at dragging this corner of “country” away from the low intelligence and transparent cynicism of the twenty-first century record industry. Alas, he had his shot and missed. I’m by no means claiming that Fust might save Southern music. But it certainly sounds as if Aaron Dowdy and crew are having a good time frolicking in what’s left of it.

A minor hobby of mine is crafting on drift wood. I should not have used the gloss finish on this piece but I’m new at this. I have found the work highly therapeutic and hope to do more in the future.

I haven’t written about music since the failure of a weekly entertainment magazine called SPREAD that I founded and ran nearly single handed back in the early ’00s. Music and I have a strained relationship for myriad reasons. Musical performance produced my only experiences with transcendence, as the term is commonly defined. However, nothing else can so thoroughly sour your love of something as striving to pay your bills with said something. Let’s leave it there.


Now to the subject of this writing and my first real essay on anything musical in over two decades. Are you familiar with a Nashville, TN band named All Them Witches? Not many people are if not connoisseurs of obscure rankings of metal/hard rock bands, which is ironic in that All Them Witches are generally regarded as a multi genre/genre busting group.


First allow me to preempt my praise for this band with what I consider their weaknesses which truly boil down to a single weakness. The studio. The aforementioned genre buster label stems from their songwriting craft for sure but their studio work highlights the variability of their interests—including songs recorded with country artist Caitlin Rose and folk artists Erin Rae, fellow members of the Nashville music scene. In a studio setting, armed with all the individual tracks and controls, All Them Witches are a mediocre band at best. Seriously. Their discography is unimpressive, self indulgent, and flat. If I had to describe them in a single word: hollow. Even with the meandering history of personnel which includes some talented multi instrumentalism, even though scaffolded by eclectic influences such as multi national folk music, within the depths of each album, at the core of each collection, lies a cold blank space. I suspect the very diversity of weaponry offered by the studio hinders this band’s actual genius.


This actual genius is on full display in a single, COVID forced live performance recorded in 2020, the year live performance was sacrificed on the alter of lockdown mania. The title of this collection testifies to my previous complaint about All Them Witches being a tad boring. The title isn’t as lazy as it first sounds. It’s an inside-baseball nod to lyrics from a previous album, Sleeping Through the War, “Guess I’ll go live on the internet.” Live on the Internet, in my once-but-no-longer professional opinion, is one of the greatest displays of mood and groove in the history of hard rock. I am cognizant of the hyperbolic tone, trust me. I am 53 years old. A lifetime of listening stands behind this statement. This live recording—sans live audience—provides a clinic on what a band in this era of retro over saturation can achieve in a single moment of time.


As mentioned previously All Them Witches—a primarily hard rock entity—has employed keyboard, violin, harmonica, etc. over the years in an effort to claim their genre bending status. Not here. Live on the Internet is performed as a traditional three piece. Michael Parks, Jr. on bass and vocals, Ben McLeod on guitar, Robby Staebler on drums. If you’d like see the band play these songs, the entire video of this show is available on YouTube, however, my suggestion is to stick with the audio only version. My argument for greatness here is anchored in sound, nothing to do with sight which is an intended salute to Mikey Allred who engineered, mixed, and mastered this performance.


This is not an album review. I will not go song by song stretching for high shelf adjectives to describe these tunes. What I want to do here is spotlight what is missing in music today, what has been missing in music for several decades, and how an almost effortless move on any band or single performer’s part can breath energy back into modern music.


The basic move here is one toward honesty in expression. I defy you to find a more honest live performance—in this broad genre—anywhere over the last decade. What we have in Live on the Internet becomes a trio of musical personalities soaring within the sweet spots of their capabilities. This isn’t the mechanical regurgitation of rote phrasing and beat counting perfection. The band creates life on this recording. Without overzealous intent to showboat or dazzle. Each of the players conveys a perfect understanding of each piece and their part within the superstructure of the performance as a whole.


McLeod’s basic trinity of whah, delay, and amp born distortion elevates his choices of flourish and rhythm to virtuosic proportion. McLeod has become one of my favorite guitarists of late with his talent for restraint. It is his restraint, his decisions on what not to play versus what he could play or what another player in his position might have chosen to play that has won my awe. At no point on this recording do I ever think, “That was uncalled for.” Full disclosure alert: one of the reasons I am enamored with McLeod’s tools lies in the fact that whah, delay, amp distortion were the foundation of my own sound when I played. After years of crowded pedal boards slowly dropping in population as each do-hicky and whatchacallit died for whatever mysterious reason, the revelation that these three stalwarts were all any true guitar work required became doctrinal for me. McLeod’s use of slide in a hard rock setting also attracts me as I too relied heavily on that tiny brass pipe to illicit my favored sounds.


Staebler, with the help excellent sound engineering, has created what is an absolute fortress of consistency behind the beats on Live on the Internet. Any falter in his timing comes as a welcome reminder that he is a living, breathing human source of the percussion. His dynamics are flawless throughout, an achievement rarely accomplished in the modern era of triggers and electronics. His willingness to rely on five or six variable fills is nothing short of glorious revelry in the groove, the mood of the show.


As the other half of the rhythm duo, Parks somehow injects soul into a tone so thick one might think he’s a sorcerer of a flavor found only in cheap fantasy novels. A majority of bass sounds in this genre—especially in a three piece configuration—rely so much on a narrow portion of low end that the subtleties required to emote much, if any mood lies out of reach and yet Parks’ playing here paints a fresco across this confined canvas, one that bellows and brawls in it’s beauty and simplicity.


Parks’ vocals are the true gem amongst the music, in part because what he does can barely be described as singing at all. His monotone delivery strikes one as if they’re hearing a bygone Jim Morrison who, so weary from working his day job as ditch digger, is simply too exhausted to grant you anything more than the his ultra cryptic, quasi-religious poetry in stilted off kilter cadence. It is absolute genius to hear. It flips on its head the notion that vocals must be the spearhead of the performance. Parks proves that not only do vocals not require outlandish, hamming up but they don’t even need to be musical, per se.


In all my declarations that this performance conveys honesty of an overall mood and groove, the songs presented here do in fact meander in sentiment. From the sweeping bleakness of Blood and Sand/Endless Waters to the back-to-basics rock fury of tracks like Saturnine & Iron Jaw, 41, Charles William and Enemy of My Enemy to hypnotic blindsides like Alabaster and Rats in Ruin the songs themselves seem to yearn to break free from the focus of the greater project. Yet the band keeps the entire menagerie on the rails with an iron will. Every tune contains that vein of collective honest intent.


Even the farthest off genre wanderings keep the mood when one would think it impossible. The Marriage of Coyote Woman is concrete delta blues that should clash in every way with the majority of the set list. Still, with the simple commitment to clothing the song in the same honesty as the others, the tune melts into the cauldron. In the same way, Open Passageways and Everest, two un-rock tunes, lacking in distortion or drive, become tasteful fringe on a cloak of darkness. Everest, incidentally, stands out as a breather, a guitar solo instrumental in the vein of sweaty 70’s bands who dreamt of Vikings and forest elves.


By all accounts this band should not be able to make this recording. In a world where the average attention span has corrupted the artistic output on a global scale, this album should not exist. Even bands who claim to have stuck to their principles—Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, etc—have caved to protocol. I’m not saying that on a certain scale All Them Witches is more musically moral than any other band. What I am willing to state without any doubt is that this work, as a whole, is as honest and true to the the craft of performance as any band could be and is most certainly what every band should strive for. This collection, recorded in one sitting, is an achievement. I commend them, even though my adoration is three years overdue.

A hovel leaned against a tree whose unripened fruit hung covered in frost. A thin ribbon of translucent smoke twisted above the opening in the roof. A draft beast stood stomping grumpy stomps on the leeward side of the structure, random gusts tossing the ball of hair that hung over his eyes.


Gartisix, four of his men, and two young priests brought their horses to a halt near the entrance where a thin blade of light cut through the leather flap. One of the clerics led an additional pony, the saddle small and vacant. A stout bearded man, sickle in hand, appeared in the gap and stood for a time while Gartisix and his party approached. The priests spoke with him for a long time while the general and his guards listened. This farmer, whose stance was at first defiant and aggressive, eventually slunk at the shoulders and allowed the clerics into his abode.


When the priests emerged again, they escorted a girl, teenager. They had wrapped her in a wooly hide. As they moved past Gartisix toward the horses, her young face turned back at the family that had stepped out as a globule of arms, legs, tattered clothes, and soiled faces of various ages. Tears dripped. Audible sorrows.


Gartisix went to the farmer and handed him a gold chain. The runes and symbols on the ovoid pendant attached to the chain declared this man and his family now members of the Durancerot, the cherished and exalted providers of sacrificial virgins to the lord of gods, Hartem. The treasure in the farmer’s hand would forever ensure that his children and their children and on and on would be cared for by royal decree. They who gave a life would never suffer for food or home. And yet as most members of the Durancerot came to understand, no amount of royal generosity could buy back the guilt one gained following the yield of innocents for slaughter.

For many years, King Zutophax ruled the lands of the mighty Gustah Mountains and The Vast Plains below them. He possessed the further southern forest kingdoms of Welki and Telki. The dusty lands of Vanzylt and Rymsalsi to the east paid tribute to Zutophax and relied on his protection from the Empire of Onquesta and the kingdom of Poortemta. These two waning powers participated in unending conflict between themselves hence any mustering of the Gustah armies proved rare. North of the mountains, stretching into the eternal unknown of the arctic wastelands, lay the Oliane Steppe, populated by mysterious nomadic tribes and beasts of dark origins. To the west churned the sea.


Integral to the king’s legend was his devotion to the god Hartem and Hartem’s wife, Demnasa. The story told across the far reaches of his influence and beyond placed a young, newly crowned Zutophax in the catacombs beneath Hartem’s temple carved into the dark rock of the Gustah convening face to face with the boisterous deity, the god of both war and peace, and the undeniable lord of his fellow gods. Zutophax pleaded to Hartem’s vanity and promised the god many wars in exchange for years of calm and prosperity. In an additional appeal to Hartem’s wife, Demnasa, the goddess of the harvest and childbirth, purveyor of the energy of all life, Zutophax presented a plan to provide exuberant amounts of what the gods most desired—the worship and sacrifice that roiled the cosmic realm to fuel their strength and magic.


The shining armies of the Gustah conquered what remained of the borderlands between the plains and Welki and Telki. He subjugated the twin forest kingdoms and decimated the wild lands of Vanzylt and Rymsalsi. He installed his brothers as princes there. He annexed waterways and fertile lands from the faltering Empire of Onquesta. He attacked Poortempta and removed the kingdom’s mad boy-king from power. Then for decades he played the two nations against one another in order to keep the peace he had promised Hartem and Demnasa. This peace provided much wealth and happiness for the people of The Gustah. Zutophax and his subjects recognized the chief god’s approval as the source of their prosperity and performed endless sacrifices to his name.

The section of this site labeled “Chrysalis” is completely fucked. I have tried many times to fix it but it’s a loss. The posts still exist and I am currently using many of them as jumpstarts to write full length works—the previous post “Soteria Road” began its life there. When I first created the Scintilla project, the idea was to write very short pieces—accompanied by art or photographs—that somehow stood on their own in either esoteric or pragmatic ways. Admittedly, as they sit now, the majority read as simply incomplete. However, there are a few that work as they are now. Descent is one of them. When I reread this for the first time in a few years, it, pleased me to discover its elegant completeness.