This story was originally performed at KUT's ATXplained Live show on April 29. Get tickets for our next show on Oct. 29!
Back around 2009, there was a man who was part of the live music scene in Austin, yet he wasn't a musician. He would come out and read a poem related to the band about to play and then leave the stage.
He was one of those characters who kept Austin weird. But then he disappeared. Nicole Stuart wanted to know: Who was this man, and what happened to him?
She remembered him introducing a band at the old Emo’s, then at Fun, Fun, Fun Fest and Monsters of Folk. He was even at Austin City Limits, she said.
She couldn't remember a lot of details — he was eccentric, with white-gray hair and, as she put it, “maybe disheveled.” Initially, she thought he might be artist Daniel Johnston. But by the early 2000s, he was well known in Austin, and people would have recognized him.
So, who was this guy?
Austin's music scene in the early 2000s
The first step in my investigation was to talk with people who were in the music scene 15 years ago: employees at our sister music station, KUTX.
Some people had a vague memory of the mystery man, but they all pointed me to Jake Pearlman for the answer. He’s an audio engineer at KUT and KUTX, but he’s so much more than that. He’s a guardian of Austin music history, a man who’s been in multiple bands and has played in nearly every venue in the city.
Pearlman had seen the best and the worst of Austin’s live music scene in the late '90s and early 2000s. Back then, he was in a band called Lions and spent a significant amount of time in music venues.
"On any Thursday night you could see something that might just blow your head off," he said.
And one of those things that would blow your head off was the guy who would read “esoteric beat kind of poetry” before shows. It was special. The way Pearlman puts it, the vibe in the room would change when this guy went on stage.
If he read a poem at your show, Pearlman said, “it felt like your band had sort of arrived." And with that metric in mind, at some point, Lions made it. This guy read for them.
'Esthetic boredom'
Pearlman didn’t remember his name, but his bandmates did: Thaxter Douglas.
Douglas started writing poetry in his 20s. At first he would do confessional poetry charged with emotions — mostly negative ones. He said it was kind of therapy.
"If you let it all out, or let your negative feelings out into the sunlight so you can see them, maybe they’ll be less frightening," he said.
But as healing as it was, it was also overwhelming, and Douglas got tired of big emotions.
He moved on to writing poems about people. Then movies, dead artists and even hockey games.
"Esthetic boredom comes easily to me," Douglas said.
By the late '90s he tried writing a poem about a band, and something just clicked. So, he made it a thing in the Chicago music scene.
The ritual goes like this: If he’s never heard the band, he listens to their music online. Then he approaches the band and asks if he can recite a poem at their concert — sometimes in advance; sometimes he just shows up. They rarely say no. Douglas writes the poem on the spot and reads it to the crowd for free.
"I feel like I am an honorary part of the band for that one night," he said. "If I had a band and I had to do the same songs every night, I would get bored."
In Chicago, he was an honorary part of huge bands like Spoon, Wilco and The White Stripes. Since he read for a different band every night, boredom was not an issue.
But while he was having fun and making a name for himself in the music scene in Chicago, by the mid-2000s, Douglas felt trapped in the Windy City and wanted a way out. He had heard great things about Austin — plus, someone offered him a free place to stay.
Home among the weirdos
In 2009, without thinking about it twice, Douglas took the Amtrak down south.
By then, he knew the right people. He hit the ground running with a show every night in the live music capital of the world. Those were exciting times.
“The 14 months in Austin is almost equal in my mind to the 12 years I did this in Chicago,” Douglas said.
For him, Austin was still the city where creatives and weirdos would come together to do their thing. He was surrounded by musicians and artists; he felt like he fit in. Even his living situation fed his creative and adventurous spirit.
Douglas was staying on the floor of an art gallery on East Cesar Chavez. In the morning, he would pick up his sleeping back and wander around the city. He sold poetry books for $20 at shows to make money to buy food.
But he quickly got the feeling that the vibe in the city was changing. And he heard what all newcomers hear when they move to Austin: You got here too late.
As nice as it was to have his work valued in Austin, he wasn’t getting paid for it. Douglas was getting tired of being a struggling artist, so he moved to Wisconsin to be close to his dad.
Douglas told himself it would be temporary; he would be back in Austin after a short break. But it took him over a decade to come back.
In April, he came for KUT's ATXplained Live show. On stage at Bass Concert Hall, he read one of his poems for the Austin band Tear Dungeon and then one inspired by the show. While in town for a few days, he also went out looking for bands to introduce at local venues — once again, hitting the ground running in Austin.
Douglas now lives in Madison. He is still writing poetry about movies, dead artists and bands. He introduces a band every night, no matter if it’s for a crowd of 10 or a crowd of thousands. He does it for the love of music and poetry.
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