This is a summer of goodbye parties for musicians and people who love music in North Texas. With those goodbyes come heightened feelings tied to place. Nostalgia for a neighborhood or a city is also invariably a longing for the whole setting. Who was there, the music you loved with them, the music you loved alone. “I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg,” Paul Tough wrote in an essay I’ll never forget about a band for which I could care less and a place I’ve only encountered through the writer’s tribute.
The stories we tell about place carry so far; sometimes music is what drives us to tell them.
There is a story being told about Denton these days that feels strange. It begins with a word. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of confronting the verb “Dentoning” on the internet or via city-sponsored materials, it’s ostensibly meant to describe doing what have been generalized as “Denton things in Denton.” Yoga, tacos, helping others, live music. If those amenities and traditions were invented in the city, as the term would lead you to believe, why must everyday free time be assigned value only if it cheers the city’s growth with a hashtag? Should the very minutes of its people be dropped into the bank of pro-Denton sentiment that city leaders believe will bolster the economy? Wouldn’t the royalties take care of things?
A regular guy named Scott Campbell is credited with the term. He claims to have nothing to do with recycled plastic dolls being sold to benefit Keep Denton Beautiful in a storefront downtown wearing “Dentoning” t-shirts. The word just caught on, as words will do. A Facebook thread on local music organizer Michael Briggs’ page discussing these dolls had reached 132 comments as of this writing. There are very few apparent fans of the dolls, and many more questions about “Dentoning” and what action words more aptly describe the condition of the city and what the people in it are doing.
The elusive staying is, ultimately, the desired outcome of “Dentoning,” as I understand it. Closing seems especially current to people whose core of existence in the city is music, whose first reference for Denton was perhaps Rubber Gloves, the beloved club that caught feet in its doors as they shut last month. A wave of house venues is on the phase-out: noise haven Gay Cat Hell stopped hosting shows in May, and this weekend House of Rot held its final show.
Goodbyes are happening everywhere, all the time. Denton can’t trademark leaving, nor would it ever want to claim being left. While it’s the preferred term, flux is much less accommodating to continuous verb tense. Everyone just hopes to find something they recognize amid these changes.
This need to feel something familiar and still be surprised is what took me to Dan’s SilverLeaf on Sunday night. I found out bebop trumpet mainstay Marvin Stamm was in town from New York via a post on the political watchdog Facebook group Denton Matters. Ed Soph made the post. He’s a drummer and a teacher and an environmental activist who has played often and recorded with Stamm. I’ve known of Soph’s work since high school; he was worshipped by young drummers I knew in Dallas.
Soph was originally set to play drums but due to a shoulder injury left the sticks to Steve Barnes, who absolutely stole both sets as he playfully antagonized his more reserved stagemates, jubilant even with brushes.
Stefan Karlsson played piano; James Driscoll was on bass: two more familiar names, still around, revered teachers in the area. Led by Stamm, who Stan Kenton once plucked from North Texas State University for his own orchestra, the ensemble played straight to a reverent, mature crowd that glowed at classics among standards: Ray Noble’s “Cherokee,” Kern and Hammerstein’s “All The Things You Are,” and Miles Davis’ “The Theme” to close, a move Davis’ group made often live. Stamm’s technical prowess (he played with Benny Goodman and Bill Mays) was outdone only by his teacherly, evaluative presence onstage.
A cell phone rang during the final 20 seconds of a bass solo and a few tables’ worth of audience walked out at exactly 10 p.m. before the band was finished. It’s hard to say what was special about the night, except that it would have been common in another time and we were on an island that could have been anywhere.
