Up until its revival season last year, Twin Peaks fandom was a straightforward, finite kind of thing. One looked back on the story. Its neo-noir aesthetic was relegated to novelty with each Audrey sweater at a Halloween party or Agent Dale Cooper reference over diner pie. Then the whole thing rose from the dead again with Lynch’s surprises in the latest round for Showtime.
One of the possibilities opened by the reanimation of Twin Peaks is Friday’s Damn Fine Music Fest at Three Links, organized by King Camel Productions’ Jeff Brown. Bands assembled from DFW’s music and arts circles were each assigned a 25-minute set to represent a different Twin Peaks character. The result promises to be an audio/visual equivalent to those postcards slipped into the Gold Box Edition of the series on DVD: special for Lynch’s most unabashed followers.
Artist and musician Sammy “Rat” Rios is in the group representing the ambiguously tragic center of Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer. She told me in late November, just before the band’s first rehearsal, how her late discovery of Lynch’s show on Netflix drew her past associations into his strange world.
“It changed my life, I think, watching the show,” the X Files fan says.
Rios’ own music has a performative, haunting quality, and she’ll be in good company with a member of They Say The Wind Made Me Crazy.
“I’m really excited because Sarah Ruth is in my band, who’s an exceptional vocalist and just all-around musician,” Rios says.
Among the artists charged with visuals for Friday’s performance is new media artist Sean Miller, who’s assigned to the Agent Cooper group. Before his set using abstract projections to riff on Lily Taylor’s vocal improvisation as Locations on Monday at RBC, Miller was thinking about the different versions of Cooper in the show. The sinister one, the reliable one. Capturing these elusive, mysterious characters will always be a task unfinished. One thing is sure: these artists are ready to venture an attempt, and in doing so, enter the mystery themselves.
