20 Years of Nerd Rock In the Bible Belt

It’s funny…even now, using the term “Nerd Rock” to describe what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years (or at least a great portion of it) seems insufficient. Am I a nerdy guy? Yes. Have I covered certain nerdy/fandom topics in my songs? Yes. But it’s always been about much more than that for me.

Dustin Ragland, former drummer for Dr. Pants and a good friend, said in our interview/conversation video (and I’m paraphrasing here) that one of the things he appreciated about Dr. Pants was that I was never really concerned with what was cool…and that the freedom for him to grow as a player and do things that maybe weren’t considered “cool” by other bands was something he enjoyed. I’ve been thinking a lot about that…about the fact that my influences and the things I love may not be considered “cool” by many other people in the OKC music scene, and that even though I believe I’ve earned the respect of many of my peers, Dr. Pants has long been sort of a “singular entity” in this city because I don’t bow to trends, or to prevailing taste, or anything.

So, call it “Nerd Rock” if you want. It’s highly likely that the music I make in the next however many years will continue to challenge that term…so don’t get too comfortable.

I appreciate everyone who has watched the 20th Anniversary videos this week. In lieu of a big concert where we bring back a bunch of former members and rock out, this is what I settled on. I have at least one or two other things coming down the pike that are backwards-looking, but I want everyone to know that, after this (and after the 25th anniversary reissue of the Mr. Utopia album in January 2021), I’m probably not gonna look back again for quite a while.

The final 20th Anniversary video is the last episode of Stories Behind the Pants that I am ever going to do. I haven’t done one for a couple of years, and I decided to officially end the series by doing one for “Under The Lights”, a track from Feezle Day. I explain a bit about the song in the video (because, you know, Stories Behind the Pants), but I’ll elaborate here a bit:

The title and idea of “Under The Lights” came to me in Santa Fe, New Mexico, some time within 6 or so months of my graduation from college. I have a bit of an obsession with gas stations and convenience stores, and the phrase “under the lights” was actually inspired by a feeling of nostalgia and sadness that I got (and sometimes still get), standing under the lights of a gas station canopy (you know, the big ones that they put over the big row of gas pumps). From there, I started thinking about sitting under lights outside of coffee shops, and in city parks at night, and other places I had spent time with friends in my youth. And it led to a song about missing those people, and those times, and those things. Again, as it says in the liner notes of Feezle Day, the song is not actually about dead people. None of the people in the song are dead. But the times that I spent with those people at that age in those places? I’m never going to get those back.

So here it is. The last of the 20th Anniversary posts. Stay tuned for more music. Play your favorite Dr. Pants songs for your friends. Hopefully, once everything is safe again, I’ll see you all at a concert.