14 January 2 - 8, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Scary Good Catacosmic’s grueling Fright Fest residency earns new fans and life lessons. BY DAVID FLETCHER S inger and guitarist Houston Ellsworth has been fronting the psych-metal band Catacosmic for nearly a decade. The band was once called Chief Swiftwa- ter, but Ellsworth changed the name and musical direction of the project last summer, bringing in drummer Bilardo Artiga and bass player Juan Flores to beef up the band’s metallic presence. Catacosmic isn’t exactly the type of band you would intentionally seek out. Its music was heavy and experimental, its lyrics sounded as though they were written by a Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons and its stage presence left a lot to be desired. All of that is to be expected of a group of working-class guys with a band on the side. That all changed midway through 2024. As Catacosmic was making its way through the local music scene, playing a record store here, a house show there and other small- venue gigs in between, the band was ap- proached with one of the biggest opportunities a local band could be offered. “I get this email from Six Flags that’s like, ‘Hey, we found your album on Bandcamp,’ of all places, ‘and we’re interested in audi- tioning you guys to be the Fright Fest band,’” Ellsworth says, recalling his surprise. “My first reaction is like, there’s no fucking way.” Over time, the band learned that the new management for Six Flags and Fright Fest had been combing through Dallas bands, looking for something scary, but PG-13-scary, to fit the whole Fright Fest experience. “We try to ride the line of the metaphysi- cal cosmic psychedelic aspects and then bring in these punk/metal breakdowns, try- ing to ride the line of beauty and destruction sort of thing,” Ellsworth says he told Six Flags’ reps, and of the 20 bands selected to audition, Catacosmic got the part. “They liked the message and every- thing, and they named the closing show after the album we put out about a year and a half ago, The Point of No Return,” Ellsworth says, remembering those early talks about how the band would be incor- porated into the Fright Fest Festivities. “’How do you feel about playing in cos- tumes? How do you feel about backup dancers?’ And in our minds we’re just like, ‘Yeah, sounds cool.’” Then came the schedule. “My jaw just kind of hit the floor: 127 sets in eight weeks,” Ellsworth says. “It just looked like we were standing at the base of Mount Everest.” With a stage set up in front of the carousel at Six Flags, Catacosmic would play three to six sets a night, three to four nights a week, for the entire eight weeks of Fright Fest. Liv- ing close to Six Flags helped, but managing a rigorous band schedule while maintaining jobs and families was the biggest challenge. “I have a pretty typical 8-to-5 office job, and they’re really good on the PTO,” Ells- worth says. “I used 68 hours of PTO. I have eight hours left until April now, one day, but it was worth it.” “I got kids out the wazoo, man,” Flores adds, referring to his five children. “I got a gi- ant family at home. Honestly, man, having ob- viously strong support at home. My job also worked with me pretty well as far as getting time off and missing days. There were a lot of days where I just couldn’t make it. But, really just my girl at home taking care of the kids, without her, it wouldn’t have been possible.” For all the sacrifices made, Catacosmic were able to turn the experience into one gi- ant learning opportunity, both for the busi- ness and for the practice of being in a band. “One difficult aspect was just dealing with all of the paperwork side of it, learning how to make invoices, submitting them to the corporate, I feel like I learned a lot on that side of it,” Ellsworth says. “I mean, do- ing local stuff is always a blast, and I’d rather keep that local vibe, not submitting invoices to Rubber Gloves or the promoter.” The technical aspects of the perfor- mances presented another challenge. With an old stage and old equipment, the band would learn how to keep the show going if a mic or an amp shorted out. “Every time that happened, whoever could play would be playing something or trying to talk something,” Ellsworth says. “We just really learned how to interact with a crowd under pressure.” Before the Six Flags gig, the crowds for Catacosmic shows, however sparse they were, had been peers in the DIY music com- munity. But at Six Flags, the band would be playing for quite literally anybody who came through the gates. “We had to keep it family-friendly, but a lot of our themes are pretty mature, singing about the apocalypse and all that,” Ells- worth says with a laugh. “It was really wild seeing people out there with their strollers and stuff, but then you see those babies rock- ing out and there’s something special about it. You could see the parents with big smiles, too, seeing their kids rock out like that.” Instead of mosh pits, the band would see kids running in a circle with bubble guns, and like rock stars, the band would pose for pictures with families and hand out guitar picks to the kids. “We would try to inspire them like, ‘Now you got to take that guitar pick and you got to pick up an instrument, whatever it is, the tri- angle, anything,” Ellsworth says. “There were some special family moments where the whole family would follow us and the mom would hit me up on Instagram or something and say, ‘My son wouldn’t stop talking about you guys on the drive all the way home, and we listened to your album.’ It was fun having those interactions and it made me think about just playing gigs totally differently.” Seeing that kind of enthusiasm and play- ing so regularly inspired the band to take its performance beyond the small-venue space and into rock stardom. “My stepmom was there on one of the very first weekends and on the last weekend, and she just said the difference was insane,” Ellsworth says. “We just started utilizing the stage, going up to the top floor, jumping off the steps, going wireless, doing tornadoes and just trying to make it entertaining be- cause you never really knew who was going to be out there.” “I had been breaking out of my shell, but when you play that many shows in a row, you get a real chance to say, ‘OK, the next one, I’m going to try this or I’m going to do this,’” Flores adds. “The stage had a lot of ledges to jump off of, so it was great. I’m not a tiny guy, but I just was letting it go. It was awesome.” In addition to the money made from the residency and the band’s virtual tip jar, Cata- cosmic’s Intagram grew by 300% thanks to their performances. And following a much- needed pause after such an exhausting schedule, Catacosmic is ready to get back on stage with a show at Double Wide on Satur- day, Jan. 25. “We’ve reached the heights of physical- ness when it comes to our playing,” Flores says. “So trying to maintain that into the fu- ture I think, for me especially, is what I plan to do. But hopefully we got some new faces out in those crowds.” “New sonic stuff too,” Ellsworth adds. “We were able to upgrade some of our gear that we’ve had for 10 years or so, some gear that could not even make it to do the Six Flags gig.” There will also be new songs and a new album on the way as Catacosmic navigates its post-Six Flags trajectory, but the experi- ence will forever shape the band’s future. “We set the bar for ourselves, and any- thing less than that just doesn’t feel right,” Flores says. “We want to keep that level going forward and just try to match the energy.” | B-SIDES | t Music Cindy Behymer Above: Catacosmic playing one of the 127 sets it performed at Six Flags Fright Fest this year. Left: Catacosmic shows up to Six Flags for an eight-week residency. Houston Ellsworth
