16 OctOber 1 - 7, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | Music | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents accident and after. Having endured a challenge unlike any most people will ever face, Saenz decided that life in the after would sound just as beautiful and loud as the life before. By the end of 2024, he set a new goal for the next year: write and record one original song each month. Music, up to that point, had got- ten Saenz through every hard and every beautiful moment in his life. He knew it could get him through many more. On Oct. 23, Saenz, under the moniker of Baby Snakes and the Electric Co., will release a 12-track album, “Ouroboros,” his first-ever solo project. The work, originally intended as a creative outlet and a reclamation of music, was never written to be released, but after a year of tribulations, Saenz is open- ing his lyrical diary, hoping to share his story of tenacity. “I’m blown away by the fact that I could pick up the pieces after an accident like the accident that I had, and I’m blown away by the fact that I could make something that I’m proud of, and I feel is beau- tiful out of such a difficult year of life,” he says. “I would only hope that people could find some power in that for themselves.” High Voltage He’s still not sure exactly how the accident happened; he remembers the night like you remember a dream — hazy and only in parts. He knows there was a power outage on his street; he remembers walk- ing outside, still holding the lighter he had used to light as many can- dles as he could find inside his home. He remembers a feeling, an overwhelming buzz that made him feel like he was bursting from the inside out. He remembers flying through the air before slamming into the ground and then he re- members staring into the panicked face of Monica above him. He can still feel the harsh juts of the stretcher collapsing; he can see the uncomfortable glow of fluores- cent lights in the back of the ambu- lance that broke the eerie dark of the pitch-black night; he can still hear how the muted sirens sounded from inside; and he’ll never forget the last words he heard that night as the EMT loaded his body with fentanyl. “You’re gonna be okay, bud.” To this day, he’s not sure of the exact de- tails of how he came into contact with the power line, but assumes he brushed it with his right hand. At such a high voltage, Saenz would have immediately lost muscle con- trol, rendering him unable to unlatch him- self from the line and leaving him entangled for the duration of the accident. He spent 10 days in a coma as doctors performed a series of necessary surgeries, including the amputation of his right hand. He awoke with Monica at his bedside, and a choice to make: whether he would surren- der to the difficulties life presented to him, or to find a new way to live. “It was either be angry, and be sad, and be sullen, and depressed, and all these things, and nobody’s going to blame you, and you’re going to go through a lot of that regardless, or just look forward and get home to your family and get to work,” Saenz says. Changing tune Make no mistake, “Ouroboros” is not about the accident, nor is it about triumph. “At no point on the album is it ever suggested that we won, we survived, we made it,” he says. “But I also was really adamant when we were writing these songs about not ending anything with a question mark, or some big loom- ing wondering of whether or not there was hope.” Life is still hard for Saenz. Daily, he’s presented with new problems to solve. The simplest tasks, like using finicky remotes, are puzzles. Many times, his only route is to fail and then fail again until he finds new normals. But life’s inconve- niences spare no one. “We got past the initial physical trauma, but people don’t often think about the tribulations that come after that,” says Monica. “There’s a lot more invisible hardship that comes after something like that. That’s what [the album] is about. It’s not about the initial, big physical accident that everyone thinks it probably is. It’s like what happens when you get back to real life.” The album chronicles a year of Saenz’s life, featuring tributes to Monica and their two children (their seven-year-old daughter even has credits on one of the songs), and ends with the title track, the only song written about the artist himself. It creates a multi-dimensional work filled with love and loss, inspired by good days and bad. “Last year was just extremely difficult for me; I needed to go as deep as I could into that space,” Saenz says. “But I found a way to write some truly happy moments into this, and I’m really proud of that because, amidst all of the pain, to be able to convey these moments of beauty and hope is tricky.” Monica has been watching her husband adapt for years. She’s watched him relearn how to brush his teeth, make his morning coffee and use a phone. But watching him relearn musicality was one of the more rewarding moments the last few years have held. “I was definitely excited for him to be able to do music again in his own way,” she says. “To be able to create something without being able to play instruments and kind of just see how it would go with him being more involved in the writing and producing as- pect than he had been before was really cool to see.” For a lifelong musician, losing the ability to play almost all instruments (he’s now only able to play the tambourine) is a seismic event, but Saenz says it has changed him in an unexpected way, and gifted him a sort of sixth musical sense. “I’m revitalized; I’ve found myself capa- Facing the music from p15 Saenz at home in his studio.