▼ Music Rubber- necking Toadies look back on three decades of alternative rock. BY DAVID FLETCHER I t’s early on a Tuesday afternoon, and Toadies singer Todd Lewis is wiping down a new table in the entrance of his The Loop Artist Rehearsal Complex in South Fort Worth. “We actually broke ground about 10 days before COVID hit, before the lockdowns,” Lewis says. “The guys who were working out here were considered essential, and they were not doing anything else. So, it went up in like a month. It’s been full ever since.” It’s an inconspicuous building on Evans Avenue, across the street from a shuttered café and a small convenience store with hand-painted signs advertising beer, wine, ice and milk, and signaling that the Lone Star card is accepted there. Driving down Evans, you wouldn’t know you were in the right place if you’d missed the sign on the door announcing “The Loop” in all caps, and “Artist Rehearsal Complex,” below in fine print. Even if you did notice the building and its inconspicuous sign, you’d never guess that this building had anything to do with Fort Worth alternative rock band Toadies. Lewis’ is the only vehicle in the lot on the building’s north side until drummer Mark “Rez” Reznicek arrives, finding a spot to park toward the back where there’s still a lit- tle shade. Lewis sets down his bottle of sur- face cleaner and opens the door for his bandmate of 26 non-consecutive years and friend for over 30, and the two share a strong embrace, the kind two veterans who have served together might share knowing that nobody else has seen what they’ve seen. It’s been months since the two musi- cians have seen each other in person as both have been pursuing their own inter- ests as the pandemic’s long reach of lock- downs, postponements and cancellations has shifted the band’s Rubberneck 25th An- niversary Tour to what is now its 28th an- niversary in real time. On this particular day, the two are meet- ing to start planning rehearsals for the up- coming tour and share the history of the album’s surprising success and unlikely legacy. I COME FROM THE WATER To really grasp the unlikeliness of the Toad- ies story, you have to understand what the Fort Worth music scene was like in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. As the Toadies tell it, there was virtually Mike Brooks no market for a local band that played origi- nal songs, and the music exchange we see today between Dallas, Fort Worth and Den- ton was virtually non-existent. “I mean, it was hard,” Lewis says. “Like there was no venue. So, if you wanted to make any money or even just get a couple of pitchers of beer as pay, it was covers and try- ing to sneak in your own songs. “When we started playing, it was very cliquish; that was my perception,” he con- tinues. “Dallas didn’t want anything to do with Fort Worth, and so we reciprocated.” Even as Pantera started to blow up in Ar- lington, Lewis recalls never having much to do with that scene as siloed as everything was. Even the Denton music scene was cold to outsiders. “And, you know, people might play in all three, but they definitely seemed like their own separate domain,” Lewis says. Much like today, the Fort Worth music scene was inextricably linked to the city’s uni- versity crowd, who were far more interested in singing along to songs they knew from the ra- dio than hearing some band nobody ever heard of sing songs about brazen evolutionary creatures and creepy home invaders. Toadies performed in August 2022 at Lava Cantina in The Colony. “Being a local band like that — that’s just what it was — a local band,” Reznicek says, “there wasn’t really a path to do anything be- yond that.” The Toadies found that path their own way, though, by “pissing off a lot of people and burning bridges” as Lewis puts it. Alternative rock was in its infancy, finding a home only in the speakers of the musically adventurous. Lewis and Rezincek counted themselves among those privileged ranks, finding inspira- tion in bands like Pixies and Talking Heads. Lewis had been left angry by a breakup, and his bandmates in a cover band with which he played at the time held a kind of intervention, telling him, “Maybe if you stop listening to this [alternative] music and maybe start listening to this [rock] music, that would help.” Lewis’s response? “How ‘bout you guys fuck right off. I’m going to go write songs. I’m really mad now.” Looking back, Lewis is glad that he is not the angry young man he was in the years he spent crafting the 11 songs that would oc- cupy Rubberneck’s initial release, but it was Mike Brooks Toadies, from left to right: Vaden Todd Lewis, Doni Blair, Clark Vogeler, Mark Reznicek that push that made Toadies a decidedly original band regardless of its existence in an unwelcoming environment. It would be years before they would agree to even think about adding a cover to a live set, much less to a recorded work. I CRAWLED UPON THE SHORE For Lewis, the memories of the band’s early years are tied to one Fort Worth venue. “[The years] ‘89-‘90 was all up and down Magnolia [Avenue],” he says. “ [Owners] Kelly Parker and Melissa Kuykendall had a place at the end, a one-story, glass-front building, and that’s where ... ” Lewis struggles to remember the name before Reznicek chimes in. “The Axis,” Reznicek says. Lewis lights up. “Yeah, The Axis,” he re- peats. “That was the original Axis.” “That’s kind of like the only place where a touring band or indie bands could play,” Reznicek says. Some of those indie and touring bands would today be referred to as “classic” or “staples.” “We played with Fugazi, we played with The Lemonheads, played with Goo Goo Dolls, and it was like literally this size,” Lewis says, gesturing to one room that is about half the size of a shipping container, “maybe with a bathroom in the back.” The Axis was similar to Parker and Kuyk- endall’s other venue, Mad Hatter’s, which served as the venue for the “Possum King- dom” video, except that Mad Hatter’s was much nicer. Before Magnolia Avenue was the nightlife destination it is today, it was a row of empty warehouses and storefronts. “It was kinda scary,” Reznicek says. “You’d go in, play a show and get the hell out of there.” Somehow, in the midst of a musical desert, playing shows along the same street in one part of town, the Toadies piqued the >> p19 17 17 dallasobserver.com dallasobserver.com | CONTENTS | UNFAIR PARK | SCHUTZE | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | MOVIES | DISH | MUSIC | CLASSIFIED | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER OCTOBER 27–NOVEMBER 2, 2022 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014
