Just Don't Worry

It’s definitely not covered really anywhere, but the early ’90s college music scene was super neo-hippie, so much so that there was a term: “neo-hippie frat rat.” I’m not sure there was anywhere in the world more full of neo-hippie frat-ratism than Austin. People were super into the Dead, and Allman Brothers, and Blues Traveler, and other little bands, smaller bands, like Allgood, the Grapes. Austin’s own hippie jam band, Soulhat, was in there too, although I didn’t really get why. I liked them better than all the others, and I just couldn’t dive fully into Dead culture. There was a disconnect somewhere. I remember sitting around thinking, man, I could really get into the Allman Brothers deep, but the whole scene was like—I just couldn’t do it. And I was convinced it was me. Like, why couldn’t I make that leap? Try harder, JD!! But all these scenes and all these bands and everything just kind of go to a mean. They all end up in the same place. A mono kind of thing. Like there’s a…