Lester Bangs.

SLIGHTLY TRASHY
Offering #1 (or: why I’m starting here)

In the year 2000, I didn’t “meet” Lester Bangs.

I did, however, see the film, Almost Famous in a movie theater and honestly? I didn’t understand him. I didn’t even understand how real any of it was supposed to be, because the whole thing felt so exaggerated - and at that point my entire world was basically Mobile Christian School and a relatively brand new journey in to the world of playing gigs.

I thought I knew the world, though. Because I was a young guitar player running with musicians twice my age, and they’d turned me on to the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead - so in my mind I was already some kind of sophisticate. You couldn’t tell me nothing. I had opinions. I had “taste.” I had the confidence that only comes from knowing just enough to be dangerous and not enough to be humbled.

So when Lester Bangs showed up on screen - Philip Seymour Hoffman in that rumpled, half-annoyed, half-saintly way - my first reaction wasn’t reverence. It was more like, “who is this guy and why is he yelling poetry into the phone?”

I couldn’t tell if he was real and honestly, I didn’t even really think about it.

To be fair, Almost Famous doesn’t make it easy. Everything in that movie feels familiar, but also mythic. It’s written through the lens of William Miller - the imaginary protagonist who’s basically Cameron Crowe’s stand-in - and it’s packed with characters that are clearly based on real people, sometimes straight-up name-checked as real people. It’s like a dream where you recognize everyone and still don’t know what’s true.

Back then, the character I latched onto was William, because of course it was. I was the kid. I was the one trying to hang with older musicians, trying to seem like I belonged, trying to earn access without admitting how badly I wanted it.

Then life did what it does: it gave me miles.

And the more miles I logged, the more my relationship with that movie changed - and every so often i would revisit it and watch it again. Maybe a better way to explain it is the film stayed the same, but I kept walking into different rooms inside it.

At some point, I started identifying with Russell Hammond - partly because he always reminded me of Dickey Betts. Here’s a guy that’s both the cowboy AND the Indian.. and you never know which one you’re gonna get. That whole “cool and unavailable” aura. The side man gravity. The whole “I’m not your friend, I’m your idea of a friend” thing.

And then eventually, quietly even, without me noticing when it happened… I ended up with Lester.

Not because I think that’s me (I do not). But because by then I finally understood what he was doing in the story. He wasn’t there to be cool. He was there to be true. The oracle. The anti-bullshit lighthouse. The guy who understood the circus AND understood what it does to you.

It took me years to understand Lester Bangs because it took me years to understand the trap he was warning about.

In many ways, 2025 was the most important year of my life. It started with me bleary-eyed and driving home from Austin, Texas - by myself - and it felt only appropriate to play Charlie Robison’s “New Year’s Day” while I tried to wrap my brain around the night before - a post-New Year’s Eve afterparty orbiting the Kill Tony universe, following their show at the HEB Center. The whole thing had that specific kind of glow that only exists when you’re running on noise and adrenaline and bad judgment and the belief that you’re still young enough to get away with all of it.

By the time I reached Houston, that glow got punctured. Reports started breaking about a tragedy on Bourbon Street in New Orleans - something awful that had happened just hours earlier. I’m not here to sensationalize it, but I also can’t pretend it didn’t land in my chest like a brick. The whiplash was immediate: from comedy and music and late-night chaos to the sick, sobering reminder that the world doesn’t care what mood you’re in. The world felt weirder than it ever had, and we were just getting started on what would become - no exaggeration - one of the most bananas years yet.

And then, almost immediately, 2025 handed me a week that rearranged my internal wiring.

I spent one of the first weeks of the year in New York City, accompanying Marcus King - who, in my opinion, is one of the most authentic and honest talents on the planet - as he embarked on a residency at the world-famous jazz club The Blue Note, backed by some of the most prolific artists of our time: Chris Dave on drums, MonoNeon on bass, and Isaiah Sharkey on guitar.

That week changed me.

It opened my eyes in a way I still find difficult to articulate, and it was the most musically stimulating series of performances I had ever encountered in my life.

Not “that was a great show.” Not “cool experience.” I mean the kind of music that makes you feel like you’ve been living with the brightness turned down and somebody finally adjusted the dial. The kind of playing that doesn’t just impress you - it confronts you. It makes you ask whether you’ve been chasing the right things, whether your internal definition of “good” has been polluted by noise, whether your hunger is pointed at truth or pointed at applause.

From that week launched a lap around the world with Marcus and his touring band. I saw many things in 2025. I began working with new incredible artists. I built out a concert series in south Alabama. I brokered some new relationships in the tech space. I battled imposter syndrome. I played some musically rewarding gigs. I produced some special musical moments that I’m particularly proud of.

And the entire time, I was searching for how to balance what’s important to me with participating in things I could defend as part of a higher sense of importance.

Which is a dramatic way of saying. I spent the year asking myself, over and over, what counts.

“What is authentic?” is a funny - but essential and exhausting - concept I chase as I try to tie all these seemingly unrelated projects together. It’s also very often my biggest blind spot, and the source of my constant self-evaluation - whether my own ego is staying in check… or quietly stealing the steering wheel when I’m not looking.

And if you’ve never had a year like that - where you’re doing things you dreamed about doing, while also feeling like you’re one wrong decision away from becoming a person you don’t recognize - I don’t know how to explain it without sounding like I’m complaining about a blessing.

But I’m not complaining. I’m reporting.

Because 2025 was the year I realized - authenticity isn’t a compliment. It’s a cost.

“I’d rather be broke than fake” sounds like a cool line until life offers you a hundred tiny opportunities to trade a little truth for a little comfort, a little access, a little approval, a little momentum.

And 2025 - between the music and the travel and the opportunities and the world feeling like it was constantly on fire - kept putting that test in my lap.

All that to be said (long story long), here we are. And as my cold open goes lukewarm, I’m going to loop this back to the actual topic at hand.

2025 was also the 25th anniversary of the first time I sat in a movie theater and saw my favorite film, Almost Famous.

Seeing that movie was as impactful to me at that point in my life as participating in the Blue Note residency was at the start of this year. It hit home with a sense of familiarity - my love for stories from the road, the myth-making, the weird little ecosystems that build around bands, the romance of it all that mirrored so many artists who shaped my young guitar-player self. Through the years, as I met people in real life like Dickey Betts or Red Dog or Ben Fong-Torres - these characters that felt like they’d stepped out of the movie - I’d catch myself reminiscing about how much I loved the movie.

But all these years later - particularly at this point in my life, and in the weird world we’re living in - the character that stands out to me the most isn’t the wide-eyed kid or the golden god or even the romance of the road.

It was Lester.

The oracle.

The guy who seems immune to the spell.

And here’s the important part: I didn’t understand him when I first saw the movie. I didn’t even know if he was real. I just knew he had the best lines - those poetically -crafted, Cameron Crowe quotes that felt like they were written on stone tablets and delivered by a man who’d already watched the whole industry chew people up.

It took me years to understand why those scenes kept getting louder in my head.

Because the older I got - and the more I lived inside the kind of world that movie is about - the more I realized Lester Bangs wasn’t “extra.”

He was the warning label.

Now - a study - an informal examination if you will.

The Lester Bangs On Camera.

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

The real Lester Bangs did not actually say that - the movie version did. Its a great line. Its one of the great takeaways from the movie

I added this line to further try and drive home the entire point. My introduction to the character who was based on a real person wasn’t an actual full biography. He’s a function. He’s the conscience of the film. He’s there to remind you that there’s a difference between being close to the music and being HONEST about what closeness does to you.

He’s there to say - without saying it like a lecture - that access can make you stupid. That proximity can turn you into a worshipper. That “cool” is a currency that costs more than it pays.

And the reason that character mattered to me - even before I understood him - even before I realized he had been a REAL person who had existed but ALSO this version of him was NOT actually an authentic depiction (and that is actually ok, because this movie was not made to mislead but rather entertain) - is because he planted an idea that grew with me:

You can love the thing without becoming owned by the thing.

The Real Lester Bangs.

One of the most curious parts of my life has been in the way that as Ive gotten older Ive started actually living some version of the different influences Ive absorbed. Some may call it the journey to enlightenment (by the way - I am in no way claiming I have achieved self-actualization) but somewhere along the way the curiosity catches you. And in my case this time and many others I have thought to myself.. was he even a real person?

So you do what any modern person does when they want to sound informed. You ask Siri.

And Siri gives you the clean version - legendary rock critic, raw writing, rebellious style, champion of outsider artists, lived the rock lifestyle, blah blah blah. Which is fine. Siri is great at giving you something you can repeat at brunch.

But the real Lester Bangs - the actual guy - was messier and sharper and more contradictory than any film character is allowed to be.

And that’s exactly why he matters.

Because real authenticity isn’t a vibe. It isn’t a brand. It isn’t a carefully managed identity. It’s a person being honest at full volume, even when the truth costs them comfort, approval, belonging, and sometimes stability.

The movie version gives you the distilled lesson in a form a teenager can absorb.

The real version gives you the full strength bottle - with the warning label still on it.

Why I Refuse To Choose Between Them.

I don’t want to “ruin” Almost Famous for myself or for anyone else. That movie is a part of my nervous system. I love it. I’m not here to dunk on it for not being a documentary.

Because the Bangs in the movie is emotionally true. He’s mythically true. He’s the version of Bangs that was built to deliver a principle straight into your bloodstream.

And the real Bangs matters because he reminds you that the principle isn’t just a quote. It’s a practice.

One taught me the value.
One taught me the cost.

And 2025 is the year I realized I still need both of them in my ear.

Because 2025 put me closer to the rooms than I’d ever been. Closer to the talent. Closer to the opportunities. Closer to the machine that can make you feel important for the wrong reasons.

And it also put me closer to the noise.

Not just music-industry noise. World noise. Media noise. Algorithm noise. That constant feeling like everything is screaming for your allegiance - your outrage, your loyalty, your identity, your attention.

I don’t want this offering or any of my bullshit I come up with to be a politics newsletter. I’m not trying to sell you a team jersey (but I have been known to sell a t-shirt or two). I’m not interested in talking points.

But I also don’t want to pretend the world isn’t happening while we talk about songs.

So if I had to define my stance, it’s something like this:

I’m politically non-aligned, but I’m not numb. I’m just trying to be culturally aware. I’m propaganda-resistant. And I’m deeply suspicious of anything - music, media, ideology, fame - that demands worship.

Because the mechanism is the same everywhere. Unfortunately these days in music its “join the cult, worship the artist, don’t ask questions.” In media “join the tribe, worship the narrative, don’t think too hard.” In life “perform the version of yourself that gets rewarded.”

And the older I get, the more I want to opt out of the recruitment.

Not out of apathy.

Out of self-respect.

Out of the very rock-and-roll instinct that made me love this stuff in the first place - the refusal to be bought.

“I’d rather be broke than fake.”

The Point.

So here it is - the big summation, the sentence I want to hang this whole thing on:

Lester Bangs is proof you can love music without joining its cult.

You can love it without worshipping it.
You can chase the beauty without becoming a disciple of the machine. You can be in the room without turning into PR. You can be obsessed without being owned.

You can be slightly trashy - human, emotional, not above it- without being fake.

That’s what I’m trying to do here.

That’s what I’m trying to do with my own life, as the world gets louder and weirder and more on-fire, and as I keep chasing “authentic” like it’s both my compass and my curse.

So I’m building a place where I can actually live by the thing I keep saying.

My friends have heard me jokingly refer to my brand as Slightly Trashy for years.

Not because I want to be sloppy.

Because I want to be honest (but for the record I do really like fun.)

The Charge. - (shoutout to my buddy Cam Doody of the Brickyard in Chattanooga for so eloquently wrapping up a speech I saw him give recently and landing it with a charge to the audience and providing me an epiphany moment on the importance of tying things together)

If you’re reading this, here’s what I want from you:

Tell me one thing you love that makes you look unserious.
The song you’d defend in court.
The artist you think is the real deal.
The moment you saw something authentic and it recalibrated your whole internal standard.

And tell me where you feel the cult trying to recruit you - into worship, into outrage, into performance.

Because the only way I know how to do this - music, life, writing, whatever the hell 2025 was - is to tell the truth as cleanly as I can, even if I have to say it in a slightly trashy voice.

And I have a feeling you do too.