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A Travis County judge says a telecommunications company and a Wyoming LLC must reveal who sent unauthorized texts and mailers purporting to come from Texas transgender advocacy groups.
Friday is the last day to cast an early ballot in next week’s midterm elections, and it looks like rain could be another factor to consider when making your plan to vote. We’ll have the latest forecast.
Housing insecurity in Austin is a big issue, especially for musicians aging here in the Live Music Capital of the World. More about a local nonprofit that’s trying to change those outlooks.
It’s been a great month of new music here in Austin. KUTX is sharing songs to know from October.
The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano A Travis County judge says a telecommunications company and a Wyoming LLC must reveal who sent unauthorized text and mailers advertising material from an LGBTQ plus advocacy organization. We’ve got more about those mailers and this week’s court hearing. Plus, there’s only two days left to cast an early ballot in next week’s midterm elections and it looks like rain could be another factor to consider when making your plan to vote. The latest forecasts coming up on today’s show.
Laurie Gallardo The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano Housing insecurity in Austin is a big issue, especially for musicians aging here in the live music capital of the world. More about a local non-profit that’s trying to change those outlooks and sticking with the tunes, it’s been a great month of new music here in Austin. We’re gonna share the best of the best with you. That is up next. It’s right here on Austin Signal.
Jerry Quijano Howdy out there, this is Austin Signal. I’m your host, Jerry Kekano. It is Thursday, October 29th. Thank you for tuning in. We’re glad to be made part of your day. Well, election season is here, as is the flood of texts and mail that comes with it. Most of those come from political candidates or political action committees, but Texans recently received some text messages and mailers that stand out. They look like they come from transgender advocacy groups, but their true sender Well, that is a mystery. The Texas newsroom’s Tolowani, OC Bamuwo reports a judge is ordering the companies involved to start talking.
Toluwani Osibamowo Texans received the texts one week before early voting began. One asked that they have questions about gender-affirming care. The other mentions a back-to-school guide for LGBTQ kids and their families. The guide comes from the Transgender Education Network of Texas, or TENT. But TENT says it didn’t send the messages, and it doesn’t know who did.
Mimi Marziani Somebody has been impersonating our client and sending out millions of unauthorized text messages and mailers to voters across Texas, intentionally creating confusion for voters and strife.
Toluwani Osibamowo That’s Mimi Marziani, a lawyer for Tent. She says the messages led to harassment and threats against Tent staff. The text messages came from phone numbers with West Texas area codes. Marzianis firm traced those back to a telecom company called Infobip. She asked a judge to force Infobib to answer questions about who registered the number. And on Tuesday, her request was granted.
Mimi Marziani So the court has ordered the parties to try to work together to work out some of the logistics of the depositions, which we will endeavor to do. And then we will give her orders to sign first thing in the morning. And then, we’ll go ahead and take our depositions.
Toluwani Osibamowo But the mystery goes beyond text messages. Marziani estimates millions of Texans got pamphlets in the mail that also mentioned Tent and promote resources for trans kids. Tent says it didn’t send these either. The pamphlet’s say they’re from a group called the Texas Transgender Student Union, a group with the same name registered as an LLC in Wyoming just last month. So who actually sent them? Turns out that’s pretty hard to figure out. So, I went to a few different post offices for help. Hi. Hi. How are you? Good. Well, you? Good. I, okay, so I have kind of a weird question. So I am trying to figure out where a piece of mail came from. I don’t know if you can help me find the source of the piece of mail. The source? I think it was sent. They said they couldn’t tell me the source of the mail. It didn’t have a barcode the U.S. Postal Service creates for tracking mail pieces. But this week in court, the lawyer for the company who did showed up. His name is Chris Hilton. He used to work for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. He says he represents the people who sent the mailers and the people sent the texts, but he wouldn’t say anything more. After a court hearing on Tuesday, reporters chased him down the hallway to try and get answers.
Reporter Mr. Hilton, can you talk about who your client is with Infobit and who you represent? We’re not. Can you talk why Tent or TTSU sent those mailers? Any comment at all on the case?
Toluwani Osibamowo His clients will have to say something eventually. At the end of the hearing, the judge ordered them to answer questions about the matter. Hilton is appealing that order. And while the civil case plays out, a criminal investigation is also underway. Sarah Stagner is the Republican district attorney for three West Texas counties. She says her office is investigating the mailers as forgery.
Sarah Stagner People think of forgery as like, you know, signing someone else’s name to a check or a false deed to a house or something like that. But really under the law, all it is, is a document, something that purports to be something that it’s not.
Toluwani Osibamowo As part of the investigation, a grand jury could subpoena whoever sent the mailers. Then they’d have to give sworn testimony about what’s going on. But investigating the case certainly won’t be done by election day. It could take months or even years. It’s possible the investigation could lead to no charges at all. Tent and other LGBTQ groups affected say the damage has already been done. I’m Toluwany Osebamalow in Austin.
Jerry Quijano Today and tomorrow are the last two days of early voting ahead of Election Day on Tuesday, and as KUT’s Trey Schar reports right now, rain is in the forecast for all three of those days.
Trey Schar Voter turnout has been healthy in the Austin area over the last week and a half of early voting and while we don’t know if rainy weather will put a damper on that we’re seeing wait times have been on the shorter side today and it’s probably safe to say that rain won’t cause a boost in turnout here in Travis County seven of the 45 early voting sites are open until 10 p.m. Tonight and tomorrow night they are Benhurst Shrine Center Lakeway Activity Center Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex Lugerville ISD Rock Gym Randall’s Brody, the Travis County Clerk’s Office on Airport, and the UT Student Union. That information is at VoteTravis.gov. And before you vote, head over to KUT.org or the KUT app for county-level voter guides, race profiles, and much more election information to help you be an informed voter. I’m Trey Schar in Austin.
Jerry Quijano Austin may boast being the live music capital of the world, but housing insecurity can be a big issue for musicians, especially as they get older. A local non-profit is trying to change that, Housing Opportunities for Musicians and Entertainers or HOME. They provide housing assistance to performers. And for the entire month of November, venues across the city are participating in the organization’s homecoming fundraiser. Here to tell us more is Hannah Kofer, executive director at HOME, Hannah welcome to the show.
Hannah Kofer Thanks for having me, thrilled to be here.
Jerry Quijano So tell us a little bit first about Home, how did it get its start?
Hannah Kofer Yeah, I mean, it’s a very Austin story, right? It was founded by musicians for musicians about 15 years ago, basically a bunch of legendary women around Marsha Ball’s kitchen table realized that there was a need there. And Miss Lavelle White was without a home and needed to, you know, had been sort of displaced from where she wanted to be in Austin. So they banded together to get her an apartment and get her some furnishings and then realized there was there there, right. So grown from there.
Jerry Quijano We always hear about how difficult it is for artists and entertainers in today’s Austin to survive and to be able to live here. Specifically when we’re thinking about aging musician, what are some of the challenges that are facing them when it comes to securing stable housing?
Hannah Kofer Yeah, I mean, they’ve kind of got a lot of a lot of things working against them, right? Like there’s the affordability in Austin isn’t a secret. There’s also just the struggle of aging. You know, that’s a difficult path to be on yourself. And then a lot of musicians maybe they didn’t build themselves a safety net like a lot of us, you know, they’re not putting together IRAs and things like that. So when they get to the point where they’re not able to gig as much or health things start to become an issue. There’s just not a lot of options for them and they don’t have, you know, that tight rope is becoming increasingly perilous.
Jerry Quijano So how does this program actually work to get these aging musicians into stable housing?
Hannah Kofer Yeah, so it’s a little bit unique in that we’re not like building, you know, big housing complexes where we’re moving everybody into in their eighties, right? So the core, right. I mean, I’m not against anybody out there. If you want to go down that path, we’re here. No. So the, the core program is really, we just pay directly to service provider, rent utilities, whatever it takes to, you know, help people age with dignity in their own homes. That was the end of the video. That was the original idea, right? That’s not always an option. So we’ve increasingly been helping people find affordable places to live, creating partnerships with some different places like the RBJ Center to get them housed so that then we can take care of them and then adding on a layer of social worker case management so that while they’re getting these grants and things, we can be getting them connected to other resources so that the hope being that they won’t need as much in the end.
Jerry Quijano You mentioned the genesis of home starting around Marsha Ball’s table. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the Austin musicians who you’ve worked with through home?
Hannah Kofer About our clients.
Jerry Quijano What about your clients, yes?
Hannah Kofer Yes, of course. And I, you know, I think when some people hear some of these names, it might actually make you cringe because how did we as a city not take care of them? Right. So we’ve got Lou Anne Barton. Miss Lavelle White was our original client and is still a client. She’s 97 years old. We celebrated her birthday this year and she loves her birthday. Omar Dykes, you know Bob Livingston. We’ve just got, you know, a lot of names that you might know, but a lot folks that maybe played for 50 years as the bass player for someone that probably doesn’t have face recognition but did their time, I guess, in a way. We’re part of what made us a musical city back in the day.
Jerry Quijano Absolutely, and one of the things that Home does is throws this event homecoming every November. Can you tell us a little bit more about it?
Hannah Kofer Yeah, we love homecoming. So it actually was the idea of a venue owner. So it’s kind of the venue owners leading the charge. Joe Abels at the Saxon Pub had this idea where a dollar for every ticket he sold in whatever month it was. We put it as November would go straight to home. And that’s not a ticket that it’s on a fee that he’s passing on. Right. That’s a donation from the venue. And so we asked around and so we’ve got about almost 20 venues participating this year. And they’re all doing it in different ways. Right. So. Um, some folks are doing a dollar per ticket. Some are, you know, if it’s Don’s Depot or a place like that, like they’ve got specialty cocktails and things that are going to us, but the idea is telling Austin, you now, this is a month to celebrate live music in your town, go out, see shows, it’ll support the folks that, you known, made it the musical city you love and you know a little bit of that love gets back to the venues to who we, um, you, know, part of that ecosystem.
Jerry Quijano I feel like people who are interested in Austin music always want to know more about the story and sometimes it’s kind of hard because there are so many disparate parts that are in this community. What is your favorite part of your job? It sounds like you get to, you’re kind of surrounded by so many, as you said, maybe not people who are famous by their name or by their face, but people who have committed so many years to establishing the Austin music scene as we know it today.
Hannah Kofer Yeah, I mean, it’s the stories and the personalities, right? Like, we hear a lot of the good, bad, and the ugly about, you know, back in the good old day. But like, there’s also a hint of positivity around, it’s still weird here, right. Like, you just have to maybe look for it and, you know. Peek under the covers, right, but those personalities are still here and they’re still part of the story. And I think it’s important for people to understand that and make a little bit of an effort to go out and see it.
Jerry Quijano Speaking of which, it sounds like Home is making an effort to work with these aging musicians. How can everyday listeners, enjoyers of Austin music, how can they contribute to what Home is doing?
Hannah Kofer I mean, I think during Homecoming, go see some live music, check out the participating venues. It’s just austinhomecoming.com. Get your tickets, go to see a show and sort of learn about, you know, how the forebears, the legacy makers, right, helped define the Austin that you love. So go see live music. Obviously, always, you come to the shows, engage with us so that you can get to know more about the story that should be part of all of our sort of Austin DNA.
Jerry Quijano What else about home haven’t I asked you about that you think is really important for listeners or just for Austinites to know about?
Hannah Kofer I mean, I think just thinking about it beyond a nonprofit that you give money to, right? Like this is being part of a heritage and a legacy and understanding who these folks are and feeling ownership in what the plan is for how we take care of not just the folks that we’re taking care of now, but how we do it into the future and being part of that conversation. So just engaging I think is really important for organizations like Home Right Now.
Jerry Quijano I personally have been thinking a lot about aging because we are launching a new project here at KUT, the Long View, which is all about aging here in Austin, and so I’m starting to think more about the future version of me and what I would like for things, what kind of world I guess I would live in and what kind of person I would be in that future. What have you learned about aging and thinking about the the future of yourself as you’re working right now in the present version.
Hannah Kofer But it’s really hard. I mean, to navigate the systems and things, it’s almost impossible to do alone. You have to have help. And for folks that don’t have big families or these networks and things it’s pretty terrifying how difficult that path is to walk. And so knowing that stronger together is something. But also getting ahead of it is so important, right? Because so many people find themselves where you’re not planning for breaking a leg and not being able to gig as a drummer anymore, right, like, and I think just not being catastrophic, but, you know, think about the scenarios and like you, like where you wanna be, like where do you want your parents to be when those types of things happen, because it doesn’t have to be that way, right. Aging should be. Awesome right like you get to retire and spend your time and you know um and i get to be around a lot of retired awesome musicians that they’re still out there every day going to see music and stuff so you know find a way to make it awesome for you and for your people you love um but it just it takes some work
Jerry Quijano All right, we have been speaking with Hannah Kofer, Executive Director of Home Housing Opportunities for Musicians and Entertainers. We’re gonna have more about homecoming in today’s show notes. Hannah, thank you for your time. Thanks so much for having me. And we’ve got more Austin Signal coming your way. That is right after this short break. Welcome back, this is Austin Signal. October is quickly coming to a close, but before we flip the calendar to next month, we wanted to check in with our friends at our sister station, KUTX, about some of their top new music this month from Austin’s music scene. And here to tell us more is KUTx host and producer, Ryan Wen. Ryan, good to see you again.
Ryan Wen Hey Jerry, thanks for having me.
Jerry Quijano So let’s start by shedding some light on the October artists of the month. First off, who are they and what is the song?
Ryan Wen UV in this song is Junie. Brrrrrrrr! Even though I love to hate you You know, UV is, for me, emblematic of why we live in the greatest time for music, because they are so eclectic, so it’s like, where are they even coming from? You don’t even know, because they’re coming from everywhere. The song is bilingual, it’s sung in both in Spanish and English as well. You know the beat is this like electronic break beat, which you know from things like genres like jungle, but then there’s elements of neo-soul, there’s prog rock. But it all makes sense. And it’s this like really, it’s fun, but it’s also like representative of how like multicultural our city is and the music itself, apart from the bilingual lyrics, just like express that in this beautiful way. And it a lot like bands like Hiatus Coyote comes to mind. So it’s like neo soul, but with like monster musicianship and you know, really a tight, tight musicianship. It’s great.
Speaker 23 Call me winter, feather began, but you never ended it Or out, uh, call me out, call, call call me ouuuuut Call me yum-a-meh, yum-ma-me, yumma- meh Yum-a meh, Yumma meh Yumma Meh
Jerry Quijano Yeah, I thought they reminded me of also this band called The Internet, which featured Steve Lacey. I never know what’s going to happen in the song, I feel like as soon as I have a grip of what’s gonna be coming next, something completely different comes out of left field. It’s very exciting and always surprising. Okay, so that’s one Artist of the Month. Another Artist of The Month from this year is featured on your list, that is Gran Moreno.
Ryan Wen And what’s the track? So I was just talking about how we live in the greatest time for music now. And that’s not to say, though, that sometimes you just want the raw, unmitigated version of this. And, you know, Gran Murano’s new song, I Fuzz You, is just a love letter to old school blues rock. And they are doing rock and roll in a way that I kind of forgot about. And the first time I saw them at South by Southwest, I was like, oh, yeah, rock and roll. This happens live, like in person. You kind of need to be there for it. But this song. The effect definitely comes through with listening to it on the radio, which is actually kind of what it was inspired by. They released this song originally on KUTX without before streaming, like a week before streaming because they missed the times when the first time you ever heard a song, like you would look forward to a song premiering on the radio, so they did that with us and that was really exciting. But it’s this really incredibly fuzzed out blues rock song. I think the louder you listen to it, the more you’ll understand why this song made the list. It’s kind of in the school, in Texas we’re a T-Bone Walker state and T-bone Walker had a very clean electric blues style. This is more in the School of Muddy Waters, Electric Mud, Buddy Guy’s latest stuff, and definitely the early Black Keys who were basically a straight-head blues band. If you have like a 1960s American muscle car and a good sound system, turn this one up. It’ll be a good Saturday.
Jerry Quijano All the way to 11. Well, let’s stick in that vein of psych rock and tell us a little bit more about strange lot Who are they?
Ryan Wen So Strange Lot is a psych rock band out of Austin, and well, obviously, but nonetheless, it’s this band that reminds me that Austin might be the greatest psychedelic rock city in the world. I think that San Francisco claims to be the birthplace of psych rock, but nobody’s trying to sound like quick silver messenger service. Everyone’s trying sound like Rocky Erickson, and for a good reason, because Rocky laid something down that I think so many Austinites have followed and iterated upon. And Strangelot is part of that lineage of psych rock in Austin. And they got help with some, you know, some legends of the Austin Psych Rock scene. Alex Moss helped mixing this and Jim Eno of Spoon as well produced it. So definitely if you’re a Black Angels fan, you’ll recognize the sound, you’ll love the sound but they’re doing their own thing. It’s like this driving, fuzzed out, but you know very, it’s much more rocking I would say than like the typical kind of like, lysergic like, you now spaced out Psych Rock.
Jerry Quijano A little straightforward versus the trippy rock, ethereal kind of feel to it. Okay, also featured in your list is Whereabouts, which I was really intrigued to find out that this band only has just a handful of songs to their name. What about their sound stood out to you?
Ryan Wen Well, kind of like, in a way that UV reminds me of, you know, that modern music is so genre agnostic and whereabouts definitely do that, but in more of like an indie rock space, they are really exciting because all their songs have been like pretty different. They’re coming from different places. This one kind of begins feeling like a song from television, this like, you know 1980s, 70s art rock band. So it’s like these like angular guitars, but then it goes into this like, you know, dream pop aughts real estate indie pop kind of sound. And then there’s like time signature changes and, you know, it’s it’s, like, a fun beachy sound it evolves into. But it begins as this like staccato, like art rocky piece. So it’ like, you know it’s changing it up in an interesting way. And I think it’s refreshing some of these sounds that have been covered quite a bit already.
Jerry Quijano Well, there is a relatively new Austinite on your list. Tell us about her. Who is she? What do you like about this track?
Ryan Wen Yeah, Effie Harvard, she, so she’s new to the Austin music scene as far as I know, but she is a native Texan. She’s doing, you know, a country sound that is kind of like a seductive Loretta Lynn. She has this mezzo-soprano, like, very sultry, smoky voice, and, but, she also has like serious songwriting chops. She’s originally, or what she did before this, she was a supermodel. And, you, know, it’s a world of style, and her music is just oozing with style.
Speaker 24 Southern sun has got me running up a fever I loosen up my sleeves And watch the red rise on the meter
Ryan Wen She has a great voice, it’s perfect for the sound, but she’s a great songwriter too. Very like clever lyrics, but also very descriptive. Like she’s great storyteller, as you know, all great country musicians are. And I think that she is really like one of the more exciting new country musicians in Austin right now. And don’t write her off because of her past. I mean, if anything, it informs her sound and makes it even cooler. And I imagine her live show probably has a lot of style too.
Jerry Quijano So we were talking there about a relatively new Austinite. We’re gonna close out today with an Austin staple. What’s the new one from Ghetto Gala?
Ryan Wen Oh yeah, I’m excited about this one, because this is a little bit of a new direction for Ghetto Gala. This is the project of Jake Lloyd and Deezy Brown. Both of them have individually been Artists of the Month. They have been Artist of the month as Ghetto Gala. And Deezy Brown, you may know, also does the theme song for the breaks, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary soon, by the way. Nonetheless, this is like a kind of a new direction for them. It has a feeling of like the… 90S southern like smooth r&b southern rap kind of like uh the smoother side of UGK or like a Aquemini era outcast really like funky beats just like heavy funk
Deezy Brown No gin and juice in the back of a 97 black Bentley coupe If you wanna slide and come through on your birthday suit, I’m not even tripping. We’ll just call it
Ryan Wen But then it’s the production, Jake Lloyd’s production, and Deezy Brown’s, it’s this like refined clean sound while also being like nasty and funky. So it’s really cool. It has kind of like this like, you know, Ali Shaheed Mohammed of Trap Call Quest has kind of been in that space lately. So a little bit like that, but they also have like really great verses on it too. It’s kind of this booty call song, but it’s you know really clever lyrics, really cool direction. And I hope that they- continue in this like smooth space that they’re working with. And I’m excited to hear more.
Jerry Quijano All righty, we always get the best recommendations from Ryan Wen. He is a KUTX host and producer, and we’ll have a link to his story in today’s show notes. Ryan, thanks as always. Thanks, Jerry. All right, one last thing. Tonight, KUT and KUTx are hosting another Connections event. Good music, great conversation, and perhaps a little chemistry too. And costumes are encouraged. Whether you’re looking for love, new friends, or just some good company, come on out and join us. That is tonight starting at 6.30 out at Central Machine Works. That is it for us today here on Austin Signal. There’s more from the show at kut.org slash signal. Our team is Caroline File, Alexandra Hart, Kristen Cabrera, and I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. We’ll be back with you tomorrow.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
