After jamming with Willie Nelson at the American icon’s Fourth of July Picnic, who will Beto O’Rourke perform with next?
Maybe it will be with Spoon, or the Polyphonic Spree.
Or maybe it will be with Landon Headstream and his buddies.
O’Rourke, who faces Republican Ted Cruz in a heated and close U.S. Senate race, and a host of Democratic candidates will descend upon Main Street Garden Park on Oct. 7 for The Buffalo Tree Festival, which is partly a concert festival and partly a get-out-the-vote drive for the November elections.
Spoon will be there, along with Sarah Jaffe, La Energia Nortena and the Polyphonic Spree, among others.
And so will the teenage Headstrom and his friends — who formed a band six months ago and will play before their largest crowd yet.
Headstream, 17, and Wolfgang Hunter, 15, are students at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. They are a band that has a pretty awesome sound, one good enough to land them a stage performance at the upcoming event.
“We’re super pumped to play; it’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done,” Headstream says.
“We’re super pumped to play; it’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done." – Landon Headstream
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Matthew Luna, 16, and Dante Zatto, 19, will join them for the performance. Luna attends Woodrow Wilson High School, and Zatto — with whom Headstream has been playing for years — attends the University of North Texas.
Together, they make up the band Fishing in Japan.
The band has an indie-pop feel — a bit mood-altering, with tones that calm you but make you feel pretty happy.
It doesn’t hurt that all the members are massive Beto fans.
“That’s another reason why we’re super pumped to play it,” says Headstream, whose mom “loves Beto.”
While they’re not sure about their set time, they’re planning on sticking to upbeat songs. It’s a safe bet they’ll be the youngest performers on stage, which is impressive given that the band is just six months old.
“It started about early March of this year. So we’re pretty new,” Headstream says. “We write kind of more indie-pop style songs. It started out just a two-piece – me and [Hunter].”
Headstream writes a lot of the music, plays guitar and keyboards — think more on the synth side. Hunter is the singer, plays guitar and mixes all of the band’s music at his parents’ home. Zatto, on bass, and Luna, on drums, play with them mostly at live events.
They get some help on the production side from Hunter’s dad, John Hunter, a local, Oscar-winning composer.
They have a good sound, but they also had some luck getting this gig.
“A kid at our school, his dad works for the Beto campaign, and so he was asking around for a band that could draw a more teenage crowd,” Headstream says. “His son brought us up because we have a lot of fans that are in their early 20's — that’s our biggest demographic — but teenagers, too.”
O’Rourke is scheduled to appear along with several Texas Democratic candidates, including gubernatorial hopeful Lupe Valdez, Colin Allred, who is running to unseat Republican incumbent Pete Sessions in Texas’ 32nd congressional district, and Kim Olson, who is running against Sid Miller in the state’s commissioner of agriculture race.
The Buffalo Tree Festival is scheduled from noon to 10 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 7, at Main Street Garden Park, 1902 Main St. in downtown Dallas. Tickets are $10.
