Protest Music Is Making a Comeback, But It Never Really Left Dallas

There’s nothing more patriotic than a protest song, and we’ve been singing them longer than we’ve been a nation.  

Songs about the redcoats may not resonate with our modern scroll-and-swipe society the same way Rage Against the Machine or Childish Gambino do, but exercising our First Amendment rights in a verse-chorus-verse form is in the American DNA. And for every “Ohio” and “Blowin’ In The Wind,” there are just as many great protest songs written by talented North Texans. The list of Lone Star State-penned songs is so long that it would take a book to cover them all. But sampling a handful can remind listeners of the Texas mantra: Come and take it. Here are some of our favorites.

“We came up with the song in early ’86,” drummer Kyle Thomas says. “On its surface, I think the song sounds humorous and maybe a goof, and not a protest song. But we had contempt in our goof and fun.”

“Near the beginning of COVID and the George Floyd murder, I wrote the music and lyrics from the different perspectives of myself being pulled over by the cops and what Chadwick likely feels when he gets pulled over,” bassist Danny Balis recalls. “I’ve never felt afraid for my life at a traffic stop, but he probably felt that way every time. Especially in the summer of 2020.”

The power of the story, with all its tragedy, is what makes the song good, Balis says.

“It was conflicting for me to present this to him with myself having no authentic experience in how he feels, and I gave him full agency to make it his own,” he says. “Ultimately, he didn’t change a word. We were noticing him having slight difficulty hitting certain notes. None of us realized there was something serious in play that ultimately landed him in the hospital, but his limitations made him push even harder than he normally would. It gave his take a strained, almost gruff tone. It added to the desperation of the subject matter, in my opinion.”

“I’ve said everything ‘protest’ I can with this song,” says guitarist and vocalist Casey Hess. “‘A man’s worth is in his chest’ is how the song starts… What I’m proud of is that those sounds came from somewhere that resonates with anyone listening. Everything living connects with responding to being captive, restrained or compromised. It’s a sound that gives and never takes. Honestly, it was written to combat tyranny and internal sabotage. It’s surreal that the sound and content of such a song is now so horrifyingly relevant.”

“What I’m getting is straight hatred towards my freedom and my existence,” McCloud says. “Trump winning the election was the whole reason I started the daily verse challenge, so I could put me, my family and my band in a better, safer position.  As time went on and the country started to get worse, I felt like I’d put myself in the perfect position to bring awareness to the state of the world for people who don’t pay attention to politics.”

McCloud says his protest music and social media strategy allowed him to reach an exponentially larger audience than he ever could through a traditional club show.

“Jasmine Crockett reached out to collaborate on a daily verse [while] announcing her run for Senate,” he says. “I started the year with 12K followers, and I’m currently sitting at about 410K.”

“We had a very abrasive, confrontational song called ‘Loyal Garner’ about a man in Texas who was dragged to death behind a truck,” frontman Ezra Boggs says. “It confronted the mentality and Southern tradition which creates the kind of monsters who would do that to another human being.  We played many anti-apartheid festivals.  Eventually, justice was served, and the men who committed the crime were punished.”

“I wrote ‘Guns and Bullets’ back in the ’80s, long before I got fed up with the ammo-sexuals that spurred me to start the Open Carry Guitar Rally,” Kooda says. “I wrote it around the time that John Lennon was murdered, hence the line ‘You can even shoot a rockstar down with a gun.’  There were so many songs that normalized murder like ‘I Shot the Sheriff,’ ‘Down By the River,’ ‘Hey Joe’, et cetera. My song was a humorous, dark, satirical look at that aspect of life.”

“[This song] was released 20 years ago, and was about how the Bush administration was invading our privacy by tracking our movements via GPS, and spying on our email and text messages,” Liles says. “With Elon Musk and Peter Thiel using DOGE and Palantir to access literally every aspect of [our] lives now, that song came out about 18 years too early.”

“’Fatal Flaw’ is the centerpiece of the fourth Nervous Curtains album, I Tried To Fight It But I Was Inside It,” frontman Sean Kirkpatrick says. “The songs for this album were written during the first Trump administration. I set out to write a protest album while also greatly deepening my own political activism and education.”

The song is also an attack on capitalistic structures.

“The lyrics detail the absurdity and cruelty of a market-based system that is incapable of meeting basic human needs of shelter, food and medicine; all while billionaires accrue more wealth and power,” Kirkpatrick says. “We’re seeing this accelerate during [Trump’s] second term, hence the song’s refrain, ‘If there’s no jackpot, no payoff, then it must be your fatal flaw.'”

“We’ve added it to our live set over the last few months, and it’s been really well received,” Evans says. “To be honest, I was nervous about it. I’d never stepped out on that ledge as a writer before, but the state of our country is weighing heavily on me. It was my wife who encouraged me to play it live.”

But the message is well received, resonating with people who feel equally moved by the country’s current state.

“It’s hitting home with folks because the struggle is universal: the struggle to make ends meet, bad folks doing wrong in the name of religion, billionaires versus all of us,” Evans tells us. “Meanwhile, all we have is one another, and the ones at the top don’t even want us to have that. More people are seeing it all for what it is. It’s nothing new. Just more of us are paying attention. That’s a powerful thing.”

“Escunalem Loo Vii” by Helium Queens, 2021

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to attend a concert on another planet in a distant galaxy, Helium Queens can help you live out that fantasy.  The group is like a black light poster that came to life in the best possible way. The experimental band uses its own language to communicate with its fan base, known as the YOUniverse.

“‘Escunalem Loo Vii’ translates to ‘we listen, you breathe’ in the Helium Queens YOUniverse,” says frontwoman Poppy Xander. “The piece was written after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minnesota, and the world felt on fire. There was a collective energy happening at that time that ranged from despair and hopelessness to anger and a demand for justice.”

Equity is an important cause to the band, who believe that art is crucial to combat injustice.

“I believe artistic expression is the enemy of fascism,” Xander says. “The purpose of the Helium Queens is to create a world that challenges our own prejudices and rationalizations. … It is not the corrupt politicians and their henchmen who believe their power gives them a special status, but those of us who stand together and challenge the status quo simply by existing and doing what is in our hearts.”