With a hot iron and a keen eye, well it’s no-mans-land when I arrive and with a pistol in my belt I take mine

Bluff Squad,

Good afternoon! Today marks the last single release off of MONOLITHS before the full album drops March 15th!

Gone to Texas (often abbreviated G.T.T.), was a phrase used by Americans emigrating to Texas in the 19th century. During the Panic of 1819, many left the United States and moved there to escape debt. They moved to Texas, which at the time was part of Mexico. Emigrants or their abandoned neighbors often wrote the phrase “G.T.T.” on doors of abandoned houses or posted as a sign on fences.

I read a while back about this movement west and the rise of the cattle barons specifically Charles Goodnight. I thought to myself how evil these men were moving west and claiming land and livestock away from the natives who survived off them. I thought how wild of a world it was to “with a pistol in your belt, take yours”. Armed with the two best traits in business, hard work and a propensity for violence, they stole when they needed to and lynched when they needed to. I began to formulate a story in my mind of what it must have looked like to break bad over the course of “doing right” by your family and how in the western mindset, greed eventually overtakes survival.

In G.T.T. I place myself in the antagonist’s boots and explore the gray areas of the ruthless west. Although these events may feel like they took place in ancient times, they didn’t. This is our very recent past. And in many ways I feel that today we’re riding down these same wagon trails. Perhaps the new frontier is a digital one where we’re the commodity/livestock and our privacy and broken backs are reminiscent of the Natives bringing a bow and arrow to a gunfight and trying to protect their people and culture from being obliterated from history.

I didn’t choose to be born into a hyper-capitalistic society. If I had my choice in how us humans evolved, I wish we’d have gone more in the direction of Native Peoples. I would have liked to worship the earth over the dollar. I would’ve liked real community, not just the idea that’s sold to us. But that just ain’t how the game is played is it?

Either way the barrons still exist and they’ll stop at nothing to take more than they need and climb up the faces of those trying to survive in an ever harsher west. But what scares me most is not these few at the top, it’s the collective mindset in all of us that we’ve accepted as a fact of life; this will forever allow the dollar to rein supreme.

The song G.T.T. to me feels left open ended. On these long cattle drives between Texas and Colorado these cowboys were sometimes ambushed by the local tribes and chased the hell out of there leaving the Cowboys to “ride (the fuck) home”. I wonder what it would be like if we could chase the barrons (or more importantly- the idea of the barron) home for good.

Just in case you feel like saying, “Kirk, it’s more complicated than all that.” I say to you:
I know our history is peppered in gray and always there are ever-shifiting monumental forces at play but this is a cross section of a place and moment in time that make up one of the building blocks that stack together as the skyline of this country. This is simply our version of a Fredrick Remington painting.

If ya’ll would like to pre-order this album on vinyl we’re selling them now! This is truly something we’re so proud of and we can’t wait to share it with you in its entirety.

These are untamed and strange times. Thank you for allowing us to paint a part of your vivid backdrop.

- The Bluff

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Article Tags

MONOLITHS, VINYL, Single, New Music, New Album, G.T.T., Gone To Texas