For Clay and Wayne

Two people on this record are not here to hear it finished.

Clay Herzing — The Real Biggs Malone

Track 2 is “Midriff.” Clay — who recorded as The Real Biggs Malone — came up with the chorus and performed it.

He did not sing a part I wrote for him. He wrote it. That hook is his, and it is the reason the song works, and every time it comes round it is him.

Wayne Holtz

Track 9 is “Go Local.” Wayne sings the chorus.

A song called “Go Local” on a record this attached to San Antonio, carried by a voice from here, and he is not going to be in the room when it comes out.

What a feature actually is

Every feature on this record gets paid $300 in hand, and it is a line in the published budget I will not cut. Part of the reason is this.

Somebody giving you their voice is giving you something that does not come back. Clay's hook on track 2 is the last of that particular thing. There is no version of “Midriff” where I go back and ask for another take.

You are supposed to understand that while people are alive. I am not sure I did.

The dedication

Bluebonnet Plague is dedicated to Clay Herzing and Wayne Holtz.

It comes out July 27, 2027, and part of why taking ten years stopped feeling like a private frustration is this: a decade is long enough that some of the people on it will not make it to the end, and the record becomes the place they still are.

Track 2 and track 9. That is them, still working, for as long as anyone plays it.