Song Spotlight: "Blue Boy" by Texas is the Reason

My musical fascination for the last year and a half has been post-hardcore and emo from the 90’s. Since falling in love with the music of At the Drive-In, I have continued backwards through the rabbit hole to find the bands they toured with, or the bands that share their influences. I’ve encountered many monster acts on this journey, becoming caught up in single songs or whole albums of melodic madness. But for the past year, one song in particular keeps rising to the top of my queue, a truly beauteous composition: “Blue Boy” by Texas is the Reason.

Two tenuous guitars open this tune, Garrett Klahn’s simple melody mixing with Norman Brannon’s wavering chords. The rest of the band sidles in behind the strings, until Texas is the Reason explodes into the song proper, layering distortion and wailing bends over the chaos. There is a subtle heaviness to the song, hiding in the drop tuning and Chris Daly’s quick drum fills, that colors the initial feeling of melancholy into something darker. Amid this prismatic instrumentation, Klahn begs for a chance to prove himself to a distant lover, struggling to keep her near with the line “maybe with you on my side / I’ll be able to reach the sky.”

“Blue Boy” is one of those tunes that grip me right at the beginning, leading me like a small child through an emotional journey. The lilting and tilting intro is laden with trepidation, not unlike the feeling buried in the stomach before talking to a crush. Yet the subsequent explosion of overdrive, crash cymbals, and earnest vocals suggests a newfound confidence, a statement of intent and purpose. Where once there was only nervous energy, suddenly the band finds a conviction, a belief in itself that is perfectly summed in the refrain “to me, this is for real.”

This new and confident identity is not just a feeling I’m imposing on the song, but actually a representation of the band members themselves during this time period. While initially released on a split EP with The Promise Ring, “Blue Boy” was one of a few new songs written for Texas’ next full-length, one intended to be their major label debut. As Norman Brannon states, these songs show the band finally “[figuring] out what Texas is the Reason sounded like.” The band truly felt that these songs “actually were” Texas is the Reason, showing their sound evolving into one both original and progressive, and thus Garrett’s exclamation in the coda of “you finally found me” suddenly seems far more personal.

That evolution from boys in a band to men making music is what lies at the heart of “Blue Boy.” The “reactionary spirit” inherent in each vibrating string, each thumping drum hit—that is the goal of music, to capture the human journey in a succession of notes. As Texas is the Reason’s only true sophomore release (the other two songs written at the time were only recently recorded), “Blue Boy” is the notch carved into the doorframe of this band’s house, the only true testament to that moment in their existence.

To lead singer Garrett Klahn, “Blue Boy” is a song that “pinpoints exactly where [Texas is the Reason] were and where we were maybe going.” For me, it testifies to the strength of soul-searching in a band, in discovering what truly makes up the experience and putting it out in as faithful and honest a version as possible. Those first few notes of “Blue Boy” strike my heart with truth and excitement like few other songs can, a feeling of which I could never grow sick. They are notes laden with uncut integrity and pure potential, and I have no doubt they will ever get to me.