Adam Pacione
On July 2, 1989, a band that would eventually change the face and direction of contemporary pop music made its auspicious Fort Worth debut. This was the night Nirvana played The Axis.
“There are 300 people who will tell you they were at that show, but there were maybe 50,” says Melissa Kirkendall, a filmmaker and one-time concert promoter whose first visit to The Axis was the night Nirvana played. “I remember liking them, but I didn’t say to myself, ‘These guys are going to be huge.’ A few months later, they were on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and the world changed.”
The Axis plays a vastly important role in the history of Fort Worth’s alternative music scene. Located at 1229 S. Main St., in a 1926 building topped with Spanish tile, it was opened by Michael and Kelly Parker, brothers who played together in a band called League of None. Although it was open for less than a year, it was instrumental in cultivating what could be described as the city’s first alternative rock scene.
“Before The Axis, there was pretty much nowhere in Fort Worth for alternative or punk bands to play and nowhere in Fort Worth for fans of those bands to gather,” says longtime Fort Worth musician Terry Valderas. “There were places that booked those shows here and there but not consistently. It’s the most important rock club in Fort Worth. It’s the one that started it all.”
The club catered primarily to local and national bands that the Parker brothers loved.
Crystal Wise
“We were just a couple kids from the small Texas town of Coleman who wanted to open a rock and roll club,” says Michael, who now lives in California. “At first, we were just booking our friends and other local bands. And then word started to spread. National bands were calling us. I remember I got home from work one day, and Ian MacKeye from Fugazi had left me a message about playing there. I just about lost it.”
Over the course of its short existence, The Axis hosted several national bands that were or would become hugely influential in the punk/underground circuit: Fugazi, Alice Donut, Liveskull, Tad, Dharma Bums, Pussy Galore, Steel Pole Bathtub, Shudder to Think, Swiz.
Many of the shows were captured by brothers Tom and James Finn, amateur filmmakers who videotaped concerts in the Fort Worth-Dallas area; some of The Axis gigs have been uploaded to YouTube.
“The Fugazi show was an important one for me,” James says. “It was wall-to-wall packed. Fugazi was already well known, and for them to be playing this club in Fort Worth meant something.”
The club is best known for hosting a then-little-known band from the Pacific Northwest called Nirvana. The group had recently released its debut record, Bleach, for Sub Pop Records and was on tour to support it. On a rainy July night, the group played to, maybe, three dozen people.
“There wasn’t a big buzz on the show or anything like that,” Kirkendall says. “They were just this cool band from Seattle that a few people were excited about seeing.”
Adam Pacione
The 2015 documentary film, “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck,” includes about 20 seconds of Nirvana’s time in Fort Worth. The footage was shot before the show as the band was loading in and features a quick clip of Cobain sitting on the sidewalk in front of the club, a flyer for an upcoming show by another then-unknown band, the Goo Goo Dolls, behind him.
By the time Nirvana had its commercial breakthrough two years later, The Axis was gone. Kirkendall, who began dating Kelly Parker shortly after meeting him at the Nirvana show, said numerous problems led to its closure in September 1989. “It wasn’t just one thing,” she says. “There were some undesirables hanging around, mostly skinheads, and that caused some problems with the cops. It was an all-ages venue, too, so no alcohol was served. That’s how clubs make their money, with alcohol. The club struggled in different ways.”
Throughout the ’90s, Parker, who passed away in 2010, and Kirkendall opened a string of like-minded music venues in Fort Worth, including Mad Hatters, helping bolster the city’s underground rock scene. But The Axis will always play a special role in the lives of the few people who were lucky enough to experience it.
“I think one of the most memorable nights there was after this band called The Chemical People played,” Michael says. “We were shutting the place down, and this guy in a convertible rolls up and gets out and starts rapping and dancing in front of us, using a boombox for music. We were all just stunned, like who the hell is this guy? Well, it was Vanilla Ice, trying to get a show there. That was the thing about The Axis. Anything could happen.”
