Thax Douglas is Madison’s musical poet laureate

The 68-year-old is a scene-stealer

by

Arts Beat

He’s shared the stage with Wilco. He survived a night with Jeffrey Dahmer. He was driven out of Chicago by legendary Nirvana producer Steve Albini. And you can hear him read poetry on any given night around Madison.

On a blisteringly cold evening in January, the lights at Gamma Ray go down and rock poet Thax Douglas reads a poem, his first of three for each act of the night. He first introduces Dusk, alt-country mainstays out of Appleton that are something like Wisconsin’s own version of The Band. Douglas also reads for The Pranks, indie upstarts out of Ohio, and hometown favorite Graham Hunt.

Douglas, 68, has been performing poems to introduce musicians for more than 30 years, calling them “poetry portraits.” He began in the early 1990s in Chicago (where he was dubbed “Chicago’s rock and roll poet laureate”), spent brief stints in Austin and New York, and has been in the Madison area since the late 2010s. He’s read for an impressive list of underground greats, from Wilco to The Flaming Lips to Andrew Bird to Spoon.

Douglas calculates that last year alone he wrote more than 1,000 poems through this practice. He listens to the music ahead of the show and writes a poem based on how he responds. He goes to multiple shows a week, typically reading for every act on the bill. It adds up.

Tyler Fassnacht, a longtime fixture of Madison DIY punk and indie music, was the first musician Douglas saw in Madison, in a now-defunct project called Fire Heads. “[Tyler] restored my faith in music,” Douglas says, after lamenting the state of early 2010s indie rock. Once Douglas becomes a fan of someone’s music, he’s all in. Douglas has written more than 40 poems for Fassnacht’s various bands.

Shannon Connor, who plays with Graham Hunt and Madison breakout Disq, describes Douglas as having “superpowers.”

“I’ve never seen an artist as devoted to his craft,” says Connor. 

Logan Severson, who also plays with Hunt and Disq, recalls stumbling onto a full-page spread devoted to Douglas in The Wilco Book after he’d heard him read at a few shows. “Who IS this guy?” Severson thought at the time.

Thax Douglas was born in Chicago in 1957 and raised in the Woodridge subdivision. In the documentary THAX: THE MOVIE, which screened at the 2007 Chicago Underground Film Festival, Douglas’s mother calls music his “first love.” His best friend freshman year of high school was future comedian Emo Phillips; they both played trombone in band. He has held two jobs in his adult life: an admissions clerk at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s emergency room in the 1980s and a writer of TV and radio ad synopses in the mid-1990s. Other than those gigs, Douglas has maintained a resolute focus on poetry and the arts.

Douglas commands great affection from the Madison music community. Neal Jochmann, who fronts kaleidoscopic outfit Combat Naps, calls Douglas “the universal emcee of all DIY shows in the upper Midwest.” Jochmann is also a Douglas favorite, collecting about 15 poems in the last few years.

Madison musicians who’ve toured extensively attest that bespoke poetry intros are not a thing they see happening in other cities.

Printed collections of his work include Tragic Faggot Syndrome (2000) and The Good Life (2008), but they are hard to find. Local musician James Strelow took it upon himself to put out a chapbook of Douglas’s Madison poems last year, enlisting Dan Halverson of Wisconsin Printing to help design and print it. Shannon Connor added illustrations. The result, Etruscan Eons, contains poems written for more than 20 area bands. It’s not available online. Most of the 50 copies printed have been distributed by Douglas, but Strelow is open to another small printing if there’s enough interest.

Douglas is sometimes bewildered at the interest in his work. “I guess I am remembered,” he says curiously.

He initially wasn’t sure how bands would react and is pleased with how few have said “no thanks.”

Douglas, who is autistic, can have trouble remembering names and faces, but he’ll happily converse with you about nearly anything, including the night he spent dancing at a gay speakeasy in Chicago with a group that included Jeffrey Dahmer, his opinions on music (he’s a fan of deep cut indie acts like the Bitter Tears and not a fan of Twin Peaks, both out of Chicago), or his poetry, which he describes as being inspired by Acmeism, a Russian movement that rejected symbolism in favor of realism and clarity. 

Douglas called the Chicago music scene home for many years. There he became close with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy (an early booster of his work; Douglas was a guest at his wedding) and The Posies (who named their 2010 album Blood/Candy after a line in a Douglas poem). He’s recently begun sharing the story of what drove him from the Chicago music scene. Nirvana producer Steve Albini, known for his surliness, would “irrationally hate people,” according to Douglas, and it was his misfortune to be one of them. He recalls Albini emitting a “constant, noxious miasma of hatred” that clouded Chicago for him. Albini died in 2024, which Douglas calls one of the “best days of my life.” He’s now comfortable going back to Chicago, where he now again reads regularly.

As Douglas has crept up in age and stature, he’s become a “scene elder,” as described by Dusk member Julia Blair. He moves with great confidence and comfort at shows, walking unannounced into green rooms around Madison. Bands never know ahead of time when he’ll show up, but they’re happy to see him. “He’s with the band, always,” Fassnacht says with a smile.

If you go to an indie show in Madison, your odds of hearing Douglas read are good, but they may not be for long. He’s considering a move to Milwaukee, or even England. Or he may just stay put: “I’m satisfied with Wisconsin, so why move?”