An open letter from Kym Register + Meltdown Rodeo: 

About a year ago i received a pretty disturbing message hidden deep in the unchecked black hole of my unread dms.  There were messages over thirty-two weeks old - and I randomly chose one.  I would soon come to understand the ethereal connection between randomness and serendipity.  This message was from a person i didn’t know or have any connection to.  It was short.   And it was one of the most transformative messages I’d read all year. 

Some historian from Louisiana had sent me a question that bands get all the time:  “Where did the name Loamlands come from?”  But the next line sat me down.  I mean, it tore at the roots of personal and ancestral work i had been doing around what it means to be a white queer person here in the southern “US.”  This man had been researching historic houses in Tensas Parrish, Louisiana and had come across a place called the Loamlands Plantation.  I hate to even capitalize that that name.  I felt a warm wind run through my body.   This dust storm of shame, surprise, wild eyed disbelief and denial kicked up inside of me as I read on.   A man by the name of John C. Register,  to whom I later i found i was a blood relative of mine, was the white supremacist that created this terrible place.   This historian was wondering how I, Kym Register, came up with the name Loamlands for my queer country band and what it had to do with the Loamlands Plantation.  I want to be so very clear - I had never in my entire life heard of this place or this man or anything else by the name of Loamlands.  I really never expected to.

This is both coincidence and not at the same time.  The name Loamlands, as used by this band for the last ten years, was drummed up by me and our co-founder / friend Will who left the band years ago.   After the split of our first band, Midtown Dickens, we transitioned into a more classic rock / country / ‘what is a genre’ sound and wanted an earthy / southern / short name that felt grounding.   We wrestled with Loamlands and some other questionable names and landed where this letter finds us.   We’ve been touring, creating relationships and releasing records under this name for over a decade with no clue of the sordid connection it drew between myself and my ancestry.   

Our initial reaction was to change our band name.  I wanted nothing to do with this relation to the antebellum south.  But that was running away from Whiteness.   Then I wondered if i could somehow reclaim the name Loamlands - but that place and story wasn’t and isn’t mine to reclaim.  So what was the path forward?  What does healing and integrity look like in action?

I’ve spent much of my life trying to uncover what the violence of Whiteness has done to the south, the world and to me and my White southern family.  I see how my direct biological lineage and current lived whiteness participates in the catastrophic roots and current lived experience of colonization. Mine is, among other things, a history bleak with genocide and displacement.  These are things i am aware of and will forever be unpacking.  And yet I wasn’t prepared to be directly connected to a southern plantation - much less have that connection be intertwined with the art that I make in my journey to understand some pretty complex stories of the south.   This is very much synchronistic and uncomfortable, and has brought our band family closer through more hard / important / direct communication.   This is real, and really hard to digest.  

We hope this letter, our songs and transparent conversations that we’ll keep having will do some of the work that can translate into something that feels like healing.  Sharing music has long been a method of resistance.  As a southern White songwriter I am working diligently to be vulnerable and tell the stories that Whiteness has tried to bury in order to dissolve the myths of White innocence.  As a band we are steeping ourselves in this conversation with friends and people we meet on the road.  We come to you as White and Black members of a very queer and southern rock / otherwise genre fluid band interested in lifting the history of multiracial resistance and collaboration in the south.  So here we are.  A part of history and the future.  A team of musicians, mischief makers and story traders that are now going under the name Kym Register + Meltdown Rodeo.   It’s not enough, and we plan on struggling openly and honestly.  I have learned through many conversations, through the labor of friends and family and strangers, that the only name i can reclaim is my own. Thank you for reading and we hope to see you soon.