Police Reports-Feb. 26, 2021

Reported by Mary Jane Farmer, Van Alstyne News, Scene In Town

Van Alstyne Police Sgt. Steve Hayslip report that during the two-week period ending February, the Van Alstyne Police Department received 246 calls for service.

Arrest — Police were called to check on the welfare of a man passed out behind the steering wheel of his vehicle and in a public place. When the officer knocked on the vehicle’s window, the man opened it and the officer noted the distinct odor of marijuana coming from inside. Hayslip reported that no medical attention was required for the suspect.

With probable cause, the officer searched and found the various drugs inside the vehicle. He placed the suspect under arrest on a variety of charges.

Charges the suspect was jailed on were: Possession of Controlled Substances PG3, PG2, PG1A and marijuana, plus one charge of unlawfully carrying a weapon. The total bail set was $10,000, which the suspect posted in surety bonds for his release the following day.

Wrecks — During this past two weeks, police investigated four car crashes. Hayslip said three of them did cause bodily injury, but nobody was seriously injured. The fourth crash caused no bodily harm, he added. Two were on U.S. Hwy. 75, one on the entrance ramp, and the fourth was on a city street.

Hayslip added that there were zero wrecks during the recent snow and ice storm.

City Council Candidates for re-election

By Mary Jane Farmer, Van Alstyne News, Scene In Town

Van Alstyne City Council has three seats up for re-election, along with that place of the mayor. City Clerk Jennifer Gould responded timely to the request for public information on this upcoming, May 1 election.

All incumbents filed for re-election, and all are running unopposed.

These are:

Mayor: Jim Atchison

Alderman Place 3:  Bruce Dawsey

Alderman Place 4:  Cary “Lee” Thomas

Alderman Place 5:  Katrina Arsenault

One of those, Alderman Place. 3, requires a special election, and will also be on May 1.

The Place 3 seat would normally have come up in 2022, along with those chairs held now held by Ryan Neal and Marla Butler (Places 1 and 2 respectively) Dawsey was appointed to fill the chair vacated by former Council Member Robert Jaska, who resigned to accept a job with the City of Van Alstyne.

Gould explained that there are still two more weeks, or until March 1, for anyone to sign up who wants to run for Place 3 seat on the Council. The reason, she said, is because, “Place 3 would not normally be on the ballot until 2022. Because of this, it is a special election. It (That seat) will be on the ballot again in 2022 for a full two-year term.”

If anyone is interested, that person(s) can pick up a packet at City Hall with applicable information for the potential candidate(s).

There are also seats up for re-election on the Van Alstyne ISD Board of Trustees, however as of this writing, those who signed up have not been made available. That information will be posted when received.

Scott Sean White to release his debut album

Call It Even
Record Cover

Scott Sean White Builds A Foundation On His Songcraft And His Truth With Debut Album Call It Even being released on April 23

Hear “Dad’s Garage And Mama’s Kitchen” today
Note:  Scott Sean White will be playing these and many other of his songs at
El Patio Escondido, 495 W Van Alstyne Parkway, in Van Alstyne, 6-8, March 1.
For a songwriter who can produce magical, poignant, and moving songs, it’s probably no coincidence that Scott Sean White now makes his home in a place called Poetry, Texas. Like Guy Clark and Lori McKenna, White is a writer’s writer. “Some songwriters spend precious time struggling to find their truth and make it rhyme,” says fellow Texas troubadour and songwriting legend, Jack Ingram. “Others just pick up their guitar and tell it. Scott Sean White is one of the others.” Ingram is just one in a long list of songwriters and artists who praise White’s songcraft—Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame members Tom Douglas, Tony Arata, and Doug Johnson are all outspoken fans as well. “I think God gives us art to penetrate the scar tissue on our hearts to make us feel something again,” said Douglas. “[White] uses artistry and craft for that very purpose.” Needless to say, they are all thrilled to see White send his tunes off for the world to hear.
On April 23, White will release his debut full-length album Call It Even; an unadulterated 11-song collection of tunes in which White soulfully invests himself with each new song, delivering them in his life-worn, warm, and vibrant vocals that compel listeners to feel exactly what he’s feeling. Cowboys & Indians magazine premiered the album’s first single, “Dad’s Garage And Mama’s Kitchen,” a vivid and nostalgic portrait of the yin and yang of mom and dad. In the article, Cowboys & Indians writes “If you don’t mind your heartstrings being tugged at and maybe a few tears rolling down your cheeks, you’ll surely appreciate the sentimental and strong new song.” Watch the video for “Dad’s Garage And Mama’s Kitchen” at this link and pre-order or pre-save Call It Even right here.

Call It Even is chock full of every-day-life crafted into song. The jaunty “Crazy ‘Til It Works” illustrates White’s canny ability to tell a tale filled with serendipitous twists and turns to find the just-right word or phrase to describe the unexpected character of life. One day, banging around on his guitar, “not even trying to write a song,” White came up with this line about a couple who gets “married by Elvis in a drive-thru chapel in Vegas.” As he recalls, “It was interesting. I thought to myself, ‘Hmmm, I wonder what that’s about?’ Sounded like a cool, crazy couple who probably didn’t have a chance in hell of making it. So I started running down that road, telling this

Scott Sean White, photo by Mary Jane Farmer

couple’s story as it unfolded in my head.” White and Jared Hard ended up finishing this bluegrass rambler about just that and the ways that some of the stuff we do in life seems crazy at the time but ends up working.

The lush spaciousness of “Humankind”—with its gospel-inflected piano—movingly tells the stories of two people for whom human kindness provided a balm for their pain. The idea for the song came from White’s co-writer Helene Cronin who saw a hashtag—#Humankind—on the internet. On the day they wrote the song, he says, “she had an idea about how to set it up with something like ‘nothing helps human pain, like human… kind.’ We ended up adjusting that wording by the time we got done but that was the thought that sparked it all. It is one of my most favorite songs my name has ever been on. And possibly…the most impactful.”
Even though Scott Sean White tells his own stories of heartbreak and hope in his emotionally riveting songs, he’s telling everyone else’s stories, too, and in every one of his songs, there’s a glimpse at the ways that everybody’s lives have sometimes fallen apart and been stitched together again by the silver threads of love.
Call It Even Tracklisting:
Call It Even
Crazy But True
Crazy ‘Til It Works
Humankind
Dad’s Garage And Mama’s Kitchen
The Broken Part
Famous
Leaves, Branches, and Trunks
Right Reasons (For Kaiya)
God’s Not Me
When I Go
More About Scott Sean White:

Kyle Level, on the left, provides harmonies and instrumentation on Scott Sean White’s (R) premier record, Call It Even.

Scott Sean White makes his home these days in Poetry, Texas, a perfectly named little town for a songwriter’s songwriter. Releasing his first album, Call It Even, this year, White has been storing up the raw materials that became these songs for over 30 years. The stories of his family were bubbling up inside him constantly—”all the major adult figures in my childhood were either alcoholics or addicts…or both,” says White, and he’s finally had the time to write these songs and make the album. For 29 years, until 2018, White managed, booked, and played keyboards in a corporate cover band that played funk, disco, and hip hop. During that time, he wrote a pocketful of country-leaning songs, and he made his way down to Nashville, where he found his musical home. White has spent several years there as a staff writer, but in 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he suddenly had time to make the album he’d been wanting to make. On Call It Even, White lays bare his soul with raw honesty, fiercely trading in the ragged vagaries of life and love in emotionally soaring vocals that echo in our souls long after the music has stopped. Few artists possess the ability to pull us into their stories immediately with such emotional vulnerability in their voice and candor in their lyrics as Scott Sean White.

Van Alstyne Police Reports

Report and photo by Mary Jane Farmer

During the two-week period between January 27 and Wednesday, Feb. 10, Van Alstyne Police received 376 calls for service, reported Sgt. Steve Hayslip. Sixteen of those calls resulted in offense reports and two in arrests. There were also three wrecks inside Van Alstyne PD jurisdiction, and Van Alstyne officers also assisted at a major wreck in Howe.

Hayslip urged that drivers use extra caution when driving, especially during these upcoming hard cold days and nights when there could possibly be moisture on the pavements.

February 1 Arrest — Police were called to a residence in the 600 block of North Henry Hynds regarding an altercation that had taken place, Hayslip said. The victim that that he felt injured, but did want medical help. Police jailed the suspect on a charge of assault causing bodily injury-family violence. The 45-year-old suspect, a Van Alstyne resident, remained incarcerated on February 10 in lieu of bail set at $20,000.

February 5 Arrest — Police jailed a Grand Prairie woman, on a charge of Possession of Controlled Substance, Penalty Group 1, less than 1 gram. Hayslip said this arrest was the result of a traffic stop made at the corner of Henry Hynds and Blasingame about 2 p.m. The arrestee was a passenger in the vehicle, and after, with probable cause, searching and finding methamphetamine in her possession, police released the vehicle and the driver. The suspect posted bail of $4,000 in surety bonds the next day for her release.

January 31 Wreck — A wreck on West FM 121 near the construction zone, resulted in the minor injury of the vehicle’s occupant. “We are beginning to see a rise in wrecks in this area,” Hayslip said, and asked that drivers heed all construction and warning signs, for their own and others’ safety.

Wreck with transport to hospital — This wreck happened on U.S. 75 and, because one occupant was a pregnant female, police called a Van Alstyne ambulance to take her to an area hospital as a precaution for her and the baby’s safety.

Wreck in Howe — Hayslip said the local police assisted Howe police with a major crash on U.S. 75. He said the car was going north when, just before arriving at the Haning Street exit, it left the roadway, flipped over more than once and threw the driver out.  Paramedics called in a helicopter ambulance, who flew the victim to a hospital for treatment.

Third V.A. wreck — The third wreck was a minor and required no medical transport.

February 2 Theft — One of those incident reports was for the theft of copper wire, taken from the location of a well on FM 121 West. Hayslip asked that, if anyone has information on this theft, for that person call the police station at 903-482-5251.

Cancel Culture and Country Music: The Rise and Fall of a Real New Age Outlaw

Story by Thomas Marlowe

The story I’m about to relate here will show my age, but I don’t care.

Apparently, over the last several months to a year, a young man by the name of Morgan Wallen has been taking the country music scene by storm, breaking records in streaming and downloading with new music. Launching a career that has, according to the entertainment media outlets I ran across this morning, taken off like a rocket. Unfortunately for him, however, the operative word is “was.”

It seems that Mr. Wallen has a penchant for rowdy behavior, the likes of which we haven’t seen since ol’ Hank Senior and Jr., and about 2/3 of the rest of the country music artists on radio four decades ago. Whether overtly or covertly, true outlaws like Cash, Waylon, Merle, Paycheck, Hank Jr., etc., engaged in sins and crazy antics consistently while living the life of a country artist.

That life was so outlandish, in fact, that Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill) created an animated series called Tales from the Tour Bus, where ex-band members, business associates, and friends of renowned country music artists verbally recount their stories that are synced up with Judge’s hilarious animated depictions of the insanity that surrounded these iconic figures of country music history. From Jerry Lee Lewis (aka “Killer”) shooting his own bass player to Johnny Paycheck shooting his bus driver’s ear off. In other words, from what I’ve read about Mr. Wallen, he’s been fairly tame leading up to his effective cancellation from the country music scene.

Oddly, back in the day, those in radio, at the labels, in management, and every single other substructure of the music industry didn’t give two nickels about country music outlaws’ private shenanigans. In fact, in many ways, bad-boy behavior often worked in their favor—the way it still does in the rap and hip hop industry today.

So what has changed? Is the John and Jane Q. Public audience member so flawless and righteous that they have become appalled at such behavior to the point of not wanting to hear music from a true outlaw like Morgan Wallen? Perhaps. Though, I happen to think that people, in general, are still people—flawed, sinful, and falling away from perfection every day. Maybe it’s that the upper echelon of the music industry itself—the CEOs at Sony, EMI, the CMA and ACM board members, the consultants and PDs at radio—are saints nowadays who have made it through seminary and seen the proverbial light. Ergo, they’ve made a unilateral decision, like the clergy of the Catholic Church against Martin Luther, to castigate this artist forever because he has become so unclean. Well, coming from someone in the music industry for two decades, I can tell you those folks are more unscrupulous and downright dirty than they ever were.

So, whence comes all this sanctimony? The viral video that seems to have broken the camel’s back, in context, can’t be altogether excused, but it bears out nothing more offensive than I have seen in commercially produced videos on YouTube of artists who are making millions off of music that is publicly demeaning to themselves, to their own ethnic groups, to other ethnic groups, to those in uniform, to authority in general, to women, and the list goes on.

I don’t really have to explain to a thoughtful, intelligent reader what has changed that has created this “death squad” environment full of merciless, hateful corporate tyrants. So I won’t. But I will remind the audience that forgiveness is a virtue, that hypocrisy is real, and that real country music that strikes a chord with real people sometimes comes from very dark, lonely, and even desperate places. It’s a kind of music that resonates with those in pain, and helps to make them feel a little less alone in the world.

Perhaps Mr. Wallen does need a little time out for his behavior from the shiny elite over at CMA, but I, for one, am not going to be the Judge and jury on that. I can tell you without naming names that today’s popular country music “outlaws” seem to be more in line with group think than ever before, and, therefore, completely out of touch with the human disposition, and many country music listeners.

Maybe that’s why I stopped listening to mainstream country a long time ago, and the rise and fall of Morgan Wallen went completely unnoticed by me. To Mr. Wallen, I would say, I hope you find peace and gain some strength in the hard lessons you’re having to learn right now. To those who canceled him for his foolish behavior, I hope your sanctimony and hypocrisy won’t come back to haunt you.

It just may…