Echoes After the Flood – A Night of Reckoning with Josh Abbott Band
The Event: Honesty Under Open Skies
September 4, in a half-cleared rodeo ground outside San Marcos, a makeshift stage had been propped up with tarps, hay bales, and borrowed lights. The flood had left its mark here: cracked fences, flattened pasture, pickup trucks still stained with river mud.
But the air was dry at last.
And the sky, though cloudy, had no intention of weeping.
The Josh Abbott Band arrived without ceremony.
No trucks, no crew. Just the band, their instruments, and a promise: to bring music to those who hadn’t had a reason to feel much of anything lately.
Josh took the mic gently, smiled at the 200 or so locals seated on folding chairs and coolers, and said:
“We don’t have speeches. We’ve just got songs. And we’ve missed you.”
Then, with a glance toward his bandmates, he began strumming the opening chords to “Amnesia.”
The Song: “Amnesia” – When the Memory Is the Wound
“Amnesia”, released in 2015, is one of the band’s most quietly devastating tracks — not a breakup anthem, but a raw plea:
“If I had a choice, I’d choose amnesia…”
The song is about wanting to forget someone who was once everything — and realizing that forgetting isn’t just hard.
It’s impossible.
In the wake of a natural disaster, Amnesia took on a new meaning.
Josh wasn’t singing about a girl anymore.
He was singing about a life before the flood — about the kitchen that used to hum with laughter, the photos lost in brown water, the hours spent trying to act like things were normal.
“Don’t wanna remember how it feels without you…”
The pain of remembering — and the guilt of wanting to forget — echoed through every note.
And it struck a chord.
There were people in the crowd who hadn’t cried in weeks.
Some had tried to stay strong for their kids, their parents, their neighbors.
But when Josh closed his eyes and let the chorus hang heavy in the open Texas air, the dam broke — quietly, and in the safest way.
Music as Witness, Not Distraction
Josh didn’t try to lift the mood.
He sat with the truth of it, unafraid of the darkness, knowing that healing doesn’t come from skipping over pain — it comes from naming it.
And “Amnesia”, in that moment, gave people the courage to say:
“This hurts. I want to forget. But I can’t.”
As the final note faded, Josh let the silence breathe.
Then he nodded — not with optimism, but with solidarity.
“We don’t forget,” he said, “but we go on.”
And that was more than enough.