Danny Anchondo’s alter-ego, Mr. Pixie, handles all his creative ventures, including his
newly-released album, Whatever Home, and his interactive play Selfie-Conscious.
The song “Spider Lillies” on the album is dedicated to his cousin who passed away.

RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
Rich@DallasVoice.com

Local musician and playwright Danny Anchondo may better be known by his stage persona Mr. Pixie. That alter ego has helmed his creative side, and this year, he’s working overtime.

After debuting a new stage show last year, Anchondo has continued Mr. Pixie’s momentum with both a new album and an expanded version of his play Selfie-Conscious.

Back in June, Anchondo dropped his newest album, Whatever Home. It was initially intended for release last year, but timing wasn’t quite on its side. The personal and conceptually rich album’s release this year, however, ended up feeling just right.

“It felt like it came to its own time,” Anchondo said. “This was a culmination of a lot of work, and I hoped to have it out the previous summer. But with the show and other projects I was working on, it kept getting pushed.”

Plus, he said, as an independent artist, he believes the album was a DIY creation that speakson many levels.

The title, Whatever Home, directly references the multifaceted idea of home – whether it’s the physical body or a dwelling. This theme is particularly poignant for Anchondo, who is in the process of moving out of a home he’s inhabited for 16 years.

“As I was coming up with this concept, I would imagine this deity who has inhabited this home, and each song represents a different room as well as the life that one would lead in this home,” he explained. “It is something to finish this album and then be about to leave this home.”

The opening track, “Old Friend,” acts as the album’s entryway, and, according to Anchondo, it signifies new beginnings and bidding farewell to the past.

The closing track is also one of the album’s most emotionally resonant tracks, “Spider Lilies,” is dedicated to one of Anchondo’s cousins who passed away.

“I saw this as symbolizing a transition from one type of home into a different kind of home,” he said.

The album’s vibe has an easy flow to it, but Anchondo serves his rock out moment, too. “Just Shut Up” — which he envisioned as the “bathroom of the house,” a place for cleansing but also where “dirtiness” occurs — touches on a common struggle.

“I’ve always had some punk rock ambitions, and this was my moment to release,” he said. “A lot of queer people often give in to negative thoughts and that self-talk that goes with it.”

He sings, almost growls, the lyrics — Maybe I’m not beautiful/maybe I’m not fuckable/maybe I’m not loveable/But I can’t listen to all this shit in my brain — before singing out the title.

“It’s one of these moments where these bad thoughts come in, and I’m telling myself ‘Be nice to yourself, stupid,” he explained. “It wasn’t until I was in the studio where it found its character.

“I think songs will make themselves known to you, and I knew what this was gonna be like.

And then when Mark Baker laid down his drum track, that added a raw energy to it all.”

Whatever Home has become Anchondo’s first album to receive radio play, notably showcased on KXT’s The Homegrown Show which featured his track “The Followers.”
Anchondo, a multi-instrumentalist who teaches violin and piano, has been a fixture in the Dallas music scene since moving from El Paso in 1999. For a while he had a regular gig at Alexandre’s on Sunday nights.

Initially on a classical music trajectory, a formative incident in the guise of a car accident at 19 led him to embrace his now more rock-inspired path.

“I wanted to be more Tori Amos than anything,” he said. But this pivotal moment birthed the persona of Mr. Pixie, who has evolved over the years.

That evolution has added theater performer to Mr. Pixie’s resumé in Anchondo’s original stage show Selfie-Conscious, which premiered last year at The Festival of Independent Theatres (FIT).

The show is an interactive and musical and satirical look at today’s relationships with our digital presence versus our real one. Pixie guides the audience that helps him create an avatar for his new social network by taking real-time selfies. The show will be reprised in January — running Jan. 9-11 at the Wyly Studio Theatre through ATTPAC’s The Elevator Project.

This has given Anchondo the opportunity to expand on the original version.

The new iteration will be longer and incorporate more audience interaction.

And, he notes, “The world is a different place from last year, and the digital world is different.”

So this new version will deliver a darker and more demented Mr. Pixie steering the exploration and the audience while also adding some new music to the show’s soundtrack.

“You know, I won’t pretend I’m a playwright, and I imagined this whole thing as a song that’s taken my hand to lead me through,” he said. “But I love how theater experiences can be transformative for people and It’s been great to explore this idea of conflating our actual reality with our digital reality.”

Whatever Home is now available on all streaming services. For tickets to Selfie-Conscious, visit ATTPAC.org.

Related