By Patty G. There’s nothing quite like showing your support by wearing a local band T-shirt.

It was early in the El Paso Chihuahuas season this year that it happened. I was minding my own business, sitting with my family before the game when I saw it: a guy in the section next to us was wearing a Lesser Care T-shirt. Just rocking it amongst the crowd of black and red and brown and yellow. I was so proud!

I went down to the poor kid and told him that I loved his shirt, which led to a brief discussion on the evolution of the band’s sound. Then I left him to continue eating his ballpark snacks with his friends.

There’s something special about spotting local band tees in the wild. This is what they are supposed to do: give you an opportunity to express your love of a group and publicize the band for other El Pasoans to discover.

I was bummed to realize that I only have one local band T-shirt: a grey “Lovers” album cover from The Royalty and that was purchased while I was living in Austin and excited for a little taste of home, so we went to see them play at Stubb’s (indoors). I have plenty of band shirts of my favorite national and international acts (Interpol and The Horrors). But, local bands? A pitiful amount of merch and swag, I am sad to say.

You can find local band T-shirts when a band goes on tour or sometimes on their website. Recently, I saw that Lesser Care is coming out with a new shirts this week and that Doomwell had a pop-up merch sale to raise funds for an upcoming tour and that The Division Men just released a new shirt designed by the band’s vocalist and bassist, Caroline Rippy Portillo (IG: @buenabuenaart), for their song, “Dead Moon.” (So, there’s a plethora of local band T-shirts to choose from; these are just a few.)

The shirt visualizes the song, says Jesus Spencer Portillo, the band’s vocalist and guitarist. It depicts a man who was a terrible husband. He asked his wife that, when he died, she would bury him standing upright with his rifle, facing the Alamo, along with his jug of whiskey. But when he did pass away, she didn’t do him that favor — on account of him being kind of a dick — and she kept his whiskey. Now his ghost roams around Central Texas, hunting for his “devil’s brew.”

The band put out another T-shirt that, like their recent design, was tied directly to one of their songs, “San Saba.” The shirt depicts a Native American chief controlling a cowboy as though he were a marionette, illustrating the curse the chief places on the Bowie Brothers, one meant to stop them from ever locating silver mines and San Saba.

Of course, these aren’t one-off items; they’re part of a bigger story for every band. “The artwork and aesthetic of band merch is key to represent your band’s full vision of your musical input,” says Danny Alcantar, Sound Decay co-owner and Acid Spitter bassist.

“Aside from purchasing an LP/tape/CD, buying T-shirts directly from bands is one of the most important ways to support your favorite artists,” he says. “Not only do you financially support them with your purchase, but being able to wear band T-shirts is essential to promoting them out in public.”

If you’re on the hunt for local band tees, reach out to the bands or check out their socials or website. You can even catch some tees at local shops. Alcantar says that Sound Decay Records tries to keep a few local band tees in stock as a way to support El Paso bands.

Band T-shirts have come a long way. It’s said that the first band T-shirt was put out by an Elvis fan club in the 1950s. Since then, the band tee has become just one way to show your love for a musician or band and has even been the uniform of rock ‘n’ rollers, K-Pop fans and Swifties alike. The most expensive vintage band T-shirt was sold in October 2021 for more than $17,000 (that’d be a 1967 Grateful Dead tee featuring the band’s logo). 

I’m not suggesting you hoard local tees for a future auction. I am saying that one day — maybe next year, maybe 10 years from now, maybe 20 — you’ll look back at your collection and realize these tees aren’t just clothing. They represent a time in your life that was really freaking great and when appreciating music was pure and fun.

Take local punk correspondent Tony Leal’s collection, for example. (It’s nostalgia exemplified for me!) Leal, who played in many El Paso bands like Sicteens and Wednesday, provided plenty of local band T-shirts to a retrospective history of El Paso’s music scene, “Musica Sin Fronteras: Twentieth Century to Now,” which was open from April 27, 2024, to April 26, 2025, at the El Paso Museum of History. He has a good collection of local band tees that he keeps tucked away in storage. The shirts – and patches – mostly span from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s.

“For me, it was totally an extension of the music,” Leal says. “Way before Home Depot and cable TV corporatized the term ‘DIY,’ realizing that you could whip up an idea, even if it was a silly one, then take on the entire silk-screening process from beginning to end (and boy was it a tedious one at that) and follow it all the way through, idea to shirt. No help from a big record label or someone telling you can’t do this or that or that’s a lame idea, blah, blah, blah. Getting to do all that fun stuff involved with that just felt like pure freedom. I can definitely tell you shirts were never done with the idea of making money behind it. Usually, you’d hit the road for tour and 70 percent of your merch had already been depleted by friends and family, free of charge. But you’d have your band’s shirt with all of its imperfections printed on a thrifted shirt. It all felt very similar to making music with your best homies. Getting to play it for people. Kinda like cat heaven.”

His favorite local band tee? The Attempted Erns one pictured above. “That particular shirt goes deep for me,” he says, explaining that it was created from a picture Leal took of fellow Sicteens bandmate Abel Salazar, who is now a co-owner of Sound Decay Records.

“It’s the epitome of what I’m trying to get across,” Leal says. “We had a running inside joke in those days, so Abel is making his ‘ferret face,’ but at the same time, he’s also a character we called ‘The Hilk.’”

Plus, Leal just thought The Attempted Erns were “the punkest band to come out of our scene in the ’90s. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to Youtube their extremely out-of-print 7-inches. Untouchable and punk as fuq.”

In today’s world, local band T-shirts can do a lot, but the best things about them is simple: they let fans show love for the music they care about. So go out and support El Paso’s local artists: see them live, play/stream their music, buy their merch and wear or display those El Paso band tees proudly.