BY Taylor Adams Cogan
When Casey Hess first went to Deep Ellum, the then-teenager sported a plaid long-sleeved shirt over a Course of Empire band T-shirt, complete with a “hippie necklace thing,” super long hair, and probably some leggings, he says. He knew Deep Ellum was the music scene he was looking for; what he didn’t know was that the community he’d build on these streets would one day save his life.
Casey grew up north of Dallas, picking up a guitar in 1989 to see what natural talent he might have. As a kid, he loved theatrics, being over the top, “making voices and being goofy, and going on adventures,” though he had no formal musical background or training.
“I just fell in love with the guitar,” he says. “I wasn’t good at a lot of things at that point, just terrible at school. I spent some time with rheumatic fever as a kid — that, and my hormones kicking in, really changed everything for me. I had a hard time believing I could be good at something.”
He had once thought he’d grow up to be a pilot, “or a soldier or something like that,” he says. “But after getting sick, you can’t go into the military.”
What he did do was dive into music, quickly making clear this was his passion. He ran to libraries and bookstores, consuming everything he could — from art and music to poetry and books. He picked up random jobs to save up for gear.
“It felt like there was nothing else,” he says. “It was exhilarating to start shaping worlds and getting these sounds going. Some were creepy and bizarre, some obvious, some natural. Everything was fireworks. It was the coolest. It still is.”
While at The Colony High School, he found his people. Together, they gathered whatever gear they could to put on shows. “It was so dangerous — getting electrocuted, getting fines, getting the cops called on us.” But they didn’t care. They just went for it.
They started playing with kids from other high schools, putting on shows in warehouse districts and the backyards of very patient parents.
All the while, Deep Ellum was the destination.
They knew it was where they could showcase their music and fit in. “If you felt awkward, alone, or out of place, you had Deep Ellum. It was so important for all of us.”
He’d sneak out with friends who could drive, watching them play in Deep Ellum venues and meeting like-minded people who, he says, felt out of place everywhere else. With his band, they played throughout Dallas-Fort Worth, taking as many gigs as they could. “If you start performing in Deep Ellum, you just hit a new level.”
As he says, the neighborhood either sends musicians packing or it sharpens them. For this group, it was the latter: His band Doosu would become a well-known name in Deep Ellum and across Dallas for its rock music.
In the mid-1990s, Doosu started gaining more traction, playing bigger venues and gathering a following. You might imagine this part as a scene from a biopic — the thrill of pursuing a passion and it paying off. Casey felt that, but he also had something darker to contend with: that rheumatic fever he had as a kid? It doesn’t just go away.
“When I was 12, it was inevitable I’d need open-heart surgery by 18. I’d look normal, but I couldn’t really run with the other kids. So, I kept it a secret,” he says. “When I started playing, I felt supernatural. I was pulling things off that doctors couldn’t believe.”
As the band built a studio in his parents’ garage, sold out Trees, and caught the attention of Columbia Records, Casey, then 21, landed in the hospital with a heart “the size of a football.”
He had open-heart surgery and then a rare infection doctors struggled to treat. “They tried everything under the sun,” including one treatment that killed all the bacteria — the good and the bad.
“It was killing me from the inside out. My heart rate was 200. My kidneys were shutting down,” he says, sharing other details that are tragic and possibly too gruesome for this page. “I looked like the walking dead.”
Though he’d worked hard to keep his condition secret, the need for O-negative blood changed things. That’s when the Deep Ellum community did what it does best: it rallied.
“They organized an emergency blood drive and filled up all the blood banks in Texas,” he says. “I wanted to keep it a secret, but they knew this kid was going to die, and they helped.
“I’m bound to Deep Ellum. That love, support, and fierceness saved my life, so I owe it forever.”
More than 25 years later, Casey is not only still playing, but talking about music with a passion that’s contagious. Over the years, his talent continued with Doosu and contributed to rock bands Descender and Burden Brothers. And in the pandemic, he leaned into his solo work, further discovering an evolution of his vocals in the music.
“I’m a musician, and I’ve devoted my life to the pursuit of music and where that would take me. It’s ridiculous on paper — it makes no sense, and it’s so risky,” he says.
But for some like Hess, it can happen, thanks to talent, probably some good luck, and a certain music-loving neighborhood.
“I’m really trying to keep more and more music happening. I’ve been doing it this far and might as well. I feel like I’m just getting started. It feels like a second golden age,” he says. “Maybe it’s a calling or a purpose. But Deep Ellum is probably one of the most important parts of my life.”
