SMU Alum / Local Musician Killed

[Danny Noonan]

Carter Albecht. Was a classical piano major at SMU. Would've graduated sometime around '96 or so. Was in a number of local bands, most recently Sorta. Tragic.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairp ... _sorta.php

[Peruna_Ate_My_Rolex]

He graduated in 95 with a degree in Piano performance. I've heard this group a time or two and he was a real talent. I found out myself right after the game. A real tragedy.

[smupony94]

Made the Austin paper too

[Danny Noonan]

Made the Austin paper too

Heck, it made USA Today and RollingStone.com.

He was awesome. His roommate and bandmate was Danny Balis (sp?) on the Ticket. Here are Danny thought's from his myspace page...


there is no question; were he here right now, he would
think this is totally f'n gay, and i would never
hear the end of it.

i found out this morning at 7:00 that my best friend
was probably dead. i got the call from his girlfriend
as she was being taken to the police station to be
interviewed, as she saw the coroner's van and a
stretcher with a covered body being loaded into it as
the cops drove her from the neighborhood. about an
hour and a half later, she confirmed it. my brother,
bandmate, roommate, and the closest friend i have ever
known had been shot to death earlier at 4:07 a.m.

we've all read the updated story in the dallas morning
news, and it seems pretty accurate, according to the
play-by-play of events she gave me throughout the
night. what we don't know is why he ended up at the
next door neighbor's back door, banging and kicking it
at 4:06. nor do we know why carter acted out with his
girlfriend in a manner that i have never seen in my
near-ten years of friendship with him.

this was not the carter albrecht i knew. the police
report failed to mention that for the previous week,
he and his girlfriend were trying quit smoking with
the prescription drug, "chantix". they had both
started the program at the same time, and had been on
it for a week. monday was supposed to be their quit
day. carter had not slept much the night before, and
had consumed approximately five cocktails in a two
hour period on sunday eve. this was not unusual, as
carter had a very good tolerance for the drink.
chantix does clearly state on the box that it's drowsy
effects could be intensified by alcohol. the two also
complained of having crazy, insane, almost horrific
dreams that week. they jokingly referred to them as
"chantix dreams" when comparing them. i later learned
through a close friend that he had firsthand knowledge
of two separate couples who had tried to quit smoking
using chantix, and in each case, one spouse had tried
to kill the other with no previous domestic conflct.
one was successful, and many refer to this drug as a
psychotic.

was it a combination of sleep deprivation, booze, and
the stop-smoking pills that sent him off? it's the
only explanation i can even think of. what was
described to me sounded like a walking black out. in
my years of knowing him, and all the girls he dated, i
have never once heard of him getting abusive or
physical with them. it was not his character.
especially with the woman that i know for a fact he
loved dearly. unfortunately, the morning news story
paints him as a batterer to the casual reader that did
not know him. this, he was undeniably not.

so why banging on the next door neighbor's back door?
who knows. same waking black out state? confusion
thinking he was knocking on his girlfriend's door?
this we will never know. any other explanation just
doesn't add up.

what i can tell you about carter is that he was the
best musician i have ever played with. it may sound
trite, but it was an honor to play music with him,
create and record with him, laugh and joke with him,
for the better part of the last ten years. he was a
unique musician. i don't think enough people got to
hear him. not only was he the backbone of sorta,
playing keys and innovative guitar, he was my favorite
solo artist/bandleader i've seen closely. if you got
him, you got him. he was one of a kind. a dylan. an
elliott smith. he had "it". that extra something that
set him apart from basically everyone else. i often
joked with him that no one would really appreciate him
until he died. his soulful, yet punk voice...his
genius lyrics that were probably above the heads of
most. and his playing. wow. today, when dozens of
musicians gathered at our house, trying to make sense
of this mess, i said more than once that "the thing
that's so wasteful about him being gone, is that he
was better than all of us." if anyone was going to
save music in the dallas scene, it was him.

he had many opportunities to go to new york, LA, and
could have played sideman to anyone. but he chose to
stay in dallas, where his family lived, his friends
played, and his loyalty was rooted. he was a
character-driven slave to honesty. and i learned alot
about being truthful and up-front from him. you could
hear it in his voice, his words, in the general way he
carried himself. he was the real deal. most of the
rest of us were just poseurs next to him.

he meant the world to me. i will never see him again
on this earth, and i am heartbroken from it. i can't
think about tomorrow because he is supposed to be
there. he is supposed to be playing his piano in the
dining room, or watching the rangers while eating some
crap from a greenville fast-food place. we are
supposed to talk about the goofy stuff that happened
on the hardline that day. we are supposed to talk
about books (usually a one-sided conversation with me
on the short side) and the mavs and girls and music.

but my best friend isn't here anymore. and i honestly
don't know what to do.

i guess the only thing left to do, is let everyone in
on something you may not have known. carter was a very
intelligent guy. smart as hell. borderline genius. so
my final dig on my buddy is this...the last movie he
watched was "snakes on a plane". well, to his credit,
he didn't watch all of it. love you, buddy.

[PonyFanSweetie]

Definitely a tragedy and a loss to the Dallas music community. He was by far one of the most talented musicians I have ever seen.

[MrMustang1965]

Not familiar with the group Sorta. But I do remember another group he performed with - Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians.

Tragic. My heart goes out to his friends and family.

[ThadFilms]

Not familiar with the group Sorta. But I do remember another group he performed with - Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians.

Tragic. My heart goes out to his friends and family.

The Sorta New Bohemians is the group that followed the Edie Brickell variety, with a couple new faces... met Carter one night outside Trees, I think it was after a Pavement show.... not that I knew him well at all, just seemed so shocking to hear about the domestic abuse part of it... all I knew about him, and that brief meeting, well that just didn't add up to what happened leading up to his death. So I am glad to have read the insight from Danny Balis.

[PonyFanSweetie]

Sorta is a completely different band than Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians.

If you want to check them out you can here

http://www.myspace.com/sorta or at www.sortaweb.com

If you get the chance to see them play, I would definitely recommend it. It's a good group of guys with some incredible musical talent.

[Longtime]

This is a tragedy all the way around. Carter Albrecht sounds like he was a great guy, but he made a terrible mistake.

The fingers are being pointed already. At the neighbor for shooting blindly. At the prescription drug he was taking to try to quit smoking.

But there's really only one person responsible for this: the guy who downed five drinks in a two-hour period while taking prescription drugs. Not only that, but drugs that he knew were already giving him weird dreams. Did it even occur to him to lay off the booze while taking such strong drugs?

No matter how high your tolerance is, alcohol is not a soft drink. It's a drug. Mixing drugs, even over-the-counter medicine, is dangerous stuff. Unfortunately, a tremendously creative human being found out the hard way.

[expony18]

wow. im sorry to all that knew him and were either friends or family