A band warms up on the opening night for Puzzles in Deep Ellum on July 30. Photo by Madelyn Edwards.
While at South by Southwest last year, Third String Entertainment founder Mike Ziemer pitched the idea of a “shoegaze” festival to his executive assistant Jewel Patani.
Within 10 minutes, Ziemer had already created a logo for the Gazed and Confused Fest that will take place this weekend at Puzzles in Deep Ellum.
In case you’re unfamiliar, shoegaze is an alternative rock subgenre characterized by melody and heavy distortion. (My Bloody Valentine often comes up as an example.)
The festival will take place Friday, Saturday and Sunday, March 20-22, and is headlined by Holywatr, Pool Kids and Dallas’ own Bleed. Three-day passes are sold out, but (as of this Tuesday evening) there are still tickets available for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, individually.
Patani has been the main driver behind Gazed and Confused. While she has handled social media and marketing for the So What?! Music Festival, but this has been her first time to take the lead role in talent buying and organizing. She took an internship with Third String Entertainment a few years ago and has been working there ever since.
“I never thought I would be a talent buyer for a festival like this kind of early on in my career,” said Patani, who is in her mid-20s. “I’m so grateful for it all.”
She sat down with us earlier this year to talk about how she has planned for Gazed and Confused.
Tell me about the experience of putting this on.
We had reached out to agents probably in the summer of 2025, and we’re just like, “We’re putting on this new mini festival. It’ll be three days showcasing all these up and coming acts. We’d love to see who you have available, or if you have any interest in pitching any of your bands.” And I had already had in mind who I wanted to headline, so I reached out and was like, “Hey, would they be available for this? Are they interested in it? We know it’s a new thing, but this is something that we plan to build bigger in the future.” From then, it’s just a lot of waiting around to see if the offer will be accepted. A couple of the first noes that I got, I cried a little bit. I was like, ‘No, why wouldn’t it work out?’ But it ended up fine because mostly all the targets that I wanted on the festival are playing it, so that’s awesome.
Once I got most of the lineup sorted, I had reached out to a girl that I follow on Instagram (Elyza Reinhart) to do the art for me, and she’s great. She really gets the vision of what I wanted. I sent her a Pinterest board of everything that I was envisioning, and she got it immediately. So she’s been great to work with so far.
From there, it’s like, OK, so what do I want to do with the marketing? How do I want to brand this on socials, and how do I want to do street marketing if I do any of that? What is the voice that I want to have behind the fest? And that’s like my favorite part, probably, of doing all this and starting from scratch is like really establishing the brand. I just love doing the marketing, like finding the voice of the brand.
What choices did you make in marketing Gazed and Confused?
I want to keep it playful and kind of sarcastic but also professional. I had told Elyza whenever I was working on the art and the lineup for it, (and it says on the poster) I describe this as the indie rock, grunge, gaze mini-fest of your dreams. You wouldn’t expect all these bands to be on one lineup. Holywatr is kind of metal-leaning, and their earlier stuff felt more shoegazey, like kind of nu metal-ish, and then Pool Kids headlining on Saturday is like indie rock, alt. And Bleed on Sunday, they’re shoegaze, nu metal, and then the rest of the lineup building under it, I’m like, OK, I want to kind of mix in some true indie surf rock with a little more metal and spread it out over the days. If someone was looking at the poster, I wanted someone to feel whiplash whenever they’re looking through the lineup. I was talking to someone about it in Austin, and I was like, “Oh, you should come to my festival,” and I showed them the lineup. They’re like, “What? This is kind of crazy. I wouldn’t expect any of this to go together.” These are all of my favorite bands on one lineup, essentially.
How many acts will be performing?
Thirty, 10 each day. We have a couple locals on each day, which is really exciting. We have Gene Ross, Amethyst Michelle, Toothpick. I’m really excited about those acts. I love watching them whenever they play our shows. They’re so good, and I feel like they’re just going to have a moment soon. They’re going to blow up soon.
Why did you choose your headliners?
Pool Kids, I had been following for a while now. They did a fall tour, and they put out a new album, and it is just so incredible that I’m like, I need them to headline this festival. I think it’s perfect for them. They did an album release party in New York in August, and I went to that. I was like, this is so much fun.
Bleed was actually Mike’s idea initially. He was like, “This band has been around for a while, and I think they would be totally down to do it, especially since it’s in Dallas, and it’s like a first year fest.” So he had reached out to them and was like, “Is this something you’d be interested in?” They were like, “We would absolutely love to do that.” So that was nice.
Holywatr, I think I found them on Instagram. They’re one of those bands that would just keep popping up on my “Explore” page or whatever. I was like, wow, I really like this music. And so I started following them for a little bit, and they had recently gone on tour with Architects, and I went to go see them, and their live set was just amazing. I was like, I feel like a different person leaving this room. And it’s so funny — I had been talking to Mike about it for a little bit. I’m like, I think that they would be perfect for this. I think they’re going to blow up in a couple months, so I would love to have them; I would like to get them while I can. I met them and took a picture with them, and I sent a picture to Mike, and I captioned it, “Me and the future headliners of Gazed and Confused” before I had locked them in. I was like, I’m just manifesting this. A couple months later, we had locked them in as a headliner.
Was it an intentional choice to have the festival in Deep Ellum?
We wanted to start it small at our new venue. It has the best sound, and I honestly love that venue so much. The layout of it is just perfect. And every time we have a show there, and I’m watching, I’m like, wow, I can’t believe a mini festival is going in here. We wanted to put it there, start it small and keep growing it, maybe do South Side Music Hall in a couple years.
Why should people come to Gazed and Confused?
I keep saying, “If you blink, you’re going to miss it.” This is probably the last time that you’ll see any of these bands in kind of this small of a room on this lineup, altogether. This is going to be one of the only years that we’re going to do it this small, and I’m really excited to keep growing it.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
I am a North Texas native with roots in Arlington and Benbrook, and I graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2018. My previous work has centered around small towns and cities west of Fort Worth, and my byline has appeared in The Springtown Epigraph/The Tri-County Reporter, Weatherford Democrat, NewsBreak, Fort Worth Weekly and The Shorthorn. I am happy to serve in Lakewood, which I’ve heard referred to as a small town within the big city. Feel free to email me at medwards@advocatemag.com