There is a question at the center of Kordell Rhodes‘s debut book that stays with you once you encounter it: How far will you go to be noticed?
Rhodes is a Dallas-Fort Worth-based author and musician who also describes himself as a voiceover actor and business owner. The question on that book cover came from something he had been observing for years. In Attention Everybody: The Experiment Edition, available on Amazon, he turns that observation into a sustained examination of how attention has come to function as its own form of currency in contemporary life.
“Today we are in an ‘attention no matter what’ state of consciousness,” he told VoyagePhoenix in a March 2026 profile. “Sometimes I feel like not even the money matters more than attention.” The book works through the implications of that claim. It traces the psychological tools and social dynamics people use to get noticed, the difference between those who attract attention without apparent effort and those who exhaust themselves in pursuit of it, and what the culture’s appetite for visibility reveals about how people understand their own worth.
Rhodes frames the work as an experiment, a word he placed in the subtitle deliberately. Readers are not handed conclusions; they are invited to observe. That framing matters for how the book lands: it positions the work as a careful dissection of something familiar rather than a lecture about it.
He came to that project from a creative practice that has never been tidy. Rhodes describes himself as a musician, voiceover actor, writer, and business owner, roles he has worked across simultaneously throughout his career in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The range is not incidental. It reflects a consistent choice to refuse specialization, even when that choice made the path harder to follow.
“Being considered different in most parts of my life from others has driven me to have more of a black sheep type of journey,” he told VoyagePhoenix. “When people are sleeping or not paying attention, I’m writing, composing and pulling in lots of ideas that I’m always in hopes that the public will like and resonate with.”
His second book is underway, and it takes a markedly different approach from the debut. Where Attention Everybody stayed analytical and outward-facing, the new project turns personal. Rhodes told VoyagePhoenix the book will draw on his own experiences and relationships, shaped with a biopic quality and science fiction elements that render real life in a more vivid and entertaining form. He described the direction as a deliberate departure: less about examining culture and more about letting readers inside his own story.
Also taking shape is his first tour, combining live music with his work as an author. The dual format reflects the way Rhodes has long structured his creative life: not as separate tracks but as expressions of the same underlying impulse. He told VoyagePhoenix the opportunity is one he plans to approach with full commitment, calling it a chance to celebrate his accomplishments in front of live audiences for the first time.
The thread running through all of it is a preoccupation that Attention Everybody puts on the table and does not let go: the relationship between being seen and understanding who you are. For Rhodes, making work is one way of answering that question, and the people he most wants to reach are those still searching for their own answer.
“I hope to join the pioneers of before and now as a true author and artist of my generation,” he said. “To be a beacon of light for those who have a dream.”
