Byson Roatch
Audio By Carbonatix
Maybe Valentine’s Day didn’t go like you had planned, and now you’re looking for somewhere to not feel alone. Or maybe it went too well, and now you’re scrambling for another date idea. Well, look no further. Things start off loud and local this week with The 40 Acre Mule in The Colony Thursday night. That night also has Memphis punk band Lipstick Stains making its Deep Ellum debut. On Friday, roots rock band The Buffalo Ruckus will fill up Dan’s Silverleaf in Denton, and neo soul singer Ari Lennox plays what could be her last ever show in Dallas. On Saturday, the Rockzilla Tour comes firing into Irving, and Show Me The Body burns down The Studio at the Factory. Things take a softer turn on Tuesday when Toto plays Grand Prairie and The Sadies play an intimate show on Greenville Avenue. The concert week wraps up on Wednesday with the reggae-infused punk (or is that punk-infused reggae?) of H.R. of Bad Brains at Ruins and the spaced-out party rock of TWRP on Lower Greenville. They may not be the biggest bands in the world, but these are some of the biggest little live shows you can get.
The 40 Acre Mule
5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, Lava Cantina, 5805 Grandscape Blvd., The Colony. $10+ at eventbrite.com
Dallas rhythm and blues band The 40 Acre Mule had quite the year in 2022. Among the highlights: touring a lot of the country with The Old 97s and The Delta Bombers, playing shows with legendary acts like Reverend Horton Heat and Shiny Ribs, making its official SXSW debut and bringing the band’s timeless sound to the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center for a special performance. The band closed the year with a blow-out New Year’s show with label mates Ottoman Turks and Joshua Ray Walker and will be playing its first show of 2023 this week in The Colony. The 40 Acre Mule hasn’t released a single since its cover of Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” in 2021, but the band has recently hinted on its socials that there may be some brand new songs in the works Thursday night. Guitarist John Pedigo will have a double shift that night playing as one half of opening act, The O’s.
Lipstick Stains
7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, Three Links, 2704 Elm St. $15 at seetickets.us
Woman-led Midtown Memphis punk band Lipstick Stains is best known in its hometown for its stage presence. With ferocity and passion, singer Xanthe Mumm-Saucier takes audiences on a journey through socio-political songs dealing with addiction, mental health and equality. She is known for engaging the crowd of any venue, making for a dynamic and thrilling live show. The band has all the brash intensity of a hardcore band and all the pop sensibility of radio-friendly punk. A relatively new band, Lipstick Stains released its first EP in 2021 and its follow-up album, Discoteca, last year. That has not stopped the band from attracting a lot of local fandom in its hometown, and they are looking forward to seeing what the country has to offer on the band’s Texas Takeover Tour kicking off in Dallas on Thursday night. Lipstick Stains will receive local support from The Wee-Beasties, American Shit Storm and Nip Slip.
The Buffalo Ruckus
7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17, Dan’s Silverleaf, 103 Industrial St., Denton. $10+ at prekindle.com
Denton roots rock band The Buffalo Ruckus started making a name for itself in 2013, when it began cranking out its smooth blend of Appalachian folk and Southern rock. Within a year, the band had released its debut, self-titled album, and two years after that came its second album, Peace & Cornbread, on Shiner (yes, Shiner the beer) Records. Since 2016, however, the band’s studio output has been inconsistent, with only a handful of singles and live recordings seeing the light of day for nearly six years. In October, the band released the six-track live EP Live from the Texas Music Revolution, which contained three previously unreleased tracks. One thing that has remained consistent is the band’s live show, playing just about every stage in North Texas from the cities to the suburbs to the small towns all over and in between. Alternative country band Brave Little Howl will open for The Buffalo Ruckus Friday night in Denton.
Ari Lennox
7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17, House of Blues, 2200 N. Lamar St. $390 at livenation.com
Neo soul artist Ari Lennox shocked fans this past December with the announcement that her Age/Sex/ Location Tour would be her last. The DC singer began uploading her music as an 18-year-old in 2009 and released her self-made, debut EP, Ariography, in 2013. By 2015, the singer had signed to J. Cole’s Dreamville record label, which is distributed by industry giant Interscope Records. Lennox has stayed with Dreamville through three EPs and two full-length albums with her most recent, Age/Sex/Location, being released last September. The album was met by rave reviews from critics hailing it as a modern classic with its updated take on ’60s R&B and ’70s soul. While it remains unclear why the singer is stepping away from touring or how permanent that decision will be, one thing that is clear is that her fans have taken her seriously. At press time, verified resale tickets for the sold-out show were fetching $390 each online.
Rockzilla Tour
5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18, The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, 300 W. Las Colinas Blvd., Irving. $117+ at livenation.com
The second leg of the Rockzilla Tour, which kicked off Feb. 1 in Rochester, New York, will make its way to Irving this week. The tour brings together metalcore band Falling In Reverse, nü metal band Papa Roach, rap metal band Hollywood Undead and screamo band Escape the Fate for some heavy ’00s-era vibes. Escape the Fate is touring in support of its new single “H8 My Self,” one of five singles it has released since its 2021 album Chemical Warfare. Hollywood Undead released its latest album, Hotel Kalifornia, last year to positive reviews that called it the band’s best since its earliest albums. While Falling in Reverse hasn’t released an album since 2017’s Coming Home, it has released an album’s-worth of singles in the last five years. Its most recent, “Watch the World Burn,” came out at the end of January. Finally, Papa Roach is touring its latest album, Ego Trip, and as longtime fans know, the band is always great live.
Show Me The Body
7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18, The Studio at the Factory, 2727 Canton St. $25 at axs.com
It doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago that New York hardcore band Show Me the Body was playing for a small crowd at CheapSteaks in Deep Ellum, but they are back and somehow bigger in just a matter of months. Show Me The Body began making noise in the NY hardcore scene back in 2009 when singer Julian Pratt formed an early version of the band as a high school freshman. Over time, the band began to incorporate elements of hip-hop, noise rock, sludge metal and a banjo, creating something that is truly unique in hardcore circles. The band’s first album, Body War (2016) was praised for its chaos and creativity. While on tour in Poland, the band visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, which influenced their second full-length album, Dog Whistle – a 30-minute outcry against the politics and problems plaguing New York City. The band’s latest, Trouble The Water, was released last year.
Toto
7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, Texas Trust CU Theatre, 1001 Texas Trust Way, Grand Prairie. $52+ at ticketmaster.com
Taking a break from its tour supporting Journey for a one-off show in Grand Prairie this Tuesday is rock and jazz fusion band Toto. You and/or your kids may know Toto from its still-ubiquitous and Weezer-covered smash hit single from 1982, “Africa,” but Toto really is so much more than one song. Founded in the late ’70s by a group of studio musicians who had worked with the likes of Steely Dan, Boz Scaggs and Sonny and Cher, Toto has always been about the sound of music. The band has sold more than 40 million records worldwide, was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009 and has won six Grammy Awards. What may be more remarkable, however, is the band’s touring history. For a band that has been recording and touring for about 45 years, there have only been five years that have not seen a Toto tour. That is nothing if not dedicated.
The Sadies
8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, Sundown at Granada, 3520 Greenville Ave. $20 at prekindle.com
The Sadies are a Canadian rock ‘n’ roll band with firm roots in Canadian country and Western music. The band’s founding member, brothers Dallas and Travis Good, are nephews of Brian and Larry Good, who founded Canadian country group The Good Brothers. The Sadies set the tone of alternative Canadian Country in 1994 and have played alongside its American counterparts like John Doe of X, Neko Case and Neil Young. Sadly, The Sadies lost founding member and keyboard player Dallas Good last year on Feb. 17. At 48 years of age, Good died of natural causes while under a doctor’s care for a coronary illness discovered earlier that week. The band had finished recording its latest album, Colder Streams, with Good and released the album last May to much acclaim. The Sadies have decided to take the album on tour in honor of Good’s music and legacy.
H.R.
7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, Ruins, 2653 Commerce St. $20 at squadup.com
Born in Liverpool, England, to a Jamaican mother and American father who had been stationed in the U.K. with the U.S. Air Force, a young Paul D. Hudson moved to the United States with his family, finally settling in Washington, D.C. It was in our nation’s capital that Hudson would be known as H.R. (a backronym for “human rights”) and fronting pioneering hardcore punk band, Bad Brains. To fully describe the impact and influence that band had on everything that would come after it would take pages, but it is vast, spanning multiple genres and five decades. As the years passed, Bad Brains would grow to incorporate reggae into its hardcore music, a tradition that H.R. carried into his solo work. As the singer has aged, his music does tend toward reggae for the most part, but as heard most recently on his 2019 album, Give Thanks, the singer does still venture into the harder avenues of rock. Reggae artist Sing Kumba opens the show.
TWRP
7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, Granada Theater, 3524 Greenville Ave. $30 at prekindle.com
Canadian party rock band TWRP, formerly known as Tupper Ware Remix Party, will be kicking off a short Texas tour in Dallas Wednesday night, bringing Atlanta vaporwave artist Nelward along with it. With Doctor Sung on keytar, Havve Hogan on electronic percussion, Lord Phobos on guitar and Commander Meouch on bass, this band of supposed robots has come together through space and time on a mission to create something utopian. Inspired by ’70s funk, modern electronic music, classic rock and old children’s cartoon theme songs, the members of TWRP want to elevate an audience’s mood, make them dance and, most of all, give them a fun experience. This is a mission that comes off as funny as it is heartfelt. In a world where things are all too serious all too often, the playful spirit of a band like TWRP may be exactly what we need right now.
