Andrew Sherman
Audio By Carbonatix
The Longhorn Backyard, the amphitheatre pairing to the historic Longhorn Ballroom, has announced its inaugural concert season, featuring headline acts like La Mafia, Mt. Joy and Braxton Keith taking the stage this spring.
The 6,500-capacity amphitheatre was completed last September, and celebrated with a soft opening and a few casual shows. But the venue will run at full capacity on March 28, for its first official show, featuring a concert by five-time Grammy-winning Latin music group La Mafia. Tickets for the first show of the season are $48.
Then, Indie rockers Mt. Joy will take a stop by the venue on April 24, followed by country artist Braxton Keith on May 30. More shows are to be announced as the peak concert season progresses.
All the while, the Longhorn Ballroom, one of the most historic concert venues in the state, will host high-billed names at sold-out shows this season. Folk star Jesse Welles sold out the roughly 2,000-capacity venue for March 27, and cult music icon Mac DeMarco sold out all tickets for his May 18 show.
The Longhorn expansion and success bring optimism to local music historians. The venue, which first opened as a honky tonk in the ‘50s by bandleader Bob Wills, was managed for a short time by Jack Ruby (who infamously shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of John F. Kennedy), and was one of the only venues Black artists were invited to play at in the era of Jim Crow South.
But the venue, still locally owned and fighting the decimation of local music perpetrated by large conglomerates, narrowly escaped closing forever. In 2019, the venue fell into bankruptcy and faced demolition, a situation worsened by the pandemic, though it ironically bought time for a new owner to swoop in and salvage the ballroom. By 2022, Edwin Cabaniss of Kessler Presents rescued the Longhorn Ballroom from the ashes, and it looks like it’s only getting better. The Ballroom reached its 75th birthday last year, and now Dallas has another amphitheatre to enjoy.
“I am still as excited about discovering and helping an emerging artist grow as I was when we first started,” Cabaniss said in a press release. “Now, with the Longhorn Ballroom and Backyard, we can continue to work with those artists as they move to the next level in their musical journey.”
