Ariana Grande American Airlines Center, Dallas Sunday, April 9, 2017 In terms of pop stars who have graced the stage at American Airlines Center, if Adele is the chatty next door neighbor who popped in for tea and biscuits and a couple of laughs, Ariana is the boardroom executive –…
For creative duo Marie Boone and Matthew Brinston, their relationship is finally coming full circle. Art was the reason they got together in the first place, and ultimately the reason they got married. The 22- and 24-year-olds are about to celebrate their first anniversary. They said their vows in Vegas…
Singer-songwriter Paul Howeth is an unknown. He’s lived in obscurity for most of his adult life — he has no job, and before recently becoming homeless, was surviving off disability payments in a cramped apartment with his longtime companion Diane and their three pets. The musician, who’s probably in his…
It’s been six months since Agustín Arteaga took over the directorship role at the Dallas Museum of Art, the crown jewel of the Arts District. The position was left vacant for nearly a year after the sudden, perplexing departure of the previous director, Maxwell Anderson, in September 2015. There were…
The concept is a little like The Magic School Bus: a colorful classroom inside a school bus that can take students anywhere, all while they learn and engage with the world around them. The new learning center on wheels won’t take inquisitive kids inside the human body or into outer space,…
Being a working musician is no small feat. Pair that with coordinating a “big band” of 11 players, schlepping tons of equipment to each gig, and keeping 1920s and ’30s period jazz alive, and Vince Giordano has quite a task on his hands. With his band, the Nighthawks, Brooklyn-based Giordano plays…
The original artwork or designs of at least two Dallas designers have been copied by big-box clothing giants as recently as early this year. Charles Smith II’s “Do Not Touch” line is the latest to be imitated by mega-retailer Forever 21, which along with Zara and H&M, is one of…
Best known for ’80s hits like “Rio” and “Hungry Like the Wolf,” the new wave and synth-pop band Duran Duran have been making music for nearly 40 years and seen six of their albums reach top 10 on Billboard. With their most recent release Paper Gods, the band put out…
Without going into unnecessary detail, foreplay is generally considered a good idea. Sometimes it’s even better than the main event. Jeffrey Brown decided to host a festival, now in its fourth year, called Foreplay Fest to showcase bands heading to South by Southwest. It seems like a fairly simple idea, but…
The month of March heralds the start of music festival season as bands from all over the state, country, and world head to Austin for SXSW. And a few smart promoters in Dallas are taking the opportunity to catch acts on their way south. Victor “Chino” Rimach, owner-operator of Chasquis…
Jeff Orlick believes that food has the power to be innocently subversive. “Food is innocuous; it’s like the Trojan Horse,” says Orlick, one of the founders of Breaking Bread NYC, an organization that started hosting cultural exchange dinners in response to Trump’s travel ban. Now he’s bringing the concept to North…
It’s doubtful that the Nasher Sculpture Center had ever been the site of a multi-religious prayer ceremony prior to Monday night, but the world renowned institution is thankfully taking chances on a lot of things that might not be typical museum fare with its recent Artist Circle installments. The Artist…
If there’s one thing that Erykah Badu’s birthday bash proved, it’s that greatness will not be rushed. According to the Bomb Factory box office, she was scheduled to go on at 10, two hours after the show opened, yet she didn’t actually take the stage until 11:45. A plethora of…
Although he’s known for “Livin’ on a Prayer,” Thursday night at American Airlines arena was enough to prove that Bon Jovi is living a dream. It’s been three years since they came through Dallas, an absence that Jon Bon Jovi himself was acutely aware of. He admitted that he was…
Erykah Badu isn’t known to play small when it comes to her birthday parties. “This year I’m putting more energy into it because I have the time, and it’s a very special year, and I want to treat it that way,” she tells the Observer. “I have time to appropriately give…
Bars and restaurants often take pride in existing in the ideological middle of the road. Taking a public stance politically is usually considered too risky an endeavor; either way you lean, you run the risk of alienating customers on the other side of the political divide. Then came the Trump…
Watching the seven-piece psych rock band Acid Carousel perform is like watching a pen full of well-dressed wolf pups wrestle with their favorite sticks. Frontmen and songwriters Gus Baldwin and John Kuzmick are young, at 18 and 21, respectively; there’s a lot of long hair; they have boundless energy; and the…
Don’s Used Photo Equipment stands amidst a hardened strip of industry on Irving Boulevard, near what’s now the heart of the Design District. When Don Puckett opened the store in 1997 he started hearing essentially the same thing every day from customers: “This is expensive, does it work?” “People come in…
Murray Smither went into the prison in Huntsville, Texas, not knowing what to expect. But the art appraiser knew the surroundings well — he was born in the city and raised about an hour north of Houston — and he was in good company. His friends, faculty at Sam Houston…
One of Dallas’ most beloved cult rappers has come back to life. Jeff Liles, creative director of the Kessler Theater, says he’d been hitting up Mark Griffin once a year since the venue opened in 2010, hoping to get him on stage to perform as MC 900 Ft Jesus, an…
On any given Saturday in Deep Ellum, throngs of 20- and 30-somethings roam the streets in small packs, looking for a good time, live music, or their next lay — maybe all of the above. But what’s relatively unusual is to see people forming lines outside the neighborhood’s laid-back watering holes. This…
There’s a red-brick mansion sitting on a grassy hill on 15 acres in Sherman, Texas, 65 miles north of Dallas. At the top of a tall staircase is a striking, colonnaded front porch, and rows of symmetrically placed windows flank the front entry on either side. It’s simultaneously beautiful and…
