Nearly 30 years ago when he was known as Jerry, Gerard Dirkx led The Telefones, one of Dallas’ first and best bands to fall under the ominous new wave umbrella. Along with brothers Chris and Steve, Gerard helped shape the area music scene of the late 1970s. Songs such as…

This crowded bill of emo (under various guises) features Long Island’s Edison Glass as its headliner, but it’s Ludo from St. Louis who makes the venture to the underage wasteland of the Door worthwhile. Using layers upon layers of guitar and genuine harmony vocals, Ludo is a throwback to Weezer…

“It’s much easier getting around Austin than Los Angeles,” says singer-songwriter Randy Weeks about his recent move to the Hill Country. “It’s just a different way of thinking and living.” Weeks is originally from a small town in Minnesota, but he’s spent most of his life in California, where he…

Hailing from a small Oklahoma town just north of the Red River, John Lyle Williams makes it into the metroplex fairly consistently, performing his stylish country/folk/blues at open mics, coffee houses or just about any place that will let him set down his guitar case. Unsent Letters is his self-financed…

Led by brothers Milind (Mel) and Neil Parekh, Love Minus Zero is another band that is just sort of local. Mel’s daytime job is in Dallas, and Neil resides in Houston, while bassist Akaash Sharma and drummer Evan Spaulding hail from Austin. The quartet met while attending UT more than…

Now hailing from Austin (always the hippest and most malodorous Texas locale), the Frontier Brothers started out in Fort Worth, where they first concocted their danceable and harmonious indie pop. Inspired by David Bowie, ELO, Wilco and Ben Folds, as unlikely (and unattractive) a collection of artists as one is…

An unusual and interesting local bill that features some playfully obnoxious metal and an electronica-fueled tribute to Cream. Money $hot are a typically sexist metallic mess, all testosterone and no brains, but hell, that’s what’s made Motorhead great. Paying homage to Judas Priest, Queen and AC/DC, Money $hot is three…

Missouri’s Domino Kings don’t add a lot to the traditional honky-tonk and rockabilly that are the band’s inspirations, but they don’t have to. Produced by Lou Whitney (The Skeletons), Some Kind of Sign, the Kings’ impressively earnest fourth release, is as solid a collection of roots rock as anyone could…

Although the headliner, Rudder, is a highly regarded quartet from New York City, it’s the local boys who are the real stars of this triple bill. Both Oso Closo and Snarky Puppy are products of the University of North Texas’ prestigious music program, but they traverse areas far removed from…

Since his people turned down my interview request and firmly declared that there would be no complimentary tickets, I am left to only imagine what questions I might have put forth to the esteemed Lyle Lovett. The sophisticated country crooner (once referred to as the Thinking Man’s Cowboy) left me…

Although readers of No Depression would say otherwise, the genre commonly referred to as alt-country never attained the popular status many predicted. Bands like Uncle Tupelo, the Jayhawks and local faves such as Slobberbone created quite a stir more than a decade ago, but sales were marginal, and crossover to…

Known for his chiseled physique, countless tattoos and blustery personality, singer/actor/writer Henry Rollins is a surprisingly painless interview. Speaking from his Los Angeles office prior to the start of yet another spoken-word tour, Rollins is polite and easygoing as he recalls his days fronting the legendary Black Flag, his noted…

Happy to identify themselves as a Fort Worth band, Urizen have been around for the better part of a decade, honing their songwriting and instrumental chops while skillfully avoiding any easy classification. Autocratopolis, the band’s 2005 debut, has been described as avant-metal and features a bewildering concept of man’s inhumanity…

Well, we guess that’s the sort of stuff that can happen when you let your kids wander off to Los Angeles—they come back with all sorts of crazy notions in their heads. Like, get this, singer-songwriter and former Dallas Observer employee Sara Radle actually wants you to believe that not…

For better or worse, Deep Purple forever changed the path of hard rock music. Deceptively simple and painfully loud, songs such as “Highway Star,” “Woman From Tokyo” and, of course, “Smoke on the Water” were packed full of riffs that ushered in what would become known as heavy metal. Selling…

Looking satisfied but weary, local singer-songwriter Dylan Sneed sits in a coffee shop near his home in Lake Highlands and talks about his escape from the corporate world. “Man, I didn’t even know what my job was,” Sneed says about his two years spent writing instructional manuals for AT&T. “Ninety…

At a recent performance, Fort Worth’s Collin Herring announced that he was picking up his newest CD from the pressing plant in a matter of days. Sadly, it has been more than two years since The Other Side of Kindness, Herring’s fantastic sophomore effort, set critics’ tongues a-wagging with its…

In his brilliant analysis of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, legendary critic Dave Marsh wrote that quality music could never come simply by force-feeding the complexities of classical music through rock and roll amplifiers. Although many have tried (with practicably bloated results) to fuse Beethoven and Chuck Berry, it wasn’t until…

If ever there were a band that represented the popular heights and resounding depths of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, it’s Badfinger. Coming together in the early ’70s, the band benefited from its association with the Beatles (Paul McCartney wrote Badfinger’s first hit, “Come and Get It”) and the Apple…

Refreshingly retro, this Canadian sextet makes old-school metal that should thrill those mining their (foggy) teen years for memories of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Vocalist Jamie Hooper is a shrieker of the highest order, but he does maintain a semblance of comprehensibility that sets him apart from many in…