Dallas Music District Festival With Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights, Somebody’s Darling, ArcAttack and more Trinity Groves, Dallas Saturday and Sunday, May 16 and 17, 2015 If organizing a festival were easy, everyone would do it. Many festivals get off to a rough start and for many reasons, the…
Saturday evening, PDNB hosted the opening reception for France, its fourth solo exhibition for Michael Kenna, a master of modern landscape photography. Following the release of his latest book of the same name, the exhibit showcases work from the past four decades representing several different projects. Kenna now operates on…
The first annual two-day Dallas Music District Festival will start tomorrow in the Trinity River Greenbelt. Actually, scratch that. This isn’t the Waterworld of music festivals. The greenbelt is flooded and, after three contingency plans failed, this fest has finally been relocated to a nearby private space surrounded by trees…
For nearly a quarter century, Brent Kollock has been painting and drawing with a unique visual language that cannot be confused with anyone else. He is also an accomplished writer of short stories and poetry. But in the last few months, Kollock may have found his true calling as an…
Sunday night, the African American Museum transformed into a television studio with many channels. After preparing for a year and a half, Adu launched his art exhibit, AFRICANamedia, with a moving performance piece he wrote and directed. Keeping the crowd guessing with tonal shifts from start to finish, performers stepped…
In the unlikely area of Uptown Dallas, near Cityplace Market retail stores like Target and OfficeMax, sits Modern Electronic Sound Recorders. It’s one of the last places that you might expect to find a recording studio that’s played host to artists both local and national, but in its few years…
The end of the school year isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be about exams, final papers and stressing over passing your classes. But not for the students in El Centro Community College’s Hip Hop Studies 101 course. No, for them it means hosting their own hip hop…
Inside an art studio in Deep Ellum, two people are working on Wayne Coyne’s brain. The studio is called Lady Brain Studios and the two people are the studio’s owners, Darcy Neal and Hailey Moore. Oh, and the brain isn’t really Coyne’s brain, merely the latest iteration of a custom-made…
Medasin is only 17 years old, but he already knows what he wants to do with his life. The Dallas native wants to be a producer, but more than that, he already is a producer. He has been for years, in fact. He may have the voice of a teenager…
Dan Deacon With Prince Rama, Ben O’Brien and Party Static Trees, Dallas Saturday, April 25, 2015 To celebrate the first anniversary of Do214 on Saturday night at Trees, Dan Deacon came out using Steely Dan as entrance music and appreciated the curtains enough to have them ceremoniously closed and reopened…
After an incredible struggle with death and life, Fort Worth hip-hop artist Smoothvega is back from a 7-year hiatus. During that time he lost his mom and learned how to be a dad. With a what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach, Smoothvega tells all on a new album released earlier this week and prepares…
Michael “Mongo” Smith has seen Deep Ellum at best and at its worst. A veteran of the scene and a longtime friend of Dimebag Darrell and his brother Vinnie Paul, Mongo still frequents the clubs in the neighborhood. In fact, you’ve probably seen him at some point, attending a show…
DJ Menace has a dream. That dream is to be a rapper, and he’s traveled far and wide to make it happen. But sometimes your plan B becomes your plan A, and for Menace, a one-time Air Force brat who’s always been a nomad, that’s exactly what happened: After years…
Crit Life is a phenomenon. Technically it’s a hip hop collective, but in truth it’s become a motto, a way of life among Dallas’ high school- and college-aged music fans. They add the word “Crit” to the names they use on social media accounts and use all sorts of Crit-related…
Gerard Hanson doesn’t do interviews. Correction: Convextion doesn’t do interviews. In a 20-year career as a producer and electronic musician here in Dallas, Convextion — the name that Hanson performs under — has preferred to remain anonymous. He rarely does press and prefers to remain faceless in pictures. He even…
Dallas hip hop is a real melting pot, but Grey Matter’s Kilo Art of Fact takes the idea to a whole other level. Born in Santiago, Chile in 1983, Kilo’s family moved to Bergen, Norway when he was three years old to escape the Pinochet dictatorship. Being a political refugee…
Deep Ellum is widely known as one of the best areas in the city for live music, with several venues opening their doors and turning on bright lights every night. But not so well known to the public at large is the host of recording studios in the area, many…
Hip-hop is largely a man’s world. But in the Dallas scene, a woman with a fresh take on the genre and a strong stage presence has been capturing the attention of artists and fans alike. Instead of putting out a music video and buying thousands of fake views to create…
On Saturday night, a large crowd packed into a new venue in South Dallas for a show with Crit Life. As cold as it was outside, people still came out and found this new place, many of them gladly standing outside waiting in an enormous line. Inside the atmosphere was…
Riding a bus to your own concert is a sacrifice most musicians wouldn’t even think of. Besides, this is Dallas, so who doesn’t just drive their car everywhere anyway? But for 20-year-old rapper $kaduf, there are no such luxuries. It’s a matter of routine for him to make the three-hour…
A job is a job for most teenagers. Whether it’s waiting tables or working as a life guard, having a job is a way to kill time and make some money. Not many high schoolers are already pursuing their life’s passion, and they’re probably not interested in squirreling away for…
Jonathan Richman Rubber Gloves, Denton Tuesday, February 24, 2015 Not liking Jonathan Richman is a bit like not liking Mr. Rogers. The Boston-bred singer radiates kindness and joy with a disarmingly naive charm. Once a forerunner of punk music with his band the Modern Lovers in the early 1970s, Richman’s…
