Josey Records had a hell of a first year. The massive Farmers Branch record store opened with a DJ booth and art gallery; then they quickly added a stage with a state of the art sound system and a second location in Kansas City. But at the one-year mark they…
If you frequent Kidd Springs Park in North Oak Cliff you may have missed the Japanese sculptures that date back until at least the 18th century. There are people who walk, jog, and ride their bikes past this artwork everyday and never give it any thought, probably mistaking antiquities for…
Jessie Frye is obviously in her twenties, but she appears as though she could have stepped into the present through a rip in time from 1994, when The Crow was in theaters and Brandon Lee’s death was fairly recent news. Frye laughs at the notion, but admits that she is…
Lily Hanson’s new exhibit is inspired by punk rock. It is not something you would guess about a work that seems playful and whimsical at first glance. “The Once Over Twice” takes its name from the title of a song by X, the Los Angeles punk band formed nearly four…
Hoodybaby has been navigating his way through a hip-hop career in the most peculiar way. A producer and writer first, he is also an artist who needs to operate under three different names, and very different characters, to tell his story. After humble beginnings in Oak Cliff, he now spends…
Dennis Gonzalez is better known for being a free jazz trumpet player and educator, but he is also an artist. Saturday night he will have his first exhibit in a decade, a one night only pop show that will also feature music from his longtime band, Yells At Eels. The…
Alan Govenar has spent the last quarter century focusing on writing books and making movies, but he knows how to put on events. It’s been a while though. Before launching his Museum of Street Culture music series with a live performance after a screening of his new film last week,…
In The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins plays Mozart over the prison’s public address system and locks himself in the control room. All the prisoners stop what they are doing and listen. They were shocked that it was actually happening, but inspired. And they understood the music. When Seth Knopp brought…
Just in case you haven’t noticed, North Texas has an enormous and rich community of music studios. It certainly helps to have one of the best studio designers on the planet, Bob Suffolk, working tirelessly in the area. And we have countless local producers who keep drawing interest from the…
The D.O.C. With Erykah Badu, A.Dd+, Dorrough, Lil Will, Fat Pimp and Mr. Pookie The Bomb Factory, Dallas Saturday, October 17, 2015 Straight Outta Dallas was a gala event brought to The Bomb Factory that really seemed to bring the city together. The D.O.C. played his first local show in…
At the tender age of 55, Gerald Williams’s weather-beaten face is dotted with gray hairs. Those gray hairs are the result of a life hard lived, one that saw him playing music alongside child prodigy Little Gary Ferguson, then fall into the deepest throws of addiction with crack cocaine that…
The last time the D.O.C. performed in Dallas was back in December of 1989 at Fair Park. After working with N.W.A. and releasing a debut album that is an undisputed hip-hop masterpiece, it was a tragic homecoming show. Just a month earlier, the D.O.C. had severely damaged his vocal chords…
There are plenty of rappers who can name check encounters with their heroes — say the D.O.C., or Dr. Dre, or both — but J. Oliver’s are a little different. He’s been cussed out by Diddy and caught up in an epic water fight between A$AP Rocky and Tyler, the Creator…
Local underwater fashion photographer Jeremy McKane will have an installation that interacts with your mind at the inaugural show at the MAC’s new location in The Cedars. It’s called Lucid and he refers to it as a living installation that addresses toxicity in the ocean. His mind-controlled digital video projection…
You’d never suspect that Valley of the Kings was a recording studio from the outside of its building. Located on the fourth floor of an office building in Carrollton, it couldn’t be in a more mundane location. But the most surprising part of the studio is who runs it: Pat…
1. Drinking Fountain #1 In the Dallas Records Building at 509 Main St., Lauren Woods made a public sculpture out of what was once a “Whites Only” drinking fountain. The county had put a plaque on top of the remnants of the prohibitive sign, but she decided to replace that…
A project to bring some color to the streets of Deep Ellum has created murals of a dozen elephants, jacks and rubber balls, iconic scenes that are representative of contemporary Dallas, a mural based on a 1938 picture of downtown Dallas, what looks like the child of Andy Warhol and…
When is a dance party not a dance party? When it’s a dark music party. Or more precisely, when it’s a dark music party hosted by goth/punk DJ Oliver Sheppard. Enter Wardance, a post-punk series and the only party of its kind in Dallas. It’s fine to dance at Wardance,…
The landscape could be more inspiring in the southeast part of Denton where AV the Great grew up and still lives. There is a huge cemetery, a juvenile detention center, the county courthouse and jail, and the alternative school. These are the day-to-day surroundings of families, what they are accustomed…
From working with the D.O.C. to owning furniture stores and now considering a run for city council, Erotic D has had a varied life. After growing up a military brat and later seeing the Jackson family fight amongst themselves to the nth degree, he has now made being a husband…
Oral Fixation builds a community by getting people to tell their personal stories. The series kicked off its fifth season last night at its new location, the Dallas City Performance Hall. The new performance space is a perfect fit, big enough for the large crowds these events draw, but still…
As far as band origin stories go, Mercury Rocket is one of the strangest you’re likely to find. The way that members Ben Fleming and Graham Brotherton met wasn’t notable so much for the fact that they met as it was for the fact that Brotherton blew Fleming off —…
