Music compilations are something of a dying breed these days. Sure, there are some great choices to be had in the Best Music Compilation category in this year’s Dallas Observer Music Awards, but the essence of the compilation has been greatly diminished in the years since CDs were superseded by…
With the 26th annual Dallas Observer Music Awards just around the corner — in fact, voting is open right now at musicawardspoll.dallasobserver.com — we’re looking to spend the next several weeks taking the opportunity to highlight some of the nominees for this year’s awards. And when we say that these…
This week, Dallas-based songwriter Ronnie Fauss released Built to Break, his second full-length effort for the New West Records imprint Normaltown. Of course, that total doesn’t include the handful of killer alt-country EPs Fauss delivered before his 2012 Normaltown debut, I Am the Man You Know I’m Not. Since 2009,…
Daniel Markham is in the midst of a pretty serious addiction. Now 33 years old, the Denton-based singer-songwriter has managed to live an exceptionally lengthy time without tumbling into the otherworldliness of one of the most popular escapes of the past three quarters of a century. The drug he can’t…
Though he hasn’t officially released music in five years, for many of us in North Texas Jack Ingram hasn’t gone away. For starters, he performs around here a lot; he’s hit Plano, Dallas and Fort Worth in the past two months alone. And more importantly, he’s built up an impressive…
This past March, Fort Worth hosted the spring edition of the Untapped Indie Music and Beer Festival. The weather absolutely sucked, but in a weird way, that made the day and evening a fun one, because the beer lines were shorter and the crowds in front of the stages for…
On December 13, The Old 97’s will perform at the Majestic Theatre in downtown Dallas. That combination alone is enough to make for a pretty cool night. One of Dallas’ most beloved bands in one of the greatest rooms our city has to offer will never be an ordinary scenario…
As a child growing up in the tiny town of Niceville, Florida, McKinney transplant and country singer-songwriter Crystal Yates couldn’t avoid the twangy sounds of country music even if she had wanted to. “My mom says I could sing ‘Why Don’t You Love Me’ by Hank Williams before I could…
Some songs pop out of a writer’s mind and onto tape in mere minutes. Other songs, however, require a journey with several stops in order to develop into the fully formed statement they need to be. Almost three years ago, during the Christmas season of 2011, popular sports-talk radio host…
“Super group” is a term that’s prone to overuse. Hyperbole is often too tempting to resist. But in the case of Bethan, a band whose music thrives on an appropriate degree of restraint, it’s hard to think of another band in North Texas with a better claim to such accolades…
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers American Airlines Center, Dallas Friday, September 26, 2014 When the iconic opening riff to “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” soared through the American Airlines Center on Friday night to begin the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ second number, it was clear the night would be a…
Since 2004 Chicago-based post-metal trio Russian Circles have pounded out one brutally brilliant album after another. Last year, the group, consisting of guitarist Mike Sullivan, drummer Dave Turncratz and bassist Brian Cook, released the epic Memorial. Between headlining their own global tour and hitting the road with the Chelsea Wolfe,…
It’s now been a couple of years since Dallas-based folk-rocker Ronnie Fauss delivered his debut full-length record for New West imprint Normaltown Records, 2012’s I Am the Man You Know I’m Not. That album won him national acclaim from notable outlets such as Vanity Fair and the New York Times,…
Folk singers are storytellers. The best ones are able to take the most simplistic subject matter and make it ache with beauty. The great ones can also take life’s greatest complexities and unanswerable questions and present us with a new, relatable vision with which we can view such big-picture wonderings…
Dia De Los Toadies Festival With the Toadies, Old 97’s, Ume, Quaker City Night Hawks, Pleasant Grove, Somebody’s Darling, Residual Kid, The Longshots and Blank-Men Panther Island Pavilion, Fort Worth Saturday, September 13, 2014 With apologies to the out-of-town artists that performed during Saturday’s Dia de Los Toadies concert at…
This Saturday in Fort Worth at Dia de Los Toadies, on a line-up filled with promising talent and proven veterens, there may not be a band that represents the past while pointing to the future as vividly and dramatically as Pleasant Grove does. The five-piece, formed in late 1998 by…
Hey, country fans, ready to see some shows? As always, there are many great rootsy acts that will swing through North Texas throughout September, so get ready to gas up the truck, fill the flask and put some miles on those tires. Here are most can’t-miss shows of the lot,…
Inside of the half-empty Clearfork Music Festival in Fort Worth this past Saturday, it was impossible to not wonder what exactly constitutes a true festival. Any view of the festival grounds at Panther Island Pavilion from one of the slightly elevated spots of the land provided a view of a…
We don’t even know if the term “festival” has much meaning around these parts any longer. It gets thrown around like so many of Tony Romo’s practice balls during training camp and seems to now apply to any concert that has more than two artists and has at least a…
Micky and Gary Braun of Micky and the Motorcars have long lived under a formidable shadow. These two brothers are the younger siblings of Willy and Cody Braun, who make up the core of the stellar Austin-based roots-rock outfit Reckless Kelly. Born into a musical family in Idaho, performing has…
Texas country kingpin Pat Green is also a Fort Worth resident, Dallas restaurant owner and a heck of a live performer. He can now add “Lyle Lovett duet partner” to that list of titles with the release of a new song, “Girls from Texas.” Save from his admirable 2012 collection…
Bilal 8 p.m. Friday, August 29, at Dada, 2720 Elm St., dadadallas.com, $25-$30 Fun fact about critically acclaimed neo-soul singer Bilal (born Bilal Sayeed Oliver): He was discovered in his teens by none other than the drummer of the Spin Doctors. Did you also know that the band that would…
