After leaving Port O’ Brien, for which he formerly served as frontman, Van Pierszalowski traveled to a variety of locales, seeking a bit of sanity as well as for some personal and artistic regrouping. Following the demise of a band that had risen to indie-darling status after releasing three well-received…
Randy Rogers Band North Texas State Fair & RodeoDenton Fairgrounds August 26, 2011 Better than: having to sit through the North Texas State Fair & Rodeo’s Saturday night Tracy Lawrence concert, most likely. There are many things that can be said about the rowdy, predominantly college-aged crowds that engulf each…
Sunny SweeneyThe Glass Cactus in Grapevine August 25, 2011 Better than: having to complain that Modern Country Radio ignores all talented Texans. Texas native Sunny Sweeney is a star. Most of the country music-loving world knows that, too, thanks to her Top 10 hit single “From A Table Away.” On Thursday…
In the past few years, music critic Stephen M. Deusner hasn’t exactly made a new gaggle of friends here in the North Texas. Sure, the Chicago-dweller’s reviews for Pitchfork, Paste Magazine, and ABC News are insightful and well-organized, but he just seems largely unimpressed with North Texas music. If nothing…
It’s a big night. One of your favorite bands of all-time is in a venue small enough to where you can be closer to them than you had ever imagined. You’re not up front, but damn it, you’re close enough and you’re ready for the show to begin.Sure, rock shows…
With his latest album, Radio Waves & Telephone Wires, the rather prolific Nicholas Altobelli proves himself an artist evolving. The folkster’s appropriately sleepy vocals that enrobed last year’s solid The Regulator have indeed been provided an effectively sharper tone this time around, but not by much. Such alteration is but…
Mainstream country music is certainly in need of a soulful revival. North Texas’ John David Kent and his backing band, The Dumb Angels, just hope that they’re the ones leading it. They’ve got a chance, actually: Sure, the former Radish drummer’s latest, self-titled album has a reworked, revved-up version of…
Shiner Rising Star 2011: Night One of Round One Love & War in Texas in Plano July 28, 2011So here we are: another year, another opening night for the annual Shiner Rising Star competition. To begin the eighth 13-week season, three Dallas-area acts were brought to the stage of the Plano…
As we’ve noted in recent weeks, there are a good bit of things that a live-show patron can do to keep other concert-goers from enjoying a given show. All too often, these things are carried out with an air of obliviousness that’s probably just as offensive as the actual concert…
This past spring, just before her debut album, Lovestrong, was released, freshly minted pop star Christina Perri revealed on her Facebook account how she would choose to deal with the people who don’t quite get what it is that she does. After Rolling Stone declared that Perri wrote “crapsongs” (a…
Current Portland-dweller Sallie Ford has come on strong to quite strong this year. While her and her band had built up steam before the end of 2010, the group’s New Years Eve show in front of a packed house of almost 8,000 while supporting the Avett Brothers in Asheville, NC…
For fans of country music here in North Texas, it’s hard to imagine hitting the various bars and honky-tonks of our fine area without stumbling upon performances from folks such as Somebody’s Darling, The Will Callers or Grant Jones & The Pistol Grip Lassos. Aside from being among the area’s…
Kasey Chambers has certainly been an artist on the go as of late. Until earlier this week, that is. On Wednesday afternoon, while on tour with her family in tow, the Australian star’s bus was on the verge of breaking down on the road somewhere between Nashville and Austin. In…
Australian treasure Kasey Chambers had the proverbial golden road laid in front of her in 1999, as her debut The Captain caught fire in her native land as well as in the United States. Thanks to her effortless, urgent blend of country, rock and folk, Chambers was rapidly saddled with…
Spring and summer mean many things to many people. To the DC9 reader, we assume, the sun-soaked days and humid nights in the middle of the year mean it’s time to catch some outdoor music performances.Maybe it’s the larger, high-dollar festivals, like Austin City Limits Music Festival, for which you…
Dwight David Yoakam, the modern savior of the Bakersfield-style of electric country music, is actually a native of Kentucky and he’s now been a staple of Hollywood productions for years. Such a quizzical mélange makes sense, really. Give a listen to the way in which Yoakam has blended so many…
On a recent Friday night in a Lewisville sports bar, a former coach for the Dallas Cowboys beamed as he welcomed one of his favorite singers to the stage. The crowd before him buzzed with anticipation, sensing a unique event before it even began. The former coach and master of…
Former Texan Steve Earle has managed to ascend the pop-culture ladder to almost legendary heights since he left Houston as a teenager in the 1970s. Judging by the quantity of his output alone, it’s easy to assume the formerly incarcerated, now-rehabilitated drug addict is merely displaying the obsessive zeal that…
“Meltdown! Meltdown!” He wouldn’t stop shouting it. No, not Brent Best or anyone in Slobberbone. Some dude in the crowd during a recent gig.It was constant. Consistent, too. Always “Meltdown! Meltdown!,” never just “Meltdown!”This was a guy that I had already moved away from once, yet somehow found myself all…
Aging American icon Willie Nelson really hasn’t slowed down. Whether it’s the amount of albums he records with any number of musical partners, his still-relentless touring schedule or hell, even his pot-related arrests, the braided shaman from Abbott is a man who loves hitting the road. Obviously, the road still…
Buzz is a confusing word, really. Incessant, aggressive hiss isn’t what one hears when a band abounds with so-called buzz. In actuality, the sound heard when a band is “buzzing” is more akin to the pained moans of pissed-off would-be ticket buyers when they realize that they’re seconds too late…
Perhaps it’s ironic that the man who first placed the spotlight on a then-unknown Emmylou Harris hasn’t been around for decades, whereas Harris now stands resplendently as the goddess of the cosmic-American brand of music served up by her former duet partner, the mythologized Gram Parsons. Looking back to the…
