This past week in North Texas, the biggest bang for your musical buck could be found Saturday night at Arlington’s Globe Life Field: Chris Stapleton’s All-American Roadshow.
Sentimentality is simply not Steve Earle’s stock-in-trade.
This was always going to be a bittersweet story. A story about four friends, bound together by the act of creation and love for one another, whose creative exploits are a part of Dallas-Fort Worth music history and who had rediscovered their artistic bond in time to mount a potential…
The record, released Sept. 22, feels like home in a way not much has since the world began to unravel earlier this year.
The storm had only begun to gather when South by Southwest made the painful but necessary decision to cancel the entirety of its 2020 conference, sending shockwaves through the creative community in Texas and around the world. As everyone processed the enormity of such an unprecedented step, Fort Worth singer-songwriter…
Like many of us these days, Nicholas Altobelli has abundant time on his hands. And, like some of us these days, Altobelli is making productive use of it. As a lark, the musician recently wrote, recorded and released a new EP — the evocatively titled I Took My Hockey Stick…
Pop music, historically speaking, isn’t kind to maturity — doubly so when it comes to women. You need only look as far back as the late 1990s and early 2000s for ample evidence of this: Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera — the Helen and Clytemnestra of tweenaged Y2K bubblegum pop…
Lesser bands might have been overwhelmed by the success of a single like “Creep.” Radiohead exploded into the public eye with its 1993 LP Pablo Honey and the ubiquitous, slow-burning ballad, which spent weeks lodged in the charts. To this day, “Creep” remains the band’s most successful single — and one the…
To hear Harry Connick Jr. tell it, he’s spent much of the last year rescuing Cole Porter from obscurity. “Most people not only don’t know much about him, but don’t know who he was,” Connick Jr. explained not long into his 110-minute performance before a near-capacity audience at Winspear Opera…
What does it mean to reckon with your legacy? Does confronting a creative achievement — even if it’s the product of decades past, when you were someone else entirely — constitute a form of capitulation, a shrugging acceptance that you’ve peaked and are merely coasting on the fumes of previous…
It took all of 40 seconds. The woman born Yolanda Quartey, standing before a sold-out Kessler Theater Sunday night, resplendent in her afro, clad in a black gown and performing under her musical moniker Yola, glided smoothly into the chorus of her song “Lonely the Night.” As she did, the…
“I’m so happy to be home right now, I can’t even stand it!” Miranda Lambert shouted on Saturday night. Whether in a Stockyards honky-tonk, an Arlington football stadium or a Dallas amphitheater, there is always an intense emotional undercurrent to her hometown shows. It’s no mystery as to why: Lambert…
From all outward appearances, Celine Dion is unmarred by time. Her eyes — beaming at the near-capacity audience from one of several enormous video screens — sparkle as ever. Her wide, white smile beams munificently at all who gaze upon it. Her muscular arms gesticulate freely, piercing the air to…
In the hurly-burly of the holiday season, the news might have just slipped past all but the most attentive North Texas music fans. On Dec. 20, 2019, the Fort Worth-based quartet known as Black Tie Dynasty played its first show in more than six years at Dallas’ Double Wide —…
The most dangerous thing that can happen to an art form is for it to be treated gently — relevance calcified into reverence. There is no doubting Dwight Yoakam’s devotion to country music — his was a poignant presence in documentarian Ken Burns’ sprawling 2019 assessment of the genre —…
Robert Ellis — a singer-songwriter born in Houston, briefly situated in Nashville, now calling Austin home — is deeply fond of Fort Worth. Appreciative of the city’s relaxed pace and its cultural fixtures, like the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Ellis also cites Niles City Sound and his longstanding…
Late in the evening, long after a packed Canton Hall had lost itself in a blissful fog of sinuous grooves, searing guitar licks and soulful vocals, Black Pumas’ Eric Burton made a confession. “I’m embarrassed by how much fun we’re having,” the gimme cap-clad singer told the adoring, sold-out crowd…
Christmas music tends to generally fall along the merry and bright end of things. Songs of joy and happiness fill the airwaves, and everyone feels that fond glow of happiness nestled all snug in the soul. But it’s worth remembering — nay, embracing — the more melancholy sounds of the…
You may ask yourself: What does Cher have left to prove? The answer, of course, is nothing. With an Emmy, an Oscar, a Grammy, a three-year Las Vegas residency, 100 million records sold around the world and an enduring status as an icon for the LGBTQ community to her credit,…
Time seemed more slippery than usual this past Friday night at the Majestic Theatre. Standing before a near-capacity audience, Rufus Wainwright, clad in a Western shirt, black jeans and glittering ruby slippers, sang in his ageless voice — rich, resonant and riveting — of youthful hedonism and domestic pleasures, collapsing…
Dan Auerbach, an electric guitar slung around his neck, stood just to the side of center stage. “Let’s go back to Akron right now, down in the basement, and play some basement music,” he said to the howling audience arrayed before him, glowing phones and overpriced plastic cups of beer…
Ray LaMontagne did a lot with a little Sunday night at the Music Hall at Fair Park, before an attentive, largely respectful room full of fans (itself a miracle; more on that momentarily). His Just Passing Through tour is a stripped-down affair. Apart from a guitar tech’s fleeting appearances to…
