Music is frustrating. Some artists toil decades before gaining recognition (if they do at all) while others churn out hit tracks like a sweatshop producing cheap toys. The latter group has cracked the formula: they know what people want to hear, and they ride the radio waves to the bank…
The year was 2015, and America was having a conversation about gender. In Dallas, the emergent press Deep Vellum Publishing partnered with a French author to publish a book all about that very topic. The catch: author Anne Garréta’s book Sphinx first hit shelves in 1986. “It was kind of…
The light pitter-patter of a hi-hat waxes and wanes, complemented by Solange’s ethereal vocals. Dressed in black and cloaked by the darkness of early morning, dozens of dancers surround Solange and Dallas City Hall, alternating between rigid marches and freestyle dancing. As the short film for “Things I Imagined /…
It was an overcast day in the spring of 2014, but everyone at the meeting was wearing sunglasses. Dave Howard and Pete Swulius, a pair of quiet software gurus, chose the recently opened Wild Detectives as the site for this unusual rendezvous. “It was a hit job,” Howard recalls. “And…
In between jokes about raucous rock orgies, memories of “mystical,” mushroom-fueled adventures and stories about onstage “fuck-ups,” the men of Kyoto Lo-Fi reflect on the peaks and valleys of the last few years. The late summer sun has descended on Bishop Manor, and the band is taking a break from…
Amanda Bongiovanni is hesitant to share the story behind her nickname-turned-stage name. “I feel a little weird about it,” she says. “Like, it’s not professional enough.” Bongiovanni is a hip-hop soul singer born, raised and based in Dallas. She has taken shelter from a midsummer storm in Astoria Cafe, where…
Indie folk-pop band The Head and the Heart is in a unique career stage: Too popular for the likes of Canton Hall and House of Blues, but not popular enough for some of the city’s larger venues. The Seattle sextet made camp at Toyota Music Factory on Friday for the…
The first thing Jacob Metcalf sees when he wakes up in the morning is a wall of sticky notes. The musician — a local staple for his folk sound as a soloist and through his work with the band Fox & The Bird — is an avid reader and writer,…
Hailey Good is in the middle of a set at the Louie Louie piano bar when her mom, 60-year-old Rhonda, screams, “That’s my baby.” A few years ago, this may have horrified Good, a 26-year-old genre-bouncing neo-soul singer from Grand Prairie. She and Rhonda have a history of trading blunt…
Ansley Dougherty ends many of her sentences with reassurances. After answering a question about a specific song or life decision, she will say, “Yeah, yeah,” as if she is agreeing with what she has just said, or trying to speak it into existence. It’s probably the latter. In the last…
It was a cultural explosion that still reverberates today. The 1920’s Harlem Renaissance was a period of legendary creative output. A group of poets, writers, painters, sculptors, dancers and musicians that sprouted the likes of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois. According to Alain Locke, a writer,…
The word alone makes them laugh. O. Deletron, a Fort Worth-based band comprised of seven music veterans, has heard the word “supergroup” thrown around, but the musicians are not too keen on that descriptor. “I find it a little humorous,” pianist Thomas Horton says. “If you go to our shows,…
Main at South Side is brimming with fans for its two-year anniversary celebration as Polydogs take the stage. The Fort Worth rock band — consisting of frontman Matt Tedder, bassist Kris Luther, drummer Matt Mabe and rhythm guitarist Nick Tittle — has recently released a self-titled debut album and is…
On a cruel early summer day two weeks before his gallery’s latest show opens to the public, Michael Bivins glides up, down and across the space that will soon become Psychedelic Robot 2.0, the second coming of Bivins Gallery’s wildly visited pop-up. The show occupies two floors of real estate…
Mitski Miyawaki is at the top of her game. The Japanese American singer-songwriter has curated a distinct brand of indie rock, a style she is taking to audiences across the country on her Be the Cowboy tour to promote her latest release, by the same name. The album, hailed by…
It’s a dim day in Dallas when Niecee X turns off the rain-swept streets into the parking lot of Desta, an East Dallas Ethiopian restaurant. The eatery is a typical haunt for the 29-year-old Niecee X, an artist, poet and queer community organizer whose vegan palate is right at home…
As night descends on the wooded hills surrounding his home, visual artist Jeremiah Onifadé gets to work. While his garage studio is his usual stomping grounds, tonight Onifadé is working in the kitchen of his two-story house in a middle-class neighborhood near Grand Prairie. A glass table facing a sliding…
Jade Nickol hated her first single. Looking back on the song, titled “Best Friends,” the 19-year-old singer-songwriter seethes with palpable frustration. “Even my mom didn’t like it,” Nickol says. “And when your mom doesn’t like it, that’s like, damn.” “Best Friends” is a country song Nickol felt forced to make…
It’s a dream scenario for any band trying to get off the ground: You cut some demos, pass them around and wind up working with a respected producer who digs your sound. That’s what happened to Holy Roller Baby, a rock band made up of Austin and Dallas musicians. There…
Alex Blair has a show in an hour or so. It’s her Thursday residency at The Mitchell, a spot she calls “chill,” which may be the perfect adjective to describe the soulful jazz singer. “The Mitchell fits me nicely,” she says, sipping a vanilla cold brew at a Starbucks off…
In 2018, Kim Kardashian West made headlines for something unexpected. The reality TV star visited the White House to advocate for Alice Marie Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender who had served 21 years out of a life sentence. A week after the much-publicized visit, President Donald Trump commuted Johnson’s…
“I say yeah buddy. Rollin’ like a big shot. Chevy tuned up like a NASCAR pit stop.” – Dorrough, “Ice Cream Paint Job,” 2009 April 7, 2009, was a beautiful spring day in Dallas. The skies were clear, the temperature never reached higher than 70 degrees, and Dorwin Demarcus Dorrough was…
