It’s the holiday season (Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, what have you), so things are starting to slow down a bit in the D-D-FW area. We’ve been slowing down lately, too, though to be honest, that has less to do with the holidays and more to do with the massive holes in…

Earlier this year, a group of electronic musicians in Denton staged a coup of Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios’ open-mike nights, arriving early and commandeering the sign-up sheet each time out, turning the open-mike nights into their own open forum. Soon enough, the group, collectively known as Stereo on Strike, was…

A couple of weeks ago (Scene, Heard, November 22) we told you about the recent closing of Dan’s Bar in Denton and what the loss of the venue meant to the city’s music scene. Specifically, we said that with one fewer outlet for Denton bands and musicians, the city was…

It’s too early to tell what effect, if any, the recent North Texas New Music Festival will have on the fortunes of local bands, but it’s already safe to say at least one thing: It definitely succeeded in putting asses in seats. So to speak. There wasn’t a single club…

Regina Chellew is sitting in Tami Thomsen’s office at Last Beat Records on Commerce Street, talking about her new album. It is her solo debut, released under the name Chao, and, for the most part, it is a true solo effort, with Chellew recording almost every note on the disc…

The last time we were at Dan’s Bar in Denton, we were sharing a table and a few beers with Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios owner Josh Baish and his girlfriend, talking about Baish’s troubles getting his own bar off the ground. The “Dan” in Dan’s Bar, Dan Mojica, had been…

You’ve heard the story so often, it may as well have happened to you. And maybe it did. Young band, barely out of high school, gets signed to a major-label recording contract. Releases a pair of solid albums–adventurous by major-label standards, good-to-great by anyone’s–yet is ignored almost from the moment…

The hits keep on coming. Well, depending on your definition of hits. Pleasant Grove is set to release its new album, Auscultation of the Heart, November 26 on Germany’s Glitterhouse Records, the same label that issued an expanded version of the group’s self-titled debut EP last year. Recorded by Matt…

From his seventh-floor loft office just south of downtown, The D.O.C. can see his grandmother’s house in West Dallas, just behind the Lew Sterrett Justice Center. From here, he can see it all. The city is his personal model train set. Reunion Tower looms close enough to palm like a…

If you’ll bear with us for a moment, we have a hypothetical we’d like to share. Say a small, no-name label in the Los Angeles suburbs enters into a joint-venture agreement with a much bigger, well-funded label. With the agreement comes expectations, of course; the bigger label wants to see…

When you’re in a band, living and playing in a college town has one big benefit: Every four years or so, a new crop of students, 18-year-old kids ready for something new, is exposed to your music. At the same time, many of the ones you’ve won over in the…

Nate Fowler used to be our neighbor, back when we both lived at the Turtle Dove Apartments on Matilda and McCommas. This was a couple of years ago, when we thought nothing of living in a joint with a busted hot water pipe, no A/C and a constant pool party…

If Jenny Toomey were like most musicians, she would only talk about her new album, what it was like to make it, what the songs are about, that kind of thing. And she would be entitled: The double-disc Antidote, her solo debut and first album since Tsunami’s A Brilliant Mistake…

The album’s worth of songs that The Filthy Reds recorded at home on a computer is worth it just for the song titles alone: “On the Road to Nicestacheville,” “The Holiest Egg Nog I’ve Ever Seen,” “Jimmy Buffett Can Smoke Himself Straight to Hell,” “Surf’s Up, Shithead.” And so on…

Travis bassist Dougie Payne is in Detroit. Or rather, the tour bus he’s on with his bandmates–singer-guitarist Fran Healy, guitarist Andy Dunlop and drummer Neil Primrose–is in Detroit. Payne only knows he’s in Detroit (“Motown,” he says, savoring both syllables) because the bus driver just announced it over the loudspeaker…

The first thing you don’t need to know about The Strokes is that they are handsome. All five of them–singer Julian Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., drummer Fabrizio Moretti and bassist Nikolai Fraiture. We’re talking Gap-ad good-looking, with the right haircuts and the right wardrobe and enough…

It’s hard enough to pull off something like the upcoming Deep Relief benefit with months of planning, yet somehow, Deep Ellum’s club owners and retailers have managed to do it in just a few weeks. We attended all of the planning meetings for Deep Relief, and it was impressive to…

The woman sitting comfortably in the uncomfortable chair doesn’t have to do anything; she dresses up the office just by being in it. Shrink-wrapped in denim, N’Dambi looks like a star, wearing the casual elegance of the girl-next-door who just happens to be very rich or very famous. She’s not…

When Wilco performed at the Gypsy Tea Room on September 21, Jeff Tweedy stopped between songs to thank everyone for coming out and making music with him and his band. “Especially now,” Tweedy added, and everyone in the audience knew exactly what he meant. Two weeks earlier, his comment could…

Five people were scattered inside Club Clearview, maybe 10. A dozen tops. Whatever the number, it wasn’t enough people to qualify as an audience and certainly not a crowd. Walking inside, it seemed as though the group onstage had served every person inside Clearview with a restraining order, forcing them…

In the wake of September 11’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., many may feel as though it’s the end of the world as they know it. But if you turn on your radio and want to hear R.E.M. say…

Jamal Mohamed was born in Lebanon, but he is an American. “I love the Beatles. I played rock and roll. I mean, I did everything Americans do; I just happened to be born to parents of Arabic extraction,” Mohamed says, “and I happen to be a Muslim.” At the moment,…