Leon Bridges Lianne La Havas Music Hall at Fair Park, Dallas Monday, Sept. 18, 2016 “Welcome to the L and L show,” the always dapper Leon Bridges, clad in a black suit, said to the sold-out crowd at the Music Hall at Fair Park on Sunday night. The L’s Leon…
Vanilla Ice Eith Tone-Loc, 2 Live Crew, Young MC, Christy Ray and Tyler Sloan The Bomb Factory, Dallas Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016 Throwback concerts are a mixed business. More often than not, they can be gimmicky affairs, sad cash grabs propped up by audience participation and samplings of others artists’…
This week marks the start of fall. Usually small talk about the weather is awkward at best, but this is something to look forward to. Especially because this week also marks the fourth annual Oaktopia fest in Denton. Navigating through one set to the next will be a little easier…
Brightly painted surrealist faces grin, jeer and snarl at passers-by under the neon sign that heralds the entrance to Club Dada – a club that sits on Elm Street just shy of where it intersects with N. Crowdus Street. The masks, fabricated by local artists, have been there for 30…
Thirty years ago, a band of four men — Bruce Corbitt, Casey Orr, Harden Harrison and Mike Scaccia — walked into Sound Logic, a small recording studio in Garland, to record their first demo. Ten hours later, the members of Rigor Mortis finished seven of the most brutal songs to…
JT Mudd, the frontman of the band Ishi, has been invited to select some tunes at local radio station KNON. It’s before his call time of 10 p.m., and he’s out by the station’s building. The show’s producers have yet to arrive, but he punches the code into the building…
As hard as it is to believe, it’s already halfway through September — but that’s a good thing for music fans. It means peak concert season is nigh for touring artists and survivable music festivals are just around the corner. This week was a pretty busy one in local music…
Death Cab for Cutie With Bully The Bomb Factory, Dallas Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016 Ben Gibbard doesn’t need to do much to create an intimate atmosphere for Death Cab for Cutie fans. The band made what seems like an annual trip to Dallas this week and played to a packed crowd…
Bad Boy Family Reunion Tour With Puff Daddy, Erykah Badu, Lil Kim and more American Airlines Center, Dallas Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016 When the notes from “Victory” rang out through the American Airlines Center on Wednesday night, the crowd on hand jumped out of their seats looking for Puff Daddy…
Thomas Blackburn, aka Tommyboy, is busy curating the DJs at Midnight Rambler cocktail bar at the Joule Hotel. But he has been an active top notch music nerd in Texas for two decades, playing gigs here and in Austin. His collection is so large and varied that, if he opened…
Bryan “Infidelix” Rodecker considers himself a “busking ninja.” Berlin is his playground. It’s been his playground for a couple of years now, since the Denton artist arrived in Europe in 2014. Rodecker’s street music has inspired people to join him in song. Sometimes they’re wanting to promote their art. Other…
Pop-ups are all the rage this season. Just last month, fans flocked to Stone Briar Center, a mall in Frisco — Frisco! — in order to stand in line for hours at Kanye West’s Life of Pablo-themed pop-up store. Not one to be one-upped, Puff Daddy is hosting his own…
If Leon Bridges’ story followed the typical plot line of a made-for-TV biopic, the Fort Worth R&B singer would have already unraveled after his quick rise to fame. In the span of a year, the now 27-year-old signed a major label deal with Columbia Records, performed on late night TV…
Demi Lovato With Nick Jonas American Airlines Center, Dallas Monday, Sept. 12, 2016 Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas came home last night, and they’re all grown up. Or, at least, that’s the sentiment they wanted the audience to feel at last night’s Future Now concert at the American Airlines Center. Although…
What’s that saying about how if it ain’t broke? After months of carousing, touring and burning cigarettes on each other (a regular pastime of theirs, apparently), Post Malone and Justin Bieber finally, officially released their first collaboration together, “Déjà Vu.” But the title may be a little more literal than it…
Who are the best musicians to ever come out of Dallas-Fort Worth? That’s a subjective question. Best-selling artists, however, can be quantified. There’s a whole industry that tracks record industry sales, and within it the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is literally the Gold standard. The RIAA, which has…
Anyone who’s been perusing the Dallas Observer’s extensive music calendar listings lately has likely noticed an influx of great artists stopping through town and local acts playing more gigs. There’s something about this time of year that brings about so many good shows. This week only further proves the point…
Lance Lopez has seen a lifetime of change in recent years. The 38-year-old Dallas-based blues guitarist lost a dear friend, found sobriety and love, formed a new band with other blues legends and fathered a baby girl named Lilly. He’s also come a long way as a musician since the…
Kraftwerk The Bomb Factory, Dallas Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016 It has been more than 40 years since Kraftwerk opened their interplanetary spaceship of future music in Dallas. Since that show, Kraftwerk have had a heavy hand in grandfathering all kinds of genres that did not exist in 1975. Kraftwerk set the template…
Deep Ellum looks a little bit different this week. No, it’s not because another restaurant opened there (although you could be forgiven for losing track). Starting last Sunday, three blocks of Crowdus Street have been closed off, from Emerson to Commerce, under the auspices of Reimagine Crowdus. For the next…
It was a short week this week thanks to the holiday weekend, but things didn’t slow down very much in the music scene here in Dallas. From festival announcements to reality TV to even news of a Christmas album, the first full week of September was a busy one in…
Black Sabbath With Rising Sons Gexa Energy Pavilion, Dallas Wednesday, September 7, 2016 After nearly 50 years, Black Sabbath took the stage for the final time in Dallas on Wednesday night. Since their inception, the English quartet has had a mythic quality to it, as though there plausible deniability of…
