Critic's Notebook

North Texas band Big Drag, which is based in Sherman, is another example of how major talent isn’t exclusive to major cities with major record labels.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Dallas musicians 88 Killa and Kali Flower have dropped a sweet new collaboration.

The North Texas metal giants are facing backlash over years-old allegations of racist antics.

Last March on a sprawling soundstage outside Atlanta, Rhett Miller, Murry Hammond, Ken Bethea and Philip Peeples stood together on an elevated drum riser with hundreds watching.

Over the past decade, there’s been a recurring argument in the local industry about who’s the biggest hip-hop artist in North Texas.

The great music venues never die and one of the most famous in Dallas will be back in business. The Kessler and Heights Theater owner Edwin Cabaniss announced that the Longhorn Ballroom on Corinth Street in the Cedars neighborhood will host live music once again by this spring.

All musicians remember their first time in Deep Ellum. Doni Blair, the bassist for the Toadies, started performing around Dallas in another band, Hagfish, with his brother Zach.

Whenever lists and discussions come up debating the greatest guitarists of all time, a peculiar pattern emerges.

For decades, Gibson built its acoustic guitars at a factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Artists such as B.B. King and Johnny Cash made them famous.

Is being a rapper really the most dangerous job on the planet? In November, the hip-hop community lost another of its biggest stars to gun violence with the death of Takeoff, one-third of the superstar group Migos, who was shot and killed in Houston at age 28.

Believe it or not, Ducado VeGA started his music career as a band nerd. “I started out playing tenor sax in junior high school,” Vega says with a laugh.

Deep Ellum is entering its 150th year and the occasion calls for a new recording facility. A new studio is making its way to the musical neighborhood and will let new artists record songs the old-fashioned away.

Isaac Hoskins knew the gentleman in the crowd was important. Standing onstage at the Magnolia Motor Lounge in Fort Worth, Hoskins was playing another opening slot at a Friday night gig as he’d been doing for nearly two decades now.

Dallas isn’t always the best at honoring its musicians. It took years and a lot of effort to get a proper homage to Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan going with a statue in their native Oak Cliff, and Deep Ellum visitors are finally clued in to the neighborhood’s heritage thanks to the Blues Alley mural project.

Technically, Deep Ellum Radio (DER) never went away, but it also really wasn’t there. The free online radio station, which launched in 2011, has been broadcasting, but it’s only been churning out a backdated catalog of music and the occasional live broadcast.

When Jonathan Tyler wrote the lyric, “The time wasn’t right, but it never is,” it was a strange time in his life. Some would call it a period of transition

Even if you’ve never heard Kanye West’s music or seen one item of his clothing/shoe brand, you still know the name thanks to his many public breakdowns.

Twenty five years ago, Dallas’ most famous psychedelic rock trio, Lithium X-Mas, broke up after a long, storied run that included 17 album and single releases.

The Pocket Sandwich Theatre is almost done with its first run of shows in more than a year since it moved into a new building, and one of the last performances had a special guest in the audience.

Just when we thought Pitbull’s ancient hit “Give Me Everything Tonight” couldn’t be more overplayed in modern radio, the ’90s pop music station Hot 93.3 FM announced its internal clock is moving forward by one decade.

It started as a “Sunday Funday” event series for young professionals in 2020, and it’s still fun, but not just on Sunday.

For better or worse, TikTok has become the musical tastemaker of our time. Unlike past launchpads for popularity, however, success on TikTok is nearly impossible to predict.