Being from Texas, country music is pretty well in our blood. It’s such a staple of our lives that we could live on Texas country and nothing else, without ever having to know about Nashville. Of course there ain’t much that’s more country than a good old-fashioned honky tonk –…
Well played, Homegrown Festival. On Monday night the festival’s organizers rolled out their 2015 lineup with an announcement party at Off the Record, and the decorum was merited: Spoon will be the headliner for this, the event’s sixth installment. The Austin indie rock kingpins are easily the biggest headliner that…
Even though we live in 2015, the world is still divided in gendered lines. Male and female artists still get separate categories at nearly all awards shows, which is probably a good thing considering that it is most often men who are casting the votes. Despite this glaring state of…
Cannibal Corpse With Behemoth, Tribulation and Aeon House of Blues, Dallas Saturday, January 31, 2015 Metal is a young man’s game. A genre defined by youthful aggression and an “us against the world” attitude, metal can impose severe growing pains on veteran bands. Typically, these acts are left with two…
Welcome to February. Also known as Black History month. As a music blog, we suggest you dig into some classic and obscure African American music this month. It’s your civic duty. But in the shorter term, as always, there are a bunch of concerts taking place this week. JMSN does…
South By Southwest is so powerful that its residual effects bleed some 200 miles north into Dallas. Well, bleed isn’t the word; it’s actually a spillover. The spillover has been so strong that for the eighth year Parade of Flesh is putting together its Spillover Fest, which was once a…
Now that it’s approaching its second birthday, we’re pretty well accustomed to seeing Three Links punch above its weight with the shows it books. It’s what they do. But on Saturday it will host a mountain of local show spearheaded by the legendary Dallas band Baboon. Joining them will be…
No one in Dallas does karaoke quite like Karaoke Carmen. For more than a decade, she’s held court at arguably the best, and certainly the most notorious, karaoke night in the city: Sundays at The Goat. Backed by a live band, Carmen’s a proudly autocratic leader. She has no qualms…
You know why I’m here. I’m just trying not to get fined. Poetry. From a man, Marshawn Lynch, a.k.a. Beast Mode, who is in fact about that action, boss. Oh wait, sorry. Who cares about the Super Bowl? That may be the biggest event that people around the country will…
Homegirl done good. Born and raised not far from Dallas, country star Miranda Lambert led the way in this morning’s announcement of the 50th annual American Country Music Awards nominations as she snagged nods in no fewer than eight categories. That was more than any other artist, including Dierks Bentley…
It’s 2015 and it’s still hard to be a woman in hip hop. Male rappers on the national scene still far outnumber women in the genre, despite the success of Nicki Minaj and (ugh) Iggy Azalea. Dallas’ own scene is as representative of that as any other city with a…
Well pals, if you read DC9 at Night, Robert Wilonsky at The Dallas Morning News, or Central Track, you could have easily missed the news due to a lack of coverage, but the historic Deep Ellum venue, The Bomb Factory, is having a resurrection. The grand opening on Thursday, March…
If you look up the word “Ragonk” in the dictionary, well, you won’t get very far. That’s because Ragonk isn’t actually a word. In truth, it’s more of a meme. So what the hell is up with Trees hosting a concert this weekend (and one with a pretty damn good…
2014 was a pretty good year for Redwood Studios. The Denton recording studio, co-owned by Midlake members McKenzie Smith and Joey McClellan, played host to the sessions for some of North Texas’ biggest albums of the year, including Sarah Jaffe’s Don’t Disconnect and Bethan’s debut full-length, Time Gone By. And…
The first time I met Ryan Tharp was at Wingstock 2014. Amidst the chaos and buffalo wing sauce Tharp and his band were doing a soulful, yet somewhat experimental set — bluesy, but with a certain tinge of Radiohead. So when I managed to wrangle a preview copy of Tharp’s…
Today, millions of people know HeadKrack and his unmistakable voice from his syndicated radio show, the Rickey Smiley Morning Show. He and the show’s namesake have been hosting the program, which airs out of Atlanta, for the better part of a decade, and it’s a nationally recognized authority on hip…
And now the wait is over. After months of anticipation, this morning The Bomb Factory revealed the plans for its grand reopening party to be held this spring. Leading the way: Perhaps Dallas’ greatest living musical treasure, Erykah Badu, will play the historic Deep Ellum venue on Thursday, March 26…
Oliver Sheppard is a different kind of DJ. He’s more of a selector in line with radio DJ’s like John Peel or Allan Freed, but far more niche. Sheppard leans heavily towards the dark and gloomy side of rock music and, through his Wardance, Folk Division and Postpunk Happy Hour…
It’s late on a December night and there’s something strange and fascinating happening behind the screen at Oak Cliff’s Texas Theatre. The crowd gathered in the tight backstage confines looks on with a mix of shock and masochistic glee as a young woman, known simply as Greer, stumbles around menacingly…
Shit’s starting to get real now with The Bomb Factory. In just over 24 hours, the soon-to-be-reopened Deep Ellum music venue has announced two big shows: Yesterday it was British shoegaze legends Jesus and Mary Chain and this morning, courtesy of Transmission Events, it was young synth-pop duo Purity Ring…
Bands with a classically trained composer often add an element of avant-garde flair to the mix. Well, Pansy Moon has four of them, and it’s readily apparent in the conceptual and nontraditional pieces of work they generate. By juggling melodic motifs, contiguous story arcs and thoughtful themes, the group creates…
Here we are, folks: No man’s land. That’s right, dead in the middle of that ghastly stretch of the year between New Year’s and Memorial Day where there are few, if any, work holidays to be had. Sure, there’s Valentine’s Day, but no one gets a day off for that,…
