In an effort to help memorialize just a few of the great personalities we lost in the DFW music community in 2013, we talked to friends and collaborators. This year proved especially hard, and while this isn’t a complete list, all of these people made profound contributions to the unique,…
Last week, we asked you to tell us your favorite albums of 2013. We got over 400 nominations, and the results are in: Below, you’ll find the DC9 at Night readers’ ten favorite North Texas albums of 2013. We’ll be telling you our own favorites in the next week or…
This past June, we provided a list of the 10 best Texas Country/Red Dirt/Whatever tunes in 2013 up to that point of the year. With 2014 looming, we’re still not sure what the nebulous terms slapped onto the songs and bands that made up that list really mean. With an…
Any way you look at it, it’s been a banner year for local punk/metal band Power Trip. After four years of garnering a solid following, the band got signed to a national label, recorded a monumental full length and headed to Europe and Russia for the first time. From his…
By now you are aware that St. Vincent’s self-titled fifth album comes out in February and that she’ll play a hometown show at House of Blues Friday, March 14. Well, tickets are on sale as of this morning. I don’t know if this is a situation where you need to…
“I had this spot on my neck. I thought it was a pimple or something,” says composer Curtis Heath. It wasn’t big — just 1.2 millimeters across. But it didn’t go away for a couple months, and his girlfriend insisted he get it checked out. The dermatologist told him it…
Punk rock is an unusual genre. Punk shows can be exhilarating, enthralling, chaotic, confrontational and offensive. Last night at the House of Blues, it was all of those and less. I’ve been going to see punk bands for more than three decades and I thought I had just about seen…
North Texas already had more than its share of places to see live music. But it got a few notable additions in 2013, especially in Deep Ellum, where Three Links has wasted no time becoming a fixture and Twilite Lounge started to feel like it had been there for 50…
Jerry Warden and Rick Perry know heavy metal. Warden has been promoting it for more three decades in the area, and Perry has been playing it. Warden is a metal historian who holds secrets to some of DFW’s legendary metal acts and venues, while Perry is the one Texas guitarist…
This week’s most unconventional show was not at a house in Denton or a taqueria somewhere. It was in Preston Hollow, where Dallas lawyer Lisa Blue-Baron booked Journey and Styx for her Christmas Party. Her neighbors are either very tolerant or very far away (probably that one), because the Blue-Baron…
Dallas is currently undergoing one of the busiest concert seasons in some time. Between the KISS FM Jingle Ball, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, and next week’s Jay-Z show- the good folks over at Ticketmaster are certainly earning their Christmas bonuses this year. In the midst of arena-tour fever, this…
Once described as one of America’s best singer/songwriters, Dar Williams has spent the better part of three decades living up to the accolades. A writer of intensely personal songs, Williams has just kept getting better and better and the evidence is on her last effort, 2012’s In the Time of…
A couple holiday shows highlight this week’s docket, including the biggest installment yet of Chad D’s Annual Toy Drive on Greenville Avenue. Resilient Dallas band Drowning Pool plays a somewhat rare hometown show at Trees and House of Blues has the week’s best punk show. New Science Projects Christmas Mixer…
The Dividends, the collaborative project between singer and songwriter Sarah Jaffe and Grammy Award-winning producer Symbolyc One (S1), piqued our curiosity with the announcement that they were working together on a new EP. Since we learned of the project, the duo has already gained momentum when news that a track…
Now that we’ve given you a complete rundown of last Friday’s Kanye West concert at American Airlines Center, it’s time to shift our focus to the other side of the stage. Half the fun of going to a Kanye West concert is taking in the evening’s best dressed among the…
Beyoncé is somewhere near her eighth outfit of the night, and the fabric of this one is made to look like so many brass pipes. She’s singing “Crazy in Love,” which is appropriate, because no one has ever resembled a human horn section as much as Beyoncé on “Crazy in…
Multi-instrumentalist Nico Turner sees herself as less a singer/songwriter and more a creator of soundscapes. When she was the central figure in Los Angeles’ Voices Voices, Turner led that outfit in all sorts of ambient and unconventional directions. Since going solo, Turner most high-profile gig has been as a member…
Update, 12/10: Last night, Guynes’ Crowdtilt campaign for “Jared’s Epic Party” surpassed its fundraising goal of $35,897.44 with just six days left to go, meaning the party will happen and he won’t have to sell one of his beloved pinball machines. Guynes wrote to his followers on his Facebook page…
Maybe you remember Mayta from their standout performance at this year’s Dallas Observer Music Awards showcase. Or, perhaps you caught vocalist Renato Rimach on the cover of our issue celebrating that most recent awards season. Well, if those things weren’t enough to grab your attention, fresh off the heels of…
Spillover Music Festival, Parade of Flesh’s annual festival featuring of some of the best bands at SXSW with 1000% less nonsense to deal with, has just announced the first portion of its 2014 lineup. Featured bands include pop shit-starter Ty Segall, Sup Pop’s Dum Dum Girls, Minneapolis rapper Astronautalis and…
The past twelve months have been unusually good ones for North Texas music. Major-label bands like Midlake, The Polyphonic Spree and The Baptist Generals produced new records. Debut efforts put the likes of Lord Byron and Sam Lao squarely on the radar, and plenty of bands somewhere in between made…
A foreboding, shadowy and sinister figure lurks at the edge of an enormous white mountain top. Buzzing synths permeate the arena, and the masked man of the hour saunters below. “Hold My Liquor,” one of the standout tracks of Kanye West’s most recent album, stirs over the ravenous crowd. He…
