The towering, imposing concrete hall in the Design District is a retired and rehabbed grain silo built in 1959 by Delmo Johnson of the Johnson Grain Company. Farmers who unloaded their crops there 60 years ago would hardly recognize the place, but they’d have a knee-slapping hoedown with the LED video walls, banging sound system, CO2 jets and lasers.
From the valet stand near the front door, the building appears to be massive. Silo is now the largest indoor dance space in town and maxes out with more than 3,000 clubgoers. Bottle service is available, but it’s primarily a venue for sweaty folks in the trenches — less than 2% of the interior is roped off for the very important people.
The club houses dance music on weekends and rock on Wednesdays, and Christians dig into the good book on Sundays. It’s a multipurpose space that acclimates accordingly based on the presentation, whether it’s the club anthem “God Is a DJ” track or a sermon about God.
The grand opening came with Thursday and Friday back-to-back nights of Tiesto with a mini-festival mainstage setup. Weekend No. 2 brought the greatest DJ duo ever: Sasha and Digweed (until John Digweed fell ill and Sasha was forced to take the gig alone — a duty he’s qualified for). A man of the people, Sasha had the controls set up at the dance floor level to create more connection with the crowd. Sasha and Digweed were not a chance booking for Silo — co-owner Patrick Tetrick was their tour manager for 20 years. Sasha’s late-'80s residency at The Hacienda was a bit before Tetrick’s tour manager time, but the raucous club owned by New Order is a key piece in dance music lore. Hacienda is Silo’s fun uncle — it was rough around the edges with a hair-on-fire persona. The best education comes from mistakes, and Tetrick is familiar with the long list of errors made at Hacienda — a special place for many, but the antithesis of how to run a successful business.
“We shoot for customer service excellence, and the party must have a good vibe," says Tetrick. “We’re looking for the sweet spot between elite customer service and our roots.”
Tetrick DJed and promoted an event in Dallas with Sasha and Digweed on the bill in the late ’90s, and the duo liked the Texan’s attention to detail and sound setup. Ahead of the 2002 31-date Delta Heavy Tour, which included a stop at the Bronco Bowl in Oak Cliff, now a Home Depot, Tetrick joined the band and hung up his headphones. The Delta Heavy Tour veered for larger venues and offered an enhanced stage, sound and lights experience — the first of its kind for electronic music. Five passports, thousands of green room chats and 20 years later, he’s a venue owner in Dallas.
The other Silo owner, “Disco” Donnie Estopinal, has a journey similar to that of the Dallas venue owner. While Tetrick was on the artist side, Disco Donnie hired the lineup, rented venues and threw parties. He started as a small promoter, hosting events at the renowned New Orleans rave venue, State Palace Theater. Opened in 1926, in its prime the State Palace Theater was a high society venue with folding red velvet seats, crystal chandeliers and gold leaf regal crown molding. By the mid-'90s, however, the red velvet seats were stained and dotted with cigarette burns — perfect for a rave.
His first Zoolu party was named after the Zulu Mardi Gras parade in 1995 on the Saturday before Fat Tuesday (around 1,500 people showed up). The second Zoolu was a two-night event and featured the live act Rabbit in the Moon, which was a game changer for Zoolu, New Orleans and the South’s rave scene. Estopinal booked Rabbit in the Moon several more times along with Paul Oakenfold, Josh Wink, DJ Icey and Dieselboy, who were largely responsible for launching the scene in the U.S. as we know it today.
“Believe it or not, a lot of the people from State Palace Theater are very successful people,” says Estopinal. “And, yeah, some are in jail,” he says with a laugh.
Hacienda and State Palace Theater are European and American dance music essentials and major reasons why Silo owners Tetrick and Estopinal fell in love with the scene. But the goal for Silo is to squeeze the good from the early raves and leave the rest in the '90s.
Scottish DJ-producer Chris Lake headlined Saturday night on the third weekend, and the line was 100-deep at 8:30 p.m., 30 minutes before doors opened. Tetrick gathered the front-of-house team with front-door gatekeepers, bartenders, VIP hosts, merch booth brokers and the cleaning team for final words of encouragement and marching orders.
“We have Chris Lake tonight; it will be fun music, expect a lot of grownups,” Tetrick told the group. “And we will have some media tonight, so feel free to answer their questions honestly. Let’s have fun and everyone have a good night.”
Party in the U.S.A.
The meeting ended and staff scattered — the cleaning team went back to sweeping and polishing the brand-new dance floor, which hardly has any shuffler scuffs or boot marks yet. Two men returned to the merchandise booth in the northwest corner where Chris Lake hoodies and “Silo I Was There From Week One” T-shirts were sold. Around midnight, Lake took the controls for a two-hour set with a hard stop at 2 a.m.The shoulder-to-shoulder dance floor roared at the lasers as Lake served his chuggy hi-hat-laden flavor of house music. He mainly played his own productions and jabs with Nightfunk’s “Pop,” the Martin Ikin remix of “Can You Feel It” and “Jump, Bounce” from Catz ’n Dogz.
Lake’s singalong remix of “Somebody” was well-received and his remix of Green Velvet’s “Perculator” buzzed the crowd. If the people on shoulders and crowd surfing are any indicators, then it seems the mass of humans below the DJ throne were enjoying themselves.
Silo is only 55% complete against the life’s-work, final edition Tetrick and Estopinal have in mind. They have plans for a separate, adjoining, more intimate club behind the stage, and an outdoor patio and loads more details are on the punch list. The artist programming, however, is racing at warp speed like a transcendental space goat — this weekend is Anjunabeats After Dark event with Andrew Bayer, Genix and Anamē (Marcus Schössow and Thomas Sagstad) on Friday and Kaskade on Saturday. The rest of October is a multi-genre schedule with house, techno, bass and trance from Seven Lions, Eric Prydz, Camelphat, Black Coffee, Charlotte de Witte, three consecutive nights of Illenium Oct. 17–19, Nora En Pure and others.
“I was a small promoter once, now I’m a venue owner, and I want to offer Silo to other people coming up,” Estopinal says. “I’m calling this [Silo] a ‘Music-Culture Experiment.’ The driver is electronic music, but it’s for everyone, all day, every day.”
Capacity for Silo is 3,200, but the ultra-clean restrooms, by design, are spacious enough for 5,000 party animals — a testament to the advancements in dance music and a deviation from “back in the day” at Hacienda and State Palace Theater.
