What’s in a name? Well, if you ask the three founders of the new local music series, An LBJ Experience, a lot of things. Take the name of their new organization: For starters, it’s the acronym of their first names, Lee, Billy and Jesse. But its also, more obviously, the…
Dallas rapper Jenny Robinson and her partner 8earcub’s performances are unlike any other live experience in town. Jenny Robinson is notorious for enacting orgasms on stage and for rolling around on the ground. 8earcub, whose real name is Gerardo Cortez, wears a brown faux fur bear coat/cape that has a…
This weekend, the minds behind The Double Wide are planning a seriously fucking epic party to celebrate 11 years of bringing trailer-trash kitsch and a lot of great bands to Exposition Park. Outside of the fact that they’ve gotten permission from the City of Dallas to host their party across…
Well, that was a hell of a weekend, wasn’t it? In its third go-around, Index Festival spread out to three days of music with nearly 100 bands, all situated on its new, larger festival grounds between Cesar Chavez and Elm St., directly across from Epocha and The Prophet Bar. There…
For the past decade Marcos Prado has been at the center of The Smoke, one of the longest-running DJ residencies in Dallas. The Smoke is the only DJ weekly in the area (possibly the state) that focuses exclusively on northern soul, a particular brand of soul music popularized in northern…
Hold onto your butts, Dallas; it’s that time of year again. Dallas Observer Music Awards time. DOMA time has moved back to its latest time of year ever, but we couldn’t be more excited about it. This year, our annual music awards showcase — Chevy Music Showcase North Texas Presents…
“Where am I gonna end up? There’s so much notoriety today, it’s astounding,” says retired photographer, Jeffrey Kliman. “It’s worse than Andy Warhol’s statement. You’re gonna be famous for 15 minutes. Now you’re gonna be famous for a nanosecond. Or three pixels.” Kliman’s lens has been capturing small portions of…
At the age of 14, most of us were just sitting around and picking our noses while watching Boy Meets World and listening to our N*SYNC albums. Adolescence is usually when most of us do our slacking off, but Kelli Mayo, one-half of the Oklahoma-based sister duo Skating Polly, was…
Plunge started as just a name, and the band that later formed under it sought to replicate the sound of the word itself. The chugging, sludgy doom-metal band that resulted is pretty spot-on. In bassist Cade Bundrick’s room before a show at Gatsby’s Mansion, the house venue he lives at…
By Steve Watkins Last Monday’s premiere of The Voice introduced the world to Luke Wade, a voice already familiar with fans all over North Central Texas. At least six separate watch parties were underway in various area venues where Wade has been a regular performer. Although a native of Dublin,…
Since 2004 Chicago-based post-metal trio Russian Circles have pounded out one brutally brilliant album after another. Last year, the group, consisting of guitarist Mike Sullivan, drummer Dave Turncratz and bassist Brian Cook, released the epic Memorial. Between headlining their own global tour and hitting the road with the Chelsea Wolfe,…
Mike Schoder is calmer than a well-fed cat in the ‘burbs, but don’t let that fool you. There’s nothing complacent about him. The owner of the Granada Theater and the adjoining Sundown at Granada, Schoder could easily be mistaken for a surfer bro, thanks to his long golden hair that…
There’s something special about the Beauty Bar come Saturday nights. Amidst the 1950s-themed decor and glittery, soft-hued color scheme, the tiny Knox-Henderson bar has two very important ingredients: Good drinks and even better music. In the case of the latter, that’s all thanks to Blake Ward. “DJs facilitate the human…
Gabriel Mendoza has built a reputation in Dallas over the past decade for being one of the must adventurous DJ’s in the city. Mendoza made this reputation not by sticking to any particular genre, but for playing that new favorite song you never even knew existed. From psychedelic turkish funk…
It’s now been a couple of years since Dallas-based folk-rocker Ronnie Fauss delivered his debut full-length record for New West imprint Normaltown Records, 2012’s I Am the Man You Know I’m Not. That album won him national acclaim from notable outlets such as Vanity Fair and the New York Times,…
Party Static light up a room. With their five members carousing on stage and their scuzzy, nonsensical music, they’re a band who truly lives up to their name. There’s the locked-in, simple rhythm section of Billy Kuykendall and Alex Mitchell. There’s the fuzzy riffing of Brett Michael Strawn. And then,…
This month, the Granada Theater is celebrating its 10th anniversary as a music venue. It was then that Michael Schoder bought the then-movie theater and transformed it into the concert venue we know and love today. To help mark the occasion, we decided to pull together our favorite memories from…
When iconic dive bar and live music venue Double Wide opened its doors at the convergence of Fair Park and Deep Ellum over a decade ago, the model trailer home, a paragon of irony, quickly became a favored hangout. Its success prompted owner Kim Finch’s decision to expand the franchise,…
Yesterday afternoon social media started to fill with laments when word trickled out that one of North Texas’ most lauded and best loved artists, Centro-matic, would be calling it quits after their upcoming December tour. The group’s fervent fan base is sure to make their 14 remaining dates as a…
You probably love Spotify, lest you’re an old-school rock dude, like Thom Yorke, or believe the Internet is evil (well, it kind of is). The ease and wide-ranging catalog is the equivalent of having Christmas everyday for music enthusiasts. Unless we have a cool dad or mom, most of us…
Want to contribute to a good cause while also getting a sweet hookup on some concert tickets? Sure you do. For the third year running, the folks at Fun Fun Fun Fest are hosting a scavenger hunt in Deep Ellum as a way to preview the upcoming festival (it takes…
Folk singers are storytellers. The best ones are able to take the most simplistic subject matter and make it ache with beauty. The great ones can also take life’s greatest complexities and unanswerable questions and present us with a new, relatable vision with which we can view such big-picture wonderings…
