Black Tie Dynasty has broken up. We usually don’t get into the business of announcing band breakups, but for a local group that’s been together for almost 10 years — and that has had huge successes — we’d be doing you a disservice by not telling you. “We just got ready for a change,” said frontman Cory Watson. “All’s good, we’re all friends, we’re all healthy. We just got to the point where we had to evaluate things.”
The band, which also includes drummer Eddie Thomas, bassist Blake McWhorter, and multi-instrumentalist Brian McCorquodale had talked about possibly breaking up about a year ago, several months before releasing Down Like Anyone, Watson and company’s stellar follow-up to their 2007 debut, Movements. “Before the [new] album, we set goals and expectations,” Watson said. Eventually, “it became apparent to us that we weren’t going to build a career on [Down Like Anyone]. If anything was going to happen, it would have been with Movements,” a record decidedly more radio-friendly than the new one. (Two Movements tracks — “Tender” and “I Like U” — had received a lot of commercial airplay, here in North Texas and in several other major markets.) “It’s tough being in a band today,” Watson said. “Touring is tough, the money is harder to make, and we were always hanging on — ‘It’s about to happen, it’s about to happen’ — but we realized it wasn’t going to happen.” But, he added, “We’re OK with that.” While Watson intends on taking a break from music – he’s getting married in November — some of the other members are already working on other projects. Thomas, for one, drums in the popular The Crash That Took Me. “We’re certainly gonna miss everything,” Watson said. “But at the same time, we’re going out on a high note.” The band’s last Fort Worth show will be on Sat., Feb. 28, at Longhorn Saloon in the Stockyards. BTD’s final show will be in March at Granada Theater in Dallas. Here’s to an awesome 10 years. I’ll surely miss you guys. … Perhaps the strongest label in all of North Texas, offering everything from alt-country to punk to hip-hop, Dallas-based Idol Records recently created Exploding Plastic, an offshoot label that does all of the things Idol does but that, unlike Idol, will have a singular sound: dreamy art pop. “So if people like one of the artists on the label, chances are they will like the others,” said founder and owner Erv Karwelis. Exploding Plastic’s first signee is from Dallas but has Fort Worth connections. Little Black Dress is a vehicle for co-songwriters Nolan Thies (John Price’s band) and Toby Pipes, who with his brother Todd Pipes, fronts Deep Blue Something (Top-40 hit “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”). The Pipes brothers also run Bass Propulsion Laboratories (Price’s A Little Piece of a Little Piece of Something Small, Collin Herring’s Avoiding the Circus, Lauren Fine’s Paper Airports). Handling A&R for Exploding Plastic will be Dylan Silvers, frontman for [DARYL] and the aforementioned The Crash That Took Me. “He’s the one who introduced me to Little Black Dress,” Karwelis said. LBD’s debut should be out soon. Visit www.myspace.com/littleblackdressmusic.
Contact HearSay at hearsay@fwweekly.com.
