Dallas’ Barley House Launches All-Local Jukebox

A Big D club/venue, The Barley House, has committed its entire jukebox to bands based mostly in Dallas. CDs by The Deathray Davies, Baboon, The Dixie Chicks, The Polyphonic Spree, and Denton’s Centro-matic represent just some of the juke’s contents. The collection, according to the Dallas Observer’s music blog, is “far from exhaustive,” which means that Dallas-local musicians are encouraged to submit CDs for possible inclusion. All proceeds benefit the Carter Albrecht Music Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to improving the quality of life for Dallas-area musicians.

Let’s applaud The Barley House not only for acting locally but also for not having a damn internet juke. However, the locals-only thing seems a bit over-the-top. The only people who may end up playing the juke are the ones who’ve heard of the bands, and I’m guessing that other than to other local musicians, most of juke’s bands will be mysteries to non-musos. The foundation might have been better served by merely a preponderance of local CDs, not an entire jukebox of them.

In case any Fort Worth club owners are reading and are inspired by The Barley House’s move, here’s what you can do (assuming that you don’t have a stupid internet juke but a bona fide jukebox): Put 817-local CDs in your jukebox with descriptions. By a Calhoun CD, you can say something like, “Recommended for fans of Helio Sequence, The Beatles, and Lake Trout” and some other popular, easily recognizable band(s) or print out an appropriate quote from the Weekly, Star-T, DMN, or Observer and tape it to the track listing. We Fort Worthians are always bragging about how much less pretentious and much cooler we are than our neighbors to the east: Here our chance to prove it.

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