During the first week of February, Dallas-based talent-buying agency Spune Productions partnered with the Mullen & Mullen Music Project (a live-music promotion project from law firm Mullen & Mullen), plus 91.7-FM KXT and entertainment website Do214, to put on Jambaloo music festival, a week of free shows at Tulips FTW in Fort Worth, Club Dada and Ferris Wheelers in Dallas, and Andy’s in Denton. Some headliners throughout the week included the Mark Lettieri Group, Rosegarden Funeral Party, Cure for Paranoia, Lou Charle$, Mountain of Smoke, the Black Angels, Remy Reilly, and Luna Luna, plus a ton more, most of whom hail from DFW.
My only Jambaloo experience was when I saw Fort Worth’s Quaker City Night Hawks and Dallas’ Texas Gentlemen at Ferris Wheelers on the last night of the festival. The show was outdoors and seasonably cold — funnily enough, the opening band for the previous night’s show was named Dress Warm — but that chill didn’t stop fans from showing up. Ferris Wheelers’ outdoor area holds more than 500 people, and it was pretty much near capacity.
The bands sounded great, and despite the huge crowd, the beer lines moved fast. It felt like a huge party. I recall one moment, standing in front of the restrooms after my third Modelo and at least as many hits from a joint and a blinker getting passed around, when my gaze drifted to the venue’s namesake carnival ride that loomed over the VIP section, its multicolored bulbs glowing benevolently against the night sky. Quaker City Night Hawks were locked deep into “Rattlesnake Boogie,” and so was the crowd.
“This is a pretty nice night!” I mused out loud to no one. A guy going into the restroom who heard me nodded in agreement.
Quaker City played their last song. People I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic milled around, then the Texas Gentleman came on and ambled through a dexterous, jazzy, perfectly laid-back set. The crowd’s vibe was loose, like everyone there was just glad to hang out. Following the show, seemingly all of those people crammed into Mike’s Gemini Twin, and after a while, when my girlfriend and I finally squeezed our way out of the bar and headed back home, I had this thought: Sure would be cool if they did more Jambaloos.
A week or so later, I spoke with Spune general manager Corey Pond and Mullen & Mullen’s Joseph Morrison about a few things, like how Jambaloo came about, growing the North Texas live music scene, and what they are working on for future events. Turns out the next Jambaloo is in the works. Morrison said it all started with a conversation with Pond while the two were playing Rocket League — the two are good friends and Rocket League fanatics, and they converse almost daily with or without a match.
“We play Rocket League almost every night and use that as brainstorming sessions, which, frankly, is how Jambaloo came to be,” Morrison said. “We’re still finalizing what the complete game plan is moving forward, but certainly [the Mullen & Mullen Music Project] want to keep promoting shows. … What [Pond] and I are talking about is trying to make some of those shows unique and kind of extra-special and extra-fun.”
Ferris Wheelers, the “backyard and BBQ” venue in Dallas’ Design District, is across the street from Mullen & Mullen’s offices. Morrison said that their initial discussions with Spune involved some sort of stage sponsorship, and that idea “became the idea of a free week,” he said. “It was pretty much, ‘Hey, this sounds like something fun to do, and let’s see what happens.’ And I think from our perspective, we couldn’t be more pleased with how it went for Year 1.”
Last year, Spune teamed up the Mullen & Mullen Music Project in a sponsored concert series aimed at boosting attendance at local shows (I watched Quaker City play one of those last August, in fact), and Jambaloo is the partnership’s most recent endeavor. Compared to the amount of time a week-long music fest across four venues in three cities might normally take, Spune assembled Jambaloo in a short amount of time.
“I mean, like literally, this time last year, we hadn’t even thought of this,” Pond said. “So, this year was really a scramble … but we were really lucky to have the cities and KXT jump onboard. That made it seem super-legit in the first year, I think.”
Mullen & Mullen helped the promo with a video and an ad buy with Dallas Texas TV, an Instagram account with 1.5 million followers. Given that that account’s followers tune in for its hold-my-beer clips of car chases, fires, fisticuffs, and aggrieved citizens dressed as Mortal Kombat characters, the ads surely hit the eyeballs of a lot of people down for free shows.
“Part of our contribution was finding funny ways to promote it,” Morrison said. “We try to give that extra little bit of juice to some of the marketing.”
Pond guessed that the best-attended show of the free week was the one I went to on February 8, though the MJ Lenderman show at Tulips on February 6 might have been the biggest had it taken place at a bigger venue. Tulips holds about 500, but Lenderman blew up between the time his show was booked and the actual date. A line ran around the block, and the concert was packed, though even more people might have shown up for him at Ferris Wheelers. Still, a packed house is pretty impressive. And since the Mullen & Mullen Music Project sponsorship has brought livestreaming videos to Tulips, even more people than that packed house caught the show.
All that audience capture was helpful for the venues, and it also helps with Spune’s ability to book the next iteration. Pond said the bands who played Jambaloo this year were thrilled with the event and the turnout. The locals were especially jazzed.
“I mean, everybody loved the idea,” Pond said. “The band that opened for MJ Lenderman, Darling Farm from Denton, played to 500 people that night, and I doubt they’ve played for 500 people before, unless it was another festival or something. So, for us, that was a big and important thing. It’s like you’re giving these local bands an opportunity to perform in front of people that otherwise probably wouldn’t see them. Fair or unfair, it’s the truth. And one other thing. We have already had booking agencies reach out to us and ask about being included next year. One of the bigger agencies, we didn’t have any of their artists in the lineups, and they’ve since hit us up, like, three times, saying, ‘Hey, next year, we want to be part of that.’ ”
I brought up the challenge of getting people to an outdoor show in the coldest month of the year, as opposed to October or November, or even April, when the weather is more tolerable. Pond laughed. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but it’s hard selling tickets to big shows in October because there’s so many. There’s ACL, right? All those bands are here, and most of those bands we can’t book” due chiefly to lockout dates and radius clauses. “It seems counterintuitive, but I think an October festival might do worse than one in February, unless the February weather is too shitty. Then we’re gonna get killed no matter what. Next year, the festival will be February 7th through the 14th. And I don’t know. I mean, we haven’t discussed moving it from February, but I mean, shit, it’s cold. But it’s also in that week for a reason, because it helps the venues the most, during one of the slowest times of the year.”
