1) Lola’s ((2736 W 6th St) Friday night show is heavy on synthesizers, featuring Signals and Alibis, Pleasure Crisis, and Programme. I dig S&A’s music, especially their new remix album, because it leads me to believe there is a semi-secret trip hop scene ’round these here parts. The show is all-ages and the cover is payable with United States currency. Here’s a video of S&A playing live from a couple years ago. It’s moody and trippy!
2) Also on Friday night: David Ramirez at Shipping and Receiving. File under “indie Americana.” This guy seems to have a lot of PR steam beneath him, so I gather that he is really good at songwriting; apparently, he’s logged something like 260,000 miles in a Kia Rio plying his guitar-and-vocals trade. Read more about it and/or get tickets here. In this video, he starts by saying “I would never call my songs ‘deep.’ I would call them ‘personal’.” I’d call his music “in the wheelhouse of people who like Tom Waits, Todd Snider, and Steve Earle.” If that’s your wheelhouse, you’ll really dig this show:
3) Saturday night at MASS (1002 S Main): high energy rock influenced by and matured from punk rock: either War Party headlines, or it’s Bummer Vacation; the event invites make the lineup a little unclear, but Joe Gorgeous is blasting the opening slot. Show is 18+, and the cover, like the one at the aforementioned Signals and Alibis show, is payable with U.S. legal tender. Here’s a Spongebob video called “Bummer Vacation”:
4) Saturday night is the Texas Gentlemen and Friends Album Release Event. The now-big-time, modern iteration of legendary studio bands like the Swampers have a debut album out called Texas Jelly, and they and a bunch of the musicians within their orbit will be celebrating it with bro-down-style jams on the Kessler’s iconic stage. Between appearances in Paste, Rolling Stone, and pretty much all the local music media, the Texas Gentlemen should be familiar to most everyone who pays attention to DFW music. The New West Records PR guy who emailed me about the show wrote me an off-the-record list of who will be joining the gents, so I guess I’m not supposed to name them, but if you follow the Dallas Hat Band scene, use your imagination and you’ll know who to expect. Snark aside, these guys have worked their asses off, and there’s a reason why they’re popping up all over the place these days: they’re that goddamn good, which has scored them backing band duties for national treasures like Kris Kristofferson, George Strait, and Joe Ely, to name but a few. And long before they played with those guys, they also backed an up-and-coming future classic you may have heard of named Leon Bridges. Will Leon make an appearance? Maybe! Hell, Robert Plant could show up for all I know. The show at the Kessler (1230 W Davis, Dallas) is all-ages and $18-$20. Actually, you know what? I haven’t awarded this dubiously significant phrase to a bill in a while, so I’m gonna call this The Team to Beat Show of the Week. Here’s the Gents’ latest video for a tune called “Bondurant Woman”:
5) Get your garage rock/reverb guitar fix with Scott Yoder (Burger Records) on Sunday night, preceded by the groovy, Euro-pop-copping effervescence of Steve Gnash, and Denton power pop band The Speedlights. The show is at MASS, starts at 8, and is 18+, with a cover charge between $5 and $1,000. This Scott Yoder jam is pretty chill yet sorta spooky!
FULL DISCLOSURE/WRITER BIO ALERT: per editorial suggestion, in addition to writing about music and other shit for the FW Weekly, I am an investor in a venue/bar called Main at Southside, colloquially known as MASS. I also bartend there, as well as the Boiled Owl Tavern, a bar that also hosts shows a few times a month. And, since we’re on the subject of warning you against what may be perceived as my own icky, unseemly self-promotion and/or conflicts of interest, I play bass in the following bands: Oil Boom, Son of Stan, Darth Vato. Sometimes I talk about one or more of those entities in this space, but I assure you that it has very little to do with my own vested interests; it just happens that the aforementioned venues and bands are part of the Fort Worth music scene, and this music scene is something I care very passionately about, as I have been part of it since 2002.
