Six Shooter is a recurring feature where we highlight six new releases by North Texas-based musicians. Dallas hip-hop reigned supreme in the month of December. End-of-the-year releases represented all corners of the city’s fragmented scene, including Southern hip-hop, trap, alternative, fusion and everything in between. Some well-known, established North Texas…
For Dezman Lehman, who goes by the name Dezi 5, it’s been four solid years of shaking his leather-clad buttocks, shimmying and vogueing with a sweat-drenched brow from stages across North Texas to the forefront of the Dallas music scene. According to Lehman, it’s been a hard-fought battle for recognition from…
If Joshua Kynd had been running just a couple hours early on Monday, he might have caught the burglar in the act. Instead he arrived at his business of seven months, Retroplex Records on Jupiter Road in Garland, after one or multiple thieves had already ransacked the place. The store…
Brian Holbrook has been a consistent presence in the North Texas DJ community as admin for the DFW electronic calendar, party promoter and versatile DJ under the name Dreadnaught. After playing out as a solo DJ for many years, he recently embarked on a partnership with fellow scene vet Michael…
Musician Cash Askew was just 22 years old when she died in the Oakland Ghost Ship fire this month. “She was super weird and kind of awkward and had a hard time socializing, but also had this ability to really see people for who they were,” says bandmate Kennedy Ashlyn. “She…
The Lights All Night festival is not letting a single inch of the Dallas Market Hall go to waste, inside or out. The two-day multi-sensory experience, starting on Dec. 30, is their largest to date. “It’s the biggest and most expensive party we’ve ever produced,” says Scott Osburn, co-founder of…
Emotions run high around the holidays, and that means lots of engagements. Even celebrities are not exempt from this phenomenon. Case in point, Golden native Kacey Musgraves, who hitched her future to boyfriend Ruston Kelly’s on Dec. 24. In an Instagram post Christmas Day, the country singer — who won…
Two Dallas artists – Jake Elliott and Pierre Krause of After Deth Productions (ADP) – recently directed and edited the video for Nelly Furtado’s single “Pipe Dreams” off her forthcoming album The Ride. The video was released on Pitchfork earlier this week and has already received praise by Rolling Stone,…
For the third year in a row, DJ Santa gifts us an Observer mixtape filled with deep cuts. In the off season, Santa travels the world playing techno, electro, disco and the strangest of niche genres, “elf house.” Santa recorded this mix a few months ago, right after finishing up…
It’s not known exactly how many people went to the ominously named Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, California, on the night of Dec. 2, but 36 people — artists, musicians, teachers, aspiring visionaries of all kinds — lost their lives there during a fire. It’s assumed they were trapped or lost in…
It’s become a Dallas tradition on the night before Christmas Eve to attend Trees’ annual Toys for Tots holiday concert with local favorites Drowning Pool. This year’s event marks the eighth year for North Texas music lovers to come together and donate unwrapped toys for local children who may not…
As the year winds to a close, we ask local music insiders who are deep in the trenches and hear new music on a regular basis — promoters, DJs, musicians and music retailers — to share their favorite releases of 2016. Wanz Dover (Blixaboy, the Dotz, Contributing writer) Non-Electronic Albums…
As the year comes to a close and movie critics look back at the films released in 2016, they are citing Manchester by the Sea as one of the best. The Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams vehicle has so far earned nominations for the Independent Spirit Awards and Golden Globes, and it has…
Editor’s note: Over the past year, Christian McPhate has been collecting stories from Dallas rockers whose brushes with fame offer inside looks at the people who devote their lives to rock ‘n’ roll. Bob Haydon’s ears perked up when he overheard a fellow student, sitting behind him in study hall,…
Ochre House Theater’s original productions often focus on groundbreaking live music performed by notable local musicians. It’s January production of Dr. Bobaganush and His Wonderful World Of The Bizarre and Macabre tells the story of an ancient arts wielding mystic traveling with his show in Nazi-era Europe. The musical delves into…
If while you were ordering a cappuccino at Drugstore Cowboy on Saturday you remarked to yourself, “Hey, that guy over there looks just like Jack White,” you missed a real opportunity to meet the lead singer and guitarist of the White Stripes. White has been making trips to Dallas over…
Hip-hop producer Malik Abdul-Rahmaan is a staunch believer in the power of music to transcend cultural barriers. He’s trying to harness that power with Field Research, a series of albums that will see their first release in early 2017 via the Brooklyn-based Indi-label Paxico Records. Field Research is the musical…
Knox-Henderson looks poised to get a significant makeover in the not-too-distant future, and that could mean big changes for one of the neighborhood’s long-standing nightlife spots. Earlier this week, Dallas’ Open Realty Advisors revealed plans for a new multi-use development along Henderson Avenue, from Glencoe Street to McMillan Avenue. Those…
Charley Crockett is a local blues musician. He recently won the Dallas Observer Music Award for Best Blues Act, and his sophomore album, In the Night — which was nominated for best album — will be released on vinyl Dec. 29. A few years back I was making my living…
For the past decade Lord Byron has been contributing to the fertile gloom-and-doom landscape of Dallas nightlife by way of his Panoptikon residency, where he leads his loyal goth fanbase on a journey through the annals of industrial, dark wave, electronic body music (EBM) and new wave classics. There is…
It looked like a scene from the 1983 classic film, The Outsiders: More than 50 teens fighting hand to hand in an IHOP parking lot in a West Texas town known as “Bomb City” in the late ’90s. It was jocks vs. punks. Spikes and chains, police batons and…
Eighteen children are bouncing around in a stately room, waiting to meet Laura Bush. They’re singing Christmas songs, yelling about their love of spaghetti and meatballs, and generally mugging for the cameras, which are there to capture their interaction with the former first lady. Their behavior is typical of young…
