The Dallas Observer Music Awards, which reward the most accomplished, innovative and outstanding contributions to the local music industry, are on their 31st year. Thirty-one years, the age most of us consider becoming adults. In 1988, the year when DOMA first started, Reagan was president, the No. 1 song was George…
Quaker City Night Hawks drummer Aaron Haynes exploded onstage last week at the Big Velvet Revue showcase at the Basement East in Nashville. Well, exploding may be too strong of an image. His Fort Worth bandmates, David Matsler and Sam Anderson, weren’t actually finding pieces of their drummer strewn about…
Lizzi Trumbore walks into a McDonald’s and confronts an internal conflict. “I had to ask myself, ‘Should I buy something?’” she reflects later, sitting in that same Mickey D’s. “On the one hand, McDonald’s is this big corporation. They don’t need my money. On the other hand, I feel weird…
Say what you will about Kenny G, but the guy is one of the most disarmingly nice people you will ever have the pleasure to talk to, and he doesn’t really care if you have anything negative to say about him. “I may not be a person like Taylor Swift…
I’ve always hated the notion of the “tortured genius” since it essentially glamorizes an artist’s devastating struggle. Isn’t music supposed to, as Woody Guthrie once put it, “comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable?” I’ll admit, it has become harder for me to intellectually defend my disdain for this archetype…
It seems like an eternity ago that derpy, 19-year-old Grapevine native Austin Post threw open the SoundCloud floodgates with “White Iverson” and thrust us into our current pop zeitgeist. Since then, there’s seldom been a mainstream radio hour, party or Spotify playlist sans one of his songs. Now 24 and…
In today’s America, where kids in high school don’t even know what a record player looks like, the yearly gross of vinyl sales is on pace to pass CD sales for the first time since 1986. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) released their mid-year report on Sep. 5,…
It was a mild evening on July 28, 1994, the first season the Texas Rangers played at The Ballpark in Arlington. Kenny Rogers had pitched to 24 batters and sent all 24 back to the dugout, one out after another. Rex Hudler, second baseman for the California Angels and seventh…
When you’re gathering and doctoring cattle across thousands of acres of Texas backcountry, chances are there may not be a food truck in sight. But there could be a chuck wagon, and people will be gathering around it playing music and telling stories. That’s part of the experience that Damon…
Yes, it’s not even Halloween yet and some people are already gearing up for the Dallas Observer Music Awards. Every year for the last 31 years, the Observer has given out awards to the best in local music — with a glamorous and slightly decadent ceremony, which will take place this…
KERA hosted a preview screening of the upcoming Ken Burns docuseries Country Music on Thursday at Southern Methodist University’s McFarlin Auditorium, and we had the esteemed privilege of attending and even speaking with Burns’ co-collaborators Dayton Duncan (writer and lead producer) and Julie Dunfey (co-producer.) Between all three producers, there are…
On a blistering late summer night in Dallas, the funk band Electric Tongues has taken refuge in a Starbucks, sipping drinks that foretell the onslaught of seasonal marketing. “These are pumpkin spiced lattes, man,” guitarist Max Ogden says. “You already know.” At this, producer and new Tongues member Sean Dream…
Texas country music singer Kylie Rae Harris was responsible for causing the fatal three-car crash that killed her and a 16-year-old high school student in Taos, New Mexico, according to the Taos County Sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office didn’t say Thursday evening if Harris was intoxicated at the time of…
Every 48 minutes, someone is killed in a drunk driving crash. It’s the leading cause of death on U.S. roads, ending more than 37,00 people’s lives in 2017, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. On Wednesday night, that someone turned out to be rising Texas country music star…
Paul Cauthen’s new video for “Prayed for Rain” is an ode to Dust Bowl-era sharecroppers and their strength to overcome a hardscrabble existence, which is what the song is about, ostensibly. “Some of the strongest people lived and made it through the Dust Bowl,” Cauthen says. “Hardships, famine, drought almost…
With summer in the books, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts found a way to negate the bittersweet feeling of starting classes again. Dallas music legend and 1989 Booker T. graduate Erykah Badu, stepped back on to her old campus with one goal in mind:…
With close to two decades in the DJ booth, Yoshi Moto has been a constant presence in Dallas DJ culture. Now located in San Antonio, he still makes regular trips back home to gig out with different crews and events across the city. Moto has a long history as a…
Anyone who’s hip on hip-hop knows that women are taking over the rap scene. Whether it be A-List artists like Megan Thee Stallion or Cardi B or local artists, audiences are (finally) starting to appreciate women in hip-hop. One of Dallas’ undisputed favorite rappers is Sam Lao, who’s been releasing…
Taylor Swift released her seventh studio album, Lover, at midnight Friday, and Dallas’ own Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is a featured co-writer on the album. Track 2, titled “Cruel Summer,” lists Swift, Clark and Jack Antonoff as writers, and the upbeat song is a perfect hybrid for St. Vincent’s…
“Give me half a chance / I can prove to you / This life is worth living.” So begins “Off the Ledge,” the second single from Fort Worth alt-rock band Meach Pango’s highly acclaimed second album Distractions. A song about not being able to prove the brighter side of life…
Robert Trusko is a ubiquitous bass player, lending his talents nightly to projects like Skinny Cooks, Thaddeus Ford Project, Bree & the Fellas, Scour, Melody Memory and Jamil Byrom and the Grown Folks, but the project closest to his heart is his solo project, TRUSKO. “I graduated (with a master…
On a hot August afternoon, 90-year-old Bill Schahn puts aside his black suit coat to play piano and sing for the residents who’d gathered in the dining area of a Fort Worth retirement home. Between songs, Schahn provides commentary, and the crowd, whom he calls his friends, respond with laughter…
