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Music

Vice Palace Is History

The notorious "roving music venue" will evolve into a documentary record of Dallas artists and musicians.
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For the last two and a half years, Arthur Peña has been a liaison between the art and the music worlds in Dallas. Now, he’s a historian.

Peña’s series of music and art pop-up shows, Vice Palace, is coming to an end, but the grant-funded music label of the same name will live on. Vice Palace is having two more shows, on November 17 and 18, before packing it in. Next spring, it will be revived strictly as a cassette tape label.

“With Vice Palace moving to the tape label, all that really means is that I’ll be focusing on getting musicians to perform and then record them for the music label, and the shows that happen will specifically happen for the purposes of recording,” Peña says. “In a way, it’s what I liked about Vice Palace to begin with, which is that it’s a collaborative effort to highlight the energy within the city.”

Peña started Vice Palace in April 2014. As a painter, he saw the city’s cultural gaps firsthand and decided to build a DIY bridge across them, throwing outlandish, underground shows with art and music in the same space. The parties took shape in warehouses, galleries, and sometimes more traditional venues, quickly gaining momentum and a reputation.

“When I started focusing on music, it was because the music community in a way was a lot more open to experimentation, and a lot more open to the energy that can happen on a late night in a warehouse at one o’clock in the morning,” he says.

One show led to the formation of Dallas-based band Panda X. At another, pop singer Dezi 5 “crucified” himself on the dancefloor, performing from a large cross.

A year into Peña’s project, something really far-out happened: Vice Palace was given a city grant to start a music label.

“[The grant] was a complete surprise. I applied for it and thought, ‘Well, I’ll give it a shot.’ When that happened, it really helped me shift gears with what was possible,” Peña says.

With $5,000, Vice Palace was able to record, produce and distribute cassette tapes, free of charge for musicians. The grant pushed Peña in a different direction.

The fire marshal would like to keep these dang kids, enjoying themselves at a Vice Palace event, from making Dallas even better. Photo by Andi Harman
People enjoying themselves at a Vice Palace event, making Dallas even better. Photo by Andi Harman


“Where in the beginning, I was really serving the underground scene and serving the music and arts community, after the first year anniversary in April 2015, which is the same time I got the grant, I just saw an opportunity to really serve the musicians and artists directly,” he says.

At the same time, the Vice Palace shows were changing. They were more frequently held in traditional venues, and they lost some of the theatricality that Peña said made them so special initially.

“I started to feel like the purpose of Vice Palace was getting a little lost in focusing on booking shows,” he says. “I wanted the shows to be important, to have a meaning. In the beginning, they were exciting because they were happening in unconventional spaces. They had this sense that you were gonna walk in and there was going to be something special.”

Peña enjoyed working in traditional venues as well, but it was clear that Vice Palace had become a different animal. With Vice Palace Tapes, he felt like the project had a renewed purpose.

“When I got the tapes for the first time, and heard them, and saw the object, I realized that you could really create and document your own history,” he says. “They really capture a very specific moment and energy with each performance…it is very much about celebrating Dallas and making sure this history isn’t lost.”

The cassettes feature the work of local musicians, with cover art from Larry Carey. This round includes Pearl Earl, Dezi 5, Teen Slut, Orgullo Primitivo, and others.



The next show, the tape release for Orgullo Primitivo and Filth on November 17 at the Dallas Contemporary, will take Vice Palace back to its beginnings.

“Vice Palace is about arts and existing in spaces which aren’t typically for these performances. The Contemporary has never hosted an event like the Vice Palace show,” Peña says.

The show will be a little more low-key than Vice Palace’s usual bashes – it will be a video watching party with a few performances and a panel discussion.

“I think this last month is pretty representative of the mood swings of Vice Palace and the different iterations it can take on, and the broad audience it can reach,” Peña says.

The end of Vice Palace shows will allow Peña to focus more fully on curating a musical history of Dallas.

“We’ve been working on a documentary for a year and a half…we don’t really know what it’s about just yet,” he says. “But in the way that Vice Palace Tapes is a project that serves to document the current energy in the city and the experience of a Vice Palace live show, what’s next is Vice Palace Films.”

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