Pop

talk to most concert pro- moters and they’ll tell you the music business in Dallas has never been healthier. Talk to most clubowners and they’ll tell you it’s never been more wobbly. Both are correct.

Dallas boasts an aggressive radio market and a handful of first-class recording studios, but so, by now, do most cities of this size. Permian, an up-and-coming, independent country-music record company, and Showco, the largest concert-sound company in the nation, are both based here. But when you talk about the local music business, you’re talking mainly about the live-music business. And when you talk about live music, you’re talking about arena concerts, which explains why more people in Dallas are buying concert tickets than ever before, while the overall number of shows is down.

“Dallas is one of the most exciting concert cities in America, even compared to Houston,” exclaims Louis Messina, head of Houston-based PACE Concerts, which promotes about 500 shows annually, including about 60 here. “Until two years ago, Houston was easily 25 percent stronger, but since then Dallas has become by far Number 1.”

“The concert industry has grown tremendously-not only were there more stadium dates this year, but there were more sellouts, too,” confirms Stan Allen, head of marketing at the Dallas branch of Rainbow-Ticketmaster, which will sell about three million tickets, 80 percent of them for rock shows, before this year is out.

Few major stars would think of touring America without scheduling at least one date here. After a surprisingly soft summer, Dallas kicked off the fall by hosting the Bruce Springsteen extravaganza, the rock-gone-country of Neil Young and England’s Tears for Fears, one of the year’s biggest new MTV breakouts. In October, we played host to the politicized pop of former Police frontman Sting and a performance by Australian metalmen AC-DC. In November the incendiary soul-rock of Tina Turner, the hard rock of Pat Benatar and mainstream rockers Foreigner and Supertramp will also pass through. In December, look for American heavy metal from Kiss and Ratt. Persistent rumors place ZZ Top, David Bowie, Billy Joel, Wham!, Journey and maybe even the Rolling Stones in these parts soon thereafter.

But clubs and medium-sized halls-which nurture local talent, provide venues for less mainstream music and allow fans to see rising bands in more intimate surroundings-are in trouble. The situation may not be as dire as a year ago-when Tango and Nick’s Uptown had both recently folded and nothing had come along to replace them-but nobody is jumping up and down for joy, either.

Local promoters attribute Dallas’ strength in the arena-rock market to a number of factors. “The local economy isn’t dependent on one industry, as Houston is on oil, so there’s always leisure money here,” says Allen.

“When you work hard, you play hard. Dallas works hard,” adds Ray Compton of the local office of Beaver Productions, a New Orleans-based promoter that uses Dallas for 20 to 30 of its 250 to 350 shows annually.

“This is a real funny town. There’s a tendency to not accept something new as quick as in other places, but once people here support something, they support it all the way,” claims Danny Eaton of 462 Productions, a local company which staged about half its 250 to 300 shows this year in Dallas.



all agree that the turning point came when the 19,000-seat Reunion Arena opened in May 1980. Unlike many such facilities, which view rock audiences as too rowdy, Reunion vowed from the beginning “to bring in as many shows as we can,” says managing director Jack Beckman, who adds, “The quality dollars in this business are in the concert industry.” They have been for Reunion, which gained about $2 million of its $5 million total gross this year from concerts, and would have done more had not such heavyweights as Eric Clapton, Madonna and Eddie Murphy been shifted to the Dallas Convention Center to accommodate the Mavericks’ schedule. Reunion is known as a “pivot building,” meaning bands often book there first and build the rest of their tour around those dates. It helps in this instance that Dallas is centrally located for a band touring toward either coast, but Showco also fits into the picture. Many acts use the Dallas sound company for their entire tour-they come here a week early to rehearse on the Las Colinas soundstage, Working out their sound with Showco at the same time, then play their local dates and take the whole show on the road. Clapton, Julian Lennon, Robert Plant and the Firm all followed that path earlier this year.

The trend toward arena-rock prevails in most cities today due to the high cost of touring. So Dallas is not necessarily a conservative music market, ac-cording to Buck Williams of New York-based Frontier Booking, an agency noted for “breaking” bands on the road when record companies have been unable to do so through sales or airplay. “Compared to the rest of the country it’s pretty progressive, not a Boston or New York or San Francisco or L. A., but in there with Denver and Chicago,” he says. “A band like R.E.M. is very progressive in the eyes of radio and the critics, but in August they sold out the Bronco Bowl in Dallas, which holds 3,000. In Houston, the band did 1,700.”

But after the Bronco Bowl (where Adam Ant plays in November), Dallas venues drop off to 900-seaters such as the Ritz (which specializes in metal and hard rock) and the Arcadia. In rooms that size, promoters are lucky to break even on low- to mid-level touring bands like Hüsker Dü, Dream Syndicate and the Bangles, all due soon at the Arcadia. At the clubs, which are even smaller, the cost of such nationally known bands is prohibitive-clubs must survive on local and regional bands alone. And Dallas traditionally refuses to support local bands. Explains David Card of Poor David’s Pub, the thriving lower Greenville folk and blues club that is the most enduring exception to that rule, “It’s basically a party atmosphere at the club level, and people who want to party don’t go to live music. They want to boogie, and that means records, so they boogie at In Cahoots, Mercedes, Fast and Cool.”

this leaves promising local bands like the Elements, Refugee, Three on a Hill, the End and the Trees with few places to develop their original material and stage acts. “Local scene in Dallas? What local scene in Dallas?” snorts an Austin manager and booker. “There isn’t one, which is why someone creative moves to Austin or New York or L. A.”

Even performers who stop short of becoming expatriates may be forced to rely on out-of-town gigs. Brave Combo, Den-ton’s “nuclear polka” band, plays Dallas less often than it does, say, Austin. Fort Worth’s Johnny Reno and the Sax Maniacs, the other local band with a burgeoning national following, used to play twice a month in Dallas (one date each at Nick’s and Tango) and twice in Fort Worth (two nights at the late Red Parrot). He’s lucky now if he plays here four times a year.

“I’ve had to take it on the road, to the Midwest mainly. Around here it’s better for me to make fewer appearances and try to play bigger places, so it’s like a special event,” Reno says. “It’s not as bad as a year ago, but live music [in Dallas] is definitely in trouble; the only artists that do well are those with big records. A few years ago I could make a good living in just Texas and Louisiana, but now we’re more popular outside the state than in Texas.”

Just as Buck Williams feels that what Dallas needs most is a 1,500-seater to allow promoters to make money on mid-level touring bands, Reno longs for a 400-seater that would support local acts. Redux, which opened Labor Day weekend in the old Tango building on Lower Greenville, plans to do just that. A combination of Nick’s and On the Air (the popular Lower Greenville video bar that closed earlier this year), the 350-seat Redux offers live music five nights a week from such Texas perennials as the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Lou Ann Barton (Austin), Dr. Rockit (Houston), Bugs Henderson, Ultimate Force and 4 Reasons Unknown (Dallas). The other bright new hope on the club circuit has been Theatre Gallery, a 300-seater which opened last February on Commerce Street in Deep Ellum and has slowly built a crowd of regulars despite its lack of liquor license (it’s BYO, though drinking is discouraged). In addition to a decidedly mixed bag of Dallas bands, Theatre Gallery has been the most consistent outlet for the new wave of Austin rock that includes True Believers, Dino Lee, Zeitgeist, Glass Eye and Doctor’s Mob.



BUT THE CLUB to most effectively and profitably bridge the gap between “boogie” and live is Fast and Cool, which holds 450 and is run by the triumvirate of John Kenyon (formerly of Nick’s), Shannon Wynne (formerly of Tango) and Matthew Mabel. Fast and Cool is largely a recorded dance-music club, but holds two or three live shows a month. Kenyon points out that this means they “don’t have to promote somebody new every night. When they come here, they know what they’re going to get: A record sounds the same every night, but with live bands, you can’t always be sure.”

For jazz, the best club in the Metroplex- probably the best club in America between the coasts-remains Fort Worth’s Caravan of Dreams, which seats 300 and books talent ranging from the local mainstream to the national avant-garde. And though Caravan carries on in large part because it has such extensive funding (from Edward Bass), the club is leaning increasingly toward mainstream acts. Still, pianist McCoy Tyner plays there three nights late in November, while homeboy saxophonist David “Fat Head” Newman, once the mainstay of the Ray Charles Orchestra, is in for a weekend early in December.

Country music remains the most stable musical idiom of all in these parts, and despite choice Dallas venues like Belle Starr and Crystal Chandelier, Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth remains the Metroplex flagship. In November, the club has scheduled Jerry Reed, T.G. Sheppard, Lee Greenwood, Janie Fricke, Mel McDaniels, Bellamy Brothers and Asleep at the Wheel; in December, it’s Conway Twitty, Mickey Gilley, Lacy J. Dalton and Razzy Bailey. Billy Bob’s, with a main room that holds about 6,000, opened nearly five years ago, at the tail end of the Urban Cowboy craze; though business has been down slightly the last couple of years, the self-proclaimed world’s biggest honky tonk draws considerable tourist trade, and as booker Jerry Max Lane says, “I think we were at a huge peak that was unrealistic because of the Urban Cowboy boom. And now we’re about where we should be.”

Which might be said for the local musicscene as a whole. Unless you own a rockclub.

HOT

TICKET



●　DELBERT MCCUNTON, REDUX,NOV. 1, (827-1591). Gutsy,roadbouse rbytbm and blues.

●　DIANA REEVES, CARAVAN OF DREAMS, NOV. 6-9, (817-877-3000). Dynamite jazz singer.

●　JOE ELY, REDUX, NOV. 7, (827-1591). If you loved Buddy Holly, you ’II love Ely’s rockabilly music.

●　LEO KOTTKE, POOR DAVID’S PUB, NOV. 8, (821-9891). His electric acoustic guitar is bound to set the club on fire. ●　A-TRAIN, REDUX, NOV. 8-9, (8271591). Jazz at its hottest.

●　SUPERTRAMP, DALLAS CONVENTION CENTER ARENA, NOV. 10, (658-7086). Mainstreampop rock.

●　LIZA MINNELLI, MAJESTIC BROADWAY SERIES, REUNIONARENA, NOV. 10, (692-9090). Need we say more?

●　JEANNETTE BRANTLEY, CARAVAN OF DREAMS, NOV. 13-16, (817-877-3000). Pop singer.

●　RIDERS IN THE SKY, POOR DAVID’S PUB, NOV. 14. (821-9891). Parody of western music classics.

●　JENNIFER HOLLIDAY AND BILL WITHERS, DALLAS CONVENTION CENTER, NOV. 21, (658-7080). The Broadway Baby and Soulman Withers pin together for one of the strongest soul sounds around.

●　MCCOY TYNER TRIO, CARAVAN OFDREAMS, NOV. 21-23, (817-877-3000). Avant-garde jazzmusicians with a Latin influence.

●　SHAKE RUSSELL BAND, POOR DAVID’S PUB, NOV. 22, 23, (821-9891). Rbytbm and blues.

●　CLARENCE “GATEMOUTH” BROWN, POOR DAVID’S PUB, NON. 29, (821-9891). One of tbe most popular blues, jazz and country singers around.

●　THE PLATTERS, FAIRMONT VENETIAN ROOM, DEC. 4-21, (720-2020). Fifties balladeers.

●　DAVID “FAT HEAD” NEWMAN, CARAVAN OF DREAMS, DEC. 5-7, (817-877-3000). Blues and jazz.

●　THE NELSONS, REDUX, 6-7, (827-1591). Rockers on the brink of fame.

●　RAY WYLIE HUBBARD AND BUGS HENDERSON, POOR DAVID’S PUB, DEC. 20, (821-9891). Country rock at its best.

●　JOHNNY RENO AND THE SAX MANIACS, REDUX, DEC. 31, (827-1591). Their music sends Fifties rock lovers into a frenzy.

●　JUDY COLLINS WITH THE FORT WORTH SYMPHONY, TARRANT COUNTY CONVENTION CENTER THEATRE, MARCH 1415, (817-332-9222). Will the ever-popular Sixties folk singer make a comeback singing torch songs?