Photo: Meredith Lawrence

Dallas-Fort Worth is the population hub of North Texas, the pulsating heart at the center of a vast, proud territory, an area is also so flat you reputedly can see Oklahoma from the top of the Ferris wheel in the fairgrounds.

Defying single-note characterization, Dallas is home to the Cowboys, one of sport’s most storied franchises; Deep Ellum, a three-street-wide entertainment district; a five-level highway interchange snarl so renowned it’s named the High-Five; a bustling food scene; and is infamously the site of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

It contains a pair of bars—the Single Wide and the Double Wide—whose two-sided drink coasters read “half the trailer, all the trash,” and “drinks that hit harder n’ dad,” respectively – a dark humor that wouldn’t fly in much of the rest of the country, even as satire. But of the many qualities that set Dallas apart, perhaps the one most often overlooked is the city’s thriving country music community.

“This state has always been a real melting pot. When people came to Texas, it was people from all walks of life, from everywhere, trying to make their fortune in Texas,” says Dallas-based musician Matt Hillyer. “You can see it in the food that we eat, the music that we listen to, the way it gets blended together; you don’t get that very many places in the world, and Texas is such a big place, with every different kind of landscape, every different kind of culture… that’s what’s beautiful about it.”

Hillyer was for 23 years the frontman of beloved country band Eleven Hundred Springs, before going solo in 2021. Starting out as a 12 and 13-year old music-obsessed kid with a steady hand on the guitar, Hillyer was welcomed under the wing of local rockabilly bands like Reverend Horton Heat and the Toadies. With the Lone Star Trio, Hillyer’s band before Eleven Hundred Springs, his music was country enough to play the tiny ‘60s-styled honky-tonk, Naomi’s, and just enough rock to fly in the renowned Dallas music joint, Three Links. Rich in talent and drive, Dallas musicians support their own with a DIY spirit that’s long driven the city’s musical spirit and warm, welcoming community.

Matt Hillyer Photo By Brooks Burris

“With roots music, it’s kind of like a secret language sometimes. To musicians in general, music is so important to them. And somebody has showed them the way when they were young. So you get a chance to pass it on,” Hillyer says. “Especially with roots music, because it’s not like a lot of this music is soaring to the top of the charts, it’s a special sort of thing.”

Since well before Willie Nelson spurned Nashville’s restrictive norms in favor of Texas’ perceived musical freedoms, the Lone Star State thrived on a reputation for independence. And while Austin gets all of Texas’ country music cred, Dallas and Fort Worth collectively kickstarted the careers of some of the best-known country and Americana musicians who now define the genre’s golden moment: Charley Crockett’s Western movie-worthy rise from itinerate busker to international star over the last decade took off in Deep Ellum clubs; Vincent Neil Emerson started crafting his deft new takes on country and western themes in Fort Worth; Paul Cauthen’s larger-than-life Fire-and-brimstone country music started and is still recorded in Dallas; Joshua Ray Walker, who’s made a name for himself in country music with his sweet high lonesome sound and intimate character portraits, got his start playing grueling, hours-long gigs in Dallas BBQ joints; R&B singer-songwriter Leon Bridges came up through Fort Worth open mike joints; and cowpunk band the Vandoliers crafted their own honest, catchy Americana music in Dallas, first.

“The music here is somewhat different than how it sounds coming out of Los Angeles or Nashville,” musician Nathan Wells says. “It’s a sense of self-preservation, or self-sufficiency maybe is the best word for it, where it’s like we have each other, and that’s kind of what we have; even if nobody else gets or digs what we’re doing, we do.”

Ottoman Turks Photo By Drewlio Photo

Wells is a singer-songwriter and founding member of punk-country band, Ottoman Turks, which he started as a teenager with Walker (Walker recently parted ways with the band to devote himself fully to his exploding solo career). The band, known for friend-love anthem “Glass Bottles” and their raucous, exuberant stage presence has been a mainstay local band for the last 15 years. In crafting their sound, Wells listened every bit as much to local bands he loved like the Toadies and indie-bluegrass band the Beaten Sea, as he did national acts like Green Day.

Dallas’ disregard for genre allows for the groundbreaking, enticing sound that’s sent some of the scene’s biggest names to success. But the flipside of artistic freedom is the trial and error inherent to the lack of guardrails in an overlooked scene, Wells says —Nashville is close enough that artists can travel for studio space and co-writing opportunities, but far enough away that its influence and rules do not apply. Much of the music in Dallas is centered around Deep Ellum, including its best known venues: Club Dada, Trees, The Factory, and Three Links and around the outskirts, the Double Wide and Sons of Herman Hall. Elsewhere in the city, the Barley House and other Greenville Avenue venues as well as the Granada and Kessler Theaters are essential music houses, too.

Nathan Mongol Wells Photo by Josh David Jordan

“[There’s] something that’s really down to earth about the music and the people that are in it generally, that is my experience in the Dallas music scene,” Wells says. “And that’s what makes me love it so much, and never want to abandon it for potentially more successful shores.”

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Dallas has been a musical hotspot for more than 100 years, blessed by shining moments in jazz, blues, punk, country, rockabilly, and Americana music. Deep Ellum developed in the late 1800s, as one of the largest Black communities in the south. In the 1920s, the neighborhood’s flourishing jazz scene attracted talented buskers including Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lead Belly.

In the 1950s, Dallas was on track to become a country music recording hub before tragedy dissolved its prospects in an instant. Hotshot recording engineer and producer Jim Beck was making a name for himself and Dallas — he was the first to record Leftie Frizzell and produced albums by Marty Robbins, George Jones, and Ray Price — when he died suddenly after inhaling chemicals while cleaning the tape heads in his studio. Around the same time, eccentric billionaire O.L. Nelms built Bob Wills’ Ranch House for the western swing king and his Texas Playboys. Later renamed the Longhorn Ballroom, the venue is Dallas’ kindred spirit to Austin’s defunct Armadillo World Headquarters, both musical gathering spaces of grand repute. In its heyday, the Longhorn hosted everyone from Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, and Charley Pride to B. B. King, Ray Charles, and Freddy Fender – and famously once advertised Merle Haggard and the Sex Pistols on the same marquee.

In the 1970s, Dallas’ counter culture and studio space attracted among others Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, enigmatic activist and poet Roxy Gordon, and briefly Willie Nelson, who recorded his seminal Redheaded Stranger in Dallas suburb Garland’s Autumn Sound Studios. Though Beck’s death truncated the city’s recording destination momentum, it’s a go-to place to record at long running studios including the still extant Autumn Sound (now Audio Dallas) and Modern Electric Sound Recorders.

When Hillyer was starting out in the 1990s and 2000s, country, rock, and rockabilly and a fringe punk scene reined in the city. Bands like the Toadies, The Old ‘97s, Tripping Daisies, Deathray Davies, and Quaker City Night Hawks cut their teeth playing venues in Deep Ellum, which was so saturated in music it was easy to spend the whole night concert and bar hopping. Later, impromptu country music gatherings sprang up in the parking lot outside the broadcast of the Texas Music Review radio show, across from popular country roadhouse Love & War in Texas.

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These days, on the heels of the city’s biggest names, a younger wave of musicians immersed in Texas’ songwriter tradition is carrying on the legacy of freewheeling, innovative country music. Frankie Leonie sings acoustic, classic country reminiscent of early Emmylou Harris; Angel White blends R&B funk into his cowboy and western stories; Kirk Holloway’s outlaw-inspired country is rich in ballads and honky-tonk twang; and Remy Reily’s indie-pop music borrows from the Texas music tradition while sounding decidedly 21^st century.

“There’s nothing phony about what’s happening,” says musician and producer John Pedigo, who’s had something to do with almost every aspect of Dallas music. Aside from his various projects over the years including ‘90s pop-punk band The Os and his solo act John Pedigo’s Magic Pilsner, Pedigo’s rap sheet includes producing all of Walker’s albums, Wells’ album, Hillyer’s solo albums, and helping set up the Vandoliers and cowriting their major hit, “Cigarettes in the Rain.”

Behind much of the great country music to come out of Dallas recently is indie label State Fair Records, who celebrated their 10 year anniversary by hosting two stages at the annual, month-long music and carnival fest, their namesake —the State Fair of Texas. State Fair Records released Walker’s first three records, and the Vandoliers’ first album, Pedigo’s solo project, Wells and Ottoman Turks’ albums, Hillyer’s solo work, and music from revered, long-running Tejano band the Squeezebox Bandits. Conceived of as a passion project by Scott Davis and Trey Johnson (Johnson passed away suddenly in 2022), the record label found a way to thrive even as the music industry weathered the upset and cataclysmic changes brought by streaming. With an artist-first, open door policy, the label became a go-to for local musicians.

As the physical spaces where concerts happen, music venues are by default keepers of a myriad of ephemeral moments in cultural history; when they close, those touchstones disappear. But in Dallas, in a rare reversal of the seemingly unending march of disappearing music history, the Longhorn Ballroom reopened in March 2023, after being purchased and restored by Edwin Cabaniss, who also owns The Kessler Theater. Re-opening weekend included shows by western swing legends Asleep at the Wheel, Old Crow Medicine Show, Brennen Leigh, and Joshua Ray Walker.

“[It’s] absolutely so important for the history of music and what a gift to Dallas, because that was months away from getting mowed down,” says publicist and long-time Dallas arts community member Maureen Womack.

Inside the wood-paneled, barn-shaped Longhorn, Cabaniss is also amassing a music history archive. He’s collected artist headshots (originals only); one of Bob Wills’ amps; a Tex Ritter suit and a James Brown robe; a dress worn by Loretta Lynn when she played at the Longhorn Ballroom in 1980; and guitars from B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Tammy Wynette, and Waylon Jennings, the latter of which Crockett played on stage at the Longhorn earlier this year.

“That’s the kind of magic that happens there,” Womack says.

In February this year, the Longhorn was added to the National Register of Historical Places. And Cabaniss is planning a creative hub, recording studio, and even a nearby larger stadium venue to cement the Longhorn’s legacy and Dallas’ standing as a serious country music city.

“Texas Music, or whatever you want to call it, I just don’t think that’s ever going to die. There’s a certain kind of ‘we do it our own way’ DIY mentality with Texas musicians that is attractive not only to the musician side of people, but also the people listening,” Pedigo says. “A lot of people listen to it and they don’t want to hear, say, Nashville country or just pop stuff, they want to hear somebody at least tell them that they’re being true.”