North of the Wall: Dallas' Live Music Scene Takes Over the Suburbs

In the HBO series Game of Thrones, a giant wall of ice separates the known world from a mysterious snow-shrouded frontier. Populated by people known as the Free Folk, the land beyond the wall is uncharted and assumed to be uncivilized. Left unchecked, it represents an existential threat to the established order below to the south.

Fans of live music who live in Dallas proper have, rightly or wrongly, long considered the city's northern suburbs — excluding Denton — as something akin to the land beyond the wall: a barren, silent and white expanse. Deep Ellum, Lower Greenville, Bishop Arts and the Cedar Springs area were the places where the music played. Suburbanites hungry for a show were welcome to head south.

But things are changing fast in the music scene, and to see how, take a drive up north to the dragon-less land of Plano and check out the Box Garden at Legacy Hall: Much like the castle at Winterfell, it comprises a large central courtyard surrounded by high protective walls, and like any good castle, an abundance of staff, various kitchens and an onsite brewery. Just outside the walls, the citizenry live and ply their trades. And every once in a while, a traveling minstrel will come to entertain.

On a recent day, it was an incarnation of the Gray family, the Kwinton Gray Project.

The tradesman who arranged the show, Moses Habtezghi, says something that sticks with us. The Grays have come to play, he says, “north of the wall.”

Is it an apt metaphor or just a clever cultural reference? Maybe a little of both. To facilitate our investigation we’ll require another metaphor: Go to any natural science museum, and you’ll generally find a slice of an old tree that shows off its rings. The oldest trees have the most rings, and there will be little pins stuck in the wood at various key dates. They'll tell you the tree was only this big during the American Revolution, or how this ring marks the start of the Great Depression.

Dallas itself is a city of rings, or loops as we like to call them. Or to be crass, a vast network of roads and highways that circle the city and its surrounding suburbs: Loop 12, Interstate 635, Belt Line Road, the George Bush Turnpike, Highway 121. All the way up to Highway 380, the vast area known generally as Dallas continues to absorb surrounding communities into the fifth-largest television market in the country. Addison, Richardson, Plano used to be separate towns, but you would need a red push pin stuck in the appropriate loop to remember that now.
Unlike George R. R. Martin's Seven Kingdoms, Dallas doesn’t have a 700-meter-high barrier of ice and rock to keep out the barbarians, and the term Free Folk has been replaced by the more common “Republican.” Any barrier that does exist is soft and fluid and needs a constant influx of refugees from California and Wisconsin to hold the gates. We’ll only drive north to get to the Oklahoma casinos or to trade our silver coins for fireworks. And the Free Folk only come south to show off their monster trucks, steal our women and listen to bro-country at Dos Equis Pavilion. At least that’s the legend.

The truth is less complicated. Plano, Frisco, Little Elm and McKinney continue to be some of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and as soon as they fill up, the honor shall pass north to Prosper, Anna and Celina. In other words, there is a huge, potentially untapped entertainment market a mere hour north of downtown. Corporate interests have certainly noticed, but what about the entertainers themselves?
Consider the past Fourth of July weekend in the northern frontier town of Van Alstyne. The holiday is kind of a big deal up here. In the big city, we know it's uncool to be too patriotic, but the folks here still cling to the old ways. There are leather vests and “Come and Take it” T-shirts. People here own guns and trucks and land and chickens and their own businesses — not barber shops by the look of it, but businesses nonetheless.

Somewhat surprisingly, they looked peaceful enough as they gathered in a new municipal space built by the city of Van Alstyne. Kids escaped the heat by playing in a multi-colored water fixture, surrounded by parents in lawn chairs. There were food trucks, rescue puppies to be adopted and a kid with a 10-foot snake draped around his shoulders. We were all waiting for one thing, the band known as Foghat. Laugh if you want, but Foghat has eight gold records, one platinum and one double platinum record. Unless your last name is Badu, that’s a lot more gold records than your band has.
In the pattern of urban growth, Van Alstyne is one of those “on deck” cities. To the south, McKinney is just about full. To the north, the Grayson County city of Sherman is building two giant semiconductor factories. Highway 75 is being expanded. Van Alstyne is building out its new high school, and all those kids (and at least half of the parents) were looking for something to do on Friday night. Several thousand of them ended up in the center of Van Alstyne for the Foghat show.

Kandi Hessel has been instrumental in bringing live music to Van Alstyne. The recently completed Central Social District is part of the city’s plan to keep and enhance a sense of community as the city grows, and live music was identified as one of the best tools to accomplish that goal.

"Our community, specifically, is growing constantly," Hessel says. "We wanted to create a central location for people just to get to know [their] neighbor[s] and local businesses."

The new Social District has a street address, but directions start with “downtown by the railroad tracks.” Everybody knows exactly where that is, as Van Alstyne makes a point of celebrating its foundation as a railway town and its spot on the old Texas Electric Railway, an interurban line that in the first half of the 20th century linked North Texas towns from Waco to Denison.

Central Social District Park, with its main stage for music, opened in April 2022 and held its first concert the next month, with Foreigner tribute band Double Vision.

With a new space and generous private sponsorships, Hessel has been able to move beyond tribute acts and attract talent you might not expect to see at a free concert in what is still a relatively small Texas town. The city works with the same promotion company that books shows for the Oklahoma casinos just north across the Red River, and that partnership is used by the city of Sherman as well. The combination gives them insight into both the audience and access to artist scheduling conflicts.

Intentionally, Hessel has started out with a lineup based primarily around country music and classic rock. Aside from Foghat, this summer’s lineup included the Jefferson Starship and Prophets and Outlaws, and closed with country singer Deana Carter last weekend at the town's 150th anniversary celebration.

For the city, the events mix music with a chance to socialize with neighbors, and when he's booking artists Hessel is looking for performers who don’t mind joining in. When Jefferson Starship played at the city in September 2022, Hessel says city police gave them a lift back to their hotel, pleasing the band members who said they'd never had the chance to ride in the front seat of a police car before — though they'd possibly seen the view from the back seats.

People bring their coolers and lawn chairs and pets. Even with the relaxed BYOB standards, everything has run smoothly, even on the night they had to move the show to the high school gym. No drinking on school property. The only other complaint of note? They have asked the kid with the 10-foot snake if he could find a different animal friend to bring along next time.

The town's city manager has a background in the music business, and Hessel has worked in radio, she says, so they know the value of bringing music to the community.

"What draws crowds is music," she says.

The Central Social District Park is designed with water features and plenty of concrete to allow vendors to set up to expand the draw. Perhaps most importantly, the city aims to keep the events free. This budget year, the city raised $110,000 in sponsorship money to cover the free concerts and hopes to exceed that amount in the coming year.

Hessel says the city doesn't see itself competing with other northern suburbs that are also expanding their live music options. Van Alstyne's goal is to strengthen its own community by giving residents the option to gather close to home. "We're not trying to compete," Hessel says. "It's more about the experience and keeping that small-town feel."

It’s a formula that is working, with attendance ranging from 2,000 to 6,000 for a given event. For perspective, the current population of Van Alstyne is right around 6,000. That's double the city's population in the 2010 census, and as the tide of people continues to head north, how long Van Alstyne will remain a small town is anybody's guess.

Of course, there is no giant wall of ice separating Dallas from the northern frontiers. It's too damn hot. But if you did want to create a demarcation between north and south, then Highway 121 might serve as a useful marker.

Highway 121 runs from Fort Worth in the west, past DFW International Airport, then continues to the north and east through McKinney. We have no idea where it goes past Fort Worth, but can tell you that north of McKinney it will bring you to the Collin County transfer station. When it snows, the magnificent man-made trash hills look a little like a giant wall of ice, but the smell gives it away.
Hard by the highway and well out of range of the smell of rotting trash lies a string of entertainment complexes. If the narrow brick buildings of Deep Ellum reflect Dallas’ musical history, then these new structures are a glimpse into our future.

If you want to know how the greater Dallas area swallows up its neighbors, consider this personal anecdote. I arrived in Texas in 1994 and settled in Frisco because it matched my budget. I was surprised to learn that MTV was not allowed on local cable and you couldn’t buy beer at the gas station.

A decade or two later, and Frisco is now the home of the Dallas Cowboys and dozens of corporate headquarters. With North Plano it is also home to the multi-use planned community of Legacy West, with its upscale shops and $500,000 condos. More to the point, buried between the new Toyota building and the Capital One offices is Legacy Hall, which includes the Lexus Box Garden.
In Texas, we’ve never been shy about replacing the old for big, new, shiny things. It’s not that we don’t like history, we just prefer that it comes with clean bathrooms and plenty of free parking. The Legacy West development resembles the European city model, with housing, shops and restaurants mixed together. Legacy Hall continues that aesthetic, but goes a little more American. The Box Garden is named for one of its architectural features, the use of shipping containers as part of the design. On the first floor of the hall surrounding the stage are small food vendors, designed to give you that food truck experience but with better hygiene. Stacked on the second and third floors are a bar and Unlawful Assembly craft brewers.

It's an increasingly common design dialectic — something new with a dash of funky and just a hint of nostalgia. The real question for us is how it works as a live music venue. We have an answer to that. Or maybe answers, since the explanation is multifaceted. Broadly speaking, we can apply some of these answers to the other venues along Highway 121 (The Hub, Lava Cantina, Grandscape, and, to a certain extent, the Toyota Music Complex).

Some of our city’s most beloved music venues were started by folks who focused on the actual performance of live music. But there isn’t a music venue in the world that can survive just on ticket sales. You can have a wedding at the Kessler Theater, a fashion show at the Granada or a spelling bee at Three Links. Counting up the bar receipts at the end of the night is a key measure of success.

We don’t think anyone would claim that the Box Garden was created from an altruistic love of live music. It is part of a big, expensive development in a high-cost part of the city, and it needs constant foot traffic though the bar and restaurants to make the math work. That doesn’t mean the place can’t put on a good show, though.

Music at the venue goes through two main channels: free and ticketed. The Grays have done both, playing background music for day drinkers in the afternoon but also presenting their Disney show one evening in September. Free music is part of the mix along with sports-watching parties and seasonal events. Anything to keep you there for one more drink or ice cream cones for the whole family.

Paid events take a different shape. Outdoor patios on the second and third floors are for ticketholders only, even as the rest of the food hall is open for business. The effect is pretty cool, as looking back from the stage into three floor levels of fans creates a sort of Thunderdome experience. The sound is good, the stage is well-lit and backed by a huge video screen.

If you have never been this far north and are afraid you won’t know anyone, you can relax. On any given night at least half of the crew running things will have “Granada Theater” on their resumes. For the grand opening half a dozen years ago, Sarah Jaffe sold the place out (around 1,500 tickets) and even had a signature beer brewed and canned for the show. The Toadies have played both here and at Lava Cantina just down the road in the last year. The Old 97's and Bastards of Soul were here as well.

Put aside all the nods and winks and smart-ass remarks, and it's obvious that many Dallas musicians have played here. What’s surprising is how many more have not even been to the venue. Really, do they not like gourmet doughnuts?
The last time the Toadies played here, about a month ago, Here Holy Spain opened the show and none of the band would admit to ever having been to the Box Garden. And they impressed us as people would appreciate a good gourmet doughnut.

The type of music booked at Legacy Hall may have something to do with it as well, as cover bands and tribute acts are well-represented on the event calendars of all these venues. Even when the Toadies or the Old 97's roll through, they are offering music that is established, well-known and well-loved.

My perception or perhaps misconception about what to expect from the Box Garden changed during the summer of 2018 when I walked through the gates at random and found 1,000 young fans rocking out to East Coast indie band Beach Fossils.

My first thought was that there must have been some sort of booking error, but looking back on it, this show exposed the real potential of the northern suburban venue.  Many of the kids at the show appeared to be in the “just got my driver’s license” age group. How much easier is it to talk your parents into letting you go to a show just around the corner, as opposed to taking Mommy’s car into Dallas? Heck, Mom and Dad could have been in the bar enjoying a cocktail the whole time.

I asked around during the Toadies set. No surprise, but many of the people lived in the northern suburbs. Would they have gone to a Toadies show downtown? Yeah, maybe. But everyone was happy to see their favorite band closer to home.

It’s a part of the experience that can’t be discounted. And being close to the highway means all of these venues have easy freeway access and plenty of free parking. Going to Deep Ellum or downtown may help you keep it real, but if you live in the suburbs going to a show in Plano may help keep it simple.

Singer Quentin Dyer Moore has played shows on the outdoor stage at the Toyota Music Factory in Las Colinas and has set up a COVID-era show in conjunction with Nosh and Bottle in the same complex. He points to the easy access of the more popular venues as a plus for getting fans out to the show: “I can get hardcore Quentin Moore lovers and core fans to come to Deep Ellum,” he says. But for “more famous venues [like the Toyota complex] people already know the drill for parking and stuff.”

Garland is another city trying to make over its image into a fun-loving town, like a party girl trying to stumble in her Louboutins onto Page Six.

On Oct. 14, Garland unveiled its new Downtown Square, weeks after announcing its new designation as an official cultural district by the Texas Commission on the Arts. The suburb has become a destination for hipster parents retiring from the big city who want a bar or two nearby for when the mood strikes, but without any drunk drivers. It has a decently picturesque old theater and the one Ricardo Paniagua sculpture.

On the Saturday evening of the new square's debut, it had the autumn air coziness of a Gilmore Girls' town jubilee celebration: Vendors selling funnel cake and fried Oreos, drones lighting up the sky by forming into the shapes of cowboy hats. Thousands of families showed up to hear the evening's entertainment: Garland's most famous resident, LeAnn Rimes.
The singer howled the yodeled chorus in "Blue" under her hometown moon, sharing stories of her move from Mississippi to Garland at age 6.

The same night, as thousands ran out of the State Fair of Texas in Dallas because of a shooting, the Garland square is peaceful, even as restaurants ran out of food.

So, yeah. Things can get a little gritty south of the wall. But depending on how you define the boundaries, there are between 6 million and 9 million people in the greater Dallas area, with more people flocking to the northern suburbs every day. They're as hungry for entertainment after a hard weekend day of yard maintenance as any Dallas hipster, so it's only natural that growing communities like Van Alstyne and Frisco and Garland would want to tap into that hunger and tap into live music to build a sense of community — and keep their residents spending their entertainment dollars closer to home. But their growth doesn't necessarily cut into the bottom line of Dallas venues. More venues mean more chances to expand the population of live music fans, as well as more jobs for sound techs and lighting techs and promoters and bartenders and all manner of support staff. And that’s a good thing.

And we'll just come out and say it: Foghat rocks. We're especially fond of their hit "Fool for the City."