16 January 19-25, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents adds. “There were saloons and places that people played music. If you were a blues singer, you played on the street. Maybe you’d get invited into a café if you were lucky.” Bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson performed on Deep Ellum’s street corners throughout the 1920s. Paramount Records talent scout Sammy Price discovered his inventive American folk and blues sounds and took Jefferson off the street corner and introduced him to countless music fans, thus shaping the future of popular music for decades. His Chicago recording sessions produced timeless songs such as “That Black Snake Moan” and “Black Horse Blues.” Jefferson’s talent and fame turned Deep Ellum into an incubator for the music industry for decades. Early Western swing and country music bands flocked to the neighborhood to build an audience and cut records to build a national audience. Downtown’s 508 Park building became a makeshift studio for new and national talent such as legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson, who cut recordings there in 1937, before his passing the following year. “[Jefferson] was definitively the most successful, down-home coun- try-blues singer of his generation and was profoundly influential to the growth of American pop music,” Govenar says. “Blind Lemon only played on street corners when he was in Dallas even when he was suc- cessful.” The neighborhood’s fame as a hub for music ebbed and followed over the years. Pat Bywaters, grandson of Jerry Bywaters of the artist collective Dallas Nine, spearheaded the reconstruction of 508 Park. He’s been going to Deep Ellum for the last 40 years. “You might’ve heard George Gimarc’s Rock and Roll Alternative show on [defunct radio station] The Zoo about shows that such-and- such will be at Club Dada,” Bywaters says. “A lot of the clubs had mail- ing lists. I remember getting postcards from the Theatre Gallery or people would put up flyers on telephone poles and you could see who was coming.” Despite its raucous veneer, Deep Ellum was still a small community of clubs attended by fans who sought out alternative sounds when they actually were the alternative. “The neighborhood was really pretty quiet,” Bywaters says. “It was a quasi-industrial area. The pawn shops were gone, so it was pretty light industrial. You just had these couple of venues that opened up in these industrial warehouses. They didn’t have seats. They’d set up a bar in the back and a sound system and all of a sudden you had a club.” The Deep Ellum scene is an anomaly of music culture because the venues and acts that played and still play there never adopted a uniform sound or style. “It was just a really fruitful time for all the bands,” says Blair. “The reason I think it carried on like a scene is no one really sounded like each other. There’s a Seattle scene or a Detroit sound. We didn’t have that. We had Reverend Horton Heat or Tripping Daisies or us. We in- spired each other and would play gigs with each other. I didn’t really re- member a rivalry with each other. It was all really friendly.” For Ducado VeGA, the stars aligned in Dallas. BY DANNY GALLAGHER B elieve it or not, Ducado VeGA began his music career as a band nerd. “I started out playing tenor sax in junior high school, he says with a laugh. “I moved to piano in high school, and guitar. Most of the instruments I play are self-taught. From there, I just kinda went crazy.” It’s hard to picture the great funk-rocker from Shreveport, Louisiana, marching in straight lines in a neatly pressed band uniform. The beauty of his music lies in his powerhouse performances and daring sound, paying homage to greats like Led Zeppelin and Prince from beat to beat. But it’s hard to deny the influence that such a disci- plined music study had on Vega, who’s a Dallas Observer Music Award winner and Deep Ellum 100 finalist. “I had a little bit of an advan- tage because when I started play- ing sax in junior high, I was learning music theory,” VeGA says. “I had a little bit of piano because my mom was like ‘you need to learn piano.’ As far as learning instruments, they weren’t teaching me what I wanted. So I just ditched it and kind of taught myself and my interest in ev- erything exploded.” VeGA has tried to gain a musical foothold in some other big music cities, such as Detroit, Nashville and At- lanta, but Dallas — and partic- ularly Deep Ellum — are the places that called to him since he watched his older brother Kevin per- form a pantomime act of an Isley Brothers song that made him want to sing and make music for real. “I always felt like I’m supposed to live in Dallas,” he says. “It was defaulting back to that feeling as a kid and man, it just fell into place.” He first came to Dallas in 1993, and things started slowly as he recorded and ex- perimented with his sound until he found his space in the local scene. “Boom, it was like the clouds opened up and it was like your time,” he says. “The stars aligned.” A set at Poor David’s Pub introduced him to Jer- emy “Pan Blanco” Piering of The Effinays, spark- ing a collaboration that would send him on his merry musical way. “Me and Jeremy got to be friends in MySpace,” VeGA says. “Jeremy from The Effinays gave me the invite to open for them and from there it just, again, the stars aligned.” The Ducado VeGA brand name got its official kick-off from that show, where he was paired up with people such as singer (and his future wife) Zenya Vi in 2010, following it up with a DOMA win in 2011 for Best Funk Group. “We were different,” VeGA says. “It’s a funk- rock band, so we incorporated funk elements in everything from Prince to Zeppelin-ishness and some Stevie Ray [Vaughan] and [Jimi] Hendrix. We just threw it in a pot and we were about the clothes and style. It was crazy, cool music and everyone had their own personality in the band, and it all works. I think Dallas was ready for some craziness like that.” Things cooled down in 2017 when Vi was diagnosed with breast cancer, or the “C-word” as they prefer to call it, and both artists took a two-year break. Vi beat the disease, but she decided to take a be- hind-the-scenes role in music with a focus on recording for film and TV projects. “It threw a monkey wrench into everything,” he says. “Ev- erything changed. So I stopped performing live and started DJing, which has been really cool and created a whole new life for me as [DJ] Ducado VeGA.” VeGA had another medi- cal roadblock in 2020 before the pandemic when he broke his hip and femur from a bad fall but still went “back on stage in a week,” he says. “People think I’m com- pletely insane.” VeGA recently released a new single called “Under- water”; the video hits on Feb. 3. He also returned to live shows as one of Deep Ellum 100’s 10 artists chosen to per- form and record a live set for an album honoring Deep Ellum’s 150th anniver- sary. That concert reminded him how much he missed the imme- diacy and impact of performing for a live audience. “It was an amazing night,” VeGA says of the Deep Ellum 100 concert in October, which included Stone Mecca and Labretta Suede & the Motel 6. “I got to be in the company of some phenomenal musicians. I real- ized how much I missed that. I’ve seen musicians online but never met them in person. It was like so much love. I missed this, and I can’t ever step away from it again.” A Kismet Story Kathy Tran Funk-rocker Ducado VeGA says his inclusion in Deep Ellum 100’s live show in honor of the neighbor- hood’s 150th anniversary celebra- tion showed him how much he missed being on stage. Kathy Tran Alan Govenar has chronicled Deep Ellum’s history in many films. Still Swinging from p15 >> p18
