19 May 1 - 7, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Chris Penn Passes Known in Dallas for decades for his big personality and permanent smile, Penn touched many with his love of music. BY KELLY DEARMORE G ood Records co-owner and Dallas music scene legend Chris Penn died on April 23 at age 54, according to a state- ment on his wife’s Instagram account. Penn, who also served as band manager for North Texas rock legends Polyphonic Spree and Tripping Daisy, was hospitalized in late March after injuring himself in a fall at the record store. The fall bruised Penn’s spi- nal cord and caused immediate paralysis from the neck down. He suffered a fall in 2024, which required surgery and led to the discovery that he has a rare condition that caused his spinal canal and spine to fuse. According to Jennifer Penn’s message, “His injuries were too great for his ravaged body to continue.” In an April 4 Dallas Morning News col- umn, Robert Wilonsky detailed his visit to Penn’s hospital room. Although he needed a machine to help him breathe, Penn was up- beat and hopeful and ready to fight for his family and his life. No one who knew Penn was surprised to read about his willingness to meet such a challenge with a smile. “If there is a heaven, and I hope there is one more than ever, I’m sure his arrival is causing a stir,” Jennifer Penn’s message says. “He is free of pain and suffering, dancing in that familiar style only Chris could claim as his own. Can you imagine Chris’s Heaven? I hope its filled with Mexican food, pinball machines, and a movie theater playing all the classics.” Penn is survived by his wife and three sons. Penn has been a beloved personality for decades, and social media has been filled with memories and tributes over the past few weeks. During her April 6 concert at the Bomb Factory, St. Vincent, also known as Annie Clark from Lake Highlands High School, told the crowd of thousands how much Penn has meant to her personally. “Who here remembers going to a place called CD World?” Clark asked. “Some of you are young, and that’s cute — going to a place, rolling up like I did tonight in your mom’s Hyundai minivan and going in to buy your first Nick Cave CD. You didn’t know it, but that CD would inform your entire life. The man who sold you that CD is a fucking legend we are all here to support — he has touched your life, whether you know it or not: the incredible Chris Penn!” Thanks to his efforts as DeeJay CeePee or as the man who turned Dallas into the Alice Cooper Band’s unofficial adopted home- town, not to mention his willing help at the Good Records shelves, it’s impossible to know how many music lovers feel the same way about Penn as St. Vincent does. ▼ LOOK BACK TWO CHICKS, ONE GREAT RECORD SISTERS EMILY STRAYER AND MARTIE MAGUIRE CHARTED THEIR OWN COURSE 15 YEARS AGO WITH COURT YARD HOUNDS. BY PRESTON JONES A fter the tumult and triumph of Taking the Long Way, there really wasn’t anywhere else to go. For the Dallas-raised sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer, the direction that made the most sense was heading west. The then-Dixie Chicks had emerged from the bruising aftermath of Natalie Maines’ infamous 2003 comment about be- ing ashamed of coming from the same state as then-President George W. Bush. The trio poured its emotions into the band’s master- ful seventh studio album, 2006’s Taking the Long Way, which yielded five Grammys and sold over three million copies. The trio took a hiatus in 2008, and just a year later, Maguire and Strayer formed the band Court Yard Hounds. (Maines would eventually dabble in a solo project of her own, Mother, which arrived in 2013.) The duo’s self-titled debut marks its 15th anniversary this year. It was a project that came together swiftly. Strayer, reeling from her recent divorce from fellow Texas singer- songwriter Charlie Robison, and Maguire co- produced the dozen tracks with Jim Scott at Maguire’s home studio in Austin. (Court Yard Hounds made its live debut at 2010’s South by Southwest, sticking close to home.) Anyone pressing play on Court Yard Hounds was not greatly startled: What’s here is a country-rock very much cut from the Dixie Chicks’ cloth, albeit skewing less Hill Country and more Pacific Coast High- way, tinged with a touch of defiance. “To be honest, I don’t know where we fit,” Strayer told The New York Times’ Jon Pareles in 2010. “Whoever wants to play it, great, but we’re not necessarily going to work country radio. We’ve been burned so badly. There’s definitely some country- sounding things on here, and I’m not going to stop making music I like to make. But at the same time, I’m not going back to a place that’s not a comfortable place for me.” Yet for all the tension, there’s an appealing freshness and sense of escape coursing through these songs. The lead single, “The Coast,” might make listeners do a double- take — it evokes prime Sheryl Crow — but elsewhere, the alchemy of the sibling harmonies is unmistakably the Hounds. Contemporary critics, unsurprisingly, found it difficult to listen to the record without wondering how it would’ve functioned as a Dixies Chicks project: “If the album represents the new direction that they’re taking, without or preferably with Maines, that makes Court Yard Hounds far more valuable than the aver- age side project,” wrote Slant Magazine. Ironically, Maguire and Strayer wouldn’t have much opportunity, initially, to promote their side project, as the Chicks were drafted to open a string of dates for the Eagles’ stadium tour in 2010, as the veteran rockers supported their recently released new album, Long Road Out of Eden. Maguire and Strayer would return to Court Yard Hounds for one more studio album, 2013’s Amelita, which, to this day, stands as the final release from the pair. Maguire and Strayer guested on Don Henley’s country-inclined Cass County in 2015, alongside Ashley Monroe, but the day job came calling in 2016. The Chicks reformed, mounting an enor- mously successful comeback tour in 2016 and eventually stripping the “Dixie” from their name in 2020. They were on the cusp of re- leasing Gaslighter, their first album in 14 years. Side projects are, by nature, evanescent, but in scratching an itch to make music, Strayer and Maguire inadvertently created an urge to hear more, even as their more prominent band (rightly) pulled focus and forced Court Yard Hounds into an indefinite hiatus. In time, perhaps, the sisters will once again hunger for a detour, an escape or simply a change in scenery. Until then, fans of Court Yard Hounds will have to take solace in the handful of songs that do exist — and have aged spectacularly well. ▼ ARTISTS NON-LINEAR THINKING JON BERMAN IS A DALLAS SINGER/ SONGWRITER WHO PICKED UP MUSIC IN HIS 50S, BEFORE GETTING A RECORD DEAL AT 59. BY SIMON PRUITT A n artist’s life is rarely linear, and Jon Berman knows this better than anyone. He’s lived his life always being close to music, growing up in the late ’90s Tripping Daisy generation of Deep Ellumites. At 53, Berman couldn’t be on the sidelines any longer. | B-SIDES | ▼ Music Eric Grubbs Chris Penn loved the Alice Cooper Band almost as much as he loved his record store for 25 years. Kevin Winter/Getty Images Chicks Martie Maguire (left) and Emily Robison perform as the Court Yard Hounds in 2010. >> p20
