17 OctOber 19 - 25, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents I n the HBO series Game of Thrones, a gi- ant 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 un- civilized. 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 consid- ered the city’s northern suburbs — exclud- ing 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 wel- come 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 cul- tural reference? Maybe a little of both. To facil- itate 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 sur- rounding 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 King- doms, Dallas doesn’t have a 700-meter-high barrier of ice and rock to keep out the bar- barians, and the term Free Folk has been re- placed 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 Okla- homa 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, po- tentially 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 week- end in the northern frontier town of Van Al- styne. 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 none- theless. Somewhat surprisingly, they looked peaceful enough as they gathered in a new municipal space built by the city of Van Al- styne. 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 re- cords, one platinum and one double plati- num 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 Al- styne 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 facto- ries. Highway 75 is being expanded. Van Al- styne is building out its new high school, and all those kids (and at least half of the par- ents) 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. ▼ Music Mike Brooks North of the Wall Dallas’ live music scene takes over the suburbs. BY MIKE BROOKS >> p18 Sarah Jaffe performed at opening weekend at the Lexus Box Garden in Plano.
