This is one of those weeks where Dallas reminds you why it punches above its weight as a live music city. The range alone — Australian post-punk legends, an 80s synth-pop double bill that belongs at an arena, a country songwriter who has been quietly building one of the best catalogs in Texas, and a hip-hop producer who has spent the better part of thirty years rewriting what electronic music can do — is the kind of lineup that drops on a Tuesday and you realize you’re already behind on ticket buying.
And that’s before you account for the bars that don’t make the Ticketmaster calendar but have been running their own music programs every weekend without asking for credit. Here’s what’s worth your time this week, by night.
Tuesday, June 16
The night belongs to The Church at the Granada Theater (3524 Greenville Ave, 8 p.m.). Steve Kilbey and his band have been making records since 1980 — the same year he founded the group in Canberra, Australia — and tonight’s show is billed as The Singles: 1980–2025, which means the full sweep is on the table. Under the Milky Way will be played, obviously, but The Church have always been more interesting than that one song suggests: Starfish remains one of the most underrated albums of the late eighties, and Kilbey’s basslines have never gotten the credit they deserve. This is a band that never broke through the way their talent warranted, which means the room tonight will be full of people who know every word and have been waiting years for this specific setlist. Presented by KXT 91.7.
Also tonight: Todd Rundgren at the Majestic Theatre (1925 Elm St, 7 p.m.) on his Damned If I Do tour. The man is 77 years old and has been producing records — Bat Out of Hell, Grand Funk Railroad, New York Dolls, Hall & Oates, his own catalogue including Something/Anything? — since the early seventies. His live shows are historically unpredictable in the best way. He’ll play what he wants and some of it will be Hello It’s Me and some of it will be something you’ve never heard a crowd react to the way this crowd will. The Majestic is the right room for this.
And at the Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie: Human League with Soft Cell and Alison Moyet (8 p.m.). Three acts, one night, full 80s synth-pop maximalism. Human League without Don’t You Want Me isn’t a thing that happens, and Marc Almond of Soft Cell doing Tainted Love live is one of those experiences that earns the ticket price on its own. Moyet is the underappreciated one on this bill — her voice is extraordinary and her solo work and her years fronting Yazoo are worth revisiting before tonight.
Fort Worth gets Thievery Corporation at Tannahill’s Tavern & Music Hall (8 p.m.) — the Washington D.C. duo’s 30th anniversary tour, Rob Garza and Eric Hilton celebrating three decades of trip-hop, bossa nova, dub, and Indian classical elements woven into something that still sounds like nothing else. If you’re in Fort Worth, this is the show.
If none of the above fits your Tuesday, there is always Lee Harvey’s at 1807 Gould Street — open until 2 a.m. every night, no cover, wood-paneled walls covered in illuminated beer signs older than most of the crowd, a yard with picnic tables that Dallas has been sitting at for decades, and live music on weekends without anyone making a big announcement about it. It is the kind of bar that exists because someone decided to run a good bar and never changed what that meant. (214) 428-1555.
Wednesday, June 17
Yebba at House of Blues (2200 N. Lamar, 7 p.m.). Arkansas-born Abigail Smith has spent the better part of a decade as one of the most in-demand backing vocalists in music — she’s worked with Chance the Rapper, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, and Mark Ronson, among others — before finally stepping to the front of the stage. Her debut album Dawn was a genuinely powerful R&B record and Jean, her sophomore effort, deepens the writing without losing the rawness that made the first one worth paying attention to. She’s touring behind it now and this is a room that fits her perfectly.
RX Bandits at the Granada Theater (8 p.m.). The Long Beach band has been making progressive rock, ska-punk, and art-rock hybrids since the late nineties, outlasting every genre cycle they’ve passed through. Their 2006 album …And the Battle Begun is a minor classic of its specific moment and their live show has always been the argument for why they’ve lasted. If you know them, you’re already buying tickets. If you don’t, the Granada is a good place to find out.
Joe Jackson at the Majestic Theatre (1925 Elm St, 8 p.m.). Jackson has spent forty years refusing to repeat himself — Look Sharp! gave way to jazz, then orchestral pop, then rock, then whatever he decided was next — and that restlessness makes him a genuinely unpredictable live performer. Is She Really Going Out With Him? still lands. So does everything else he’s made since.
Thursday, June 18
Thievery Corporation returns — this time to The Echo Lounge & Music Hall (1323 N. Stemmons, 7 p.m.) in Dallas proper. Two nights, two rooms. If you missed Tuesday in Fort Worth, tonight is the chance. The Echo is a more intimate space for this music and that intimacy suits it.
Friday, June 19
Ryan Bingham at the Longhorn Backyard Amphitheater (8 p.m.). Bingham is a West Texas songwriter who won an Academy Award for The Weary Kind from the film Crazy Heart and has spent the years since making records that quietly accumulate. He’s not fashionable in the way that draws think pieces, but he draws the kind of crowd that comes for the songs specifically. An outdoor amphitheater on a June night in Texas is exactly where this music should be heard.
Killswitch Engage at South Side Ballroom (6:30 p.m.). The Massachusetts metalcore band has been one of the genre’s most consistent acts since the late nineties, with The End of Heartache and As Daylight Dies as the cornerstones of a catalog that has barely slowed down. Jesse Leach back on vocals makes every show in the current era the definitive version of the band. South Side Ballroom is the right room for this kind of volume.
Parker Millsap at The Kessler (1230 W. Davis, 8 p.m.). An Oklahoma singer-songwriter who makes gospel-inflected Americana with enough grit to feel honest and enough melody to make you sing along before you’ve heard the songs twice. The Kessler is the right room — intimate, attentive, built for this.
Gary Hoey at the Granada Theater (8 p.m.). The Boston guitarist has spent three decades proving he belongs in the conversation about serious rock instrumentalists, and his live shows are built around the instrument rather than around production. Worth your time if you appreciate guitarists who can hold a room on technique alone.
Also Friday: Juneteenth Jazz Jam with Martha Burks at The Women’s Museum (3800 Parry Ave, 9 p.m.). A Juneteenth celebration through jazz, the right music for the holiday and a venue that doesn’t get used for live music as often as it should.
And if you want live music without committing to a ticketed show on a Friday night, two bars carry their own weight. The Free Man Cajun Cafe and Lounge on Commerce Street runs live music from midday through late night most Fridays — Midday Grooves in the afternoon, full bands through the evening, the Zee Band and Linny Nance Band among the regulars. It is a Cajun bar that takes both parts of that description seriously, and the combination of the food and the music in that room on a Friday is one of the more underappreciated experiences in downtown Dallas.
Sons of Hermann Hall on Elm Street in Deep Ellum is the other answer — a fraternal hall built in 1911 that has been running live music for most of the century since, with a dance floor that is the actual point of the room and a lineup that tends toward Texas swing, country, and folk. Check their calendar before you go. The cover is never unreasonable.
Saturday, June 20
Whip It Fest at the Granada Theater (7 p.m.). A Devo tribute night built around the 1980 film anniversary, which sounds like a gimmick until you remember that Devo is one of the most genuinely original bands American rock produced and their influence on everything that followed — industrial, new wave, electro — is underacknowledged. A room full of people in energy domes is a room full of people who paid attention.
For Saturday night after the shows, or instead of a ticketed show entirely: AM/FM at 1950 Market Center Blvd in the Design District is the venue worth knowing this year. Spune Productions took over the old Ferris Wheeler’s space in January and turned it into something genuinely different — a retro diner in the morning run by Chef Anastacia Quiñones-Pittman (James Beard semifinalist, formerly of José), a lounge with a DJ at night, and a massive backyard stage with a full L’Acoustics system and the original Ferris wheel still standing, now LED-lit against the dark. Capacity runs from 500 to 1,000-plus depending on the configuration. Live bands in the backyard, DJs in the FM lounge, happy hour weekdays 3 to 6:30 p.m. at $7 for cocktails, beer, and wine. Open daily 11 a.m. to midnight, Friday and Saturday until 2 a.m. Check @amfmlive for this week’s backyard lineup before you go. (214) 741-4141.
Club Dada on Commerce in Deep Ellum runs live music most Saturday nights and has for longer than most of the bars around it have existed. The Double Wide on Commerce has a patio, cheap beer, and local bands without the expectation that you’ll pay attention, which is its own legitimate category of Saturday night. And Lee Harvey’s yard is open until 2 a.m. if the night runs long and you need somewhere that asks nothing of you but your presence.
Whatever you choose this week, choose something. Dallas in June has no shortage of reasons to be somewhere with speakers pointed at you.
