Seeking out the ghosts of DFW music history

This is the first installment in a series of posts exploring locations of former DFW musical landmarks

Jimmy's Lil' Rockhouse

The story begins in April of this year, when I stumbled across a copy of an old hand drawn flyer while browsing some listings on eBay. The bands being advertised were ones I'd never heard of, as was the venue listed for the performance, but I recognized the included "Z Nites" logo as that of a long defunct radio network that was on the air during my middle and high school days. Upon closer examination of the embedded (also hand drawn) map to the venue, one "Jimmy's Lil' Rokhouse," I recognized the names of several streets and was able to discern that the area being pictured was in Arlington, between Dallas and Fort Worth and literally down the street from the University of Texas at Arlington, my alma mater from 1998-2000. The dates given on the flyer suggested a year of 1986, based on when those particular dates and Friday and Saturday nights would line up. Where exactly was this Jimmy's Lil' Rockhouse, and what was it today? I decided I wanted to find out.

And so it was that on the afternoon of April 22nd, 2023, I set out with a copy of the map - downloaded from the eBay listing and printed out via my laser printer - and armed with a satellite view of what I thought was the location as shown via Google Earth. The earliest Google Earth view available was from 1995, but I had pinpointed what I believed to be the erstwhile location of Jimmy's in what looked to be a present day strip of auto repair shops. My friend Alex accompanied me as we set out for Arlington on our scavenger hunt. A few wrong turns and a bit of reorientation later, we arrived at what, as far as I could be sure, was once a would-be watering hole (though apparently without a liquor license) for long gone hair metal bands and their fans in the then-infant DFW metal music scene. I had found it. But what had I found, exactly? In short, the outside of an auto repair complex. The actual original building that housed Jimmy's was not visible from the outside, either with the naked eye or through a telephoto lens - if indeed it still existed. There were no hints of any previous life as a live music venue, no relics of days gone by as a hole in the wall dive packed with young, hungry metalheads, no ghosts of local music history. But my appetite for discovering other, similar ghosts had been whetted by the success of the afternoon's outing, and there were other vintage flyers available for purchase where I had found this one. I had chosen the most promising specimen for this particular expedition, but why not acquire some of the others and go on the hunt for the other places as well?

Thus began a months-long research project, one which would see me scouring the internet, social media sites, and old newspaper archives for information on long forgotten bands and deceased hole in the wall music venues. I would discover the greatness of a few long out of print local albums and bands, and would forge new relationships with people who helped make the local music scene of the 1980s and 90s what it was. I would get a lesson on some of the What and the Who and the Where, and in the process open my eyes to a part of DFW music history that I was heretofore unschooled in. I would come to recognize the history of certain Deep Ellum sites that I'd visited - or ignored - for years. I had served some time in the DFW music scene myself, but I had begun more than two decades after the show advertised on that Arlington flyer, and the late 2000s cultural zeitgeist was very different from the one of 1986. This would be a whole new world of bands and venues and musical genres, record labels, people, and cultural artifacts. Of course this history had always been there, but like many in my age set, I had only been concerned with the particulars of that local scene of which I had been a part.

The fruits of these efforts are what this series is about. I've spent the last several months working on gathering information and taking photos, and in the process I've put together a collection of memorabilia ranging from old show flyers to press kit photos to ticket stubs to semi-rare vinyl and cassette releases. I have a decent sized collection of local and regional music from over the years (with nearly 500 items in the collection as of this writing), and I confirmed that I already had several examples of DFW acts from the 1990s on hand. I had the advantage of already having many useful connections at my disposal thanks to my two stints in the Dallas open mic scene and my time spent photographing live music from 2007-2016. The former Lost Art Open Mic was of especial help when reaching out to certain contacts who proved to be particularly valuable for this project. I made a lot of overtures to various individuals via social media, photo sites, and e-mail, explaining what I was trying to do while hoping to get a response back. Many showed a willingness to help.

One thing I recognized fairly early on in this project was the need to limit the list of potential locations to something manageable. I won't be revisiting every single former music venue and record label that ever existed in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Many names recognizable to old timers in the scene (Rascals, the Hot Klub, Slipped Disc, etc.) aren't going to be covered at all, nor will most of those whose days in operation overlapped significantly with my own time in the music scene, or my time listening to local radio in the early to mid 1990s. I think, however, that I've managed to come up with a decent mix of well known and obscure, of places with more historic significance and others whose stories have long since disappeared into the ether. With all the potential topics available, the final arbiter of what could and would be included proved to be my own judgment as to a given topic and availability of vintage memorabilia.

The series will be posted in installments over the next few months. Hope you enjoy!