Day: June 30, 2025

This is part of a continuing series of posts exploring locations of former DFW musical landmarks and the stories behind them.

During the mid to late 1980s, the Fort Worth metal scene was on fire. While Dallas had its coffee shops, punk clubs, and new wave hot spots, a burgeoning rock music scene with its own distinctive identity was gaining currency on the west side. Of course, these two cultural movements did not exist in a vacuum, and as geography would suggest, there was indeed crossover between them which was evidenced by the existence of certain venues and a sharing of some of the principal players, fans, and musicians. But, broadly speaking, the west side of town was the more metal, a more welcoming place for headbangers and longhairs and for those interested in a more hardcore style of music. On the far westernmost edge of town there was Joe's Garage, but for those who were perhaps unenthusiastic about the long drive, there was the Tombstone Factory.

The story of the Tombstone Factory's origin has become legendary, repeated vigorously and vociferously in person, online, and via the printed page. It has been shared via anecdotes and reminiscences and secondhand accounts, circulated year after year both by word of mouth and electronically, echoed again and again in blogs and social media posts and print articles to an ever widening audience. It has found increasing legitimacy not only among those who were actually there, but among those who have since come afterward. Yet the full story of the Tombstone Factory – and its surprising antecedent – has never heretofore been told. Where the building came from, the reasons behind its construction and unique design, how it actually came to get its name, and what it actually was in its previous life – these are questions whose answers have until now been obscured by local mythology, conjecture, or even outright misinformation, for decades. The actual history is as surprising as it is unexpected, involving creatives and participants from very different communities with barely any connection between them save the one which resulted, indirectly, in the Factory's well-known name. That is the story that will be told here, and it begins in a most unlikely place.

Continue reading "Ghosts of DFW music history: Tombstone Factory"