Criminal Birds play Dan's Silverleaf on Friday.
Alright, we get it. It's hot. Summer is almost over. Getting back to school/work is hard. Well, we've got some good news for you: all your pain and suffering will come to an end now that the long awaited Barley & Board is open on the corner of Locust and Oak Streets. Prepare yourselves for a full rundown of all the glory you can expect from the newest and hottest place on the square. Hashtag your stuff #WDDI and keep doing you.
For more tips and tricks, email glen@wedentondoit.com.
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Mind Spiders play 35 Denton's Main Stage on Saturday afternoon.
After 24 months, the 35 Denton music festival is back this year. There are signs all around - the new mural at Oak St. Draft House, the marquee at Dan's Silverleaf, heck even your Facebook event invites are probably blowing up right now. We're pretty pumped for this weekend. There's more than just music, too, several panels, exhibitions, photography walks, and and more are planned. Below, are several #WDDI-approved local bands that we've written about before in our monthly Three Songs column that will be playing the festival. Check out a tune (or video) of theirs, the times they'll be planing and read some of our thoughts below.
Read MoreWe're chiming in before the month ends with 3 Songs, our monthly column featuring three tunes from local artists that we've been digging lately. Read on to get a quick glimpse into the current Denton music scene. We dig 'em. Hope y'all do, too.
Dome Dweller's song "My Halo" caught us by surprise this month.
The Days - "Loose Knots"
(Editor’s Note: We Denton Do It shares a few members/contributors with The Days, but none of them are writing this, none of them asked for this, and we're diggin' it quite a bit. Conflict of interest be damned. While we’re at it, you wanna buy a couch from us on Craigslist?) If you’ve yet to catch The Days live or hear them in any capacity before, you’ve been missing out. These dudes sound as if The Band was fronted by a younger, less smokey Mark Lanegan. "Loose Knots" is particularly driven single - possibly the first we’ll hear of their upcoming full length. Throughout the track, lead singer, Robby Day, laments in his baritone all that he’d do for a girl which just so happens to be quite a bit - so much so that by the end of the song, we believe him and we want to hear more.
Dome Dwellers - "My Halo"
To be honest, y’all, we had a hard time writing this column this month. Things didn’t come together too easily and we spent easily an hour last night crawling through SoundCloud and Bandcamp, listening to various recent tracks from Denton bands and nothing was sounding good to us (let's leave it at that). We were getting pretty bummed and then we just so happened to stumble across "My Halo" from Dome Dwellers. Everything was immediately right with the world. Seriously, this is great stuff and hopefully a precursor of more that we’ll be seeing from this trio of dudes who have a full length coming in late October. "My Halo," itself, reminds us a bit of the Canadian band, Women, before they imploded a few years back - mathy and disjointed in the best of ways. The guitars are full of 90’s-era chimey-ness and tremolo and the math rock aspect of this tune acts as more of a hook than it does a headache - let’s just say that it’s more Algebra 1 than it is Pre-calculus. Whether they’re aware or not, this slightly epic track harkens back to the days of Denton space rock and we couldn’t be happier to be reminded of that era. Do yourself a favor and give this a listen. Heck, you can even download their entire EP for free from their bandcamp.
Ella Minnow - "We Got Moves"
Longtime Denton rockers, Ella Minnow released a slow-burner of a track this week. This duet, dubbed We Got Moves" (we’re hypothesizing that it’s the “We” part of their new single, “We and Them”), starts off slow with a slight western twang and some reverb-laden guitar before making way into the dueling male/female vocals. Eventually, they lead the way into the rest of the tune that kinda sounds as if an old surf rock record got played at the wrong speed, but in a good way. As the song goes on, it starts to give off a later era Jesse Sykes-vibe and that ain’t a bad thing either.