Flyer for “Behind the Music” exhibit, centering Deep Ellum’s music scene over the years.
The next part of Deep Ellum’s Behind the Music exhibit series opens on Friday, March 13 at the Deep Ellum Community Center.
The last iteration of the exhibit featured the stories of music venue owners, bookers, managers and artists in the 1980s. Now, venues like Trees, Club Dada and Lizard Lounge in the 1990s will take center stage.
“The exhibition centers on the 1990s, a defining era when Deep Ellum’s music scene surged with energy and experimentation,” reads a press release from the Deep Ellum Foundation. “Feature walls dedicated to Club Dada, Lizard Lounge and Trees highlight the venues that helped shape those nights and the artists who filled their stages. The Deep Ellum Foundation team dug through archives, tracked down old flyers, some of them the kind that used to land straight in your mailbox, and gathered DIY band promos, photographs, and video footage capturing ’90s rock in its prime. Together, these pieces recreate the raw, analog ways the scene spread and the spaces where Deep Ellum’s reputation for live music took hold.”
At the time, Deep Ellum venues hosted many up-and-coming bands, especially from those with an alternative rock sound.
“My favorite time of Trees was probably the mid-’90s, ’94, ’95, ’96. By that time, all the grunge bands had already come through, and they moved on to bigger venues. Leading up to that point, is kind of where Trees got its reputation,” longtime Trees employee Rusty Davis said in the press release. “We had Sound Garden, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, Joan Jett, Iggy Pop, every band you could imagine. And they were on their way up, and we were a stepping stone at that time. But my favorite thing about Trees or Deep Ellum in general was we were a neighborhood. We looked out for each other.”
On March 13, the exhibit will be open from 4-7 p.m., and you can reserve your spot here. It will be available to view through June. If you have a story about this era of Deep Ellum or a music collectible to show off, you can contribute via an interactive wall in the exhibit to be chronicled in the Deep Ellum Archive, according to the press release.
I am a North Texas native with roots in Arlington and Benbrook, and I graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2018. My previous work has centered around small towns and cities west of Fort Worth, and my byline has appeared in The Springtown Epigraph/The Tri-County Reporter, Weatherford Democrat, NewsBreak, Fort Worth Weekly and The Shorthorn. I am happy to serve in Lakewood, which I’ve heard referred to as a small town within the big city. Feel free to email me at medwards@advocatemag.com