Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to help you stop doing it wrong. Send your problems to her -- confidentiality is assured, unless you want to use your drama as a ticket to Internet microfame.

Hello Fan!
We're a Chicago-based indie folk duo called Elk and big fans of your column. We have a question that we feel lucky to be asking: After several years making music together, we've decided to get more serious. We just released our debut EP and it's doing well. Family, friends and fans are paying more than we expected for the download, and we've got a little band nest egg on our hands. It's not too much money, but it still brings up a strategic question. What's the wisest way for us to invest money that the band earns? We don't need to pay ourselves right now. Should we pay some creative friends to help us make a cool-looking music video, or get some better press photographs? Should we just save it for gas money when we tour? (We haven't toured yet but would like to start.) Should we be saving up for engineer costs of a full-length record? What about investing in merch which could, in turn, help us make more money when touring?
Thanks so much for your advice!
Elk

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Rachel Parker

Kenny Chesney's No Shoes Nation tour came to Cowboys Stadium, bringing the DFW Chapter of said Nation to Arlington for a day of drinking, flag waving and camaraderie. Massive country tours don't get any better than this in 2013 -- Kenny's undercard includes unlikely superstar/brilliantly odd songwriter Eric Church, the Denton-bred Eli Young Band and Kacey Musgraves, the pot-smoking singer you can expect to find on year-end best-of lists of all stripes come December.

So there was plenty of cause for celebration, and celebrate the No Shoes Nation did. Let them show you how it's done:

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Update, 5/13: As of 11:30, or an hour and a half into the regular on-sale, there are still plenty of tickets available. Our searches included hits for tickets nearly on the floor, toward the back of the arena, for $197 (!!) and some at the lowest price point, which is $68 (including fees). That seems to be the trend around the country for this particular tour -- nothing's sold out yet.

Yes, Justin Timberlake, the crown prince of pop/viral video appearances will bring his 20/20 Experience Tour to Dallas on December 4. It's at the American Airlines Center, and tickets go on sale Monday, May 13 at 10 a.m.

See also:
-Don't Feel Guilty About Justin Timberlake's 20/20 Experience
-Justin Timberlake "Suit & Tie" is a Boring Rehash

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All photos by Mike Brooks

Homegrown Festival brought a solid crowd to Main Street Garden Park on a perfect Saturday. That crowd was unlike your typical concert-going group. Even for a music festival, there were a disproportionate number of kids in attendance. That's by design: Those under 10 got in for free and the day was built to be family friendly. There park is equipped with a fountain and playground, and Homegrown had face painting and magic shows set up as well. We talked to a few of the festival's young attendees (after getting permission from their parents) about what they saw and liked most.

See also:
-A Family-Friendly Music Festival and Cannibal Corpse: Just Another Saturday in Dallas
-My 12-Year-Old Stepson Reviews The Dark Side of the Moon

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The beatmakers, producers and DJs in Dallas are busting the local music scene wide open. We here at the Observer wanted to showcase that talent through mixes made by the best in the business, especially for DC9 at Night. So stream, download and share the mix with your friends. Relive the weekend and prepare for the next with the official DC9 at Night Mix.

It's easy to run into Taylor "Effin" Cleveland any night of the week, sometimes more than once. As the resident DJ at Circuit 12, he's responsible for amping up the electric vibe of the gallery's exhibits. A jack of all trades, Cleveland has also written for a few publications in town, painted murals for Urban Outfitters and played in local electronic act, Zhora (which he recently left).

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Mike Brooks

The Relatives, featuring Dallas.

Saturday in Dallas was a day you could choose to paint in the starkest possible contrasts, if that's your thing. Two big gatherings cut from an extraordinarily different cloth were happening within a relatively pleasant fifteen-minute stroll of each other, and how often do you get to travel from one event to the other in Dallas without touching a vehicle? Sure, this particular trip required a brief hop, skip and a jump over an on-ramp for I-30, through some trees, and past several parking lots that looked less than welcoming, but that's about as good as Dallas paths get anyway.

First up was Saturday's biggest event, the Homegrown Music and Arts festival. Fitting neatly inside Main Street Gardens and nestled between several skyscrapers, everything about this day in the park was spectacular. The weather was perfect, as a clear blue sky provided the citizens of Dallas with a constantly pleasant temperature. The attendance was fantastic and varied, with a very high adorable child/adorable dog ratio among the crowd and a lot of blankets and local art and relaxing. I'm pretty sure someone hotboxed a portapotty at some point. It was just that kind of place.

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Mike Brooks

Apparently the youth of today can sometimes be found in "pits" and within these pits it is agreed upon that they will "mosh," a word that covers a variety of bodily gyrations and movements. While in Britain obviously we call them "polite sections" where everyone vigorously shakes hands and nods gently in time to the music, I've been here long enough now that I've seen a thing or two.*

See also:
-Music Etiquette archives
-Songs That Have Hidden Messages When Played in Reverse

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Lauren Logan Photography

This weekend, Homegrown Music and Arts Festival will gather some of the area's biggest and most interesting bands at Main Street Garden Park.

This year, the lineup is once again all Texans, after the festival's organizers decided they were losing the focus of the thing by expanding beyond the state's borders for bands last year. Megan Morris tells the whole story in this week's music feature.

See also:
-Homegrown Festival Gets Back to its Dallas Origins
-The Best Bands in DFW: 2012 Edition

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Lindsey Best

Andrew Youssef

[Editor's Note: Longtime concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out almost two years ago that he had Stage IV Colon Cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events for our sister paper OC Weekly on top of other freelance work and working a day job at a hospital, of all places. As he continues to fight for his life, this series allows him to tell his story in his own words.]

By Andrew Youssef

I've had a number of moments since my diagnosis that have inspired me to keep on fighting my battle with cancer. When I was laying in my hospital bed after my diagnosis, I reflected on the multitude of concerts that I attended. One of my immediate flashbacks was from 1992. I attended two nights of Ministry, Helmet and Sepultura at the Universal Amphitheatre in LA. It was incredible. Ministry was at their most destructive in support of their album Psalm 69 and Sepultura was gaining momentum in the thrash world with their album Arise.

See also:
-Last Shot: A Concert Photographer's Battle With Cancer
-The Most Important Time to Follow Your Passion is When it's Hardest
-Slayer Helped Get Me Through Chemotherapy

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When speaking of North Texas country music collective Chapter 11, we're not using the term "collective" lightly. The project, dreamed-up by Sherman-based producer and engineer Dustin Hendricks, who's worked with such greats as Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard and even metal giants Hellyeah, isn't a traditional band by any means. It's a genuinely collaborative musical project by several talented folks that simply wanted to finally work together. In fact, Hendricks admits that a short-coming of his own led to the project's beginning.

"I've written several songs in the past," says Hendricks on his way back from a radio-promotion visit in Corpus Christi. "I never put much more into them due to the fact that my voice sounds like nails on a chalk board."

See also:
-The 100 Best Texas Songs: The Complete List
-The Ten Most Badass Band Names in DFW
-The Best Bands in DFW: 2012 Edition
-Photo Essay: The Tattoos of Dallas' Nightlife Scene

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