When a Music Scene Leads to a Boom

Denton, Texas, is a small city home to two universities in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan region. Several years ago, Chris Flemmons, a long-time resident and singer/songwriter for the Sub Pop band The Baptist Generals, decided he wanted to stem the annual exodus of his friends who went looking for jobs in cities outside of Denton. He thought the best way to do this was to leverage what he saw as the city’s “best export” – its music scene.

Considering that Denton has well over 100 active bands in a city of just over 110,000 residents, it wasn’t a stretch of reasoning. The city serves as home or launching pad to bands as diverse as Midlake, Bowling for Soup, Eli Young Band, Neon Indian, and Sarah Jaffe. Even the local polka band, Brave Combo, has appeared on The Simpsons and won two Grammy Awards. Musical genres represented on any given night in the rehearsal spaces, house parties, and venues that fill Denton range from hip hop and doom metal to experimental folk and noise rock.