Your Texas Summer Concert Guide: The Shows Worth Marking Down

Summer in Texas is brutal, but the concert calendar makes up for it. Between the outdoor amphitheaters running their gates open until midnight, the indoor venues running their AC on max, and the festival circuit moving through Austin and Houston, the next four months are going to be unrelenting. We've been working through promoter announcements all spring — here's what we're marking down, city by city, and where we think the energy is going to be.

Paper Tiger continues to do most of the heavy lifting for SA's underground bookings — three or four shows worth flying in for already on the books through August. The 1,200-cap room on the Saint Mary's strip has built a reputation for catching artists right before they outgrow rooms this size, and the summer lineup follows the pattern.

The Aztec Theatre's run of touring rap dates is also unusually deep this year. After the Freddie Dredd / Back to Hell stop in May, the Aztec is hosting a series of mid-level hip-hop and alternative bookings that would have routed past San Antonio entirely two years ago. The Tobin Center and Majestic Theatre are running their usual mix of theater-scale tours, jazz and Latin programming, and one-night-only specials — the Majestic's summer slate in particular is worth a full look. The Frost Bank Center has the Don Toliver stop on June 14 (covered separately on this site) and a handful of other arena dates worth marking.

Don't sleep on Sam's Burger Joint and The Lonesome Rose for smaller bills. The Lonesome Rose's outdoor patio is the best low-key summer move in the city, and Sam's is one of the only rooms in town doing consistent under-21 booking.

Stubb's, Mohawk, Empire, ACL Live at the Moody Theater — the rotation is on its normal cycle, with Stubb's outdoor amphitheater taking the bulk of the touring stops. Antone's continues its decades-long run as the city's blues home base, and Emo's has the most reliable mid-tier hip-hop and alternative calendar of any room in the city.

The bigger story is the festival circuit. ACL in October is the obvious headliner (we have a full preview on this site). But the run of smaller festivals in June and July — Hot Luck on the food-and-music side, Float Fest, and the various one-day showcase events — are doing some of the more interesting booking this year. Watch the smaller bills.

White Oak Music Hall is having its strongest summer in years. The newer 713 Music Hall has filled a gap in the 2,500-3,000 cap range the city was missing. Toyota Center is hosting two of the bigger Texas-tied tours and a handful of national stops worth crossing the state for, and NRG Stadium has a stadium-level show or two on the books in addition to the World Cup matches in June and July.

Houston's smaller rooms — The Heights Theater, Continental Club Houston, the various warehouse-district pop-ups — are also worth tracking. Houston has more rap shows per capita than any city in Texas, and most of them never make it onto the national booking radar.

Granada Theater is the consistent flagship for Deep Ellum bookings. The Factory in Deep Ellum is doing the bigger touring stops. House of Blues Dallas and South Side Music Hall round out the mid-tier. American Airlines Center has a handful of arena dates that will move tickets fast. AT&T Stadium is going to be dominated by the World Cup through July, but the surrounding bookings — at smaller rooms and across Deep Ellum — are going to benefit from the international foot traffic.

Trees in Deep Ellum continues to be the room where the city's harder-to-categorize bookings end up — punk, hardcore, experimental electronic, niche hip-hop. If you want to see what Dallas's actual scene looks like, the Trees calendar is where you start.

We'll keep this updated through Labor Day. New show announcements get added as confirmations come in, and we'll flag the ones we're going to be at with photo and review coverage. Show tips welcome at the contact page — promoters, publicists, and fans all get the same response window.

Summer's already started. The shows aren't waiting on you.