Longhorn Jubilee featuring St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Abraham Alexander, The Suffers

To celebrate Longhorn Ballroom’s 75th anniversary, the venue will host a series of events to honor the iconic room's past, present, and future. Dubbed the Longhorn Jubilee, the all-genre-encompassing events will unfold both inside the Ballroom and outside in the Courtyard combining music with food trucks, local vendors, and more; a celebration highlighting the curated programming and eclectic community spirit that has been bringing fans and musicians to the Longhorn for three-quarters of the last century. 

The celebration continues on April 19 with performances by St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Abraham Alexander, The Suffers, and The Longhorn Ballroom Players led by Chad Stockslager.

Thank you to event sponsors: Prekindle, Rujo Boots, Geisler Partners, Visit Dallas and Dallas Observer.

St. Paul & The Broken Bones

Founded in Birmingham, Alabama in 2011, St. Paul & the Broken Bones consists of Paul Janeway (vocals), Jesse Phillips (bass), Browan Lollar (guitar), Kevin Leon (drums), Al Gamble (keyboards), Allen Branstetter (trumpet), Chad Fisher (trombone), and Amari Ansari (saxophone). The eight-piece ensemble burst into the world with their 2014 debut Half the City, establishing a sound that quickly became a calling card and landing the band a slew of m The Broken Bonesajor festivals including Lollapalooza, Coachella and Glastonbury. Critical praise from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, SPIN and NPR followed, leading to shared stages with some of the world’s biggest artists—Elton John and The Rolling Stones among them—and launching an impressive run of headlining tours behind what Esquire touted as a "potent live show that knocks audiences on their ass.”

The group has continued to expand their sound with every record, branching out well beyond old-school soul into sleek summertime funk and classic disco on albums like 2018's Young Sick Camellia. Their forthcoming LP, Angels In Science Fiction, stretches their limbs further afield, building on the shadowy psychedelia and intricate, experimental R&B of 2022’s The Alien Coast.

 Abraham Alexander

When Abraham Alexander unspools his extraordinary life story, it becomes clear that he should always trust his instincts. Each time he has, something unknowable but amazing has happened for him.

Born in Greece, where he spent the early part of his life with the Acropolis as his playground, Abraham was transplanted to Texas in the early 2000s at 11 years old to escape the ever present racial tension of his birthplace. Adopted in Texas after losing his mother in a car accident with a drunk driver, Abraham became a sports nut who excelled on the pitch and had first set his sights on a career in soccer. A torn ACL sidelined those ambitions but opened the door to a new path. A friend handed him a guitar during this downtime, and, without warning, his soul was unlocked.

Songs he did not know that he had in him poured out. A series of increasingly incredible chance meetings — including a life-changing encounter with Leon Bridges — led him to nurture this newfound musical voraciousness. Those roads have converged on his forthcoming album Sea/Sons, out on Dualtone Records in 2023.

Co-produced by Alexander with the help of several folks including Matt Pence and Brad Cook, the album is a lush, seductive affair that showcases the 31-year-old singer-songwriter's beguiling voice — one which offers both honey and grit — and supple acoustic guitar work. The 11 tracks on Sea/Sons display a cool assuredness even as the songs themselves play with themes of loss, redemption, longing, anguish, and joy informed by a complex life of love and pain. There is a refreshing genre fluidity at play as elements of folk, pop, rock, R&B, gospel, and even electronic music meld and tangle. Ineffable backing vocals, sparse but rich arrangements, and a sense of emotional purpose draw the musical threads together into a cohesive whole that is simultaneously warm and cool.

The Suffers

“How do we heal from this?” Kam Franklin asks on The Suffers’ explosive new album, It Starts With Love, It Ends With Love Part 1. “How do we heal?” It’s a loaded question without any clear answers, a painful reckoning with the open wounds of racial violence and trauma that continue to plague this nation as we lurch forward from one tragedy to the next, swearing things will change each time only to watch the same scenes play out over and over again. “They keep breaking us like we can’t feel,” Franklin continues. “We’ve all been shouting out since Emmett Till.” “There’s a lot of anxiety that comes with being Black in America,” says Franklin, “with not feeling safe if you put on a hoodie or even just look at somebody the wrong way. I wrote that song with my friend John Michael in New Orleans, and it was a really therapeutic thing for both of us to speak our truth like that. “The truth, it seems, has set The Suffers free. Racism, misogyny, and the ugly underbelly of the music industry are all in the band’s crosshairs on It Starts With Love..., but so are growth and evolution and self-acceptance. Written in the midst of a tumultuous stretch that saw the Gulf Coast Soul powerhouse reinvent themselves personally and professionally, the record is a fierce, defiant ode to resilience and commitment, to the passion and drive that brought them together in the first place. The writing here is bold and self-assured, with fearless lyrics and addictive melodies, and the performances are blistering to match, fueled by buoyant rhythms, muscular horns, and Franklin’s hair-raising vocals. Mixed by GRAMMY-winner Adrian Quesada (Black Pumas, Prince), who transferred all of the sessions to analog tape, and mastered by Chris Longwood (Khruangbin, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic), It Starts With Love...is an album for survivors, for the down and out, for the doubted and the written off, but it’s delivered with the kind of faith and conviction that ultimately transcends pain and anger to instead land on something far more triumphant and spiritually rewarding. Certainly, there’s a righteous fire burning beneath the surface, but the heart of this record is, as its title would suggest, love: love of the band, love of the music, love of the self. Founded in 2011, The Suffers built a devoted local following before breaking out internationally in 2015 on the strength of their extraordinary debut EP, Make Some Room, which helped land them performances everywhere from Letterman to NPR’s Tiny Desk. The band followed it up in 2016 with a self-titled full-length that yielded similarly widespread acclaim along with star-making performances at Newport Folk and on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. By the time the group released their 2018 sophomore effort, Everything Here, their arrival as critical and festival favorites was undeniable: NPR praised the “multidimensional, multicultural possibilities of their take on soul,” while The Guardian called the album an “adventurous” collection that “blends 70s R&B, disco, jazz, and contemporary gospel,” and Rolling Stone proclaimed it “an inspired vision of roots music.” It Starts With Love...marks the band’s debut release for Missing Piece Records.

The Longhorn Ballroom Players

The Longhorn Ballroom Players led by Chad Stockslager are an iteration of the historic house bands the venue was known for – playing R&B standards and deep cuts, paying homage to the Longhorn’s history.

Featured special guests for April 19 include legendary artists: Gregg A. Smith, Little Ernie Johnson, Lady Lotion, and Bobby Patterson.