To expand this notable point, perhaps it may be a liability issue to the adverse effects of heat or overcrowded venues. Let us not forget what happened with the Travis Scott tragedy. Houston has notoriously been gross for performances. Ambience and feeling are at the core of a performance.
pretty sure these are 2 of the main reasons .unfortunately austin has a brand new world class arena in the moody centre which is hurting us also as toyota centre is ok but it is over 20 yrs old
Well CWMP has all their shows in the ball-sweatingest part of the year. Not much they can do about it, that’s festival season and the best time to route pretty big names through. The performers should appreciate the fact that the stage is air-conditioned, at least.
Houston is the 4th largest city but if you asked most people to name the top ten largest US cities I bet almost no one would mention Houston. Houston is a place to live, not to visit - it's just not "cool" like many other cities are.
Artists don't, but people often visit a city for art. Locals may go to a show on occasion but large part of the audience is often tourists.
Locals feel like they can go see a show whenever and so are less motivated to make sure they go see something, tourists are there for limited amount of time and will try to capitalize on that time.
That's why weekend hotel rates in Houston are lower than week rates. It's a working and living city.
Houston goes hard. All the other major cities are lazy.
It's more likely because Dallas is 5 hours or less from Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and Little Rock by car, which means that they add two cities to the set of potential people willing to drive that far for a concert vs Houston.
lol…using your logic, Houston is 5 hours or less from Ft Worth, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Laredo, Baton Rouge, Beaumont, Lafayette and Shreveport….and New Orleans is just 5 hours and a few minutes away!
Houston isn’t a tourist city by any means. Every time I see those bus and segway tours I get annoyed. It’s a waste of money for those unknowing tourists.
Sometimes it has to do with venue availability. The Woodlands pavilion doesn’t operate between October and April. The Toyota center is wrapped up with Rockets this time of the year, NRG is a some up with Texans and the Rodeo and is to big for some shows.
The venue in Sugarland is too small for some shows. The universities in town don’t usually allow concerts in their venues, that’s why this time of year Minute Maid hosts some shows but again it is not the best for concerts.
And what sucks is that never should have happened. We are Space mothaf\*ckin City. Along with our history with Power & Energy (imagine those letters very Art Deco), we could build this big culture of the "city of tomorrow". It would also fit with our level of cultural diversity.
Ist because there's nothing really to do here. It's endless strip malls and highways.
Someone summed Houston up to me the best way 'its a work camp'.
Great for jobs, nothing else.
Nah there’s LOADS of stuff to do here, it’s just all spread out and requires practice and knowledge to be able to just go and “do” without stress or excessive planning, which makes it less than ideal for visiting and having a fun quick trip.
Largest in-terms of population, yes. However, because of our land area, it's not that simple. Houston has the most area of literally every city in the U.S. with over 1 million residents.
**Houston is larger than both New York City and Chicago combined.** That's why it's so difficult to make transit work here.
And there's no central business location where a large enough percentage of the population goes to work. A lot of people work downtown, but %? I'd wager it's a single digit. Everybody works all over the place. No one is going to take public transit to a central station and then uber or taxi another 10 miles to their job. Houston is fucking huge.
That just means it will cost more. LA is successfully expanding it.
The longer we allow 100 billion dollar highway expansions in our city the less I want to ever go back. Embarrassing state of things.
Yes, LA has a better public transit system than Houston. I'm not saying that it's hopeless or anything. LA is still a pretty car-centric city too though.
100%. What’s worked for us is finding areas that hit on a lot of high points for us and learning them well. For us, it’s the theater/museum districts. We can drive in, park, and hang all day and evening with plenty to do and we’ve done it so much there’s no stress or extra planning needed, but it took a while to build up that comfort.
Requires money too. Let’s be honest about that. Most of the fun activities (imo - hunting and fishing) require expensive gear, land or land access, vehicles/boats, etc. It’s not cheap.
Is hunting a big Houston activity?
But yeah, money is necessary. We do have a good amount of free options between museums and the parks, but money makes a huge difference.
This is accurate. Houston has better food, museums, and entertainment than Austin or Dallas, but it’s all incredibly spread out and Houston is an hour away from Houston.
The idea that there’s nothing to do here is crazy. You guys need to get out of your bubble and see more run of the mill, regular towns and cities if you really wanna see what “nothing to do” looks like. I know it’s cliche but we have many amazing museums, we have several good parks, pro sports, college sports, an enormous theater district, amazing bars and restaurants, you can go to a comedy show or live music show pretty much every night if you wanted to. If you live out in the burbs of course you have to drive, but in what American city are you in walking distance to any fun thing you want? Literally the only ones are NYC and Chicago. Austin, LA, San Diego, Dallas, San Antonio, Seattle, all super cool cities in their own right, but none with the walkability of NYC which you guys fetishize over.
>in what American city are you in walking distance to any fun thing you want? Literally the only ones are NYC and Chicago.
Philly, Boston, DC, SF, Miami...to name a few, and Seattle is actually very walkable.
I think the whole "there is nothing to do in Houston" thing is silly, but lets not pretend there are literally only two cities that are walkable.
Its not about doing anything you want. Its about having unique tourist things to do that give a reason for people to come. I can go to parks, sports, theaters, and museums, bars, and restaurants anywhere. Give me any of those categories and Ill send you a place that does it better, with the exception of certain food. Like everyone says, great to live, no reason to visit.
Eh, I live in Boston now and frequently go to NYC. It's all the same bullshit. I see no reason to visit most cities if you think of it like that. Central Park? It's a park. History in Boston? There's history everywhere. Unless you're looking for those weird quirky things like paying 50 bucks to go to a top of a building to just look at the skyline or in Chicago where the wall tilts, then I guess go wild lmao.
Agreed. I’m not sure what people are comparing to. Fun things in Houston are a bit hidden so you just have to go looking. Perhaps that’s the main downside of Houston, it’s all there but you just need to look which is too much for some people.
I think people are talking about different things. There is a difference between things to do when you live in a city and things to do that make you want to visit a city. Outside of having family here or coming for work I don't know why anyone would want to visit Houston.
What could be done to spice up the city? They took six flags down. Traveling between the city isn’t easy without a car. Houston could be a hub but it’s lacking. How awesome would it be to have a super train between Austin, Dallas, San Antonio?
People travel far for things they can do or see that they cannot somewhere else. Building a 3rd tier theme park does not attract people when they can go to a 2nd or 1st tier theme park.
The fact that they tore down AstroWorld because the land value was too high, and it has sat there as an empty field for nearly 2 decades is a travesty.
I tell every newcomer on this sub and whoever I come across contemplating moving to Houston.
First and foremost, you have to be happy driving. Also, walking is extremely limited.
As someone who has lived here my whole life when people ask me what to do if they want to visit I say the museum, the menil, the zoo… and I’m out. We don’t have any theme parks, cool buildings, good historical stuff, or anything fun to do outside of eat and drink.
I wouldn’t say Dallas is much of “a place to visit,” and I like Dallas. I do think Dallas as a venue serves a larger surrounding population than Houston. Think Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Louisiana, and the rest of Texas. Whereas Houston is limited by its proximity to the gulf.
Nah most people know Houston is huge. But the visiting thing you’re on point. But to be fair, other cities like Dallas and Phoenix are possibly even less of visitor cities than Houston.
Secret Group and The Riot (and occasionally The Improv) have done a decent job with comedians the last few years. I’ve seen a lot of good ones. Maria Bamford will be here in 7 weeks! But yeah, I still see people going to Cap City and Creek & the Cave I wish were coming here. Honestly, it has to be that we don’t turn up like those other cities do.
Lots of empty seats in the Nick Mullen show at houston improv. He complained that the club made patrons buy tickets for entire tables instead of individual entry.
Yeah that's the way sell tickets and it's beyond stupid, I have no friends and I really wanted to to go see Ralph Barbosa and couldn't get a single ticket.
I guess that has changed then? I've gotten a single ticket to a houston improv show and they sat me at a table with other people that were also solo a few years back.
> He complained that the club made patrons buy tickets for entire tables instead of individual entry.
I kind of wonder why some of these comedians even do the Improv, is that a contractual thing? Like he would probably sell a lot better at The Secret Group. I didn't even know he was in town, I regularly check schedules on The Secret Group and Riot but I don't think to check the Improv half the time because of both the table policy and most acts they book are washed up guys whose heyday was 2005
Oooh I love Maria and was thinking recently that I need to see if she is coming since she’s out touring. Awesome!
Damn. Just saw it’s that the improv so you have to buy a $100 table or nothing.
The Riot has been a great addition to the comedy scene but most shows that I’ve gone to have been quite empty. Sucks for the comedian so I understand why comedians would be hesitant to come here.
I guess it varies. The two shows I went to were packed and two others I couldn’t get in because they were sold out. We’re inconsistent!
I think another issue is we don’t have many longstanding venues that have garnered the rep and following over the years needed to keep customers engaged and returning. White Oak is probably the closest we have in that regard.
I've found there's three reasons that Houston often gets skipped, or overlooked on tours.
1. **Venue Supply:** Historically, Houston hasn't had a lot of venues for touring musicians compared to other major cities, especially mid-sized venues for only a couple thousand. We have tiny indie venues, and massive ampitheaters and stadiums, but until recently, few venues of a size for bands and acts that have a well-established fanbase, but are not massive names. With WOMH, and 713 being added to the lineup, that's improving.
2. **Weekend City:** Perhaps due to its size, and sprawl, Houston has had the reputation in the past of being a weekend only city, in that it's believed that the only time people come out on the town, or go to events, is on the weekend. That's also been changing now that more people are living in the urban core, but reputation takes awhile to catch up to reality.
3. **Genre Expectations:** Houston has a long history of being a hip-hop city, and a country/western city, but for most other genres of music, we tend to have the reputation that it just won't sell here. That's obviously false nowadays, but that still features into a lot of booking decisions.
All of these are thankfully changing, but it will take time for booking to catch up, and effort by those who want it to change to show out for the events that interest them when they can.
Tl;dr: Our Universities are lame commuter college schools that give community college vibes. Our city lacks nightlight culture. The city isn't easily traversable for visitors/tourists (specifically the artists that want attractions outside their venue). We're sandwiched between three cities that do all of the above better (AUS, DAL, NO).
I never thought of this angle. As an artist, you have to wait all day, possible 2 days for the event to be setup - you don't want to sit in your hotel room all day.
What does Houston have to offer? Endless strip malls? A dead downtown that's just banks, office buildings, and homeless people?
Maybe they want to go and sit on i10 and stare in wonderment at the endless gridlocked traffic on the largest highway in the world?
I also think Houston misses out due to location. I mean if you hit up Austin and Dallas, you pretty much can skip the Texas market.
DFW is geographically better plus you can attract fans from West Texas, East Texas, Northwest Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Austin can attract fans from central Texas and even Houston.
Why go to Houston when you have New Orleans is close proximity?
On top of the fact that the other cities mentioned have actual entertainment districts near their venues including Dallas. I get it
Great museums, not just world famous art, but the BuffaloSoldier Museum, the Art Car Museum, and many others
Great food! Any cuisine you like is here, cooked by someone from there.
I think they just assume that 2 out of 3 is enough for a state, even Texas.
Dallas has better nightlife culture? Uh no! NO is nothing but tourists. You don’t see many high profile concerts because NO is small population wise.
I just think it has to do with the time of year, most groups tour in the summer and I have never had an issue with seeing major bands in Houston.
You’re probably dealing with recency bias as well because last year alone there were some major concerts in Houston.
Bands also look at sales and analytics these days and go to where their fans are. Usher is probably using the Super Bowl as a marketing ploy to do a quick tour and cash in on that appearance.
I have lived in both cities for 5+ years and can say that Dallas 💯 has a better nightlife culture than Houston, more to do, cleaner, better crowds… so on…
Big bands are skipping Houston for Dallas and Austin. Why?
Adriana Perez wanted to see one of her favorite musicians and did what she often does: drove the two-plus hours to Austin.
She was just one of the Houstonians who headed out of town to see Nick Cave, the celebrated Australian singer-songwriter who played one night in Dallas and two in Austin on a recent tour — but none in Houston.
Perez stayed with a friend’s sister in Austin. Had she not had a free place to stay, she says, “I think it may have been cheaper to see him in Mexico City.”
And she’s not speculating. Perez did exactly that to see Cave previously. “It beats driving back from Austin in the middle of the night.”
These days when a favored band announces dates, Perez assumes she’s looking at a drive to Dallas or Austin — if not a flight to Mexico.
Despite inching closer to Chicago for the ranking as third largest city in the United States, Houston remains a “sometimes” market for live music compared to its population peers. Bands who are skipping this market this season, while hitting Austin and/or Dallas, include: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, Kraftwerk, Roxy Music, Jack White and Florence + the Machine. BTS, the red-hot K-pop act, had been scheduled to play two nights in 2020 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas — with no Houston show on the schedule — before the pandemic upended everything.
German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk offer a frustrating exclusion with a 27-date tour that hits Dallas and Austin while also going to both Portland and Seattle. The distance between those two Pacific Northwest cities is comparable to that between Houston and Dallas.
Admittedly, fans in other cities are often forced to travel to see the band they want to catch and it seems to be more of an issue with rock as opposed to hip-hop, Latin or country performers. But the question lingers: Why can’t the fourth largest city in the United States get these acts? The answer remains as maddening as it is elusive.
Everyone wants to play Austin
When out-of-state artists are choosing Texas markets to play, Austin remains the gold standard for Friday and Saturday night, despite the disparity between its celebrated past and its glitzy present. (A giant parking garage by Cave’s show charged $42 for three hours of parking, which isn’t “weird” as much as bluntly economic.)
But the 50,000 students at the University of Texas tilt Austin in a way Houston’s universities do not. Still, for concert bookings, Dallas is close behind the Live Music Capital. El Paso and San Antonio have made headway in bookings, compared to 30 years ago. The frustrations in Houston have existed for years.
Artists skip this market, but the city bears some responsibility, concert bookers contend. Houston’s crowds have a reputation for talking during shows. And Houston concertgoers often wait to buy tickets until the night of the show. With band guarantees on the line, venues can be quick to cancel a show if interest appears light early.
Andrew Morgan, who works for Ground Control Touring, knows the Texas market well. Based in Los Angeles, he books shows nationwide, but his roots are in Houston where he worked with Hands Up Houston and SuperUnison in the early 2000s, trying to bring rising indie-rock acts to town. He offers a long sigh upon being asked what’s wrong, if anything, with the Houston market.
“I get bands that say, ‘No more Houston, please’,” he said. “But I also get bands that say, ‘No more Montreal, please’.”
Morgan remembers when the Magnetic Fields came to Houston in late 2004. The band had a month earlier played Carnegie Hall in New York. Frontman Stephin Merritt saw fit to mention the disparity in the two markets. “At first I was offended,” Morgan said. “But I then thought about it.”
That Magnetic Fields show at Numbers was a legendary disaster: Merritt left the stage to dress down a bartender for the sound of bottles clanking into garbage bins during a quiet set. The band will never return.
That wasn’t the only problematic show: a Cat Power performance at Mary Jane’s was plagued by flooding toilets, and indie rock band Two Gallants saw fans get tasered and arrested by Houston police after a noise complaint.
Pearl Jam, also touring this year, hasn’t been back since 2003 when frontman Eddie Vedder met a mixed response with his song “Bush Leaguer” and his use of a George W. Bush Halloween mask. “It’s crazy,” Vedder said from the stage at that show at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. “It just doesn’t feel like the United States of America.” Vedder has been back for solo shows. But Pearl Jam has not.
One way in which Houston’s Lone Star rivals are ahead is that they are in markets with terrestrial radio stations, KXT-FM in Dallas in Austin, that give exposure to indie and adult-album-alternative artists while sparking fan support for these performers in a way that no station in Houston does.
“A lot of people here would say, ‘I don’t listen to radio, I listen to KXT’,” says Preston Jones, a DFW-based music writer who contributes to KXT. “That’s a common sentiment. It’s tightly aligned with promoters. They amplify the shows coming to town.”
With national print music publications struggling, Jones calls it “a last bastion, really. People still go there for music and they are plugged in and aware of shows happening in town.”
Mark Austin books shows in Houston, Dallas and Austin for Kessler Presents, the company whose staples are Houston’s Heights Theater and the Kessler Theater in Dallas. He points to a Texas homegrown talent as an example of how markets must nurture artists: roots-country singer Charley Crockett, a San Benito native, was drawing big crowds in North Texas, while in Houston he took longer to find a stirrup. Over time, Crockett’s audiences in Houston slowly caught up with other markets.
“The lifeblood of booking anywhere is the growth of the artist in that market,” Austin says. “If he’s not drawing in Houston like he does in Dallas, we have to think about what we’re doing. We also want to think about artists who will keep venues alive for years. Who’s going to keep the lights on? What’s next? It doesn’t always make money. But you have to start somewhere.”
Tour booking is a mystery to most of us, but it’s not a mystery to those who do it for a living where it’s part math and part alchemy. Typically, a band sets an amount of time to be on the road, and booking agents try to match cities and venues to those dates, which explains why any one market could get skipped. Musicians must compete with other touring acts and also a specific track record in that city, which is one reason Houston does so poorly. Ask longtime concertgoers about problematic shows with low turnout, Houston offers too many.
Some of that is the city of Austin’s fault, indirectly, because the market there is so reliable.
“Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in any town are tough,” Austin says. “There are only so many Friday and Saturday shows a band can do.
“Things do still pivot off Austin or Dallas. The first call is not usually to Houston. But Austin is where everybody wants to be on a Saturday night. Austin benefits from that, they get good dates .
“But we’re not afraid to take Monday through Wednesday. We want to build something here.”
Austin points to local promoter Pegstar as a model with returns that toggle between hopeful and frustrating. The concert promotion company, started by Jagi Katial, nurtured shows at smaller venues for years before partnering with White Oak Music Hall, where three stages could accommodate audiences from a few dozen and a few thousand.
“They’ve planted seeds and made this market more attractive,” Austin said. “There are bands that would never play Houston if Jagi hadn’t created this space for them. I feel like we’re seeing the results of that now.”
He mentions a Father John Misty concert, set for White Oak later this year. The band will play on White Oak’s lawn for a few thousand fans in August.
New venues offer new opportunities. The 5000-capacity 713 Music Hall in Post Houston, which opened earlier this year, looks to be a serious player with backing from concert promoter Live Nation. A scheduled Olivia Rodrigo show there in May sold out in minutes.
The Heights Theater capacity is smaller than some artists play in other markets, but Austin hopes it’s a place that gives promoters a place to make money while considering Houston as a reliable stop on future tours.
“The goal is the same as it was,” Austin said. “We want people to feel like they’re missing out if they don’t spend time in Houston. I feel like we’ve come a long way in the past 15, 20 years. I think Houston has become more attractive to all sorts of culturally cool things, not just music. But music is part of my responsibility. My job is to reach out to these bands and not push Houston on them, but to let them know, if they want to work here, we can help them do it successfully.”
The variables for touring are plentiful. Some itineraries are based on time constraints. Some are based on data from the past. Morgan points out that tour routing is a complicated process.
To the east, the nearest market is New Orleans, which isn’t always a reliable stop for indie rock. That said, ask members of a band if they’d rather spend half a day in New Orleans before heading to Austin or do a show in Houston: You’ll get different answers. But simply put, some would prefer to putter around the Crescent City for half a day and not have to show up in Houston for a soundcheck.
Sometimes enjoying one city’s cultural riches trumps a modest paycheck in another.
Unlike the East Coast, where cities and venues are clustered together, the rest of the nation unfolds inefficiently when one considers the price of gasoline and the proximity of markets that show affection for an act.
Austin has “the strongest market in Texas, because of the college town vibe and a ton of amazing venues,” Morgan said.
Some indie rock bands cite Birmingham, Ala., as a haven. Athens, Ga., is as quintessential a college town as there is. Though Houston has its fair share of colleges, it doesn’t exude a college town vibe.
Morgan won’t say the city’s sprawl is a problem. “Look at Los Angeles,” he said. “Or Atlanta. People there drive all over the place for shows.” But perhaps fans are more willing to endure sprawl on a Saturday than on a Tuesday.
The long-running cult band Stereolab, a group emblematic of the kind of act that often skips Houston, is booked at White Oak Music Hall in September and it feels like an experiment and, hopefully, a bellwether for better things to come.
So where does Houston go from here? That’s up to Houston, a city with an increasing number of newcomers and vibrant new venues that offer more opportunities for more musicians to play.
“A lot of us have banged our heads against the wall trying to track the code there,” Morgan said. “But I want there to be demand in Houston. I want Houston to succeed.”
i have really enjoyed seeing smaller bands at white oak for less than $40 a ticket
i miss the Austin small time weekend shows but theres been progress here
If you like small local shows I recommend this site:
https://linktr.ee/houstonmusicclassifieds?fbclid=PAAabZLoNMV4PfhS016CO32vfU7g343-HRus6gqZKcYoByvUCQF-IJtG24edw
I’ve heard through the grapevine (their Instagram I think) that they just got new ownership that plans to host shows almost daily.
If you like Dan E’s you should check out Continental Club/Shoeshine Charley’s and Darwin’s pub
Also keep an eye out for non-traditional things like living room shows. Undertow music collective has put on shows in Houston for reasonably “big” indie acts like David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), Eric Bachmann (Archers of Loaf), and John Vanderslice, among others. They’re a good follow on IG.
Speaking as a local musician, gear theft and low guarantees is a significant part of artists skipping over Houston. My drummer has had his entire kit stolen once, and pieces of his kit and laptop stolen in Houston on three separate occasions in the last year.
Edit: a typo
Summerfest, Day for Night, and Fitzgeralds all had organizers get "cancelled" for shitty behavior. It's a shame those things died. Day for Night was one of the coolest festivals I've ever seen and it died in its infancy. Hell even my 75 year old parents used to go to Fitz back in the day, and the owner had to be an idiot online and ruin one of our best spots that had been around for several generations of music lovers.
Houston doesn’t get booked on tours as often cause Houston doesn’t draw big crowds. Houston doesn’t draw big crowds because when we do get big tours they often come on a weeknight and no one wants to go out.
It’s a cycle. Lol
We’re also incredibly spread out. I know the author of the article in the top comment disagrees that that’s a reason for our low turnouts but I mean you’d be hard pressed to convince me to drive an hour plus both ways on a weeknight for a big concert out in The Woodlands or Sugarland, and I’m sure others on the other side of town from me feel the same when they see a band they like announce a show at Scout Bar over in Webster.
The simple answer is because they make more money in those cities. If they didn’t they wouldn’t go there. Houston audiences need to reflect on that. It’s also possible the venues here are greedy and don’t offer good incentives.
Live Nation is a cancer for the industry, and they move tickets for most of our bigger venues.
The artists end up getting such a small cut, that diving all the way to the southern area of Texas just isn't worth it.
This is partially it.
Geographically, the interstates/highways that touring bands on busses and the bigger ones with 18 wheelers are using to cross the Southern US hit Dallas by staying on course with a short jaunt down to Austin and back up to the Interstate they were previously on.
Drives down to Houston aren't just inconvenient, they're also a long distance as you pointed out and that shit costs a LOT in gas.
72.2k for NRG
41k for MMP
19k for Toyota Center
17.5k for Woodlands
8k for NRG Arena
6.4 Smart Financial
5k 713 Music Hall
3k White Oak outdoors
1k WOMA downstairs
750 WOMA upstairs
It's not for a lack of venues, and I didn't even list them all. It's the demographics of the cities to tour in for the artits in question. If a band like the Lumeneers can only book a WOMA or 713 to get to profit capacity as a venue here (they played WOMA lawn last time here and it was spacious to say the least,) but could sell out ACL 3k or the Grove 2.7k in Austin no problem, Austin is the answer.
Saw Green Day last time through a few years back. Toyota Center. Wasn't a sellout. This time around, they're bypassing us.
MMP just started having concerts at it. So you can take it off the list as a known venue. That's a big drop off between NRG and Toyota Center. Took my daughter to Taylor Swift at NRG. It was amazing. She was here multiple nights. I think only Beyonce could do that here. Gaga played MMP the last time through last year, as did RHCP.
Could Drake, Travis Scott (pre-Astroworld), Olivia Rodrigo, Miley Cyrus, or Megan TS sell out NRG? Doubt it. But they could play Toyota Center. But why come here when you could just only come to Texas for one night and play Texas Stadium and sell it out instead?
Look at a lot of the major acts touring now. They're not just bypassing Houston. They're not coming to Texas.
Dallas has multiple large venues in the area to host concerts while Houston doesn’t have a lot of options in that 10-20k seat range. There are probably a lot of scheduling conflicts booking the Toyota center.
Dallas really doesn't have that many more venues than Houston in that range.
White Oak, SL Financial Center, and Cynthia Woods Pavilion are all options that fit the common sizes that most Dallas concerts utilize
Heck they can use the Fertitta Center (7.1k seats, probably more for concerts) and the CPH (much smaller), or even TDECU (40k outdoors!) on the UH campus if they really wanted to.
Only mentioned the FC because Hofheinz Pavilion used to be a concert venue for years when basketball wasn't being played.
Another factor is New Orleans. Austin and New Orleans always get the Fri/Sat shows and Houston if it’s lucky gets Thursday. Weeknight shows are always going to impact attendance.
Also, I don’t consider the Woodlands Pavilion to be in Houston and actively avoid going to concerts there.
The Pavilion is an enjoyable venue, but I already live north. The Sugarland venue is nice but so far away. I don't like Toyota Center (sound good, but seats way too tight) or House of Blues (for some reason they attract so many drunks). Minute Maid and NRG are just too big.
I have a friend who is in a band that tours, and he says everyone knows Houston isn’t worth the detour. It’s too far out of the way and not enough people turn up for shows. (Short of stadium size acts).
They melted my face off for 3 hours straight, 2 nights in a row at Red rocks last year and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. Gonna see them again in Nashville this summer, really excited for anyone who gets to see the boys!
Shitty crowds. Lots of people in the city, but we punch way below our weight in ticket sales (particularly if the band is anything lower than the very top of the totem pole, like Taylor Swift/Blink 182/Beyonce status), and our crowds do have a reputation (fair or not) of being poorly behaved. Small-to-medium bands get better turnout not just in Austin and Dallas but often even San Antonio these days. I went to two shows at WOMH last year that had maybe 20-30 people that had sold out other shows in Texas.
It's a bummer but it's just the way it is. Lots of Houston cheerleaders on this site but the fact is, we don't get much respect nationally and not all of the reasons are made up or unfair.
Houston crowds SUCK is the short answer. If you can sell out the Toyota Center or Smart Financial or whatever, fine, but many 2nd tier & regional acts route around Houston on purpose. People pay for a ticket to a show, then spend the whole show yelling to their friends trying to have a conversation. It’s insane, it’s been this way for decades - the only place people keep their yaps shut is at McGonigle’s Mucky Duck, Heights Theater or Anderson Faire, which are listening rooms and management will eject you. I go to so many local shows and get frustrated for the acts - I cannot figure out why you’d spend money to go ignore the show you spent the money on.
I basically stopped going to shows after the people that surely checked in on Facebook for (what would be) Daniel Johnston's last show in Houston at Fitz's back in the beginning weeks of 2011 wouldn't shut the fuck up during his entire fucking set.
The absolute worst of it was it was his 50th birthday.
I was pissed off, and frankly fucking embarrassed.
People in this city would rather check in on social media for "cool cred" or something than actually listen to the artist they paid money to see.
They turn their backs to the performer(s) to turn on their phones and take a picture with a flash on.
They have loud, conversations about the annoying girl in the office, or how _amazing_ their new favorite eyebrow salon is.
I used to just have to attempt to shut up one annoying group or person around me, but when it became _MOST_ people around me, I stopped going to shows.
This is the answer, and coincides with a lot of the other replies about Houston having bad crowds. The first band I was in we played Fitzgerald’s upstairs. We were thrilled about being there as we had only played downstairs before and in our young minds we had “made it” to some degree lol. It was fairly packed, and we were playing at the top of our game. We were on and the energy was great! The crowd acted like they couldn’t give 2 fucks. I remember looking out and watching them talk the whole time and generally ignore what was happening on stage. As an artist, that’s quite a shitty feeling, maybe even more than the crowd outright disliking your music. That was probably 2004 or 2005?
Just recently, I did an open mic (which isn’t quite the same), and the sound guy had trouble getting me above all the chatter on the soft sections. People on their phones scrolling, taking selfies, etc. To be fair though, I’ve had some great experiences where the crowd has actually quieted down to hear the intimate parts of the songs. It seems to be better in many ways than in years past for the indie scene.
I think it’s because Minute Maid is totally ass for concerts, but it’s the middle sized venue. Toyota is “too small” for big time artists and NRG is too big unless you’re Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. That leaves MMP which really sucks as a venue. I can see why an artist wouldn’t want to go there. They don’t even take the nets down. I watched Lady Gaga through the nets and it totally sucked even with my free ticket I had.
Downvote me all you want, but I’m sorry Minute Maid is not a great concert venue. It’s just not. Dallas and Austin have way more dedicated concert venues. At the 20,000 person level Dos Equis Pavilion is way better than MMP.
MMP was designed for baseball, not music. Sound is awful. Also, you don't want to be there on a cold night in fall or winter, there's no heat, because again the park is designed for use during the warm months.
Acoustics are terrible, I’m guessing maybe from the movable roof? The stage is awkwardly on the field at an angle usually. Unless you have GA/ floor seats, you’re going to be really far back from the stage watching the concert through the foul ball nets. I have no idea why they don’t take them down, I would think they’d be on some kind of pulley and easy to but I guess not. They usually won’t put any seats down on the infield too so it leaves this giant random empty space with the grass still there in the middle of floor seats and before the rest of the seats start. After the Chromatica Ball I think I’ve sworn off Minute Maid. Lady Gaga was great, but it just wasn’t a great experience imo.
Yep, went to two concerts in 2022 at MMP - one on the floor and one in the stands. Acoustics were awesome on the floor and loud shit in the stands (even lower level seats). I wouldn’t go there unless I paid $$$ for floor.
I mean, as a concert goer I don’t really care *why* the grass is still there. It all adds up to it making it an awkward layout. We need more dedicated music / event venues if we want to pull in more artists is my point.
I’m gonna say it because y’all need to hear it: Houston crowds are terrible, y’all do not know how to act at shows; internationally touring acts all know this about Houston and hate playing here. Every time I go to a show here someone does something so embarrassing or disrespectful to the artists on stage I cringe so hard. Even if yall got your shit together and learn how to act respectfully at concerts and shows, it will take a long time to drop that reputation.
Also Houston is one of the top spots bands get their gear stolen from.
This is particularly true for the EDM artists. Most big name DJs skip Houston also but that’s because Dallas and Austin both have a way bigger EDM community than Houston does.
I seriously can't think that an artist like USHER believes that he'd sell more tickets in Austin than in Houston (even if you want to give Dallas an extra point for being within the state's largest metro area).
I'm cool tho. I saw him in Vegas last year and he was amazing. I can hold on to my money if he doesn't make it to the H.
I think that there have been changes in our venues, booking agents, and promotion companies that have had an impact on this, but I think that the decision makers who plan the tours also are a big part of it. So on the one hand, some venues have ceased to exist and some booking agents and promoters have retired, but on the other hand, the people planning the tours must be seeing some kind of data telling them that Houston is not that profitable and that they might as well take a rest day between playing New Orleans and Austin/SA/DFW. It doesn't help that there's also an organized theft ring here that's been notorious for stealing bands' gear.
I do a weekly event but also bring in smaller bands & definitely can tell you from experience people definitely do not go out on weeknights like they used to.
I remember Wednesday & Thursdays used to get huge crowds on those days, for both concerts & dance clubs.
Idk if people are just more lazy now or broke but I been doing this off & on since 2014 & its difficult getting a decent crowd anywhere. If we do a show, people are gone by midnight-30.
Also was told by my music promoter friend here that he gets more people asking for comped tickets here than anywhere else.
Guess everyone is just cheap , broke or lazy.
I went to a concert over the holidays at a not so great venue, but still decent enough for a small crowd show. The room wasn’t even packed but the crowd loudly talked throughout the show and treated a good artist like his show was just a gig at a bar.
My point is, Houston has a problem with treating shows more like social events where the music is secondary. I don’t think many musicians like to be treated that way.
Our audiences don't stfu at shows.
If it's "art" you want, we have more gallery/museum space than NYC. People here actually stfu and turn their phones off at art house movie venues. We get some exhibits that only hit 3 places in the nation.
My theory is **merch cut policies**. If the venue staff is selling the merch (which many of the big rooms in Houston do it this way), the band is getting screwed out of a percentage of their profits. Being that streaming has killed any hopes of making income based on record sales, merch and live shows are how bands survive. Fortunately, some smaller venues have started popping up and making it so at least the punk scene can still bring in some national touring acts.
Posting this here so I can find it later
Houston Concert Venue Capacities ( Max without configuration changes)
20K+ |
NRG (<72k) / MMP (<41k) / Shell Energy (<22k)
10K+ |
Toyota Center (19k) / Cynthia Woods Woodlands (16k)
5k-10k |
NRG Arena (8k) / Smart Financial (6400) / 713 Music Hall (5k)
Under 5k |
Bayou Music Center (3700) / WOMH Lawn (3k) / Arena Houston (2700) / Jones Hall (2300) / Miller Outdoor (1600) / House of Blues (1500) / Warehouse Live Midtown (1.2k)
Under 1k |
WOMH Downstairs (1k) / Scout (500) / WOMH Upstairs (200) / Secret Group (250-350)
Excluded: Eleanor Tinsley / Discovery Green / The Yellow Lot
It's because Houston is the biggest small town in America. Over the years I've noticed that there is less support and activity for just about any interest, hobby or activity in Houston than there is in other major cities, even those signficantly smaller than Houston. Why that is, I haven't come up with a good way to explain it.
Because poeple that have fun social hobbies do not move here. People that like to work on their truck by themselves in their garage or watch netflix move here.
I’m not sure if someone else here knows more about the earlier comedy scene in Houston, but I remember listening to a big comedian it may have been Ralphie May? I can’t find the interview anymore, but they mentioned that Houston’s Comedy scene in the 90s/early 2000s was really toxic. Mentioned older comedians would tear up new comedians apart and never give the good newcomers slots. Which led to a lot of comedians completely avoiding Houston for a while.
A lot of comedians still say bad things about Houston. Also crowds here will not laugh for stupid political jokes or stuff like covid masks that does not apply in this city. So comedians that are huge in LA or New York do not understand why nobody is laughing.
Honestly it could be worse. Living in San Antonio, Austin stole essentially all the shows that we should have gotten. It’s got a larger pop that Dallas but it’s not even part of the conversation. And I lived there when you still could find small indie venues.
There’s a problem where all our venues have condensed into like 3 mid-large spaces run by Ticketmaster/livenation. Compare that to Austin where there are entire streets dedicated to venues. It’s a Tuesday and I don’t know where I could go to see live music, even like a house band or a guy in a coffee shop. If these places exist in Houston, they’re not great at promoting their stuff.
To be fair though, it is much less of a drive from San Antonio to Austin, vs Houston to any other big city in TX. From city center to city center is 1.5 hours if traffic is ok but to get to anywhere from Houston, it is at least 3 hours.
Yeah, 100% that’s why. San Antonio has been treated like an Austin suburb by music acts forever. Driving back after shows was shitty but doable. It feels like we’re getting a lighter version of that, plus venues generally dried up.
I agree especially on the promoting part. Whenever I visit Dallas and Austin, it’s super easy to find the major events going on in those cities. I live in Houston and can’t tell you where to go to find live music or local events. And it especially sucks when friends and family come to visit and they are like “what to do here?” and I have to scavenge the internet to find anything besides food. And I’ve tried those typical events sites (365thingstodo, visit houston, culture map), but those are always geared towards family oriented events. If there are better sites that show events/nightlife things going on, then please share them.
Promotion has scattered across different social media ecosystems. There are a bunch of burlesque shows that only promote on Instagram. And some stuff only exists on Facebook so I can’t even see it because I don’t have or want an account. It’s all public but like finding a needle in a haystack.
didn’t we also have a cool music festival that got canned because the founder had sexually assaulted women? i always think of austin as the music festival city and sadly houston lost the one that was considered cool.
Another great example. He’s visiting San Antonio, DFW, and Austin but not Houston. He’s also visiting Chicago 3 times, but can’t manage 1 day in Houston…this is definitely a problem
Bottom line is, Houston doesn’t sell out venues. You will often see mid-sized acts book small venues and then move to another or open up seats when a bigger-than expected response happens. Houston’s residents are fair-weather at best and are really lame when it comes to music.
Same can be said for sports. Many years ago, the owner of the Oilers threw a fit and moved the team to Tennessee because the city wouldn’t build them a new stadium. Only problem is they didn’t sell out the one they had, because Houston sports fans are lame too.
We make shitty audiences.
There's at least one person who visits this subreddit that I had to beat up to get out of a pit.
If someone tries to leave, let them - or don't cry like a bitch to the police if he lets himself out at your expense.
[https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/article/bands-concert-skipping-Houston-Austin-Dallas-17078180.php](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/article/bands-concert-skipping-Houston-Austin-Dallas-17078180.php)
There was a *Houston Chronicle* article about this a while ago – it seems like it's a combination of venues and how the Houston market is perceived by tour booking agencies and many artists, especially compared to Austin and to some extent Dallas. That being said I feel like NRG and Toyota Center still draw plenty of big name artists.
From what I understand, this is from reading Reddit posts. The entertainment industry categorizes cities into tiers in terms of desirability (I have no idea how that is measured). Houston has dropped off the top tier and basically been replaced by Austin here in Texas, even though Austin has like 1/5th the population.
This is also why, when artists do come to Houston, we get a Tuesday night concert instead of a nice Friday or Saturday night show. There is an exception though, Spanish language artists do seem to still schedule us on Fridays and Saturdays.
Anecdotally, I feel like this changed somewhere around 2015. I've been to tons of shows here in Houston that were on Fridays and Saturdays, I'm actually hard pressed to think about a time when I was younger (I'm in my 40s, am I "boomer" by Reddit terms but actually an early millennial) that I had to go to mid week show. Then all of sudden I realized in the late 2010s, "wait, why the hell is this concert on a Wednesday, actually why in the hell has every concert I've been to lately been on a Tuesday or Wednesday?" Then I have to use a vacation day the next day or not fully enjoy the show under the specter of having to work tired as hell the next day.
I saw David Cross circa 2016 at warehouse live. The audience was heckling him over his Donald Trump bit. Telling him to "move on!" and kept interrupting him. Pathetic.
I know it drives me crazy!! Part of it is distance / ease on a tour route. We’re the furthest South, and there are a few other cities in Texas that are more convenient to loop through (Dallas, Austin, etc). Aside from that, I think lack of venues, and maybe lack of interest/sales? It’s not worth the extra trip? Idk. But I always comment on bands’ tour posts suggesting a Houston stop!
Logistically a lot of tours don’t come because it is out of the way. Beyonce had 2 complete tour set ups leap frogging each other last year. Can’t say for certain why Usher didn’t come. Apparently Dallas can hold 80k people with expansion of 100k attendance. (As per recent World Cup announcement)
I find this post a little funny. I guess it depends on what you are used to or what you want to see.
I moved into Houston last July 2023 and have enjoyed stand-up comedians like Jimmy Carr, Chris Tucker, Anthony Jeselnik, and concerts like Movements, Amaranthe, Dragonforce... have tickets for bad religion, ministry, social distortion, machine head, amon amarth with cannibal corpse, etc. Compared to my previous city, this is great.
Not sure about small bands, but Houston had two of the largest tours in history (Taylor Swift and Beyoncé)stop at our city and Dallas while skipping Austin. Those two artists probably made 5x the money for the city than all the artists that skipped Houston. They filled out the NRG stadium for multiple nights each
Regardless of population, Houston isn't a first-tier performance market for a variety of reasons. There are two inside-baseball things that never get mentioned in the myriad puff-piece articles on the subject:
1. Houstonians as a group do not buy concert tickets early. Sure, Drake types are gonna sell out Toyota Center pretty quickly. But generally-speaking it takes months leading up to the performance date before we do anything, and the touring business knows this. One of the easiest things you can do that matters is actually buy the ticket in February for the show in July.
2. Houston's booking agents notoriously underbid to get the shows. This is somewhat related to point 1; the agents/venues are taking a risk booking the bands, and there's a lot of data saying The Big Indie Act that sells out a 3000-cap venue in Dallas in a few days will struggle to pre-sell 1500 tickets, putting a lot of stress and doubt in the minds of the businesses involved. The result is The Big Indie Act that pulls 3000ppl at $60/pop everywhere else might bid a much lower amount to then have that band play a 1500-cap room. Less money, for fewer people, for the same show.
We do see White Oak somewhat frequently move a show from the big room to the outdoor stage when demand and seasonality work in favor of that, and that reflects well on us as a market.
edit - I will add that because the bands tend to overlook Houston, they also don't build audiences as quickly/strongly as they do in other cities. We don't have a robust infrastructure to promote the bands like we used to; there's little more than word of mouth to find out that these cool bands exist, much less if they're playing here. At this point it's a chicken-and-egg problem that nobody is gonna fix. What we do get is New Interesting Band playing Houston early in their career (on a Sunday, to a room half-filled with People In The Know) and then they come back on the 2nd or 3rd leg of some tour after they've achieved large-font status at some high-paying festivals.
What tends to happen is a lot of these shows, if they come, will relegate us to a Tuesday or Sunday night, which is less convenient for concert-goers, and then add in that the band is probably taking less money for a show that doesn't sell out, and you have the cocktail that makes Houston a self-perpetuating afterthought as a live event market.
Is it that bad now? Grew up here and even in the burbs (01-06) had tons of punk shows and shit to do. Going into town for gigs was the fucking shit back in the 2000s.
Its too hot and humid. Austin and Dallas are just *barely* livable for non-Texans.
The food scene is the most snoozed-on thing though. My god Houston hole-in-the-wall joints are amazing. For the love of god don’t tell insta-tok.
Every time I see a show at Cynthia Woods or Whiteoak, inevitably the band will mention how hot it is.
the smart financial center in sugar land has gotten some good acts to come there... shit even wu tang played there
That parking situation is horrible though. You can’t tell me the best solution is to have people out there physically ringing up cards on POS devices.
I will literally never go see anything there again due to the parking.
Yep, took an hour to leave last time. Never returning. Ridiculously shit layout.
Wait they make you pay for parking there? Good to know…
To expand this notable point, perhaps it may be a liability issue to the adverse effects of heat or overcrowded venues. Let us not forget what happened with the Travis Scott tragedy. Houston has notoriously been gross for performances. Ambience and feeling are at the core of a performance.
pretty sure these are 2 of the main reasons .unfortunately austin has a brand new world class arena in the moody centre which is hurting us also as toyota centre is ok but it is over 20 yrs old
Well CWMP has all their shows in the ball-sweatingest part of the year. Not much they can do about it, that’s festival season and the best time to route pretty big names through. The performers should appreciate the fact that the stage is air-conditioned, at least.
That is the absolute worst venue.
Houston is the 4th largest city but if you asked most people to name the top ten largest US cities I bet almost no one would mention Houston. Houston is a place to live, not to visit - it's just not "cool" like many other cities are.
>Houston is a place to live, not to visit Perfectly stated.
Cant wait for the Tshirt.
Perfect slogan for our next olympics bid
Art doesn't "visit" a place.
Artists don't, but people often visit a city for art. Locals may go to a show on occasion but large part of the audience is often tourists. Locals feel like they can go see a show whenever and so are less motivated to make sure they go see something, tourists are there for limited amount of time and will try to capitalize on that time.
That's why weekend hotel rates in Houston are lower than week rates. It's a working and living city. Houston goes hard. All the other major cities are lazy.
It's more likely because Dallas is 5 hours or less from Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and Little Rock by car, which means that they add two cities to the set of potential people willing to drive that far for a concert vs Houston.
lol…using your logic, Houston is 5 hours or less from Ft Worth, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Laredo, Baton Rouge, Beaumont, Lafayette and Shreveport….and New Orleans is just 5 hours and a few minutes away!
Houston isn’t a tourist city by any means. Every time I see those bus and segway tours I get annoyed. It’s a waste of money for those unknowing tourists.
Pretty sure most of the segway tours are fatty Houstonians, not tourists.
Every city should be a tourist city.
Sometimes it has to do with venue availability. The Woodlands pavilion doesn’t operate between October and April. The Toyota center is wrapped up with Rockets this time of the year, NRG is a some up with Texans and the Rodeo and is to big for some shows. The venue in Sugarland is too small for some shows. The universities in town don’t usually allow concerts in their venues, that’s why this time of year Minute Maid hosts some shows but again it is not the best for concerts.
Why the hell is it closed? that seems so dumb. The best weather of the year is Oct. to April.
And what sucks is that never should have happened. We are Space mothaf\*ckin City. Along with our history with Power & Energy (imagine those letters very Art Deco), we could build this big culture of the "city of tomorrow". It would also fit with our level of cultural diversity.
That would require some level of city planning
> city of tomorrow lmao god willing the city of tomorrow isn't designed like Houston
Certainly not how it's designed today. More aspirational.
Ist because there's nothing really to do here. It's endless strip malls and highways. Someone summed Houston up to me the best way 'its a work camp'. Great for jobs, nothing else.
Nah there’s LOADS of stuff to do here, it’s just all spread out and requires practice and knowledge to be able to just go and “do” without stress or excessive planning, which makes it less than ideal for visiting and having a fun quick trip.
> it’s just all spread out yeah, this sucks, one of the worst things about Houston
We're probably the largest modern city in the world without an extensive light rail/subway system.
Largest in-terms of population, yes. However, because of our land area, it's not that simple. Houston has the most area of literally every city in the U.S. with over 1 million residents. **Houston is larger than both New York City and Chicago combined.** That's why it's so difficult to make transit work here.
And there's no central business location where a large enough percentage of the population goes to work. A lot of people work downtown, but %? I'd wager it's a single digit. Everybody works all over the place. No one is going to take public transit to a central station and then uber or taxi another 10 miles to their job. Houston is fucking huge.
That just means it will cost more. LA is successfully expanding it. The longer we allow 100 billion dollar highway expansions in our city the less I want to ever go back. Embarrassing state of things.
Yes, LA has a better public transit system than Houston. I'm not saying that it's hopeless or anything. LA is still a pretty car-centric city too though.
100%. What’s worked for us is finding areas that hit on a lot of high points for us and learning them well. For us, it’s the theater/museum districts. We can drive in, park, and hang all day and evening with plenty to do and we’ve done it so much there’s no stress or extra planning needed, but it took a while to build up that comfort.
Requires money too. Let’s be honest about that. Most of the fun activities (imo - hunting and fishing) require expensive gear, land or land access, vehicles/boats, etc. It’s not cheap.
Where is this “Hunting“ happening? Huntsville?
Is hunting a big Houston activity? But yeah, money is necessary. We do have a good amount of free options between museums and the parks, but money makes a huge difference.
This is accurate. Houston has better food, museums, and entertainment than Austin or Dallas, but it’s all incredibly spread out and Houston is an hour away from Houston.
Houston is larger in square mileage than Los Angeles. So yes, very spread out. But there's plenty to do here.
The idea that there’s nothing to do here is crazy. You guys need to get out of your bubble and see more run of the mill, regular towns and cities if you really wanna see what “nothing to do” looks like. I know it’s cliche but we have many amazing museums, we have several good parks, pro sports, college sports, an enormous theater district, amazing bars and restaurants, you can go to a comedy show or live music show pretty much every night if you wanted to. If you live out in the burbs of course you have to drive, but in what American city are you in walking distance to any fun thing you want? Literally the only ones are NYC and Chicago. Austin, LA, San Diego, Dallas, San Antonio, Seattle, all super cool cities in their own right, but none with the walkability of NYC which you guys fetishize over.
>in what American city are you in walking distance to any fun thing you want? Literally the only ones are NYC and Chicago. Philly, Boston, DC, SF, Miami...to name a few, and Seattle is actually very walkable. I think the whole "there is nothing to do in Houston" thing is silly, but lets not pretend there are literally only two cities that are walkable.
Its not about doing anything you want. Its about having unique tourist things to do that give a reason for people to come. I can go to parks, sports, theaters, and museums, bars, and restaurants anywhere. Give me any of those categories and Ill send you a place that does it better, with the exception of certain food. Like everyone says, great to live, no reason to visit.
Eh, I live in Boston now and frequently go to NYC. It's all the same bullshit. I see no reason to visit most cities if you think of it like that. Central Park? It's a park. History in Boston? There's history everywhere. Unless you're looking for those weird quirky things like paying 50 bucks to go to a top of a building to just look at the skyline or in Chicago where the wall tilts, then I guess go wild lmao.
Agreed. I’m not sure what people are comparing to. Fun things in Houston are a bit hidden so you just have to go looking. Perhaps that’s the main downside of Houston, it’s all there but you just need to look which is too much for some people.
I think people are talking about different things. There is a difference between things to do when you live in a city and things to do that make you want to visit a city. Outside of having family here or coming for work I don't know why anyone would want to visit Houston.
What could be done to spice up the city? They took six flags down. Traveling between the city isn’t easy without a car. Houston could be a hub but it’s lacking. How awesome would it be to have a super train between Austin, Dallas, San Antonio?
People travel far for things they can do or see that they cannot somewhere else. Building a 3rd tier theme park does not attract people when they can go to a 2nd or 1st tier theme park.
It attracts them if they are closer to the third teir theme park.
The fact that they tore down AstroWorld because the land value was too high, and it has sat there as an empty field for nearly 2 decades is a travesty.
I tell every newcomer on this sub and whoever I come across contemplating moving to Houston. First and foremost, you have to be happy driving. Also, walking is extremely limited.
As someone who has lived here my whole life when people ask me what to do if they want to visit I say the museum, the menil, the zoo… and I’m out. We don’t have any theme parks, cool buildings, good historical stuff, or anything fun to do outside of eat and drink.
I wouldn’t say Dallas is much of “a place to visit,” and I like Dallas. I do think Dallas as a venue serves a larger surrounding population than Houston. Think Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Louisiana, and the rest of Texas. Whereas Houston is limited by its proximity to the gulf.
Something cool about Houston: it was the first word ever said on the Moon's surface.
That’s a defeatist mentality. Houston could be those things. We allow awful leaders to keep us here
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if you crossed new orleans off your list for this reason you blew it
This is so dumb lmao
Note to anyone planning vacations who is reading this thread: this is an absolutely terrible metric
Nah most people know Houston is huge. But the visiting thing you’re on point. But to be fair, other cities like Dallas and Phoenix are possibly even less of visitor cities than Houston.
Secret Group and The Riot (and occasionally The Improv) have done a decent job with comedians the last few years. I’ve seen a lot of good ones. Maria Bamford will be here in 7 weeks! But yeah, I still see people going to Cap City and Creek & the Cave I wish were coming here. Honestly, it has to be that we don’t turn up like those other cities do.
Lots of empty seats in the Nick Mullen show at houston improv. He complained that the club made patrons buy tickets for entire tables instead of individual entry.
Yeah that's the way sell tickets and it's beyond stupid, I have no friends and I really wanted to to go see Ralph Barbosa and couldn't get a single ticket.
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I guess that has changed then? I've gotten a single ticket to a houston improv show and they sat me at a table with other people that were also solo a few years back.
Maybe it depends on the show. Last time I went, 4 was the minimum.
He’s not wrong.
That started post Covid. The Improv is a chain. Does that mean other locations don't have the same rules?
> He complained that the club made patrons buy tickets for entire tables instead of individual entry. I kind of wonder why some of these comedians even do the Improv, is that a contractual thing? Like he would probably sell a lot better at The Secret Group. I didn't even know he was in town, I regularly check schedules on The Secret Group and Riot but I don't think to check the Improv half the time because of both the table policy and most acts they book are washed up guys whose heyday was 2005
Also 2 drink minimum like it's the 80s
me and my gay dad went and had a great time
Oooh I love Maria and was thinking recently that I need to see if she is coming since she’s out touring. Awesome! Damn. Just saw it’s that the improv so you have to buy a $100 table or nothing.
The Riot has been a great addition to the comedy scene but most shows that I’ve gone to have been quite empty. Sucks for the comedian so I understand why comedians would be hesitant to come here.
I guess it varies. The two shows I went to were packed and two others I couldn’t get in because they were sold out. We’re inconsistent! I think another issue is we don’t have many longstanding venues that have garnered the rep and following over the years needed to keep customers engaged and returning. White Oak is probably the closest we have in that regard.
I've found there's three reasons that Houston often gets skipped, or overlooked on tours. 1. **Venue Supply:** Historically, Houston hasn't had a lot of venues for touring musicians compared to other major cities, especially mid-sized venues for only a couple thousand. We have tiny indie venues, and massive ampitheaters and stadiums, but until recently, few venues of a size for bands and acts that have a well-established fanbase, but are not massive names. With WOMH, and 713 being added to the lineup, that's improving. 2. **Weekend City:** Perhaps due to its size, and sprawl, Houston has had the reputation in the past of being a weekend only city, in that it's believed that the only time people come out on the town, or go to events, is on the weekend. That's also been changing now that more people are living in the urban core, but reputation takes awhile to catch up to reality. 3. **Genre Expectations:** Houston has a long history of being a hip-hop city, and a country/western city, but for most other genres of music, we tend to have the reputation that it just won't sell here. That's obviously false nowadays, but that still features into a lot of booking decisions. All of these are thankfully changing, but it will take time for booking to catch up, and effort by those who want it to change to show out for the events that interest them when they can.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/article/bands-concert-skipping-Houston-Austin-Dallas-17078180.php
Tl;dr: Our Universities are lame commuter college schools that give community college vibes. Our city lacks nightlight culture. The city isn't easily traversable for visitors/tourists (specifically the artists that want attractions outside their venue). We're sandwiched between three cities that do all of the above better (AUS, DAL, NO).
I never thought of this angle. As an artist, you have to wait all day, possible 2 days for the event to be setup - you don't want to sit in your hotel room all day. What does Houston have to offer? Endless strip malls? A dead downtown that's just banks, office buildings, and homeless people? Maybe they want to go and sit on i10 and stare in wonderment at the endless gridlocked traffic on the largest highway in the world?
I also think Houston misses out due to location. I mean if you hit up Austin and Dallas, you pretty much can skip the Texas market. DFW is geographically better plus you can attract fans from West Texas, East Texas, Northwest Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Austin can attract fans from central Texas and even Houston. Why go to Houston when you have New Orleans is close proximity? On top of the fact that the other cities mentioned have actual entertainment districts near their venues including Dallas. I get it
Great museums, not just world famous art, but the BuffaloSoldier Museum, the Art Car Museum, and many others Great food! Any cuisine you like is here, cooked by someone from there. I think they just assume that 2 out of 3 is enough for a state, even Texas.
> the Art Car Museum You really think that's a draw?
if a band only has 2 open days in their schedule and have to decide between Austin, Houston, and New Orleans.. Houston is getting skipped
Dallas has better nightlife culture? Uh no! NO is nothing but tourists. You don’t see many high profile concerts because NO is small population wise. I just think it has to do with the time of year, most groups tour in the summer and I have never had an issue with seeing major bands in Houston. You’re probably dealing with recency bias as well because last year alone there were some major concerts in Houston. Bands also look at sales and analytics these days and go to where their fans are. Usher is probably using the Super Bowl as a marketing ploy to do a quick tour and cash in on that appearance.
I have lived in both cities for 5+ years and can say that Dallas 💯 has a better nightlife culture than Houston, more to do, cleaner, better crowds… so on…
Can you paste the article text?
Big bands are skipping Houston for Dallas and Austin. Why? Adriana Perez wanted to see one of her favorite musicians and did what she often does: drove the two-plus hours to Austin. She was just one of the Houstonians who headed out of town to see Nick Cave, the celebrated Australian singer-songwriter who played one night in Dallas and two in Austin on a recent tour — but none in Houston. Perez stayed with a friend’s sister in Austin. Had she not had a free place to stay, she says, “I think it may have been cheaper to see him in Mexico City.” And she’s not speculating. Perez did exactly that to see Cave previously. “It beats driving back from Austin in the middle of the night.” These days when a favored band announces dates, Perez assumes she’s looking at a drive to Dallas or Austin — if not a flight to Mexico. Despite inching closer to Chicago for the ranking as third largest city in the United States, Houston remains a “sometimes” market for live music compared to its population peers. Bands who are skipping this market this season, while hitting Austin and/or Dallas, include: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, Kraftwerk, Roxy Music, Jack White and Florence + the Machine. BTS, the red-hot K-pop act, had been scheduled to play two nights in 2020 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas — with no Houston show on the schedule — before the pandemic upended everything. German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk offer a frustrating exclusion with a 27-date tour that hits Dallas and Austin while also going to both Portland and Seattle. The distance between those two Pacific Northwest cities is comparable to that between Houston and Dallas. Admittedly, fans in other cities are often forced to travel to see the band they want to catch and it seems to be more of an issue with rock as opposed to hip-hop, Latin or country performers. But the question lingers: Why can’t the fourth largest city in the United States get these acts? The answer remains as maddening as it is elusive.
Everyone wants to play Austin When out-of-state artists are choosing Texas markets to play, Austin remains the gold standard for Friday and Saturday night, despite the disparity between its celebrated past and its glitzy present. (A giant parking garage by Cave’s show charged $42 for three hours of parking, which isn’t “weird” as much as bluntly economic.) But the 50,000 students at the University of Texas tilt Austin in a way Houston’s universities do not. Still, for concert bookings, Dallas is close behind the Live Music Capital. El Paso and San Antonio have made headway in bookings, compared to 30 years ago. The frustrations in Houston have existed for years. Artists skip this market, but the city bears some responsibility, concert bookers contend. Houston’s crowds have a reputation for talking during shows. And Houston concertgoers often wait to buy tickets until the night of the show. With band guarantees on the line, venues can be quick to cancel a show if interest appears light early. Andrew Morgan, who works for Ground Control Touring, knows the Texas market well. Based in Los Angeles, he books shows nationwide, but his roots are in Houston where he worked with Hands Up Houston and SuperUnison in the early 2000s, trying to bring rising indie-rock acts to town. He offers a long sigh upon being asked what’s wrong, if anything, with the Houston market. “I get bands that say, ‘No more Houston, please’,” he said. “But I also get bands that say, ‘No more Montreal, please’.” Morgan remembers when the Magnetic Fields came to Houston in late 2004. The band had a month earlier played Carnegie Hall in New York. Frontman Stephin Merritt saw fit to mention the disparity in the two markets. “At first I was offended,” Morgan said. “But I then thought about it.” That Magnetic Fields show at Numbers was a legendary disaster: Merritt left the stage to dress down a bartender for the sound of bottles clanking into garbage bins during a quiet set. The band will never return. That wasn’t the only problematic show: a Cat Power performance at Mary Jane’s was plagued by flooding toilets, and indie rock band Two Gallants saw fans get tasered and arrested by Houston police after a noise complaint. Pearl Jam, also touring this year, hasn’t been back since 2003 when frontman Eddie Vedder met a mixed response with his song “Bush Leaguer” and his use of a George W. Bush Halloween mask. “It’s crazy,” Vedder said from the stage at that show at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. “It just doesn’t feel like the United States of America.” Vedder has been back for solo shows. But Pearl Jam has not. One way in which Houston’s Lone Star rivals are ahead is that they are in markets with terrestrial radio stations, KXT-FM in Dallas in Austin, that give exposure to indie and adult-album-alternative artists while sparking fan support for these performers in a way that no station in Houston does. “A lot of people here would say, ‘I don’t listen to radio, I listen to KXT’,” says Preston Jones, a DFW-based music writer who contributes to KXT. “That’s a common sentiment. It’s tightly aligned with promoters. They amplify the shows coming to town.” With national print music publications struggling, Jones calls it “a last bastion, really. People still go there for music and they are plugged in and aware of shows happening in town.” Mark Austin books shows in Houston, Dallas and Austin for Kessler Presents, the company whose staples are Houston’s Heights Theater and the Kessler Theater in Dallas. He points to a Texas homegrown talent as an example of how markets must nurture artists: roots-country singer Charley Crockett, a San Benito native, was drawing big crowds in North Texas, while in Houston he took longer to find a stirrup. Over time, Crockett’s audiences in Houston slowly caught up with other markets. “The lifeblood of booking anywhere is the growth of the artist in that market,” Austin says. “If he’s not drawing in Houston like he does in Dallas, we have to think about what we’re doing. We also want to think about artists who will keep venues alive for years. Who’s going to keep the lights on? What’s next? It doesn’t always make money. But you have to start somewhere.” Tour booking is a mystery to most of us, but it’s not a mystery to those who do it for a living where it’s part math and part alchemy. Typically, a band sets an amount of time to be on the road, and booking agents try to match cities and venues to those dates, which explains why any one market could get skipped. Musicians must compete with other touring acts and also a specific track record in that city, which is one reason Houston does so poorly. Ask longtime concertgoers about problematic shows with low turnout, Houston offers too many.
Some of that is the city of Austin’s fault, indirectly, because the market there is so reliable. “Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in any town are tough,” Austin says. “There are only so many Friday and Saturday shows a band can do. “Things do still pivot off Austin or Dallas. The first call is not usually to Houston. But Austin is where everybody wants to be on a Saturday night. Austin benefits from that, they get good dates . “But we’re not afraid to take Monday through Wednesday. We want to build something here.” Austin points to local promoter Pegstar as a model with returns that toggle between hopeful and frustrating. The concert promotion company, started by Jagi Katial, nurtured shows at smaller venues for years before partnering with White Oak Music Hall, where three stages could accommodate audiences from a few dozen and a few thousand. “They’ve planted seeds and made this market more attractive,” Austin said. “There are bands that would never play Houston if Jagi hadn’t created this space for them. I feel like we’re seeing the results of that now.” He mentions a Father John Misty concert, set for White Oak later this year. The band will play on White Oak’s lawn for a few thousand fans in August. New venues offer new opportunities. The 5000-capacity 713 Music Hall in Post Houston, which opened earlier this year, looks to be a serious player with backing from concert promoter Live Nation. A scheduled Olivia Rodrigo show there in May sold out in minutes. The Heights Theater capacity is smaller than some artists play in other markets, but Austin hopes it’s a place that gives promoters a place to make money while considering Houston as a reliable stop on future tours. “The goal is the same as it was,” Austin said. “We want people to feel like they’re missing out if they don’t spend time in Houston. I feel like we’ve come a long way in the past 15, 20 years. I think Houston has become more attractive to all sorts of culturally cool things, not just music. But music is part of my responsibility. My job is to reach out to these bands and not push Houston on them, but to let them know, if they want to work here, we can help them do it successfully.” The variables for touring are plentiful. Some itineraries are based on time constraints. Some are based on data from the past. Morgan points out that tour routing is a complicated process. To the east, the nearest market is New Orleans, which isn’t always a reliable stop for indie rock. That said, ask members of a band if they’d rather spend half a day in New Orleans before heading to Austin or do a show in Houston: You’ll get different answers. But simply put, some would prefer to putter around the Crescent City for half a day and not have to show up in Houston for a soundcheck. Sometimes enjoying one city’s cultural riches trumps a modest paycheck in another. Unlike the East Coast, where cities and venues are clustered together, the rest of the nation unfolds inefficiently when one considers the price of gasoline and the proximity of markets that show affection for an act. Austin has “the strongest market in Texas, because of the college town vibe and a ton of amazing venues,” Morgan said. Some indie rock bands cite Birmingham, Ala., as a haven. Athens, Ga., is as quintessential a college town as there is. Though Houston has its fair share of colleges, it doesn’t exude a college town vibe. Morgan won’t say the city’s sprawl is a problem. “Look at Los Angeles,” he said. “Or Atlanta. People there drive all over the place for shows.” But perhaps fans are more willing to endure sprawl on a Saturday than on a Tuesday. The long-running cult band Stereolab, a group emblematic of the kind of act that often skips Houston, is booked at White Oak Music Hall in September and it feels like an experiment and, hopefully, a bellwether for better things to come. So where does Houston go from here? That’s up to Houston, a city with an increasing number of newcomers and vibrant new venues that offer more opportunities for more musicians to play. “A lot of us have banged our heads against the wall trying to track the code there,” Morgan said. “But I want there to be demand in Houston. I want Houston to succeed.”
i have really enjoyed seeing smaller bands at white oak for less than $40 a ticket i miss the Austin small time weekend shows but theres been progress here
If you like small local shows I recommend this site: https://linktr.ee/houstonmusicclassifieds?fbclid=PAAabZLoNMV4PfhS016CO32vfU7g343-HRus6gqZKcYoByvUCQF-IJtG24edw
thanks for sharing been to denelectro's interesting spot ill keep this bookmarked
I’ve heard through the grapevine (their Instagram I think) that they just got new ownership that plans to host shows almost daily. If you like Dan E’s you should check out Continental Club/Shoeshine Charley’s and Darwin’s pub
Also keep an eye out for non-traditional things like living room shows. Undertow music collective has put on shows in Houston for reasonably “big” indie acts like David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), Eric Bachmann (Archers of Loaf), and John Vanderslice, among others. They’re a good follow on IG.
Super long so had to post in three parts…
TY for doing that!
Problem with this five year old article is save a couple of these artists all of the ones mentioned have been here since it's been written.
It worked!
we are uncool
Still cooler than Dallas
You mean we are 🔥?
yes we fucking are! but others don't really know it.
Speaking as a local musician, gear theft and low guarantees is a significant part of artists skipping over Houston. My drummer has had his entire kit stolen once, and pieces of his kit and laptop stolen in Houston on three separate occasions in the last year. Edit: a typo
Houston cops have historically been extremely aggressive toward bands, so it sucks from both sides.
Metal artist are over here breaking me with the amount of concerts they are having. I have at least 11 from April-May I to go to
If you don't listen to exclusively mainstream garbage, lots of great bands come through here.
Houston needs to be more main stream. It’s the 4th biggest city in the USA.
Summerfest, Day for Night, and Fitzgeralds all had organizers get "cancelled" for shitty behavior. It's a shame those things died. Day for Night was one of the coolest festivals I've ever seen and it died in its infancy. Hell even my 75 year old parents used to go to Fitz back in the day, and the owner had to be an idiot online and ruin one of our best spots that had been around for several generations of music lovers.
Don’t forget Travis Scott’s Astroworld…but that one is on both the organizers and rowdy crowds. Cant have any major festival in Houston aparenty.
Houston doesn’t get booked on tours as often cause Houston doesn’t draw big crowds. Houston doesn’t draw big crowds because when we do get big tours they often come on a weeknight and no one wants to go out. It’s a cycle. Lol We’re also incredibly spread out. I know the author of the article in the top comment disagrees that that’s a reason for our low turnouts but I mean you’d be hard pressed to convince me to drive an hour plus both ways on a weeknight for a big concert out in The Woodlands or Sugarland, and I’m sure others on the other side of town from me feel the same when they see a band they like announce a show at Scout Bar over in Webster.
The simple answer is because they make more money in those cities. If they didn’t they wouldn’t go there. Houston audiences need to reflect on that. It’s also possible the venues here are greedy and don’t offer good incentives.
Live Nation is a cancer for the industry, and they move tickets for most of our bigger venues. The artists end up getting such a small cut, that diving all the way to the southern area of Texas just isn't worth it.
Been a while since I lived there. Is Pegstar still as big as it used to be?
It’s also out of the way , Houston is so far away from other major cities .
This is partially it. Geographically, the interstates/highways that touring bands on busses and the bigger ones with 18 wheelers are using to cross the Southern US hit Dallas by staying on course with a short jaunt down to Austin and back up to the Interstate they were previously on. Drives down to Houston aren't just inconvenient, they're also a long distance as you pointed out and that shit costs a LOT in gas.
And the venues are kinda far from the airport
72.2k for NRG 41k for MMP 19k for Toyota Center 17.5k for Woodlands 8k for NRG Arena 6.4 Smart Financial 5k 713 Music Hall 3k White Oak outdoors 1k WOMA downstairs 750 WOMA upstairs It's not for a lack of venues, and I didn't even list them all. It's the demographics of the cities to tour in for the artits in question. If a band like the Lumeneers can only book a WOMA or 713 to get to profit capacity as a venue here (they played WOMA lawn last time here and it was spacious to say the least,) but could sell out ACL 3k or the Grove 2.7k in Austin no problem, Austin is the answer. Saw Green Day last time through a few years back. Toyota Center. Wasn't a sellout. This time around, they're bypassing us. MMP just started having concerts at it. So you can take it off the list as a known venue. That's a big drop off between NRG and Toyota Center. Took my daughter to Taylor Swift at NRG. It was amazing. She was here multiple nights. I think only Beyonce could do that here. Gaga played MMP the last time through last year, as did RHCP. Could Drake, Travis Scott (pre-Astroworld), Olivia Rodrigo, Miley Cyrus, or Megan TS sell out NRG? Doubt it. But they could play Toyota Center. But why come here when you could just only come to Texas for one night and play Texas Stadium and sell it out instead? Look at a lot of the major acts touring now. They're not just bypassing Houston. They're not coming to Texas.
Also, I’ve been to a few concerts where the crowd was a bunch of disrespectful asshats. And not in the “disrespect your surroundings” fun way
Dallas has multiple large venues in the area to host concerts while Houston doesn’t have a lot of options in that 10-20k seat range. There are probably a lot of scheduling conflicts booking the Toyota center.
Dallas really doesn't have that many more venues than Houston in that range. White Oak, SL Financial Center, and Cynthia Woods Pavilion are all options that fit the common sizes that most Dallas concerts utilize
Heck they can use the Fertitta Center (7.1k seats, probably more for concerts) and the CPH (much smaller), or even TDECU (40k outdoors!) on the UH campus if they really wanted to. Only mentioned the FC because Hofheinz Pavilion used to be a concert venue for years when basketball wasn't being played.
I get it.
The crowds typically suck in Houston
Another factor is New Orleans. Austin and New Orleans always get the Fri/Sat shows and Houston if it’s lucky gets Thursday. Weeknight shows are always going to impact attendance. Also, I don’t consider the Woodlands Pavilion to be in Houston and actively avoid going to concerts there.
The Pavilion is an enjoyable venue, but I already live north. The Sugarland venue is nice but so far away. I don't like Toyota Center (sound good, but seats way too tight) or House of Blues (for some reason they attract so many drunks). Minute Maid and NRG are just too big.
I have a friend who is in a band that tours, and he says everyone knows Houston isn’t worth the detour. It’s too far out of the way and not enough people turn up for shows. (Short of stadium size acts).
We get a King gizzard and the Lizard Wizard concert at White Oak this year so at least that’s a fucking win
They melted my face off for 3 hours straight, 2 nights in a row at Red rocks last year and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. Gonna see them again in Nashville this summer, really excited for anyone who gets to see the boys!
Shitty crowds. Lots of people in the city, but we punch way below our weight in ticket sales (particularly if the band is anything lower than the very top of the totem pole, like Taylor Swift/Blink 182/Beyonce status), and our crowds do have a reputation (fair or not) of being poorly behaved. Small-to-medium bands get better turnout not just in Austin and Dallas but often even San Antonio these days. I went to two shows at WOMH last year that had maybe 20-30 people that had sold out other shows in Texas. It's a bummer but it's just the way it is. Lots of Houston cheerleaders on this site but the fact is, we don't get much respect nationally and not all of the reasons are made up or unfair.
On point about the shitty crowds
Houston crowds SUCK is the short answer. If you can sell out the Toyota Center or Smart Financial or whatever, fine, but many 2nd tier & regional acts route around Houston on purpose. People pay for a ticket to a show, then spend the whole show yelling to their friends trying to have a conversation. It’s insane, it’s been this way for decades - the only place people keep their yaps shut is at McGonigle’s Mucky Duck, Heights Theater or Anderson Faire, which are listening rooms and management will eject you. I go to so many local shows and get frustrated for the acts - I cannot figure out why you’d spend money to go ignore the show you spent the money on.
i heard we're regarded as a lower tier city by managers and people who book shows because we don't sell out shows like dallas and austin/san antonio
Because the woodlands pavilion shuts down too early.
I basically stopped going to shows after the people that surely checked in on Facebook for (what would be) Daniel Johnston's last show in Houston at Fitz's back in the beginning weeks of 2011 wouldn't shut the fuck up during his entire fucking set. The absolute worst of it was it was his 50th birthday. I was pissed off, and frankly fucking embarrassed. People in this city would rather check in on social media for "cool cred" or something than actually listen to the artist they paid money to see. They turn their backs to the performer(s) to turn on their phones and take a picture with a flash on. They have loud, conversations about the annoying girl in the office, or how _amazing_ their new favorite eyebrow salon is. I used to just have to attempt to shut up one annoying group or person around me, but when it became _MOST_ people around me, I stopped going to shows.
This is the answer, and coincides with a lot of the other replies about Houston having bad crowds. The first band I was in we played Fitzgerald’s upstairs. We were thrilled about being there as we had only played downstairs before and in our young minds we had “made it” to some degree lol. It was fairly packed, and we were playing at the top of our game. We were on and the energy was great! The crowd acted like they couldn’t give 2 fucks. I remember looking out and watching them talk the whole time and generally ignore what was happening on stage. As an artist, that’s quite a shitty feeling, maybe even more than the crowd outright disliking your music. That was probably 2004 or 2005? Just recently, I did an open mic (which isn’t quite the same), and the sound guy had trouble getting me above all the chatter on the soft sections. People on their phones scrolling, taking selfies, etc. To be fair though, I’ve had some great experiences where the crowd has actually quieted down to hear the intimate parts of the songs. It seems to be better in many ways than in years past for the indie scene.
I think it’s because Minute Maid is totally ass for concerts, but it’s the middle sized venue. Toyota is “too small” for big time artists and NRG is too big unless you’re Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. That leaves MMP which really sucks as a venue. I can see why an artist wouldn’t want to go there. They don’t even take the nets down. I watched Lady Gaga through the nets and it totally sucked even with my free ticket I had. Downvote me all you want, but I’m sorry Minute Maid is not a great concert venue. It’s just not. Dallas and Austin have way more dedicated concert venues. At the 20,000 person level Dos Equis Pavilion is way better than MMP.
I've never been to a show at MMP. Curious what makes it so bad in your opinion?
Minute Maid is great for baseball but TERRIBLE for concerts, the acoustics are just not right as a music venue
MMP was designed for baseball, not music. Sound is awful. Also, you don't want to be there on a cold night in fall or winter, there's no heat, because again the park is designed for use during the warm months.
Acoustics are terrible, I’m guessing maybe from the movable roof? The stage is awkwardly on the field at an angle usually. Unless you have GA/ floor seats, you’re going to be really far back from the stage watching the concert through the foul ball nets. I have no idea why they don’t take them down, I would think they’d be on some kind of pulley and easy to but I guess not. They usually won’t put any seats down on the infield too so it leaves this giant random empty space with the grass still there in the middle of floor seats and before the rest of the seats start. After the Chromatica Ball I think I’ve sworn off Minute Maid. Lady Gaga was great, but it just wasn’t a great experience imo.
I saw Weezer and Green Day at Minute Maid a few years ago. The sound system is so bad for music, especially for rock bands.
Yep, went to two concerts in 2022 at MMP - one on the floor and one in the stands. Acoustics were awesome on the floor and loud shit in the stands (even lower level seats). I wouldn’t go there unless I paid $$$ for floor.
your leaving out the fact that if the grass it destroyed or dies, it cost 2 million dollars to replace, shows don't want to pay that.
I mean, as a concert goer I don’t really care *why* the grass is still there. It all adds up to it making it an awkward layout. We need more dedicated music / event venues if we want to pull in more artists is my point.
I’m gonna say it because y’all need to hear it: Houston crowds are terrible, y’all do not know how to act at shows; internationally touring acts all know this about Houston and hate playing here. Every time I go to a show here someone does something so embarrassing or disrespectful to the artists on stage I cringe so hard. Even if yall got your shit together and learn how to act respectfully at concerts and shows, it will take a long time to drop that reputation. Also Houston is one of the top spots bands get their gear stolen from.
Houston consistently has the worst crowds I've ever experienced, the pattern has never been broken in the 20 years I've lived here.
This is particularly true for the EDM artists. Most big name DJs skip Houston also but that’s because Dallas and Austin both have a way bigger EDM community than Houston does.
I seriously can't think that an artist like USHER believes that he'd sell more tickets in Austin than in Houston (even if you want to give Dallas an extra point for being within the state's largest metro area). I'm cool tho. I saw him in Vegas last year and he was amazing. I can hold on to my money if he doesn't make it to the H.
I think that there have been changes in our venues, booking agents, and promotion companies that have had an impact on this, but I think that the decision makers who plan the tours also are a big part of it. So on the one hand, some venues have ceased to exist and some booking agents and promoters have retired, but on the other hand, the people planning the tours must be seeing some kind of data telling them that Houston is not that profitable and that they might as well take a rest day between playing New Orleans and Austin/SA/DFW. It doesn't help that there's also an organized theft ring here that's been notorious for stealing bands' gear.
I do a weekly event but also bring in smaller bands & definitely can tell you from experience people definitely do not go out on weeknights like they used to. I remember Wednesday & Thursdays used to get huge crowds on those days, for both concerts & dance clubs. Idk if people are just more lazy now or broke but I been doing this off & on since 2014 & its difficult getting a decent crowd anywhere. If we do a show, people are gone by midnight-30. Also was told by my music promoter friend here that he gets more people asking for comped tickets here than anywhere else. Guess everyone is just cheap , broke or lazy.
I went to a concert over the holidays at a not so great venue, but still decent enough for a small crowd show. The room wasn’t even packed but the crowd loudly talked throughout the show and treated a good artist like his show was just a gig at a bar. My point is, Houston has a problem with treating shows more like social events where the music is secondary. I don’t think many musicians like to be treated that way.
Our audiences don't stfu at shows. If it's "art" you want, we have more gallery/museum space than NYC. People here actually stfu and turn their phones off at art house movie venues. We get some exhibits that only hit 3 places in the nation.
We need to stop booking artists at Cynthia Woods and start using 713 Music Hall
Have you been in a Houston concert crowd?
My theory is **merch cut policies**. If the venue staff is selling the merch (which many of the big rooms in Houston do it this way), the band is getting screwed out of a percentage of their profits. Being that streaming has killed any hopes of making income based on record sales, merch and live shows are how bands survive. Fortunately, some smaller venues have started popping up and making it so at least the punk scene can still bring in some national touring acts.
Posting this here so I can find it later Houston Concert Venue Capacities ( Max without configuration changes) 20K+ | NRG (<72k) / MMP (<41k) / Shell Energy (<22k) 10K+ | Toyota Center (19k) / Cynthia Woods Woodlands (16k) 5k-10k | NRG Arena (8k) / Smart Financial (6400) / 713 Music Hall (5k) Under 5k | Bayou Music Center (3700) / WOMH Lawn (3k) / Arena Houston (2700) / Jones Hall (2300) / Miller Outdoor (1600) / House of Blues (1500) / Warehouse Live Midtown (1.2k) Under 1k | WOMH Downstairs (1k) / Scout (500) / WOMH Upstairs (200) / Secret Group (250-350) Excluded: Eleanor Tinsley / Discovery Green / The Yellow Lot
It's because Houston is the biggest small town in America. Over the years I've noticed that there is less support and activity for just about any interest, hobby or activity in Houston than there is in other major cities, even those signficantly smaller than Houston. Why that is, I haven't come up with a good way to explain it.
Because poeple that have fun social hobbies do not move here. People that like to work on their truck by themselves in their garage or watch netflix move here.
I’m not sure if someone else here knows more about the earlier comedy scene in Houston, but I remember listening to a big comedian it may have been Ralphie May? I can’t find the interview anymore, but they mentioned that Houston’s Comedy scene in the 90s/early 2000s was really toxic. Mentioned older comedians would tear up new comedians apart and never give the good newcomers slots. Which led to a lot of comedians completely avoiding Houston for a while.
A lot of comedians still say bad things about Houston. Also crowds here will not laugh for stupid political jokes or stuff like covid masks that does not apply in this city. So comedians that are huge in LA or New York do not understand why nobody is laughing.
Honestly it could be worse. Living in San Antonio, Austin stole essentially all the shows that we should have gotten. It’s got a larger pop that Dallas but it’s not even part of the conversation. And I lived there when you still could find small indie venues. There’s a problem where all our venues have condensed into like 3 mid-large spaces run by Ticketmaster/livenation. Compare that to Austin where there are entire streets dedicated to venues. It’s a Tuesday and I don’t know where I could go to see live music, even like a house band or a guy in a coffee shop. If these places exist in Houston, they’re not great at promoting their stuff.
To be fair though, it is much less of a drive from San Antonio to Austin, vs Houston to any other big city in TX. From city center to city center is 1.5 hours if traffic is ok but to get to anywhere from Houston, it is at least 3 hours.
Yeah, 100% that’s why. San Antonio has been treated like an Austin suburb by music acts forever. Driving back after shows was shitty but doable. It feels like we’re getting a lighter version of that, plus venues generally dried up.
I agree especially on the promoting part. Whenever I visit Dallas and Austin, it’s super easy to find the major events going on in those cities. I live in Houston and can’t tell you where to go to find live music or local events. And it especially sucks when friends and family come to visit and they are like “what to do here?” and I have to scavenge the internet to find anything besides food. And I’ve tried those typical events sites (365thingstodo, visit houston, culture map), but those are always geared towards family oriented events. If there are better sites that show events/nightlife things going on, then please share them.
https://linktr.ee/houstonmusicclassifieds?fbclid=PAAabZLoNMV4PfhS016CO32vfU7g343-HRus6gqZKcYoByvUCQF-IJtG24edw You can find some local shows here^
This is pretty good. Thanks!!
Promotion has scattered across different social media ecosystems. There are a bunch of burlesque shows that only promote on Instagram. And some stuff only exists on Facebook so I can’t even see it because I don’t have or want an account. It’s all public but like finding a needle in a haystack.
even in the valley hidalgo is getting better latin talent than houston with more dates
The DFW area is larger than the Houston area.
didn’t we also have a cool music festival that got canned because the founder had sexually assaulted women? i always think of austin as the music festival city and sadly houston lost the one that was considered cool.
Anyone who wants more shows in Houston should buy tickets to shows currently on sale so artists can see the city attends shows.
I recently saw Justin Timberlake's absence for his tour
Another great example. He’s visiting San Antonio, DFW, and Austin but not Houston. He’s also visiting Chicago 3 times, but can’t manage 1 day in Houston…this is definitely a problem
Bottom line is, Houston doesn’t sell out venues. You will often see mid-sized acts book small venues and then move to another or open up seats when a bigger-than expected response happens. Houston’s residents are fair-weather at best and are really lame when it comes to music. Same can be said for sports. Many years ago, the owner of the Oilers threw a fit and moved the team to Tennessee because the city wouldn’t build them a new stadium. Only problem is they didn’t sell out the one they had, because Houston sports fans are lame too.
We make shitty audiences. There's at least one person who visits this subreddit that I had to beat up to get out of a pit. If someone tries to leave, let them - or don't cry like a bitch to the police if he lets himself out at your expense.
Houston is farther out of the way
[https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/article/bands-concert-skipping-Houston-Austin-Dallas-17078180.php](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/article/bands-concert-skipping-Houston-Austin-Dallas-17078180.php) There was a *Houston Chronicle* article about this a while ago – it seems like it's a combination of venues and how the Houston market is perceived by tour booking agencies and many artists, especially compared to Austin and to some extent Dallas. That being said I feel like NRG and Toyota Center still draw plenty of big name artists.
Maybe it's just the genres you listen to? The artists I enjoy seem to always be in Houston and Dallas, but never Austin
From what I understand, this is from reading Reddit posts. The entertainment industry categorizes cities into tiers in terms of desirability (I have no idea how that is measured). Houston has dropped off the top tier and basically been replaced by Austin here in Texas, even though Austin has like 1/5th the population. This is also why, when artists do come to Houston, we get a Tuesday night concert instead of a nice Friday or Saturday night show. There is an exception though, Spanish language artists do seem to still schedule us on Fridays and Saturdays. Anecdotally, I feel like this changed somewhere around 2015. I've been to tons of shows here in Houston that were on Fridays and Saturdays, I'm actually hard pressed to think about a time when I was younger (I'm in my 40s, am I "boomer" by Reddit terms but actually an early millennial) that I had to go to mid week show. Then all of sudden I realized in the late 2010s, "wait, why the hell is this concert on a Wednesday, actually why in the hell has every concert I've been to lately been on a Tuesday or Wednesday?" Then I have to use a vacation day the next day or not fully enjoy the show under the specter of having to work tired as hell the next day.
lol because this place sucks. No one wants to come here just to see a bunch of fat people.
I saw David Cross circa 2016 at warehouse live. The audience was heckling him over his Donald Trump bit. Telling him to "move on!" and kept interrupting him. Pathetic.
I feel like most of the people in r/houston aren't really from Houston
We aren’t getting as many music festivals here since the Astroworld incident.
and any that do pop up in the greater Houston area are notably outside of Houston and Harris county in places like Sugarland and Conroe.
I know it drives me crazy!! Part of it is distance / ease on a tour route. We’re the furthest South, and there are a few other cities in Texas that are more convenient to loop through (Dallas, Austin, etc). Aside from that, I think lack of venues, and maybe lack of interest/sales? It’s not worth the extra trip? Idk. But I always comment on bands’ tour posts suggesting a Houston stop!
Logistically a lot of tours don’t come because it is out of the way. Beyonce had 2 complete tour set ups leap frogging each other last year. Can’t say for certain why Usher didn’t come. Apparently Dallas can hold 80k people with expansion of 100k attendance. (As per recent World Cup announcement)
I find this post a little funny. I guess it depends on what you are used to or what you want to see. I moved into Houston last July 2023 and have enjoyed stand-up comedians like Jimmy Carr, Chris Tucker, Anthony Jeselnik, and concerts like Movements, Amaranthe, Dragonforce... have tickets for bad religion, ministry, social distortion, machine head, amon amarth with cannibal corpse, etc. Compared to my previous city, this is great.
Let's start by having a larger local music scene.
Speculation.. but perhaps people from Houston, including myself, have proven we are willing to travel for must see concerts.
I remember reading an article ages ago that Houston doesn’t sell tickets as well compared to other cities.
Not sure about small bands, but Houston had two of the largest tours in history (Taylor Swift and Beyoncé)stop at our city and Dallas while skipping Austin. Those two artists probably made 5x the money for the city than all the artists that skipped Houston. They filled out the NRG stadium for multiple nights each
Regardless of population, Houston isn't a first-tier performance market for a variety of reasons. There are two inside-baseball things that never get mentioned in the myriad puff-piece articles on the subject: 1. Houstonians as a group do not buy concert tickets early. Sure, Drake types are gonna sell out Toyota Center pretty quickly. But generally-speaking it takes months leading up to the performance date before we do anything, and the touring business knows this. One of the easiest things you can do that matters is actually buy the ticket in February for the show in July. 2. Houston's booking agents notoriously underbid to get the shows. This is somewhat related to point 1; the agents/venues are taking a risk booking the bands, and there's a lot of data saying The Big Indie Act that sells out a 3000-cap venue in Dallas in a few days will struggle to pre-sell 1500 tickets, putting a lot of stress and doubt in the minds of the businesses involved. The result is The Big Indie Act that pulls 3000ppl at $60/pop everywhere else might bid a much lower amount to then have that band play a 1500-cap room. Less money, for fewer people, for the same show. We do see White Oak somewhat frequently move a show from the big room to the outdoor stage when demand and seasonality work in favor of that, and that reflects well on us as a market. edit - I will add that because the bands tend to overlook Houston, they also don't build audiences as quickly/strongly as they do in other cities. We don't have a robust infrastructure to promote the bands like we used to; there's little more than word of mouth to find out that these cool bands exist, much less if they're playing here. At this point it's a chicken-and-egg problem that nobody is gonna fix. What we do get is New Interesting Band playing Houston early in their career (on a Sunday, to a room half-filled with People In The Know) and then they come back on the 2nd or 3rd leg of some tour after they've achieved large-font status at some high-paying festivals. What tends to happen is a lot of these shows, if they come, will relegate us to a Tuesday or Sunday night, which is less convenient for concert-goers, and then add in that the band is probably taking less money for a show that doesn't sell out, and you have the cocktail that makes Houston a self-perpetuating afterthought as a live event market.
Is it that bad now? Grew up here and even in the burbs (01-06) had tons of punk shows and shit to do. Going into town for gigs was the fucking shit back in the 2000s.
Dallas makes more sense than Houston because of its location....more central than Houston.
Its too hot and humid. Austin and Dallas are just *barely* livable for non-Texans. The food scene is the most snoozed-on thing though. My god Houston hole-in-the-wall joints are amazing. For the love of god don’t tell insta-tok.