Lost Evenings IX: Frank Turner Brought More Than a Festival to Dallas

There was a sign hanging in the lobby at South Side Ballroom during Frank Turner’s Lost Evenings IX that told you right away this wasn’t going to be a typical punk rock festival. No mosh pits. No circle pits. No crowd surfing. No stage diving. No wall of death. No slam dancing.

The merch line snaked through the entire building from front to back!

At almost any other punk show, that list might sound like someone was trying to take all the fun out of the room. By the end of four days in Dallas, September 24 through 27, it made a lot more sense.

Nobody had taken anything away. Frank Turner had simply created a different kind of space.

There was still plenty of loud music. People danced. They screamed lyrics back at the stage. They drank. They stayed out too late and came back the next afternoon looking like they hadn’t slept nearly enough. But there was also this constant feeling that people were looking out for each other. You noticed it everywhere. That ended up being the real story of Lost Evenings IX.

Yes, Frank Turner played four completely different headline sets. Yes, bands including The Menzingers, Hot Water Music, The Get Up Kids, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Girl in a Coma, The Iron Roses, Laura Stevenson, Black Guy Fawkes, Ben Kweller and plenty more came through the building during the weekend. There were two stages, panels, open mics, workshops, after-parties and things happening from the afternoon until late at night.

But after spending four days talking to the people who came to Dallas, it became clear pretty quickly that most of them weren't going to remember Lost Evenings IX simply as a collection of concerts. They were going to remember the people. For some, this was their first Lost Evenings. Others had been coming since the beginning.

Stuart and Emma Patterson were at their ninth. They started with the first Lost Evenings in Camden and have followed the festival through places like Anaheim, Boston, Berlin and Toronto. When Dallas was announced, they came here too. In fact, they turned the trip into a Texas vacation, traveling through Austin, San Antonio and Houston before coming back to Dallas for the festival.

“We’ll go wherever Frank takes us,” Stuart told me. That could easily sound like the comment of a devoted music fan following a favorite artist around the world, but talking with Stuart and Emma, you realized that wasn't really what they meant anymore.

Over nine Lost Evenings, the festival had become part of their lives. Emma talked about seeing people every year whom they might not know particularly well but instantly recognize. They say hello, catch up for a while and then probably see one another again the following year in another city somewhere else in the world.

“We now meet people on an annual basis that we don’t know them that well, but we know who they are, and we’ll have a little chat with them,” she said. “It brings people together from a wide variety of different social spectrums.” She laughed while talking about friends back home thinking they were crazy for continuing to follow Frank Turner around the world.

Maybe they are. But they definitely aren't alone. You saw versions of that same story all weekend. Richard Hill was attending his eighth Lost Evenings. His daughter Katie was attending her ninth. The reason for the difference apparently remains a sore spot in the family: Katie went to the first one without telling him. They've essentially been going together ever since.

Karen Shaver was attending her third, and she probably summed up the evolution from fan to Lost Evenings regular better than anyone I talked to. “It’s like we come for the bands, but more so we come for the people that we’ve met over the years too.”

That's it. You might buy your first ticket because of Frank Turner. You come back because of everybody else.

Lost Evenings started in Camden in 2017 and, rather than becoming another festival planted permanently in one location, it moves. Over the years it has gone to cities including Boston, Berlin, Anaheim, Toronto and Edinburgh before landing in Dallas for its ninth edition.

That decision to come to Texas generated some criticism when the location was announced.

Turner addressed it himself well before the festival. Rather than avoid Texas because of the political and social climate surrounding LGBTQ+ issues, he made it clear that coming here was part of the point. Lost Evenings has developed a long relationship with The Ally Coalition, and Dallas gave that partnership an opportunity to put money, attention and support directly into the community. Once you were inside the festival, that wasn't some message buried in the fine print. It was everywhere.

The Ally Coalition works with artists and music fans to support organizations serving LGBTQ+ youth, and its relationship with Turner goes back years.

Geoffrey Morrisey, Director of Operations and Community Engagement for The Ally Coalition, first met Turner in 2013 when Turner agreed to be interviewed for Morrisey’s new radio show. Years later, Morrisey was at one of Turner's Boston shows when he heard Turner say from the stage that he wanted more charities involved with his concerts.

Morrisey reached out. That conversation eventually led to The Ally Coalition becoming part of Lost Evenings. “The rest is history,” he said. By the end of the Dallas weekend, The Ally Coalition had raised more than $100,000 for queer youth in Texas and beyond, with the total still growing. That's a significant number.

But Morrisey told me some of the moments that hit him hardest had nothing to do with counting dollars. He watched the hugs. The reunions. The dancing. The fan-made merchandise. People who only see one another once a year finding each other again.

He also heard stories from fans who said Lost Evenings and The Ally Coalition had helped their families become more open and loving. One person told him Turner was the first artist they had ever seen talk from a stage about protecting the trans community.

Think about that for a second. For most people at a concert, something an artist says between songs disappears almost as soon as the next song starts.

For somebody else in that same room, hearing those words can stay with them for years. “To be seen and accepted by an artist and their fan community for the first time is special,” Morrisey said. “I was moved to tears every day.”

That's why calling Lost Evenings IX simply a music festival never felt quite right. Music was obviously the reason everyone was there. But music was also the excuse to create everything happening around it.

During the day, people could attend panels and discussions, play open mics, wander into workshops or just spend time talking to each other before the bands started. At night, they could bounce between two stages and see artists they had followed for years mixed with musicians whose names they didn't know when they walked into the building. That discovery was a big part of the weekend.

Victor Rios and Itczel Viccara came from Mexico. Itczel had been following Turner for 11 years and had already seen him numerous times in Mexico City and Puebla. Lost Evenings, however, had always been this thing happening somewhere else.

Until Dallas. “This was like a dream for me to be here,” she said. Victor was excited to see Hot Water Music and Chuck Ragan, but he was just as interested in finding something new. “I really love the punk rock scene, so it’s really cool to see new shows and old ones like Hot Water Music,” he said. That happened a lot.

You'd see people rush into one room for an artist they absolutely had to see and later find those same people watching somebody they had never heard of. And, unlike some festivals where the early acts perform to an audience talking over them while everyone waits for the headliner, people at Lost Evenings actually listened.

Black Guy Fawkes noticed it. Dallas was his third Lost Evenings after appearing in Anaheim and Toronto. He described the festival as a wholesome community where people came to drink, dance, raise money and have a good time. Then he had one of those moments performers spend years hoping for. He has been singing the 4 Non Blondes song “What's Up?” for around 11 years. During his Dallas performance, the entire room started singing it back to him. Not just the people in front. The room. He told me he almost cried.

“I’ve been singing that song for about 11 years now and nobody really paid attention while I was first playing it,” he said. Hearing everyone sing it back at him was “beautiful” and “surreal.” Later, when I asked him what made the Lost Evenings audience different, his answer was pretty simple. At a lot of shows, he said, people are there to drink and get rowdy. They talk through the bands. Sometimes the music feels almost secondary. That wasn't what he saw here. People were paying attention and if someone fell down, somebody helped them back up.

That sounds like a small thing until you spend a weekend watching it happen over and over again. The setup helped. That sign in the lobby banning pits, crowd surfing and stage diving wasn't there because Turner wanted a quiet punk show. It created room for people who might otherwise stay home.

Cesario Martinez came up from San Antonio and spent part of the weekend busking. He's done it when Turner has played Austin and San Antonio, and he said that if Lost Evenings ever came to Texas, he knew he had to be there. This was his first one. He noticed those rules immediately. Martinez pointed out that not everybody feels comfortable in a pit. Some people are introverted. Some are anxious in packed, aggressive crowds. Some simply want to hear the music without worrying about a body suddenly coming over their head.

At Lost Evenings, he saw another option. “You can come out, experience that and feel safe,” he said. That's not taking punk away from somebody. It's letting more people into the room. The music itself gave Turner plenty of chances to show why people keep following him around the world. Instead of playing variations of the same headlining show four nights in a row, each evening was built around something different. Thursday looked back at the first decade of Turner's solo career, pulling from records including Sleep Is for the Week, Love Ire & Song, Poetry of the Deed, England Keep My Bones and Tape Deck Heart.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead

For longtime fans, it was the kind of set where every few songs seemed to trigger another memory. Some people in the room heard those songs when the albums were new. Others found Turner years later and worked their way backward through the catalog. It didn't matter much once everyone started singing.

Friday shifted toward the early solo material and the 20th anniversary of the Campfire Punkrock era, changing the mood without changing the connection between Turner and the audience. Saturday moved into the second half of his career, focusing on material from roughly the last decade. By Sunday, there wasn't much need for a concept anymore. It was the final night. People were tired. Voices were gone. Feet hurt. Everybody had probably consumed too much of something and slept too little. And nobody wanted it to end.

That's another strange thing about a four-day festival. On Thursday, four days sounds like forever. By Sunday afternoon, everybody seems to be checking the clock, wondering where the weekend went.

The barriers between performers and fans also became less noticeable as the days went on. Artists weren't hidden away waiting for their twenty minutes on stage. You saw musicians walking around, watching other musicians, talking to fans and experiencing the festival themselves.

Nina Diaz of San Antonio's Girl in a Coma was part of Sunday's lineup after Turner discovered the band and invited them to play. She was clearly excited about the recognition. “Frank is a badass,” she said, laughing. “So to be finally discovered by him, it feels like an accomplishment.” But she also talked about the opportunity to use the platform for something beyond the performance.

For Diaz, causes involving youth, at-risk kids and suicidal teens are personal priorities, and she said that whenever she has an opportunity to support an organization doing that type of work, she wants to participate. “It’s great to use our platform for something like that, to be able to help,” she said. That idea kept coming up all weekend. Use the platform. Use the music. Use the room full of people. Do something with it.

Victor Rios said music has the power to transform or at least support a local community.

Lost Evenings IX gave you four days of examples. More than $100,000 was raised for queer youth in Texas and beyond. Artists found new audiences. Fans found new bands. People who traveled from different countries met people from Dallas. Old friends saw one another again. Parents came with their kids. People who had never attended Lost Evenings before suddenly understood why others had traveled to nine of them.

And some people simply walked into a punk festival and felt safe enough to be themselves. You could see why Lost Evenings starts to feel like a family reunion after a while. Not the awkward kind where you spend three hours making small talk with relatives whose names you've forgotten. The good kind. The kind where people genuinely light up when they see somebody coming across the room.

The kind where you know eventually everyone has to go home, but nobody is really saying goodbye because there is already an assumption you'll find one another again. Maybe next year in London for Lost Weekends X? Frank Turner will play the songs again. Some of them for the hundredth time. Some of them for the thousandth.

But I don't think that's why many of these people will get on another airplane. Karen Shaver already explained why. You come for the bands. Then you come for the people. After four days at Lost Evenings IX, that difference became impossible to miss.

There were some great performances in Dallas. There were artists people had waited years to see and artists they discovered completely by accident. There were loud rooms, quiet conversations, hugs, tears and thousands of voices singing together.

But the thing I kept noticing wasn't happening on stage. It was happening everywhere around it. People taking care of people. That's what Frank Turner brought to Dallas. The music just gave everyone a reason to show up.

Lost Evenings IX: Frank Turner Brought More Than a Festival to Dallas

Facebook YouTube Instagram

Almost Famous Magazine

Lost Evenings IX: Frank Turner Brought More Than a Festival to Dallas

The Damnwells Celebrate 20 Years of Air Stereo at the Lodge Room

Facebook YouTube Instagram

Almost Famous Magazine