More details on Houston's newest downtown music festival emerge

Photo By David Hopper/For the Chronicle

Photo By Smiley N. Pool/Houston Chronicle

Photo By Mayra Beltran/Staff

Photo By Michael Miller/For the Express-News

Photo By Pin Lim/For The Chronicle

A new music festival coming to Houston has quite an interesting lineage behind it.

The Lone Star Music Festival bows at Discovery Green on Friday, Nov. 7 and Saturday, Nov. 8, with major headliners blink-182, Steve Aoki, Sublime with Rome, plus heritage acts like Roy Head, Jerry Jeff Walker and Joe Ely. Local stars Paul Wall, The Tontons and The Suffers are also slated to perform. More acts are to be announced, according to the festival's official site.

Tickets go on sale this Saturday, Aug. 16, at noon on the fest's website. There was no word available on ticket prices. It is not affiliated with the famous Texas beer of the same name.

There will be three stages of music at the Lone Star Music Festival, according to Tom Bunch with TAB Management, one of the festival's organizers. There will also be an art component to Lone Star, as well.

'We will construct a main stage and also the use the existing Budweiser and Transier Bandstand stages,' Bunch said this week.

The other big name behind the festival is Mark Lacy, the executive director of The Houston Institute For Culture, which usually puts on free cultural events in Houston, like the Juneteenth Festival at Miller Outdoor every June 19. This year that event featured both Allen Toussaint and Ruthie Foster.

Bunch was hired by Lacy's team to produce Lone Star, but he's been a big part of the Houston music scene for some time. From 1983 until 1999 he promoted shows, tours, and ran venues as TAB Concerts, while also managing notorious weirdos the Butthole Surfers and Dallas' Toadies.

Bunch ran The Vatican and Unicorn Ballroom in Houston, two historic Bayou City venues that brought landmark acts to Houston. The Vatican, at 5213 Washington Avenue, played host to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Nine Inch Nails, on their way up the ladder of rock stardom. Bunch also ran the International Club in Montrose, which played host to bands like Black Flag.

The Lone Star Music Festival is just one of several that has made its Houston debuts over the past year.

This year may have been the last hurrah for the Houston International Festival. Declining ticket sales and growing debts led to the organizers announcing earlier this summer that they were filing for bankruptcy.

Regardless, the multi-day music format seems to be growing in the city

Untapped Festival, a beer and music festival rolled into one day debuted at Discovery Green last fall and returns Sept. 20. Last weekend, the first-ever Houston Whatever Festival was held in east downtown around Warehouse Live, and the indie-rock-inflected Downtown Festival arrives the weekend after Lone Star Music Festival.

Free Press Summer Festival wrapped up its sixth edition in June and only seems to be getting bigger each year. Something Wicked will bring EDM to Sam Houston Race Park the last weekend in October. Bassnectar and Kaskade are among announced performers so far for that fest's third edition.

With Houston's continued growth and the young professionals taking residence in the city, Houston is probably bound to have a few more festivals plant roots in town to take advantage of the demographic.

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