Live Music Now

These are the 6 best concerts in Houston this week

Christmas came early for urban cowboys in Houston.

The one-time most famous country bar in the world and line dancing haven is making a comeback. Gilley's, first opened nearly 50 years ago in Pasadena. The nightspot and its owner, country singer Mickey Gilley, would catapult into the national consciousness with the hit John Travolta film, Urban Cowboy, released in 1980.

The venue will make a return for that movie's 40th anniversary in 2020 as a $130 million, 16-acre mixed-use development in fast-growing League City, that will include a hotel, amphitheater, and restaurants. It will be similar to another Gilley's entertainment complex in Dallas. And no Gilley's would be complete without a massive dance hall to partake in some boot-scootin' boogie.

Be on the look out for scheduled concerts at the new hot spot in the column. Until then, here are this week's biggest, best, and most notable shows of the week.

CultureMap show of the week: Megan Thee Stallion at White Oak Music Hall
Who's had a bigger year in music? Billie Eilish? Okay. Lizzo? Probably. But Houston's own Megan Thee Stallion is certainly up there as an artist that completely blew up in 2019. The "Hot Girl Summer" star and Texas Southern student blew up the charts and onto the national scene faster than James Harden puts up 60 points, earning widespread acclaim.

Yes, "Hot Girl Summer" might have been the catalyst with her 2019 album Fever the big payoff, but the woman born Megan Pete earned her stripes on the Houston freestyle scene, learning from all the "chopped and screwed" H-town artists that came before her. This one is sold out and no doubt is one one of the hottest tickets of the year.

Megan Thee Stallion play White Oak Music Hall, located at 2915 N. Main St., on Tuesday, December 3. Tickets are sold out. Doors open at 6:30 pm.

CultureMap recommends: Old 97's at Warehouse Live
One of the more popular regional acts makes another appearance in Houston this year and those who like lead singer Rhett Miller are in for a double dose. The band will perform a yuletide set, most likely drawing songs from its 2018 album, Love the Holidays.

The night will also feature a solo set from Miller and magician Casey Magic, which sounds more than interesting and bit bizarre. But we'll give the hardworking and hard touring Texas band the benefit of the doubt.

Old 97's perform at Warehouse Live, located at 813 Saint Emanuel St., on Wednesday, December 4. Rhett Miller plays a special acoustic set and Casey Magic opens. Tickets start at $25 plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

Yacht at White Oak Music Hall
Los Angeles by way of Portland act electro-pop Yacht was on a roll creatively and commercially, gaining critical notices for 2015 album I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler when the usually smart group made a really dumb decision to promote a new song via a fake sex tape that blew up in their faces. While they always explored the interaction of music via our reliance on the digital sphere, the stunt came across as extremely insensitive and set the band's career trajectory back years.

After a few years off to regroup, the Yacht is back with Chain Tripping, a colder, less-fun album than their previous work, returning to LCD Soundsystem head honcho James Murphy's label, DFA Records. The fact that they are playing upstairs at White Oak when a few years ago would have easily played the larger downstairs space just shows how much of a hill they have to climb before winning back their fanbase. Whether they can forgive or forget remains to be seen, but surely this band has a lot of musical talent to make up the gap.

Yacht performs at White Oak Music Hall, located at 2915 N. Main St., on Thursday, December 5. Jennifer Vanilla opens. Tickets start at $13 plus fees. Doors open at 8 pm.

A$AP Ferg at House of Blues
A member of the similarly money-signed A$AP Mob, which included A$AP Rocky, the New York City-based A$AP Ferg has found success as his own voice outside of his original group. Moving past the Mob, Ferg released a series of tight and aggressive mix tapes, collaborating with a who's-who of hip-hop artists, including Snopp Dogg, Busta Rhymes, and Rick Ross.

His 2017 full-length, Still Striving, hit the Top 20 of the Billboard charts making him an equal with his former bandmate. After a series of guest appearances on other artists' tracks, his latest is this year's Floor Seats.

A$AP Ferg is at House of Blues, located at 1204 Caroline St., on Friday, December 6. Murda Beatz, Made in TYO open. Tickets start at $32.50 plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

Kansas at Smart Financial Centre
The holidays are a good bet that classic rock acts will roll through the city and that job this year falls on the shoulders of Kansas (The Guess Who are also playing in The Woodlands Saturday night). The group rose to fame when too many bands named themselves after geographic locations (re: Chicago, Alabama, etc.).

Like bands of the time, they got big on a mix of hard rock and prog rock that fit with the psychedelic times, hitting their commercial peak with 1977s Point of Know Return, featuring single "Dust in the Wind." And again, like many classic rock acts of the time, they broke up and reformed and are now a staple on the nostalgia circuit but fans of the act will take pleasure in the fact the band will be playing their biggest album in fill on this tour.

Kansas performs at Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land, located at 18111 Lexington Blvd. in Sugar Land on Saturday, December 7. Tickets start at $44.50 plus fees. The show starts at 7:30 pm.

The Grand Ol' Christmas Show at House of Blues
Holiday shows are a dime a dozen each December, but here's one that actually does it for a good cause. The Grand Ol' Christmas Show is a concert-meets-variety show-meets play featuring some of the best talent in Texas, including locally raised Americana troubadour Robert Ellis and Blue Water Highway.

Starting in 2003, the annual Texas touring performance has helped raise over $100,000 for various charitable organizations, including the Brazoria County Youth Home, Agape in Action, The Brazosport Center for the Arts and Sciences, and Military Moms and Wives of Brazoria County. Part of this year's proceeds goes towards Habitat for Humanity.

The Grand Ol’ Christmas Show is at House of Blues, located at 1204 Caroline St., on Sunday, December 7. Murda Beatz, Made in TYO open. Tickets start at $32.50 plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

CultureMap show of the week: Houston's Megan Thee Stallion performs a sold-out show at White Oak Music Hall on Tuesday, December 3.

Photo courtesy of Red Bull

CultureMap show of the week: Houston's Megan Thee Stallion performs a sold-out show at White Oak Music Hall on Tuesday, December 3.

music nightlife concerts column

Movie Review

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya face pre-marriage jitters in The Drama

Photo courtesy of A24

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in The Drama.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will be seen together a lot at the movies in 2026, with mega-films like The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three coming out later in the year. But fans can get a much more intimate look at the two stars in a film that offers a unique take on relationship struggles, The Drama.

Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are a New York couple who are engaged to be married. After a quick-but-effective montage of their courtship, the story joins them as they are just days away from their wedding. As they get all the details like music, flowers, and food finalized, a visit to the caterer with married friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) proves fateful.

A few too many drinks leads to each member of the group deciding to divulge the worst thing they’ve ever done. While each story is slightly shocking, Emma’s takes the cake, so much so that Charlie starts to question their relationship. As they get closer to the wedding date, Charlie finds it increasingly difficult to get beyond Emma’s revelation, with each real or imagined conversation threatening to derail their previously tight bond.

Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, the film is provocative, funny, and cringey as it tries to get to the center of human dynamics. Charlie, Rachel, and Mike have starkly different reactions to Emma’s story, and the way those play out over the course of the film provides, well, the drama. The harder Charlie tries to justify Emma’s past, the more his underlying feelings start to eat at him, causing friction not just between him and Emma, but in other parts of his life, as well.

Strangely, especially for a character played by Zendaya, Emma recedes more than expected. Her explanations for her previous actions are timid at best, and she mostly seems to be waiting for Charlie to forgive her instead of questioning why she needs forgiveness. Borgli favors the male side of the equation, and in so doing he doesn’t dig as deep into the root of the issue as he could have.

Still, the downward spiral at the center of the story has a propulsive nature to it, and each successive step proves to be both hard to watch and impossible to turn away from. It also helps that Borgli manages the tone well, keeping interactions between characters relatively light so that the film doesn’t turn into one like Marriage Story.

Pattinson, who gets to use his own British accent for once, put on an interesting performance that is much better than his last two roles in Mickey 17 and Die My Love. He has good chemistry with Zendaya, who manages to shine despite being laden with a role that doesn’t play entirely to her strengths. Haim and Athie do good work in small roles, while Hailey Grace and Hannah Gross make an impact in brief appearances.

The situation in which Emma and Charlie find themselves in The Drama is not one to be wished on anyone, but it’s presented well by Borgli, keeping tensions high for the bulk of the film. Despite the two main characters not given completely equal footing, the story finds a way to get to a satisfactory ending.

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The Drama opens in theaters on April 3.

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