Lance Roark books a Sunday night at Gruene Hall, Dec. 27

The Tahlequah songwriter behind last year's "Bad Reputation" brings his Red Dirt sound to Texas's most storied dance floor in the quiet week after Christmas.

The week between Christmas and New Year's is a strange, loose stretch on the calendar, and there are worse ways to spend a piece of it than on the worn floorboards in Gruene, under the tin signs, with a cold one and a songwriter who's been climbing fast. That's the offer on the table now: Lance Roark plays Gruene Hall in New Braunfels on Sunday, Dec. 27, at 8 p.m., a show announced Nov. 3. Tickets are $15 through Prekindle, and in a room that holds about 800, a price like that tends not to last.

If the name is newer to you than the hall is, here's the short version. Roark is from Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the same hometown as the Turnpike Troubadours, and for a while that was the easiest way to describe him. Saving Country Music noted the resemblance between the sound he and producer Andrew Bair built and the Troubadours, but its review of his debut full-length, *Bad Reputation*, framed the record as the moment Roark moved from a "one to watch" among Texas and Red Dirt prospects to a featured artist in his own right. Before that, the same site wrote that his 2024 EP *Tenkiller* was where he stepped out from under that shadow and asserted himself as a frontman.

*Bad Reputation* landed late last year and drew a strong reception. Whiskey Riff called it a "killer debut" and said it proved he's here to stay, and Oklahoma public radio's KOSU talked with him about how the record traces the evolution of a life on the road. One song in particular should land with a Texas crowd: "Melissa Texas," a road warrior's lament named for the map-dot town on U.S. 75, the highway that links eastern Oklahoma to North Texas. Expect groove as much as twang; reviewers have pointed to southern rock and bluegrass running underneath the country songwriting.

A $15 ticket, a Sunday night after Christmas, and the oldest-feeling room in Texas.

Then there's the room. Gruene Hall went up in 1878 as a saloon and social hall for the area's cotton farmers, built by Christian Herry under the direction of town developer Henry D. Gruene, according to its history. The hall bills itself as the oldest continually run dance hall in Texas; the state historical marker out front, placed in 1988, puts it a bit more carefully as one of the oldest (marker text). Either way, not much about the building has changed since it was first raised, and that's the point. Its modern life as a music room dates to the 1970s, and generations of country acts have used that stage as a rite of passage on the way up.

For San Antonio folks it's an easy drive up I-35, and a Sunday show means you can make a night of it without wrecking Monday. Roark's songs are built for exactly this kind of place: a room where people actually dance, where the bar is close and the band is closer.

If you've been meaning to catch him since *Bad Reputation* came out, this is about as good a setting as you'll get. Grab the tickets now, plan to get there early for a spot near the front, and bring someone who'll two-step.

Sources: Album Review – Lance Roark's "Bad Reputation" (Saving Country Music) (savingcountrymusic.com); Album Review – Lance Roark's "Tenkiller" (Saving Country Music) (savingcountrymusic.com); Lance Roark Proves He Is Here To Stay With Killer Debut Record "Bad Reputation" (Whiskey Riff) (whiskeyriff.com); Lance Roark shows the evolution of life's journey in Bad Reputation (KOSU) (kosu.org); Gruene Hall (Wikipedia) (en.wikipedia.org); Gruene Hall historical marker (HMdb) (hmdb.org); Lance Roark at Gruene Hall tickets (Prekindle) (prekindle.com)