Austin Meade and Dylan Marlowe bring a 'Christmas Vacation' to The Vanguard

Meade, Marlowe and Mitchell Ferguson share a holiday bill at Tulsa's 500-capacity Vanguard on Wednesday, Dec. 9.

Two weeks before Christmas, The Vanguard is hosting the kind of holiday party that comes with loud guitars instead of ugly sweaters. Austin Meade and Dylan Marlowe are putting their names on it together.

Austin Meade plays The Vanguard on Wednesday, Dec. 9, at 7:30 p.m., with Dylan Marlowe and Mitchell Ferguson on the bill. The OpenDate ticket page bills the night as Marlowe & Meade's Christmas Vacation. The date was announced Oct. 26, and the room holds 500.

Meade is a Texan who came up through the Red Dirt circuit that runs across Texas and Oklahoma, and he has never sat comfortably inside the country label. When Rolling Stone wrote about his album Almost Famous, released in November 2025, the headline said it was more Texas rock than country, and Meade offered his own description: "I think we're just Southern alternative rock." Rolling Stone counted it as his sixth studio album, and antiMusic reported that it was recorded between a Nashville garage and Meade's spare-bedroom studio in Texas before coming out on Snakefarm.

Snakefarm has been his home since Black Sheep, his label debut, released Feb. 19, 2021, as uDiscover Music reported when he signed. That record's single "Happier Alone" helped put him on the map well beyond the Texas-Oklahoma circuit.

"I think we're just Southern alternative rock."

Dylan Marlowe comes at country from a different angle. He's a Sony Music Nashville artist from Statesboro, Georgia, and he's spent the past couple of years building a touring audience of his own. In 2025 he headlined his Mid-Twenties Crisis Tour, and that spring he and Conner Smith co-headlined the Did We Just Become Best Friends? Tour, as MusicRow reported. Before that, WTOC reported on his run opening for HARDY and Lainey Wilson.

Put the two together and you get a bill that covers a lot of ground: Meade's heavy, rock-leaning Red Dirt on one side, Marlowe's Nashville-polished country on the other, with Mitchell Ferguson opening the night. A co-billed holiday show is the kind of booking that tends to bring out both fan bases at once, which in a 500-cap room means a full floor from the first act.

The Vanguard is the right size for this. Five hundred people is close enough to feel like a party and big enough to carry the volume Meade's band is known for. For Tulsa, which sits right in the middle of the Red Dirt map, a December night with an act like Meade is close to a homecoming crowd even if he isn't from here.

There's no price listed in our data, so check the OpenDate page for tiers. A Wednesday date also makes this one easy to fit in before the holiday rush really hits.

Call it the company Christmas party you'd actually want to attend. Grab a ticket, show up for Ferguson, and stay for both headliners.

Sources: Austin Meade Is More Texas Rock Than Country on New Album 'Almost Famous' - Rolling Stone (rollingstone.com); Austin Meade Streams New Album Almost Famous - antiMusic (musicpressbox.antimusic.com); Austin Meade Signs To Snakefarm Records, Announces Album, 'Black Sheep' - uDiscover Music (udiscovermusic.com); Dylan Marlowe - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Dylan Marlowe, Conner Smith Team For New 'Did We Just Become Best Friends' Tour - MusicRow (musicrow.com); Dylan Marlowe Will Hit The Road In 2025 With His Mid-Twenties Crisis Tour - All Country News (allcountrynews.com); Rising country singer from Statesboro will tour with Hardy, Lainey Wilson - WTOC (wtoc.com); Marlowe & Meade's Christmas Vacation - OpenDate (app.opendate.io)