{"id":393967,"date":"2025-11-21T05:51:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T05:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/393967\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T05:51:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T05:51:25","slug":"tulips-turns-5-and-celebrates-with-lou-charle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/393967\/","title":{"rendered":"Tulips Turns 5 (and Celebrates With Lou CharLe$)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celebrating five years since Tulips<\/a> first opened its doors, the music venue will host an anniversary party Thursday, Nov. 20, featuring local hip-hop icon Lou CharLe$<\/a>, the same man who christened Tulips\u2019 stage with the venue\u2019s first-ever live performance.<\/p>\n

Billed as \u201cA Full Circle Anniversary Show,\u201d the celebration will also feature Gervatti, Jwoodz, Kevin Tyrone, and Day Banks. Taking the stage with Lou will also be his long-time collaborator and DJ, Jose \u201cChico\u201d Santiago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve put together a really good set that spans the last five years,\u201d Lou says about the performance. \u201c[The show] will take you on the ride through those five years. And we’ve really dug down and been very intentional with what we put together. I think it’s going to be awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

At work on his new album, and on the heels of releasing his latest single, \u201cPay Me,\u201d this will mark Lou\u2019s first Fort Worth show since February, when he also played Tulips.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m super excited to get back on the stage at Tulips,\u201d he says. \u201cFor me, the biggest thing is I’ve missed community. And that’s one thing you can’t recreate. I mean, you’ve got TikTok, Instagram and all the social media networks, but that live show experience is always something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the fact Lou\u2019s last performance was at Tulips is not surprising considering the unique and singular footprint the business\u00a0occupies in the city: a hip music joint neither large nor small that attracts national acts.<\/p>\n

When our magazine first wrote about Tulips a little over five years ago \u2014 before the space had opened its doors \u2014 the story\u2019s lede referred to it as \u201cFort Worth\u2019s first mid-size music venue.\u201d New(ish) to the area and fulfilling my fact-checking duties as the magazine\u2019s editor, I recall doing a double-take and diligently Googling local music venues to ensure the accuracy of the statement.<\/p>\n

I mean, how could a city of over 900,000 people not have a comparable space for live music? There\u2019s no way, I thought. Dallas has these spots in spades (Granada, Club Dada, Trees, etcetera, etcetera), and the whole western side of the metroplex can\u2019t get one?<\/p>\n

Yeah, it was a striking void Tulips filled when the venue first opened its doors on Nov. 20, 2020<\/a> \u2014 five years ago to the day \u2014 and it has since made its way into the pantheon of cultural institutions. Taking over the Near Southside space previously occupied by Collective Brewing Project, Tulips has gone on to host sold-out shows of national indie acts like Geese, Shakey Graves, Tank and the Bangas, DIIV, Wavves, and Beach Fossils (I could go on) \u2014 bands that previously skipped Cowtown for the then-greener pastures of Dallas.<\/p>\n

One could argue this success, and Tulips\u2019 continued influence, is the venue\u2019s reward for navigating more than its fair share of obstacles.<\/p>\n

Owner Jason Suder would sign the lease on the vacant brewery\u00a0Feb. 1, 2020, just a month and a half before the world shut down for a spell and was collectively traumatized thanks to COVID. Undeterred, and having successfully reconfigured the space into a venue, the new business\u00a0would launch a month before the vaccine became available \u2014\u00a0Tulips opened its doors when every other music venue was closing theirs. Lou, on the space\u2019s opening night, sang to a room full of socially-distanced people rocking N95 masks, something that would continue for months.<\/p>\n

Resiliency, y\u2019all.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost a third of our investors during the pandemic,\u201d Suder says. \u201cSo, our budget was immediately slashed. On top that, we opened at a time when we could not operate the core of our business model [live music].\u201d Regardless, the venue \u2014 to this writer, at least \u2014 was a breath of fresh air.<\/p>\n

Looking to subsidize its income, Tulips pivoted and began operating a deli and coffee shop. While you can still snag an espresso at Low Doubt Bar behind the venue<\/a>\u00a0(an addition that opened in early 2024 and Fort Worth Magazine recently named the city\u2019s best bar<\/a>), the deli was axed in favor of hosting food trucks<\/a> in the venue\u2019s back patio, some of which, like Gusto\u2019s<\/a>, have gone on to achieve brick-and-mortar status.<\/p>\n

According to Suder, who greets anyone who visits Tulips with a hearty \u201cwelcome home,\u201d his objective was always to make Tulips more than a venue for live music. \u201cMusic is what we do, but we are a creative cultural center,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is the ethos. That is what everybody believes in. We want people to come here and we say, \u2018Welcome home,\u2019 because we want everybody who comes through that door to take equal ownership of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tulips has gone on to team up with local muralists to put their stamp on the venue\u2019s brick walls and metal fences and collaborates with Fort Worth-based art advocacy nonprofit Art Tooth<\/a> to display works from local artists.<\/p>\n

\u201cFort Worth is filled with so much talent and so much creativity,” Suder says,\u00a0“and it needs space for people to exercise that.”<\/p>\n

Deflecting any praise for Tulips\u2019 success during a time that\u2019s, let\u2019s face it, not easy for local music joints, Suder praises those around him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast support network that I have in this place is incomparable,\u201d Suder says. \u201cEverybody who’s ever touched this place, everybody who’s ever been a part of it, everybody who has been involved for the past six years \u2014 we all believe that Tulips is something special because Fort Worth is something special.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Suder called Lou (\u201csuper, super energetically\u201d) to ask if he\u2019d be willing to perform at Tulips\u2019 anniversary party \u2014 to make a full-circle moment \u2014 Lou says there was some magic he felt, and the opportunity, its significance, was \u201ctoo good to pass up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s tough to find another venue in the city like Tulips,\u201d Lou says. \u201cThey’ve opened their doors to a lot of artists over the years, and they\u2019re doing it for the right reasons [for community]. And anything that I can do to support Tulips, to keep Tulips, I’m definitely down to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celebrating five years since Tulips first opened its doors, the music venue will host an anniversary party Thursday,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":393968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,29751,7371,7372,187052,975,143369,358,7453,187051,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,51561],"class_list":{"0":"post-393967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-brian-kendall","10":"tag-fort-worth","11":"tag-fortworth","12":"tag-lou-charle","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-near-south-side","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-top-story","17":"tag-tulips","18":"tag-tx","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa","25":"tag-venues"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115586130576278487","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}