DFW Venues by Erilyn Daly: 1919 Hemphill

Venue: 1919 Hemphill
Map: Click

Stoked for the second installment of the DFW Venue Review by yours truly? I am! The first one was in Dallas, now we’re going to take a little journey across the metroplex and talk about 1919 Hemphill in Fort Worth. A forewarning, a lot of these venues that I’ll be reviewing are small and quaint; you will often hear me saying (or reading, technically) that they provide an intimate performance. I’m sorry in advance for repeating myself, but hopefully, I will soon find a better and more appropriate word than intimate, but for now, please bear with me.

Alright, the first time I went to 1919, I drove right by it, three times actually, so if you’re not looking for it, you’d hardly know it was there. But once you know, you’ll sure be glad. 1919 is a quaint, kind of run-down venue, but its ruggedness is all part of its’ charm. 1919 first opened it’s doors in 2002 and has been operational ever since. One way it differs from almost all other venues in the area?? It is completely nonprofit and is fueled by donations and volunteers. The tickets are super crazy cheap (their website says tickets are $6, unless posted otherwise) so if and when you go, you might as well donate a few bucks to help the place out, ya hear??

Another interesting facet of 1919, is that it seems to be very politically active. When I was there a group of individuals associated with some political group gave a five minute and very moving speech about the war in Iraq and a protest that was going on in Dallas the following week, and everyone there seemed to have plans to attend. If you listen closely to people talking around you (aka eavesdrop) I assure you that you will hear deep meaningful things. If you’re about as uniformed as I am, this will drive you to go home and look up the things they were talking about.

1919 is a very community driven venue. It really is all about people helping people, this place. They offer their space up for various organizations and community efforts at no charge and maintain a free lending library (with some pretty radical literature) as well as a free secondhand store. They also have some pretty rad bleachers and when I was there, they had a rope attached to the rafters, which the kids promptly used to swing over the top of the crowd and jump//land on the people in front of them.

You oughta check it out, donate, read, listen to music, whatever, if for no other reason than because its completely different than anywhere else in DFW.

-Erilyn Daly

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