The Denton Rock Lottery picks 25 musicians, organizes them into five bands through a lottery the morning of the performance and sends them off to practice at different locations. The musicians have 12 hours to create a band name and come up with 3-5 songs, only one of which can be a cover song. The bands will return to Dan's Silverleaf that night and perform what they have created in front of a waiting audience.

The twenty-five musicians included in this experiment are carefully selected in an attempt to represent a wide variety of musical styles. These are the confirmed participants in the Rock Lottery:

Aaron White from Old Snack
Bill Dodds from Bukkake Moms
Chris Welch from Pinebox Serenade/Old Warhorse
Cody Garcia from The Heelers
Daniel Zeigler from Wiccans
Darcy Neal from Bludded Head
David Saylor from Terminator 2
Doug Burr
Ginny Mac from Brave Combo
Isaac Hoskins
James Washington from Peopleodian
Jeff Barnard from Dust Congress
Jeremy Buller from Bosque Brown/The Hope Trust
Judson Valdez from Chambers/Becoming
Justin Gray from Cerulean Giallo/Idiots
Mckenzie Smith from Midlake
Mike Forbes from Shiny Around the Edges
Nicole Estill from True Widow
Paddy Flynn from Deep Snapper
Petra Kelly from Spooky Folk/Hares on the Mountain
Rachel Yoder from Odd Partials/Madera Wind Quintet
Rob Buttrum from Vaults of Zin
Ryan Becker from RTB2
Taylor Kimbrough from DEEP Throat
Tex Bosley from Warren Jackson Hearne & Le Leek Electrique/The Holler Time