Weekend Event Planner

Comedians take top billing in the 12 best Dallas events this weekend

Plenty of big comedians make their way through the Dallas area, but this weekend will be a tad unusual, with five notable comedy events taking place over two days. Other choices include the start of more holiday events, a conversation with a brash pundit, a symphony concert, a new local theater production, a concert from a longtime producer, a dance production, and a huge outdoor art event.

Below are the best ways to spend your free time this weekend. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, November 14

Holiday events
Every weekend in November will bring more and more holiday events, with three more starting this weekend. They include Holiday at the Arboretum at the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden, featuring the the 10th anniversary of their 12 Days of Christmas display and more; The Trains at NorthPark at NorthPark Center, featuring model trains traveling through small versions of American landmarks; and Gaylord Texan ICE! featuring Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in Grapevine, featuring two million pounds of ice sculptures and more. All events will be open through January 5. (And here is a long list of the best Christmas lights in Dallas this season.)

The Eisemann Center presents An Evening with Fran Lebowitz
In a sea of pundits and talking heads, Fran Lebowitz stands tall as one of the sharpest cultural observers. Her essays and interviews dissect current events with a razor-sharp wit, taking aim at everything from tourists to after-shave lotion. Purveyor of urban cool, Lebowitz is hailed as the heir to Dorothy Parker, her insights cutting through the noise with unmatched clarity. She'll appear for a conversation at Eisemann Center for Performing Arts in Richardson.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents "Ravel’s Boléro"
Gershwin’s Concerto in F is a concert favorite that speaks in America’s musical vernacular - jazz - and is the perfect vehicle for the talents of pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Internationally renowned conductor Juanjo Mena returns to lead the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever performance of Bartók’s The Wooden Prince. The concert will finish with Ravel's iconic Boléro. There will be three performances through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Theatre Three presents Sleuth
A cunning mystery writer, Andrew Wyke, invites his wife's lover, Milo Tindle, to his secluded English manor, setting off a deadly game of manipulation and deceit. As the tension rises, surprising twists keep the audience guessing the dramatic end. Thie production will take place in the Theatre Too space at Theatre Three through December 15.

T Bone Burnett in concert
Musician T Bone Burnett is arguably best known for his producing work on albums for Elvis Costello, Brandi Carlile, and others, as well as his contributions to the soundtracks of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Walk the Line, and Crazy Heart. But he has solo albums dating back to 1972, a career that is still ongoing with the release of his new album, The Other Side. He'll play at the Kessler Theater.

Friday, November 15

Rhett & Link: Good Mythical Tour
Comedy duo Rhett & Link and the Mythical Crew will present a night that will bring their show to life like never before. It features favorite segments, classic games, music, mayhem, Mythicality, and more, and audience members may even become part of the show. The performance takes place at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving.

Hyena's presents Christopher "Kid" Reid
Christopher "Kid" Reid is best known as one-half of the late 1980s and early 1990s hip-hop musical act Kid 'n Play. Reid, who was particularly notable for his extreme high-top fade hairstyle, now tours as a stand-up comedian. He'll perform twice on Friday at Hyena's Comedy Nightclub.

Bruce Wood Dance presents Touch
As part of its latest program, Touch, Bruce Wood Dance will perform Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of A Wayfarer) by world–renowned choreographer and former artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater, Jirí Kylián; Dvorák Serenade by legendary American choreographer Lar Lubovitch; and the return of Bruce Wood’s riveting audience favorite, RED. There will be three performances through Sunday at Moody Performance Hall.

Martin Lawrence: Y’all Know What It Is! Tour
Comedy legend Martin Lawrence comes to Dallas as part of his first comedy tour since 2016. After a 30-year acting career that saw him star in four Bad Boys movies and his own sitcom, Lawrence has gone back to his roots with an all-new stand-up show where he brings the real talk and finds the funny in everything from family to culture as only he can. He'll be joined by fellow comedians Deon Cole and Benji Brown at American Airlines Center.

Saturday, November 16

Matteo Lane: Can't Stop Talking
New York-based comedian Matteo Lane has been a part of Netflix’s The Comedy Lineup, and has self-released four specials in the past three years. He’s also appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Late Night with Seth Meyers, HBO's Crashing, and Will & Grace. He currently co-hosts the podcasts I Never Liked You with Nick Smith and Teach Me Daddy with Chris Distefano. He'll perform twice on Saturday at Majestic Theatre.

AURORA Biennial: FuturePresentPast
The AURORA Biennial, taking place at Dallas City Hall and surrounding areas, is a free public one-night-only exhibition curated by New York City-based Kendal Henry and Mexico City-based Leslie Moody Castro. Under the title FuturePresentPast, Henry and Moody Castro look into the shared experiences of North Texas, reflecting on the past to consider and shape our future through the present. Artwork themes will include bridging disconnected communities, health advocacy, environmental sustainability, and urban transformation due to displacement and migration.

Chelsea Handler: Little Big Bitch Tour
Comedian Chelsea Handler has had the bulk of her success in the 21st century, hosting The Chelsea Handler Show in 2006 and 2007, and then Chelsea Lately from 2007 to 2014. She has also written six New York Times best-selling books, hosts the advice podcast, Dear Chelsea, and released her latest special, Revolution, on Netflix in 2022. On the Little Big Bitch tour, she will give fans a retrospective look at what made her the person and comedian she is today. She'll perform at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Photo courtesy of Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Handler will bring her Little Big Bitch Tour to the Music Hall at Fair Park on November 16.

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RIP, Frank

Frank Beard, drummer of legendary Texas rock band ZZ Top, dies at 77

Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

He kept the tempo for the band’s biggest hits like 'Sharp Dressed Man,' 'Legs,' and 'Gimme All Your Lovin.'

NEW YORK (AP) — Frank Beard, the drummer for the Texas boogie-rock trio ZZ Top who kept the tempo for the band’s biggest hits like “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs,” and “Gimme All Your Lovin,’” has died. He was 77.

Beard was in hospice care when he died Tuesday, August 18 at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, near Houston, with family members at his side, according to publicist Bob Merlis. Band co-founder and guitarist Billy Gibbons, on tour with bassist Elwood Francis, hailed Beard in a statement.

“Today, Elwood and I lost a great friend and collaborator, and the world lost one of the most naturally innovative drummers and a great and true son of Texas. His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top. The band of which he was part for six decades is going to keep on keeping on as he had wished,” Gibbons said.

ZZ Top sold more than 50 million records and had six singles that reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. Seven of their albums have been in the Billboard 200’s Top 10 and they earned three Grammy Award nominations.

“I’ve found the people I was meant to play with,” Beard says in the 2019 documentary ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas. “I never wanted to quit, and never wanted to get fired.”

Band's early days
Beard, from the East Texas town of Frankston, met Gibbons in a band called The Moving Sidewalks and later introduced bassist and vocalist Dusty Hill, a Dallas native, who had been in several bands with Beard.

The trio formed ZZ Top in 1969, naming themselves in part after blues singer Z.Z. Hill and influenced by the British power trio Cream and Jimmy Reed. They maintained their original lineup for more than five decades. Their signature look — long, bushy beards on Gibbons and Hill, and dark sunglasses for all — didn’t change much, either.

When Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards helped induct the trio into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, he joked: “These cats know their blues and they know how to dress it up. When I first saw them, I thought, ‘I hope these guys are not on the run, because that disguise is not going to work.’”

ZZ Top songs — with their sly and humorous lyrics — were popular in Hollywood, which used “Gimme All Your Lovin’” in “Happy Feet,” “Sharp Dressed Man” in “Evan Almighty,” “Legs” in “Air,” “Sleeping Bag” in “I, Tonya,” “Tush” in “Dazed and Confused,” “Mexican Blackbird” in “From Dusk Till Dawn” and “La Grange” in “Armageddon.”

“The best way to describe ZZ Top is we’re interpreters of a great American art form,” Gibbons told The Dallas Morning News.

Their debut release, “ZZ Top’s First Album,” came out in 1970. Their sound was described as a hybrid mixing elements of rock, blues and funk into a steaming-hot Houston stew. They called themselves a “Little Ol’ Band From Texas.”

Breaking through
Three years later, they broke through commercially with “La Grange,” a funky blues song on the album “Tres Hombres” that paid tribute to the Chicken Ranch, a brothel outside of the Texas town of La Grange that operated from 1905 until 1973 and was immortalized in the Broadway show and the film, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” Gibbons has ascribed the power of “La Grange" to its simplicity — just two chords and a Robert Johnson-inspired guitar solo.

The band went on to have such hits as “Tush” and “Cheap Sunglasses.” But their 1983 “Eliminator” — named after one of Gibbons’ custom cars — added more production elements, synthesizers and drum machines to their stripped-down sound and yielded the hits “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Legs” and “Sharp-Dressed Man.” The band toured with a Texas-shaped stage, live rattlesnakes and a longhorn steer.

Long beards weren’t always part of the band’s look. Gibbons said it happened by accident: In 1976, the trio took a long break and scattered. Beard went to Jamaica, Hill went to Mexico and Gibbons went to France.

“Although we were speaking by phone, this was pre-video phone. And Dusty and I did not know that we had gotten so lazy that we had decided to forget to shave,” Gibbons told The Tribune in San Luis Obispo in 2010. “So after three years we returned and showed up, and lo and behold here was this sort of wacky-looking image. And it just kind of stuck with us.”

A boost from MTV
The band’s rock-chic cool played well on the nascent MTV crowd and their videos, featuring models in short skirts emerging from one of Gibbons’ custom roadsters, became a mainstay.

They kept the beards, hats and cheap sunglasses in the video trilogy of “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Legs,” made with director Tim Newman.

“ZZ Top reveled in the humor and ridiculousness of it all, busting their synchronized dance moves and spinning their white-fur guitars. These guys always got the joke, at a time when other bands were still just nervously lip-syncing in front of brick walls,” Rolling Stone said in 2021.

In 2012, superstar producer Rick Rubin helped update the trio’s sound with the band’s comeback album, “La Futura.” The album landed at No. 6 on the Billboard chart, their highest position since 1990's “Recycler,” some 22 years previously.

Hill died in 2021.

In March 2025, the band announced via Instagram that Beard would temporarily step away from the band’s tour to tend to foot and ankle problems. Beard died weeks after ZZ Top called off its August 5 concert at the Hollywood Bowl due to his health issues.

Beard is survived by his wife, Debbie Meredith, and three children.

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