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provided by The Moon
The Moon
The Moon's neon sign
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provided by The Moon
The Moon
The Moon's wall art
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provided by The Moon
The Moon
interior of The Moon
From 2004 to 2011, The Moon was at the epicenter of the Fort Worth music scene, hosting the likes of Quaker City Night Hawks, Bob Schneider, Maren Morris, and literally hundreds of other bands big and small.
But seasons change. Scenes change — especially when great venues are lost.
When The Moon closed the doors of its West Berry Street location in hopes of moving on to bigger things at the Ridglea Theater, the zoning nightmare that ensued took The Moon and the collaborative spirit it fostered down with it.
“I was missing the collaboration,” owner Chris Maunder says. “That was a big part of this music scene. Everybody wanted to be hanging around everybody. There was just a lot of synergy. Maybe it was just lightning-in-the-bottle-type of thing. Maybe it’s just that this whole thing is just very circular.”
Seasons come back around, after all.
The reopening of The Moon at the intersection of Eighth and Berry is all about recapturing that lightning and providing local bands a new venue in which to collaborate, but this time Maunder wanted The Moon to appeal to all ages.
“We wanted a more family-friendly environment, not dark red and black walls,” he says in remembrance of the smoky dive The Moon used to be. “We wanted to brighten it up and hopefully be able to influence some of the younger kids and introduce the younger generation to a music scene.”
The Moon has kept the lights that used to adorn the ceiling of their old location, but today’s Moon has a very clean feel to it with midcentury sci-fi paintings on the wall and band stickers confined to the tip jars.
Also making the venue appealing to all generations is its hosting of BirdieBop, a fried chicken joint serving Southern-Asian fusion recipes from 5 p.m. until close.
The lifeblood of The Moon, however, is the 20,000 students of the venue’s neighbor one mile west, TCU.
“I’ve always felt like college is a very influential time in your life, and music is a big part of that,” Maunder says. “When everything started leaving over here, I felt like we kind of lost the soundtrack of our college years, our formative years — the years we were coming of age. That’s what I’m excited about bringing back.”
Maunder points across the bar past the west doorway to an outdoor area he and The Moon’s staff have dubbed the Moon Crater, a perfectly level sunken field capable of holding pop-up bars, food trucks, and up to 3,000 people for an event, like, say, a music festival.
“We want to be able to sell 1,000 to 1,500 tickets and bring in some more of the bigger regional and smaller national acts,” Maunder explains. “I think that will help us reach one of my goals in creating that connection between the TCU population, The Moon, and Fort Worth music, whether it’s hip-hop, rock, country, or whatever it is. I’m hoping that we’ll find a way to bring some cohesion back.”
The Crater will also play host to charity events, chili cook-offs, and anything that brings people together in the spirit of good fun and good tunes.
“Music brings people together,” Maunder says. “Music came before the first word was ever spoken, sitting around a fire chanting or humming some beat. It’s a very collaborative thing, and it’s something that brings people of all thought and color, race, creed — whatever you want to call it — together. Everybody gets something very different from it, and that’s pretty cool when you can bring people of different minds in one place for a given amount of time and share moments together.”