Western Swing didn’t come from Nashville. It came from Fort Worth, from the same stock tanks and cotton fields that put Bob Wills behind a fiddle and turned dance music into something closer to jazz than the radio knew what to do with. On November 15, Dave Alexander brings that lineage home — to Cowtown, where it started, with a 65-piece orchestra and Kristyn Harris on the bill.
Alexander knows this music from the inside. His father played in Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys. He grew up with those recordings, studied jazz at the University of North Texas, and spent decades building the show that earned him the Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum — the same honor the organization gave the album From the Saddle to Symphony Hall in 2023. The International Western Music Association named it Western Album of the Year in 2025. Alexander is a four-time Grammy nominee who has shared the stage with George Strait, Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, and Lyle Lovett. He has conducted alongside the Dallas Symphony for more than a dozen seasons. He knows what a room full of people sounds like when they’re dancing.
The setlist draws from the Western Swing canon — Cindy Walker compositions, “Take Me Back to Tulsa,” “Big Balls in Cowtown” — alongside original work that sits in the same tradition without pretending it hasn’t moved. This is not a museum piece. This is the music the State of Texas declared its own.
Joining him is Kristyn Harris, who runs a cattle operation in Burleson and plays swing rhythm guitar the way the 1940s cowboy films taught her to at age fourteen. She has won the IWMA Entertainer of the Year six times — the youngest performer to hold that honor. Her 2020 album A Place to Land won the Wrangler Award for Outstanding Western Album. She yodels. She does not apologize for it.
The Venue
Will Rogers Auditorium sits inside the Will Rogers Memorial Center complex at 3401 W. Lancaster Ave. in Fort Worth. It seats 2,856 — a main-stage room built to carry the weight the city puts on it. For a concert rooted in Fort Worth’s musical origins, there may not be a more fitting stage in DFW.
Tickets
From the Saddle to Symphony Hall — Cowtown Birthplace of Western Swing takes place Sunday, November 15, 2026, at 1:30 PM at Will Rogers Auditorium in Fort Worth. Get tickets here.