Thirty years is a long time to stay restless. Rob Garza and Eric Hilton formed Thievery Corporation in Washington D.C. in 1995, released Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi the following year — it charted at #12 on Billboard’s Dance chart and arrived with a Bebel Gilberto feature on “Scene at the Open Air Market” — and have spent the decades since building one of the more stubbornly genre-resistant catalogs in electronic music. That debut album is what this tour is celebrating. The 30th Anniversary run hits The Echo Lounge & Music Hall on Thursday, June 18.
About Thievery Corporation
The Thievery Corporation sound has never been easy to shelve. Trip-hop and downtempo form the spine, but bossa nova, dub, reggae, soul, jazz, Middle Eastern and Indian elements have threaded through more than twenty albums since that 1996 debut. Film supervisors figured out early what the record-buying public was still catching on to: “Lebanese Blonde” landed in Garden State and turned a generation of listeners into converts. Placements in Vanilla Sky and Crazy Stupid Love followed. The records reward repeat listening — but the live show is where the architecture really opens up.
Recent dates from this anniversary leg confirm it: the set runs close to two hours and expands well past the two-man format. The touring ensemble includes collaborators Mr. Lif, Laura Vall, Frank Orrall, and Puma Ptah. Eric Hilton performs on sitar. What started as an electronic record cut in a D.C. studio thirty years ago becomes something genuinely live and layered onstage — the kind of show that rewards showing up before the opening note.
The Venue
The Echo Lounge & Music Hall holds 1,000 at 1323 N. Stemmons Fwy in Dallas. It’s a Live Nation–operated room that books confidently in the mid-tier, and for a touring production the size of Thievery Corporation’s current ensemble it’s a correct fit — large enough for the full band, close enough to the stage that the sitar and the guest vocalists land rather than disappear. The band is also playing Tannahill’s in Fort Worth on June 16, so Dallas is the second of two Texas dates in the same week. This market is worth the stop.
Doors open at 7 PM, show at 8 PM.
Tickets
Tickets for Thievery Corporation at The Echo Lounge & Music Hall on June 18 are available via Ticketmaster. The Dallas date lands after Red Rocks on June 14 and before the band heads to Florida to close out the North American run. More upcoming DFW concerts here.