The Set List

The Set List
By Brian Washburn

Goodbye Music Hall
Hello Three Six Mafia

It’s a sad week for the Northwest Arkansas music scene. The much-loved, long-lived music shack, The Music Hall, located behind Foghorn’s and the old Hunan Manor on North College will be shutting its doors for good in October. The Music Hall will be missed.
The Music Hall has hosted such national acts as Underoath, Norma Jean, Anberlin, The All-American Rejects, Bowling For Soup, Modest Mouse (back in the day), Showbread, Blindside, The Chariot, The Dillinger Escape Plan, As Cities Burn, Alesana and Jonezetta.
The Music Hall has also given a bouncing start to Fayetteville bands such as The Wedding (when they began as Easier Said), Take It Back!, School Boy Humor, The Goodnight Fight (when they were decent and again when they came back worse) PM Today and Mourning After Massacre.
The Music Hall was certainly an integral part of the Northwest Arkansas music scene. However, that’s not to say this situation is all sad. Music Hall owner and operator Jeremy Brown posted on the venue’s MySpace page that he will now be focusing on bringing national tours and big name musicians to Northwest Arkansas, much like he did when he brought Story of the Year, Every Time I Die and From First To Last back in ’06. So this move should be a plus in everybody’s column.
The close down of the Fayetteville Music Hall did lead to a baffling decision to let the relatively new Rogers Music Hall remain open — an extremely questionable decision on the business and popularity side, in my opinion. Fayetteville, after all, is the college town. It just will not be the same without the location in Fayetteville.
But that’s not to say the good times witnessed at The Music Hall will be forgotten. I could never forget the first time I stepped foot inside the place, which was filled from wall to wall, and rocked out to the recently signed Fayetteville golden boys The Wedding back in 2004. That was not the first nor the last time I would watch The Wedding rock

the hall, much less watch shows there and perform there a number of times back in the day.
The biggest concert The Music Hall ever saw came in 2006 when national screamo/metal powerhouse Underoath blew the roof off the place two nights in a row, the second night was bigger and better, however. The shows were sold out and even got The Music Hall on the cover of Pollstar Magazine. This night was truly one of the highlights in the Northwest Arkansas music community.
Whenever it’s all said and done, the condensation gathered from the sweat of The Music Hall gatherers will remain on the pipes atop the ceiling. There will be other music venues, but in Fayetteville, there will only ever be one Music Hall.
Final Thought: Three Six Mafia will be hitting up Fayetteville on Sept. 19 for a concert the likes of Fayetteville has not seen before. Even though it will take place at the Fayetteville Town Center — I am still not sure if it can hold the number of people who will flock to this concert — Three Six Mafia are Oscar winners and currently on every five minutes on one of the 13 MTV channels.