Fort Worth's The Burning Hotels headlines a night of retro cool at the Cavern, also including Gazelles and Austin's Pompeii. I'm kinda likin' the Pompeii.

Club Dada is all Dallas-ed out this evening with The Slack, Here, In Arms and Rose County Fair. You're bound to like one of these acts -- Brent Engel's (Here, In Arms) new material is surprisingly hard-driving, unlike the electro-folk stuff he started out doing.

While I'm here, I'll give you a little J.D. Whittenburg quoteage to get you interested in the piece I'll have on him in tomorrow's paper: “Sometimes a song will pop into my head while I’m mowing the lawn, complete with lyrics. I’ll think to myself, ‘I’ve never heard this before,’ then realize that I’m actually writing it.”

I think this is quite possibly the best description of writing process an artist has ever given me. Whittenburg plays with an all-star lineup Friday at Sons of Hermann.