McDavid Studio

Nice little auditorium on block behind Bass Hall. Liked that we could take our drinks in the show (can’t do that in Bass Hall).

This is a great venue for true music lovers. Not a place to get rowdy and loud though as it’s more of a listening room where the patrons want to hear the music, not talk with their friends. It seats maybe a couple hundred (if that), great acoustics and friendly hosts who will find you a seat in the cocktail table-​style seating arrangement.
Conveniently located in downtown Fort Worth, this is actually across the street from Bass Performance hall but a part of that larger venue with many places to eat before-​hand and even after the show. There is a Flying Saucer pub with food a block away and a Razoo’s cajun food restaurant 4 blocks away. And many others within walking distance.
So go to McDavid if your favorite artist is playing here. You won’t be disappointed.

One of my favorite music venues in DFW. It’s somewhat small (seats about 200, I’d guess) and a great space to enjoy great music, especially singer-​songwriters and bluegrass. They have a small bar. Seating is at round tables.

more work needs to be done.

McDavid Studio should be a welcome addition to the Fort Worth music scene. It is a large, warehouse style space with wood floors and a mid-​sized stage. It is attached to the Bass Hall complex in downtown — great location. And it is, apparently, managed by the worst sort of amateurs.
We attended their ⁰⁸⁄₀₉ New Year’s Eve bash. As billed, it should have been lovely: warm up with some drinks over blues, kick it into high gear through midnight with the awesome Tejas Brothers then mellow out the buzz with a breakfast from Joe T’s with pastries from Esperanza. Aces! Pricey at $ 100 a head and a no-​host bar but a fun bill.
Or so we thought.
We knew we were in trouble when we wandered in about 15 minutes after the 9 o’clock opening and the Bros were already on stage. WTF? Weren’t they billed as the headliner? Weren’t their pictures plastered over every ad we saw including the Startlegram?
They played a great set with tunes written by every member of the band and Dave Perez’s stunning Louis Armstrong on What a Wonderful World. Then, suddenly, in a terrifying lurch, they not only left the stage at 10:00 but they also announced that «breakfast» was served and there would be an hour break in the music as food was served in another room! Way to crank it up! Sigh.
The food would have been good if we hadn’t just eaten before wandering over to the show. And conversation with other attendees might have been fun if everyone wasn’t being stunned and cranky by this evil turn of events.
When music finally did resume around 11:00 we were in bluesland — not the highest energy location at the best of times and, with a crowd filled with Mexican food, the joint was far from jumping. Jim Suhler & Alan Haynes were not bad and at times — briefly — were quite good. But they lost what few stars they had won when they proved to be so self-​involved that they played right through midnight without so much as a pause to acknowledge the coming of the new year.
Some free advice for McDavid Studio: when you book a performer as charismatic as Dave Perez for New Year’s Eve, make sure he is behind the mike at midnight. If you are serving breakfast on New Year’s Eve, serve it AFTER midnight with some lower energy music — say some blues, maybe. And never ever ever advertise one show and deliver another.
I know I won’t be back and, judging from the grumbling, you’re going to have a hard sell for many of our fellow patrons.