Michael H. Price

Fort Worth Business Press Commentary

Rooted in the high-lonesome Texas Plains with more than 40 years of music-making experience, the Flatlanders hardly seem the type of ensemble to take the headliner spot at Fort Worth’s Cendera Center. The former skating rink at 3600 Benbrook Highway has emerged from a massive reconstruction process with a new sonic design calculated to show off the finer qualities of practically any musical ensemble.

The Flatlanders, a perpetual venture of the iconic Texas songwriters Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, have announced an Aug. 3 appearance at Cendera. The individual members are frequent soloists in the metropolitan area, but their full-band appearances in these parts are rare. The Orbans, a Fort Worth-based pop-rock ensemble with a distinct regional twang, will open.

The occasion will launch a collaborative booking arrangement with Dallas-based Spune, a turnkey production-management-touring-recording organization. The sequel to the Flatlanders at Cendera will be an Aug. 24 appearance by Fleetwood Mac alumnus Lindsey Buckingham.

The central element of Cendera – which pitches itself as amenable to performing arts, meetings, parties and sporting events – is a sound system designed for industrial-strength clarity. Fort Worth-based Sowden and Associates and American Audio Visual collaborated on the sound design.

“Cendera Center was designed to accommodate a broad assortment of activities,” explained Mike Horn, president of American Audio Visual. “It was critical for the system to not only provide first-class sound quality, it also needed to be relatively compact [to accommodate] the resulting three stage positions in Cendera Hall.” Loudspeakers are moved according to the nature of an event. A self-contained power source virtually eliminates the necessity of housing separate power amplifiers.