06/15/2026
has two new releases coming out, and they're partying about it at Tulips on August 29, 2026! One is a live album called Mistakes Were Made -- Live!, the other is a four-song EP of new material called Playing with Fire. IYKYK. But if you don't know about Darth Vato...
In April of 2002, Kerry Dean, Eric Dodson, and Steve Steward learned enough Sublime and Slightly Stoopid covers to play for two hours at the TCU-area bar where Steve worked, for no money and exactly three free beers. Calling themselves Darth Vato (from a license plate seen in an issue of Lowrider Magazine), they padded their set of sloppy covers with a few original instrumentals. About a year later, Darth Vato worked their way into other Berry Street/University Drive bars to play for shorter amounts of time and double the amount of free beers. By the end of 2003, their setlist was mostly their own songs, party-friendly anthems that blended reggae, ska, and punk -- usually filled out with a cover of an Eddie Rabbit or George Strait tune. For the next five years or so, Darth Vato built a reputation as one of Fort Worth's rowdiest live bands. They brought a party with them everywhere they played, including the odd flatbed trailer.
Parties wind down eventually, and Darth Vato went on indefinite hiatus in 2009, after releasing two EPs, two full-length albums, and touring Texas a ton and California twice. In the decade that followed, the dudes would reunite every year or two to play a show. Altogether, the band played 287 times between 2002 and 2022. Kerry knows the exact number because he recorded almost every one of them, setting up a mic and minidisc recorder near the soundboard or where it was least likely to get stolen. These live recordings -- Darth Vato's history, captured in real time, basically -- sat in hard drives for over 20 years, until Kerry got around to sorting his office, where he found them in a box in the closet.
In early 2026, Kerry listened to all of these recordings -- literally hundreds of tracks -- and decided that after 24 years, Darth Vato needed to put out a live album. Because not only did these songs make for a lot of heavy trips down the foggy turns of Memory Lane, they captured the sound of an era (2003 through 2009) where people just went to a bar to see some dumb band and everybody had a good time, and nobody stopped what they were doing to make a post about it.
Called Mistakes Were Made --- Live! and released as a double-CD (in addition to the streamers), the album's 40+ tracks span about six years, recorded in venues across Texas (and one in Long Beach, CA), most of which no longer exist. It's a fun listen, hearing a band evolve (and devolve, depending on their various BACs at a given performance) over time, to hear all the rickety moments of musical telepathy and beer-brained, happy accidents, as well as the more beer-brained, less-happy accidents, and the other stuff that happens when a band plays live to an enthusiastic crowd. So there's that...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
Along with Mistakes Were Made's collection of old songs, Darth Vato is also releasing NEW SONGS that same night! Playing with Fire is Darth Vato's new four-song EP, collecting three new tracks with the band's oldest song that they just never got around to recording until recently. In addition to streaming, Playing with Fire will be available in a limited number of CDs and vinyl. As for the show at Tulips on 8/29: Darth Vato's direct support is their "brother band," , Fort Worth's longest-running reggae standard-bearers. Party rockers , fronted by Darth Vato's longtime producer Jordan Richardson, open the show.
🎟️ Grab tickets: https://wl.seetickets.us/event/darth-vato/692833?afflky=TulipsFTW
