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James Estopinal is having an existential crisis.
For most of his professional life, Estopinal has operated as Disco Donnie, an old school concert promoter known for throwing festivals and taking dance artists on tours across the country. Estopinal was what many called a “pure play” promoter, meaning he didn’t own any venues himself; 100 percent of his attention and capital was spent building artists’ touring careers and supporting acts on the road.

Unfortunately for Estopinal, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain oneself as a full-time road warrior, renting out venues and battling club owners each night for his artists’ fair share. After a bumpy festival season in 2024, Estopinal and his partner, Patrick Tetrick, crossed the concert world’s Rubicon last summer and opened Silo, a brand-new nightclub in Dallas’ burgeoning Design District. Silo is not a typical nightclub — it’s a 30,000-square-foot transformed historic grain storage facility with beveled walls, 40-foot height ceilings, a 1,200-square-foot stage and a massive 100,000-watt sound system made by German loudspeaker company D&B Sound. Silo is Dallas’ first ever concert venue built for the electronic dance world and, to most people, opening their city’s hottest new nightclub would be the ultimate flex on a high-profile 30-year career in music and touring.

But Estopinal is not like most people.

Trending on Billboard

“I’m really struggling to suddenly be a club owner; it’s just not how I’m programmed,” he tells Billboard, noting that the transition from tour promoter to venue management has been difficult. As a promoter, Estopinal was taught early on not to trust venue managers and to always be skeptical of the line they’re pushing.

“I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with club owners,” Estopinal says. “They’re shady and I’m always trying to do the right thing. Like 90 percent of them have some shady shit going on and I never imagined myself being on that team.”

Making the leap from promotion to club operations is like a public defender suddenly joining the district attorney’s office, or an environmental activist going to work at a big oil company. Traditionally, the nightclub owner is the adversary of the show promoter, due in large part to the economic model of concert promotion.

Concerts typically make money in two ways: ticket sales and food and beverage sales. In a perfect world, the artist and the promoter keep 100% of the ticket sales, while the venue keeps all the food and booze money. That part’s easy — the tricky part is splitting up the show costs and deciding who pays each bill. Typically, venues will cover bar staffing and basic production needs, but the bigger the show, the more ticket takers and bouncers need to be hired, and the more expensive backline becomes.

These types of details should be worked out in advance, typically months ahead of time when the promoter is paying the deposit to book the venue. But it’s not uncommon for surprise expenses to pop up when the bill is settled between the parties. That’s when the gamesmanship begins, Estopinal explains, with both sides going line by line through bills, arguing over money.

Estopinal says he loathes the idea of hitting acts that play Silo with last minute expenses. As a promoter, when it “came to the settlement, I would always fight back,” Estopinal says, especially when club owners tried to make him pay their house nut — essentially a standard fee the venue would charge every touring show to recover unspecified expenses. To Estopinal, the house nut is like a hotel charging a $40 resort fee or an Airbnb rental charging a $100 cleaning fee — “they’re junk fees that are just a cash grab.”

Shakey Settlement

Inside Silo Dallas

Patrick Le

Estopinal remembers a show settlement in El Paso, Texas, when a club owner shook him down for a last-minute $1,000 “rent” charge.

“The deal was that he kept the bar and I got the door. Rent wasn’t in the original deal and I told him I wasn’t going to pay him rent,” Estopinal explains. “So, he opens his drawer and pulls out a gun and puts it on the desk. So, I say, ‘Oh, you’re threatening me now? Fine, take your $1,000 blood money.’”

Estopinal says he returned to the tour bus and stewed in anger for a while, before going back inside to confront the club owner again. Six security guards were summoned to the office, and “one got me in a headlock and they all kind of picked me up in a lateral position, carried me out down the stairs and put me back on the tour bus,” he recalls. “I never got my $1,000 back, but I did hear that he later got arrested for something else.”

Then there was a Skrillex show Estopinal promoted in the 2010s at a country western bar in San Antonio, Texas. Skrillex finished his set at midnight and his crew wanted to break down the show and leave, but the bar owner wanted to stay open to keep selling beer. The owner even had his resident DJ go on after Skrillex’s set and play Skrillex music.

“Suddenly all the fans that were leaving at the end of the Skrillex set turned around and came back in,” Estopinal says. “All so that the club owner can sell beer for two more hours.”

The tour managers approached Estopinal and told him to find the owner and shut down the faux Skrillex set so they could leave. “But I couldn’t find the owner anywhere. I noticed they had four bodyguards stationed around the DJ booth, and so I went back to the dressing room and said, ‘Hey, I can’t get this guy to turn the music off. You guys are just going to have to load out.’ They told me, ‘We can’t load out with all these people in here.’”

Worried that he might lose the rest of the tour if he didn’t quickly act, Estopinal took two shots of tequila with the tour manager and then “ran into the front of the DJ booth, dove inside, unplugged all the wires and pushed all the equipment on the floor,” he says. While the security guards weren’t able to stop Estopinal from silencing the bootleg set, they did “eventually get a hold of me and started wailing on me.”

The police eventually showed up, placed Estopinal in handcuffs and got him to fork over $2,000 to pay for the broken mixers and busted CDJ player. An expensive night, but minor when compared to the extortion Estopinal encountered when he tried to throw a rave with several big-name promoters in San Bernardino, Calif., in 1999. What had originally been forecast as a 5,000 to 8,000 person show quickly ballooned into a 25,000-person riot with fans swarming the box office, desperate to buy tickets.

“It was cash only and we’d have people come up to the window with a huge wad of cash and be like, ‘Give me 16 tickets,’” he says. “The money was coming in so fast that one of the ticket takers just started sweeping the cash onto the ground. There was no place to put it. And she just keeps selling tickets, ankle deep in cash.”

Eventually, Estopinal lost control of the show and “the police called in the riot squad, and they arrived in helicopters and tear gassed the front of the venue,” he says. Once the dust eventually settled, the venue manager approached Estopinal and told him the police wanted $40,000 in cash, right away. “I asked, ‘Can I give it to them myself?’ And they told me, ‘No, that would be illegal.’ The whole thing sounded illegal to me, but my only goal was not to have that party shut down. So, I went and got the $40,000 in cash and gave it to the venue manager. I don’t know where it went, but the event never got shut down.”

Promising Signs

Inside Silo Dallas

Tyler Church

The concert world has changed significantly since Estopinal’s riotous rave in 1999, mostly for the better, he concedes. The corporatization of the business led by Live Nation and AEG has standardized the show settlement system, and major talent agencies have become much more vigilant about sticking to the language of the contract and avoiding last-minute surprises.

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I can change the dynamic as a club owner and make the venue more artist-friendly,” Estopinal says. “I can try to make the tickets as cheap as possible and not let people bribe the doorman to cut in line or slip in through a side door that the promoter doesn’t know about.”

He’s also decided to make Silo available to community groups during off hours and has even struck a deal with a local Dallas church to lease the club for its Sunday services.

Pastor Richard Ellis with the Dallas-based Reunion Church told Billboard that he happened to stumble upon Silo while looking for a new home after the church ended its lease at the Dallas Convention Center.

“I met with Donnie’s partner Patrick Tetrick and he told me, ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it would be good for us to have you in here,’” recalls Ellis. “Sometimes a club like that can have a reputation and one can soften that reputation by having a church in the building on Sundays.”

Estopinal says he has other community uses for Silo in mind and notes that having a church in the building makes him feel better about crossing over into the venue world.

Protect The Enterprise

Inside Silo Dallas

Bo Buckley 

Estopinal also says he has started to bring a lot of his own experience to Silo and do some of the club’s bookings in-house, tapping into his own expertise. One of his first lessons came during the opening of Silo in September when he ignored his own advice about splurging on a big headliner for opening night.

Estopinal says it’s a “classic mistake” to book a big a headliner for an opening night concert at a new venue because “if there’s any type of delay due to permit issues or construction, you’re not going to be able to open the venue and you’re still going to end up owing the artist the money.”

For reasons he can’t explain, Estopinal ignored his own advice and booked superstar DJ Tiesto as the opening artist for Silo. “The day of the show arrived and we still don’t have the permit needed to open the venue” due to a disagreement with the local fire marshal about Silo’s sprinkler system, he says. “The show sold out and I’m just sitting there imagining, ‘How am I going to get out of this one?’” Estopinal recalls. “Then Tiesto’s agent calls me and says, ‘I got some bad news. Tiesto’s plane had depressurized, and he had to turn back.’”

Estopinal described the news as divine intervention: If Tiesto was cancelling on Silo, then he didn’t owe the Dutch DJ a dime — crisis averted.

“And then, oddly enough, about an hour later, my phone rang again,” he says. “It was the fire marshal’s office. The permit issue had been resolved, and I was cleared to open Silo.”

Estopinal says he was shocked, but also clear-eyed in what he had to do. Tapping into his instincts as a promoter, new club owner and lifelong hustler, Estopinal grabbed the phone and immediately dialed Tiesto’s agent.

“I told him, ‘You better put him on a new plane immediately and get him out here tonight or else!’” Estopinal remembers. Tiesto made it in time to play the gig and the show opened without a hitch.

Surprisingly, Estopinal said he didn’t feel bad about the episode, noting that club ownership and tour promotion had one key component in common.

“You’ve got to protect the enterprise,” he says. “No matter what side you’re on, you want the show to go on.”

HipHopWired Featured Video

Source: Marcus Ingram / Getty
Faith leader Bishop T.D. Jakes suffered a “medical emergency” while delivering a sermon at his church over the weekend.
On Sunday (Nov. 24), Bishop T.D. Jakes was delivering his weekly sermon at The Potter’s House Church in Dallas, Texas, when he fell ill due to suffering an apparent “medical emergency.” The pastor was on stage finishing the sermon, which was also being livestreamed to viewers. “Oh Lord, my strength, my redeemer, let them go in peace,” he said just before dropping his microphone and shaking before going silent.

The livestream video was cut off, but images from the stream, which were later posted on social media, captured church members rushing on stage to help Jakes. “Back up, back up, give him some space,” someone was overheard saying. The Potter’s House Church would issue a statement in a post on X, formerly Twitter, shortly afterward. “Bishop T.D. Jakes experienced a slight health incident and received immediate medical attention following his powerful hour-long message. Bishop Jakes is stable and under the care of medical professionals. The entire Potter’s House family is grateful for the outpouring of love, prayers, and support from the community,” the statement read.

A Statement From The Potter’s House of Dallas
November 24, 2024 pic.twitter.com/68vvYWKNSt
— The Potter’s House (@TPHDallas) November 24, 2024

The 67-year-old faith leader, born Thomas Dexter Jakes, has been pastor at The Potter’s Church since its founding in 1996. The “non-denominational, multicultural church” reportedly boasts a membership of 30,000. According to the church’s website, Jakes spoke at former President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration and has also served as an advisor to three presidential administrations. On Sunday evening, Sarah Jakes Roberts, and her husband, Touré Roberts, shared an update on Jakes’ condition with the public through Facebook.
“Today could have been a tragic day, but it wasn’t by the mercy of God, by the grace of God. Bishop is doing well, he’s recovering well. He’s getting medical care,” Roberts said. They also said jokingly that they’re working on getting him to slow down with his schedule, but emphasized that this is a good time to consider what’s important. “People are asking, ‘What can we do?’ Keep praying. Keep encouraging. It means a lot to our family,” they said.

Independent promoter Donnie Estopinal and Dallas entrepreneur Patrick Tetrick are opening a new venue in Dallas next month in the city’s celebrated Design District.
SILO Dallas will open with back-to-back performances by Tiësto Sept. 19 and 20 following three years of planning and development of the concrete landmark. First built in 1959 as a grain storage facility for Johnson Grain Company, the building played a crucial role in feeding Texans and supplying General Foods’ Cereal Division.

The 30,000 sq.-ft. modular custom space with 40-foot high ceilings can accommodate up to 3,145 guests and will be powered by an over 100,000-watt D&B sound system, a new HVAC system and a huge 40-foot by 30-foot stage. Acoustic design for SILO Dallas is by Owens, which designed the Winspear Opera House.

Trending on Billboard

“We have a fan community who is hungry for live entertainment all of the time,” said Estopinal, founder of Disco Donnie Presents, which promotes festivals in Texas, Florida and throughout the Southeast. “Even with the success of major festivals like Lights All Night, Shaq’s Bass All-Stars Festival, Ubbi Dubbi, and So What?!, we haven’t had a venue in Dallas that we can control and can call home. Silo solves that.”

SILO in Dallas, TX.

Courtesy of Silo

Estopinal is known for successful events at venues like the Texas State Fair and Dallas Convention Center. He plans to continue this tradition with SILO Dallas, projecting millions in economic impact and numerous job opportunities within its first year.

“We found the only building in Dallas that had no parking lot, no roof, no electrical, no plumbing, no HVAC – and it’s kind of on Holy Ground,” Tetrick said. “The community’s response to our vision has been overwhelmingly positive, and we look forward to making SILO Dallas a key player in the city’s cultural and economic landscape.”

The venue will host a number of high-profile acts in its first month, including superstar DJs Sasha & John Digweed on Sept. 28, Above & Beyond’s premier record label Anjunabeats showcase on Oct. 10 and James Hype on Nov. 1.

More at silodallas.com. Tiësto tickets go on sale Thursday, July 11 @ 10 AM CT.

HipHopWired Featured Video

Source: Omar Vega / Getty
The City of Dallas and DART are giving fans of Erykah Badu a permanent “Window Seat” after unveiling the new “Badu Bus” to honor the Neo-Soul icon.

According to the announcement last week at a press conference outside Badu’s old high school, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the Grammy Award-winning singer and DART revealed they teamed up to put artwork on Dallas buses and trains; announcing that the design would be seen for the next year. Overwhelmed and excited by the DART x BADU collaboration, the “Next Lifetime ” artist said:

“If you are Black in Dallas, Texas, you know you made it, if you’re on the cover of Jet and on the cover of DART,” Badu said. “I was a hustler, everybody. And I’m still a hustler today. And what I’m hustling now is love, and kindness any kind of way I can. I want to thank y’all for allowing me this space, this platform, and this day; And, if you guys can give me my keys, I’d like to take my bus now.”
The “Badu Bus” is a collection of three buses and two trains that have been specially wrapped and decorated, featuring images of Badu and artwork designed to celebrate this collaboration. The new “Badu Bus” design will be operational throughout DART’s thirteen service area cities.

As noted by Dallas radio station, 97.9The Beat, students, teachers, and DART executives were thrilled to commemorate Badu at this significant milestone, ahead of her annual Birthday Bash event at The Factory in Deep Ellum, over the weekend. At the Birthday Bash, four lucky DART riders and their plus-ones received special access to a VIP section, private entrance, exclusive swag, and a DART monthly pass for riding on the “Badu Bus”.
When asked by the station about the significance of receiving the honor during Black History Month, given Black Americans’ history with the bus system, Badu said:
“Humor is my defense mechanism, so I don’t have anything funny to say about that,” Badu said. ”I remember there was one bus driver on my route — it wasn’t called DART at the time; it’s rebranded now, it was yellow and black and white. I remember my route, the No. 2 Ervay route to this school, Booker T. The bus driver was so sweet. He would let people on who didn’t have transfers or the money or stuff. He didn’t talk at all, he would just do a little [nods] go to the back kinda thing.’ It reminded me that there are still angels and love in the city.”