Cedar Springs Merchants Assocition members have been hard at work getting The Strip in its best, most colorful state for Oak Lawn Live
RICH LOPEZ | A&E Writer
Rich@DallasVoice.com
The Gayborhood has had its Halloween Block Party for years, and its once-a-month street markets have become a community favorite over the last couple of years. But the Gayborhood has never had an all-day festival.
Not until now.
The Cedar Springs Merchant Association wanted to fill that gap in Oak Lawn’s event calendar. Inspired by Chicago’s queer street festival Market Days, the CSMA will launch its inaugural Oak Lawn Live: Music and Arts Festival this weekend.
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Oak Lawn Live Stage Schedule
Cedar Springs Stage
Noon: Oak Lawn Band
1 p.m.: EMSKI
2:30 p.m.: Dezi 5 & the Tailgaters
4:30 p.m.: Anton Shaw the Bad Habits
6 p.m.: Cure for Paranoia
7:30 p.m.: The Cowgays
9:15 p.m.: Daya
Throckmorton Stage
12:30 p.m.: Women’s Chorus of Dallas
1:30 p.m.: DJ Memoz
3:30 p.m.: Dan Slater
5:30 p.m.: Kameron Ross
7 p.m.: Drew G
8:45 p.m.: Cain Culto
Pride in Dallas Stage
1 p.m.: Disco Daddies
2 p.m.: Eldian
3 p.m.: Red Eye
4 p.m.: Deluna
5 p.m.: Philip Webb
6 p.m.: House of Manchic
7 p.m.: Momenta, featuring Rexxha
8 p.m.: Barbiefartsss
According to CSMA’s press releases announcing the festival, Cedar Springs Road will be transformed into a full-day celebration of live music, visual art, food, creativity and community.
“We’re excited about the lineup put together and excited that it ties to Pride in Dallas with the parade,” CSMA Board Member Marc Buehler said.
Spanning four blocks, OLL will feature entertainment on three separate stages, a variety of local vendors, food and beverage stations and a swath of rainbow colors throughout.
A year ago, the CSMA board traveled to Chicago for Market Days to begin its research. The annual three-day festival celebrates community in Chicago’s landmark Northalsted/Lakeview neighborhood. The half-mile-long summer festival features multiple stages of live music, almost 300 vendors, food and drink, dance and drag performances along with other highlights.
“We know it didn’t start out that way, and we thought, ‘Can we do something similar’” Buehler said. “Immediately on return, the wheels started turning. We already know how to do events on The Strip, with the Block Party and Wine Walk, and now here we are with the big reveal on Saturday.”
Oak Lawn Live will be open from noon to 10 p.m. in the 3900 and 4000 blocks of Cedar Springs Road.
Of course, working with an event this size comes with challenges. There were the logistics of closing the street off, working with the city and arranging for police security. All his previous experiences of building these events — from Caven Enterprise’s Block Party to Bueller’s events at his off-Strip venue Dallas Eagle — came in handy.
Plus, doing it once will be a blueprint for future festivals.
The entertainment
Perhaps the biggest draw of OLL is its music lineup both regional and national. The lineup includes more than 20 artists. Among them are Cain Culto and The Cowgays.
Cain Culto, is an American singer and violinist who mixes up his Colombian heritage and Appalachian upbringing into his distinct brand of pop music. He will perform on the Throckmorton Stage.
The country trio The Cowgays delivers campy western music in a “show that feels like a honky-tonk revival colliding with a queer rodeo.”
This continues to be a landmark year for Dallas-based hip-hop collective Cure for Paranoia which is also in the lineup. CFP was announced as the winner of NPR Music’s 2026 Tiny Desk Contest which took them to NPR’s Tiny Desk for its official concert debut as well as the Tiny Desk Contest On The Road tour. They played Market Days, wrapped up a European schedule of shows and will play Austin City Limits next month.
Grammy-winner Daya is the festival’s key headliner. The singer-songwriter released Til Every Petal Drops, her second album in nine years and also her most personal release to date since coming out after her self-titled debut in 2015.
The Cowgays, Cure for Paranoia and Daya all play the Cedar Springs Stage.
Check out the schedule with this article for the full line-up.
The action won’t all be in the streets. Being the Merchants Association, Buehler, who owns and operates the UPS Store and Roy G’s, said the retailers along The Strip will have their own activations — either inside or on the street.
Much of the event is self-supported by CSMA due to the monthly Wine Walk event which has surged in popularity over the last year. This along with event sponsors are allowing this event to have free admission. Donations though are certainly encouraged.
“Taking the proceeds from that and reinvesting into something that’s for the community is truly what we’re all about,” Buehler added.
Finding some help
To help pull this off, the CSMA board decided to hire some help.
Enter Cody Hutchison and Peter Pepper.
They were brought in to sharpen the logistics of planning and marketing for the event. But they also considered its purpose.
“For me, I think this is a beautiful example of centering queer art and joy in the middle of a Pride week, which is really where it should be,” Pepper said. “I think that’s really what led our movement, and so it feels very fulfilling to me to bring something like that to life in the neighborhood, particularly in the middle of our second Pride of the year.”
Pepper is a Dallas-based community advocate with previous experience in project management and civic engagement.
The vision for the event shifted over the course of the planning process from what these two and the board first had in mind. In fact, when Pepper and Hutchison were hired, the event had an entirely different name. But the two men put their expertise and experience to work, going over information and analytics to shift the direction just a bit.
“We did some market research and reframed the marketing and branding around a new name,” Hutchison explained.
Hutchison brings 15 years of marketing experience and a background in organizing LGBTQ+ community events into this effort. He helped establish Arlington Pride and served as one of its three leads every year it ran — experience that has carried over into his work with Oak Lawn Live.
But Hutchison, said, “I think the vision overall has always been to create something intersectional and eclectic that appeals to all the diversity that our community has.”
“I’m really proud of the fact that CSMA looked around, saw what made our community great — all that diversity — and then tried to get a lineup that was going to appeal to that diversity,” Pepper added.
The dynamic duo did all this in record time. When they were hired, they had just eight weeks to finalize plans.
We were hired for our expertise and skill sets, but we first had to spend time proving ourselves before we got things moving,” Hutchison said.
To describe the culmination of their work, Pepper put it simply: “Imagine the best June Pride Wine Walk and multiply that times 10 with an art fair and three stages of music,” he said.
Hutchison predicts that this inaugural event is going to be a strong start to the future of Oak Lawn Live.
“This will be a really solid pilot for CSMA where everyone’s feeling comfortable about doing it again,” he said. “We’ll get additional time and resources to dial in with the community even more meaningfully and help them put together exciting programs across, up and down the street.”
But as for Saturday …
“I think it should be a fantastic day,” Bueller said.
For more information, visit TheStripOnCedarSprings.com/Oak-Lawn-Live.
