Midnight Rodeo to Change Hands, Re-Brand

SAN ANGELO, TX — Midnight Rodeo San Angelo held its last concert Saturday night. Roger Craeger, the popular stalwart performer on the Texas Country Music circuit, the guy who sometimes plays the trumpet too, sang hits like “Love”, “The Everclear Song”, and “Having Fun All Wrong” to an almost packed house.

Good times and a packed house. What could possibly be wrong about that?

Packing the house only occasionally isn’t enough to keep Midnight Rodeo going in San Angelo, Mark Easterling said. Easterling carries the title of marketing director for the small chain of Midnight Rodeo nightclubs, and he is also the guy who runs and operates Midnight Rodeo San Angelo. In all, Midnight Rodeo has five additional locations: two in San Antonio, and one each in Houston, Dallas, and Austin.

Letting go of San Angelo’s Midnight Rodeo wasn’t an easy decision, Easterling said. “My ties to San Angelo go back to the late 70's, especially at Angelo State University,” he said. “We as a company love San Angelo. We wish we can stay and I really feel badly having to leave. It’s like we’re letting an old friend down.”

Having multiple locations around the state, particularly in large metro areas, gave Easterling leverage when booking bands here. Midnight Rodeo firmly plants itself in the Texas Country Music circuit, with the most recent incarnation of this genre of music made popular in the 1990s by the rise of artists like Pat Green. When booking bands, Easterling wasn’t just booking for one location in small market San Angelo. He adds Dallas, Austin and San Antonio to the mix, and requires artists’ agents to make the band take a trip out west to seal the multi-venue deal.

The San Angelo venue has a capacity of 799 people that gives it an additional advantage to book the larger and more popular music acts. With volume, Midnight Rodeo has potential to make enough money charging admission to pay for them.

Making enough money to keep a large venue like Midnight Rodeo open requires a steady and relatively high level of gross sales because even with leverage to book them, the big acts are still expensive. The Texas Comptroller makes gross receipts of venues with alcohol licenses available to the public. Recent sales at Midnight Rodeo were uneven, and lagged other bars, even bars with no live music at all.

Midnight Rodeo experienced a fantastic run here since 2008 when it opened and took on Graham’s Central Station, a large venue for a similar demographic. The Graham Brothers eventually closed and sold their location near Southwest Blvd. and the Houston Harte Expressway, leaving Midnight Rodeo as the only large venue nightclub in the city. Today, brand new hotels occupy the land where Graham’s once was.

Without another large nightclub venue in competition, Midnight Rodeo was it, and for nearly a decade, the club thrived, bringing popular and relatively expensive live Texas music performers to San Angelo. If the act were on the top of the Texas Music Charts, eventually they’d perform at Midnight Rodeo here. All of that began to decline at the end of the last oil boom and with the resurgence of downtown’s nightlife scene by 2015.

The Midnight Rodeo closed down in 2016. Easterling, however, was convinced by the landlord to give it another try. The venue re-opened in March 2017.

That Midnight Rodeo was on the market wasn’t advertised, but in nightclub management circles, there were rumors. It wasn’t until brothers Dwaine and Roddy Thomas were inquiring about a venue in Sweetwater for a similar type nightclub that the leasing company, ORDA Corporation, mentioned that the San Angelo Midnight Rodeo location was available if they could make a deal with Midnight Rodeo’s management team.

Dwaine Thomas, who today is in the oil and gas industry, is also a professional fiddle player, said he and his brother were looking for an opportunity ever since Shane Luther, who at the time was trying to sell his club in San Angelo, The Little River Club, planted the seed.

“He offered to sell us that club, but we couldn’t make the numbers work,” explained Dwaine. On the other deal north of here, the brothers didn’t believe Sweetwater had the population base to support a large venue nightclub. When the leasing company mentioned San Angelo, they took a look and eventually made the deal.

The brothers close on the sale of Midnight Rodeo’s San Angelo assets July 3 and take over the location. Dwaine said they’ve been in negotiations since February.

The new club will be called The Concho Palace. It will be open Wednesday through Saturday. Some weeknights will feature the same Texas Country Music acts existing patrons expect. The weekends, however, will feature country swing bands and emphasize dancing. “For the older crowds,” Dwaine said. The idea is to add to the existing customer base with a similar genre of music that attracts older patrons.

Roddy, who on Sunday was driving through Colorado on his way to San Angelo from his former home in Oregon, is excited about the opportunity and the move.

The opportunity brings the brothers together to work on a project. Roddy will manage the business end; Dwaine will book the bands and the entertainment. Being back in West Texas matters. Roddy went to Angelo State University and the brothers’ mother lives in Abilene.

“We are both in love with San Angelo and with Roddy living there and part of the community, we think we can make the club very successful,” Dwaine said. “We are going to have skin in the game.”

Roddy has decades of experience running large nightclubs for the Graham Brothers, the same folks who sold the land where Graham’s Central Station once was and the hotels are today. The nightclub business almost comes full circle in San Angelo.

If all goes well with the transfer of the business, The Concho Palace will open Friday, September 14. Bret Mullins will perform. He’s a popular regional act who sings traditional country music. On September 15, Bobby Flores and the Yellow Rose Band takes the stage. Both bands are great for two-stepping the night away.

Being local, diversifying the customer base with western swing, and remaining flexible to adapt to challenges and new opportunities are how the brothers say they’ll make The Concho Palace thrive.

In the meantime, there’s much work to finish. Dwaine said they are remodeling the nightclub up and until the grand opening weekend. To keep tabs on their progress, follow The Concho Palace on Facebook.