Denton, slacker capital of the American southwest, grows up

At first glance, the Denton town square is near-saccharine 1950s Americana – complete with baroque courthouse and ice-cream parlour. A closer look reveals a strange mix of the hip and the stodgy in and around the square.

Among the brightly-lit burger joints and craft-beer bars, there’s a secondhand bookshop with an extensive collection of vinyl, a junk store with suits of armour in the window, and a vacuum cleaner repair shop. Look beyond the fashionably attired students and you’ll notice a parade of more ragged dressers, many bearing guitar cases. The adjective “dive” doesn’t quite cover the dungeon atmosphere of Andy’s Bar on one corner of the square. Yet upstairs at Andy’s is Paschall, a speakeasy whose absinthe glasses, antiques and bookcases are more Left Bank than Texas.

Denton, Texas, is the new slacker capital of the southwest, a mantle it took from state capital Austin and Athens, Georgia – two weird college towns that grew up.

On Tuesday 4 November, Denton citizens will vote on a proposal to ban “fracking”, or energy drilling by hydraulic fracturing, in the city limits. The drilling fight has awoken this normally laconic city of roughly 125,000 inhabitants 40 miles north of Dallas. In one corner is the anti-fracking campaign, supported by local residents and artists such as polka band Brave Combo. In the other corner is the oil industry, supported by mainstream Texas opinion.

The fight is about health and energy – residents have complained about experiencing respiratory problems from the fumes produced by the drilling. But the fracking vote is also a decision on what the town wants to be when it grows up.

Currently, Denton is reminiscent of the Austin in Richard Linklater’s early films, combining the eccentric charm of a country town with the willful wackiness of an artists’ hub. When I moved to Denton in 2009, a neighbour warned me that he didn’t approve of people from New York (I’m from Ireland). A few months on, I saw a young man arriving late to a Flaming Lips concert in a “Keep Denton Stoned” T-shirt. More recently, a waitress at a local cafe told me that she had injured her face running into a tree during a game of “zombie laser-tag”.

Denton’s two universities, Texas Woman’s University and University of North Texas (UNT), have about 50,000 students between them. UNT, the larger of the two, has a jazz music programme so strong that college rehearsal bands have won several Grammys. This pool of virtuoso musicians has seeded a music scene that’s the envy of much larger cities, producing acts such as Norah Jones, the Polyphonic Spree, Neon Indian and Midlake.

Dan’s Silverleaf, part of a terrace of converted warehouses on Industrial Street near the square, is one of the wellsprings of the scene. When Midlake played Dan’s last September, the crowd greeted their melodic odes like the standards of a victorious army. (Midlake band members also own the Paschall speakeasy on the square and sometimes wield spoons and sugarcubes themselves for the absinthe preparation.)

Other venues, including Hailey’s and Rubber Gloves, rival the late John Peel’s radio show for the seemingly endless procession of imaginatively named bands in their lineups. On 8 November, the Rubber Gloves bill includes I am Clark Kent, Top Hat Ted and Johnny’s Big Red Rocket. With a capacity of about 300, Hailey’s is one of the biggest and most central clubs. Rubber Gloves is hands-down the weirdest, its location opposite a cement plant and its psychedelic murals recalling the most decrepit depot venues of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A sign on the back of the “rehearsal studio and industrial dive bar” says Bands Only No Drugs No Out Side Drinks [sic].

In the spring, there’s 35 Denton and the Arts and Jazz festival, two music festivals where the atmosphere – and the beer – is yet to be diluted by corporate sponsorship. Taking place mostly in a roped-off area of town in mid-March, 35 Denton features local talent such as Sarah Jaffe alongside bigger acts en route to South by Southwest, like Solange Knowles – both of whom played last year. There’s usually a free finale in the local fairground, where Jesus and Mary Chain played to a greying mosh pit in 2012. After two days of erudite brass music and gourmet street food, the Arts and Jazz festival’s climax involves half of Denton doing the “Chicken Dance” with Brave Combo.

In Austin circa 2000, everyone knew Leslie, the sequin-loving, bearded transvestite-about-town who eventually ran for mayor. In Denton, everyone knows Frenchy, a lawn-care professional who sells advertising and message space on the side of out-of-service, bright-orange moving vans. Another local legend is the Bubble Man who sells exotic herbs from a van – allegedly none are illegal – on the college bar drag of Fry Street, announcing his presence to potential customers by blowing bubbles.

In 2011, a light-rail service linking Denton to the Dallas metro-rail system ran for the first time. The rail link has supported and accelerated Denton’s growth. Traditionally, the centre of Denton had emptied out with the universities on weekends and during summer holidays. Since the train’s arrival, a string of bars and beer gardens have opened, and they are hopping year round. Television chef Tim Love opened a Queenie’s Steakhouse in a converted garage just off the square. The town’s first brew pub, Audacity, opened about 10 days ago. It looks like a giant corrugated-iron aircraft hangar painted a vivid shade of green.

Denton has a lot in common with creative magnets like Portland and Austin. Whether its trajectory follows theirs, or that of nearby Frisco, the quintessential Dallas exurb, hangs in the balance.

“You’re talking about (attracting) millennials who can fill tech jobs and more entrepreneurial jobs … they don’t want to live in a city that allows frack sites 200 yards from their homes,” said Adam Briggle, a UNT philosophy professor and one of the leaders of the anti-fracking campaign. “People might say, ‘Yeah I want to move to Denton, but there’s this whole fracking thing.’”