Live music
The Valley's music calendar runs from arena-tier shows at Payne Arena and Bert Ogden Arena down to small rooms and cantinas that book a band on a Thursday and post the flyer on Tuesday. Both ends matter, and only one of them is currently findable online.
The Valley's music calendar has three floors and they barely know about each other. At the top are Payne Arena in Hidalgo and Bert Ogden Arena in Edinburg — arena-tier venues, regular stops for touring Spanish-language acts, with tickets sold through national sellers. In the middle are the McAllen Performing Arts Center, the convention center, and Cine El Rey downtown, which has been booking shows since the 1940s and still takes what the bigger rooms will not. At the bottom, and this is where most of the actual music is, are the small rooms, the cantinas and the salones that book a band on a Thursday and post the flyer on Tuesday.
Conjunto is a genre, not an ensemble size — accordion and bajo sexto — and it sits alongside norteño, banda, cumbia, Tejano and mariachi as distinct things, not as regional flavors of one thing.
If you have never been to the bottom floor: the flyer time is the door time, the opening act is local and worth catching, the cover is usually cash, and the room fills late. If you have only been to the top floor, you have not heard the Valley's music scene — you have heard a tour that stopped here.
Only one of those three floors is currently findable online, and it is not the one with the most music on it.
At a glance
| What it is | Everything from arena tours to a band booked on Thursday and announced on Tuesday |
|---|---|
| Peaks | Year-round · arena tier heavier in fall and spring |
| Typical cost | National ticketing at the arena tier · a cover at the door below it, often cash |
| Strongest cities | Hidalgo (Payne Arena) · Edinburg (Bert Ogden Arena) · McAllen · Brownsville · South Padre Island |
| Bring | Cash for the small rooms · ID |
By city
Live music across the Valley
Pick a city to see what Qué Hay will cover there.
Other categories
We never invent an event to make a category look busy. If a category is thin, it is thin — and we would rather show you that honestly than waste your Saturday.