Photo Credit: Breonny Lee
BY Taylor Adams Cogan
Dallas band Rosegarden Funeral Party has released three full-length albums, completed 13 tours, and even made a European debut. Even if you’re not focusing on the best bands coming out of North Texas, if you periodically read the Dallas Observer, you’ve surely come across this name.
For frontwoman Leah Lane, it’s a dream come true, one that she’s been working toward since she was 13 years old, playing in bands in Deep Ellum.
“I used to think in order to be a successful musician, I had to be a superstar, so the idea of being a musician was terrifying for me: ‘I have no idea how to get to that level,’” Lane says. “When I saw and got to know people in Deep Ellum, I learned you can do music, and you can make music your life on so many different levels – it gave me hope and inspired me.”
The singer, songwriter, guitarist, and keyboard player credits that mindset to her time spent in Deep Ellum, feeling like she was raised by the neighborhood. By the time she was 16, she was in a band where the front man left, but the group stayed together – rebranding as Moon Waves and playing regularly throughout the neighborhood, which served as a home base for the teenager.
School life was “chaotic,” she says. Someone might be able to use that word for the Deep Ellum entertainment district at times, but for Lane, being in the neighborhood grounded her.
“When I got to Main and Malcolm X, I thought, ‘OK, I can breathe,’” she says. “Deep Ellum became my home. I spent all my time in the studio down there or playing gigs in the area or AllGood. The people down there and the spot really became what I knew as family and what I knew as home, meaning it was the place I knew that I could go to where everybody was supportive and loving and friendly, and gave me perspective on what my life could be once I grew up a little bit.”
She was a young girl running around an adult, male-dominated scene, and feeling safe – “I was very ‘little-sistered,’” she says.
The Dallas native’s talent landed her in bands, and her leadership kept them lasting as she further gained respect among the creatives in the neighborhood. A hub for her community ebbed from the open garage door of Three Links – a not uncommon feeling for Dallas musicians, but one that’s just as meaningful to each one who calls it HQ.
She brought her own funk to her band, singing her own songs – two of 10 would be hers, then half the set would be hers. John Kuzmick, the co-front man of Moon Waves – and later of (now defunct) Austin band Acid Carousel – was a final push Lane needed to share more of what she had to perform.
“I had always written songs, I just hadn’t shown anybody,” she says. “John made that really easy, and I owe a lot to him.”
And with that, she’d move from the back of the stage on keys to the front with a main mic, and eventually, in 2018, all the songs she’d perform would be hers as Rosegarden Funeral Party formed. The sounds garnering a fan base came from Lane as singer, songwriter, guitarist and keyboard player, Dean Adams as drummer, and Wil Farrier (Lane’s brother) on bass. The musicians aim to blend “traditional gothic sonic stylizing with modern pop sensibility that supports emotionally evocative and relatable lyrics about heartbreak and healing.” Whether or not those words connect to you, it’s impossible to deny the band’s polished sound and Lane’s commanding presence. When you hear them, you’ll be proud of Dallas’ local music scene.
Fan-girl Observer puts it well: “Wherever she goes, Lane is head-to-toe in full garb as a rock ‘n’ roll queen. Her dramatic makeup and rebellious outfits evoke the visage of Siouxsie Sioux and, when coupled with her fervent stage presence, make her a photographer’s dream. Though she is a studied musician and gifted songwriter, her true aspirations are to inspire unity and compassion.”
“I feel like I was lucky because I had baby-stepped my way there – there was never any moment when I was nervous or afraid because I was well prepared for that position,” she says.
“The Dallas community immediately kind of pushed us upward. In a little tongue and cheek way, we were Dallas Observer darlings for at least three years,” she says. “That backing we got from the Deep Ellum community and Observer, Central Track – all of that came at us immediately.
“We’re a big-kid band now.”
It’s why Rosegarden toured to LA the first year they were a band. The support they built in Dallas helped them tour seriously fairly immediately. Though it was quick, for Lane, it was a long-time coming.
“I had clawed my way. I really understood how hard it was to get anyone to pay attention to you,” she says. “I’m so unbelievably thankful, it changed my whole life. I owe everything to Deep Ellum. I am the person I am because I have been well taught and well loved by that community.”
