By Richardson Community Staff
Published October 23, 2026
A Free Ticket West
Picture a Sunday afternoon in early November: the drive up Performance Drive, the familiar glass facade of the Eisemann Center catching the last of the fall light, and the sound of a full concert band warming up inside. No cover charge at the door, no ticket stub to lose. Just music — specifically, a musical road trip that stops in Chicago, detours through Las Vegas, and ends somewhere along the California coast.
On November 1, 2026, at 3:00 PM, the Richardson Community Band takes the stage at the Charles W. Eisemann Center for “The Great American Road Trip, Part 2,” a free concert that charts a musical course westward along Route 66.
The Set List as Itinerary
The program doubles as a travel guide. The band will move through songs tied to Chicago, then swing through the desert heat of “Viva Las Vegas,” roll into the poolside ease of “Hotel California,” and cover other stops along the legendary highway connecting the American Midwest to the Pacific. Vocalist David Alley joins the ensemble, adding a live voice to the arrangements.
For anyone who caught the first installment of the Road Trip series, this is the continuation of that same idea — using familiar American song as a way to pull a Richardson audience through a shared geography, from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Coast, without anyone leaving their seat on Performance Drive.
Who Makes Up the Band
The Richardson Community Band is exactly what the name suggests: local musicians, most of them volunteers, who rehearse and perform together as a civic ensemble rooted in Richardson. The group has been a fixture in the city’s cultural calendar for years, drawing players from across the Metroplex who share an interest in keeping community band music alive in a region where professional touring acts tend to get most of the attention.
The fact that the concert is free is not incidental. It reflects the band’s longstanding orientation toward accessibility — the idea that a Saturday-afternoon or Sunday-afternoon concert should not require a reservation or a credit card, just a willingness to show up.
The Eisemann Center as Home Stage
The Eisemann Center at 2351 Performance Drive has served as Richardson’s primary performing arts venue since it opened, and it is where the Community Band typically stages its larger concerts. The hall’s acoustics suit a full concert band well, giving brass, woodwinds, and percussion room to breathe without overwhelming a seated audience.
The center’s fall 2026 calendar has been busy. Swedish jazz multi-instrumentalist Gunhild Carling performed with the Texins Jazz Band there on October 24. Jazz and cabaret vocalist Ann Hampton Callaway brings a separate show to the intimate cabaret setting on the same day as the Road Trip concert, November 1 at 2 PM — meaning the Eisemann will host two distinct performances that afternoon. And on November 8, the Aga Khan Master Musicians bring classical traditions from Central and South Asia to the same stage as part of the center’s 2026–27 season.
For a single performing arts building in a mid-sized North Texas city, that is a compressed stretch of programming — and the Community Band concert sits in the middle of it, holding the space that free civic music has always held.
Getting There
The Eisemann Center is located at 2351 Performance Drive in Richardson, easily reached from US-75 or from the Galatyn Park DART rail station nearby. Parking on the grounds is available. The concert begins at 3:00 PM on November 1, and no ticket purchase is required.
For anyone who has driven any stretch of Route 66 — or simply grown up listening to the songs that made the highway mythic — the band’s program will cover familiar ground. For anyone who has not, it is a reasonable introduction, delivered by neighbors who have been practicing for weeks to get it right.
More Information
Current concert details, programming notes, and information about the Richardson Community Band’s full season are available on the band’s official website.
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