Marfa: Planet Marfa

Planet Marfa is the kind of bar that could only exist in Marfa. It is too strange for anywhere else, and in Marfa, it fits perfectly.

The bar sits at 200 South Abbot Street, a block off the main drag, behind an adobe wall that gives away nothing about what is inside. Step through the gate and you find a sprawling outdoor space: Christmas lights strung overhead, a sunken seating area built around a tipi, mismatched chairs and tables scattered across the gravel, and a raised stage at one end. The whole thing looks like it was assembled over several years by people with strong opinions and no master plan. It works completely.

Planet Marfa runs live music on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, along with Sunday afternoons. The acts lean toward Texas roots music — country, folk, Americana, singer-songwriter — though Marfa’s art world means the booking occasionally goes somewhere more unexpected. The bar opens at 1pm most days, which makes it the kind of place you wander into for a beer in the afternoon and stay longer than you planned.

Marfa’s Living Room

Marfa is a small town — about 1,800 people — that has attracted an outsized amount of attention since the artist Donald Judd moved there in the 1970s and began installing large-scale sculpture in the desert. The art world followed. Then the tourists followed the art world. Consequently, Marfa now sustains restaurants, hotels, and bars that would be remarkable in a city ten times its size.

Planet Marfa sits comfortably between the art-crowd scene and the local West Texas culture. It draws both. On a good Saturday night, you will find Marfa old-timers drinking at the bar alongside gallery visitors from New York who drove down from Chinati Foundation. The music holds the room together. The bar does not take reservations and does not do bottle service. You show up, you find a spot, and you stay as long as the night holds.

The Rest of the Route

Marfa connects naturally to the rest of the Trans-Pecos music circuit. The Granada Theatre in Alpine is forty minutes east. The Starlight Theatre in Terlingua is two hours south, deep in the Big Bend country. For the full experience of West Texas live music — from border honky-tonk to ghost town saloon — the Starlight is the essential final stop.