A wonderful album made in a Dallas rehearsal space launched separate solo careers for two musically driven siblings
On the Dallas Famous podcast in May 2023, singer-songwriter Salim Nourallah recalls a story of his mother finding a declaration he wrote when he was young. It stated that he would become a musician and a producer and he would assist others with their music. He also clarified that he would (in all caps) “NOT BE FAMOUS.” After many albums and thirty-plus years as a musician, Salim has lived his statement and more. Salim makes records at Pleasantry Lane, the studio he built in Dallas, Texas. The building began as a rehearsal space for Salim and his brother Faris and it’s where they made the Nourallah Brothers album, the first recording produced there. After the brothers had sweated it out in bands for more than a decade, the album served as the spark that started their individual creative directions.
Nourallah Brothers screams for a sequel, but it’s not in the cards. Salim and Faris have each put out a slew of solo records, but they have not recorded another LP together under their family name. A shame, because they make such beautiful music together. Or so it would seem. When they were kids, they learned songs by listening to The Beatles’ White Album and, apparently, Salim and Faris recorded the songs for Nourallah Brothers the same way John and Paul cut tracks for their classic album. They mostly worked on their own songs separately, putting down their own vocals and playing their own instruments. The sessions were actually an environment of unrest as apposed to a cooperative effort.
Salim and Faris grew up in El Paso, Texas. Their artist mother encouraged their music interest, and they started playing together—Salim on guitar and Faris on drums—with Beatles and Kinks as an early influence. Later, as Punk rolled into new wave, they turned to The Clash, Elvis Costello, and the Replacements. They named their first band Crying Dymes, but it was short-lived after they moved to Denton to attend college. The move was less about school and more about finding other musicians to perform with, and in the early 90s, they formed The Moon Festival and signed to Dragon Street Records. The band lasted nine years, with two albums and a couple EPs, and a rotating cast of band members. And it was taking them nowhere.
Faris is the one who found the rehearsal spot in Dallas. They recorded the songs for Nourallah Brothers there in ‘97 and ‘98, with, as noted on the Pleasantry Lane website, “boxing gloves and occasional instruments.” The Moon Festival disbanded in 1999 and Faris briefly joined his brother’s new group, The Happiness Factor, playing on their debut. When Western Vinyl put out the Nourallah Brothers album in 2000, it picked up a following in Europe, but Faris was done with band life. Instead, within a few years, Salim and Faris had each scored their own individual record deals because of that wondrous record they released under their last name. And the rest, as they say, is history.
These days, Salim is a producer, studio owner and world touring musician with his own record label. Artists he’s produced include Old 97s, the Damnwells, the Deathray Davies, and solo work by Rhett Miller. He also finds time for side-band projects: The Disappearing Act, NHD and The Travoltas, where he gets to act out his lounge singer fantasy in polyester duds. Salim is getting close to sixty, but he’s kept the youthful rock guy look: still thin, with a full head of hair that’s always in need of a trim. Faris has a more reserved approach. He sports a hermit’s beard on his website and maintains the intensity of an artist satisfied with what he’s creating. The “quiet” brother makes his albums in his home studio with, as he wrote on his site’s front page: “One microphone, me, and room with a 16 track recorder.” The siblings haven’t collaborated except for a 2016 charity recording “Christmas in Aleppo,” for families devastated by the conflict in Syria (their father is from Jableh, Syria). It would seem that Salim and Faris don’t really need to make their music together. There’s enough beauty to be found in each of their own solo recordings.
In 2004, Nourallah Brothers earned a double CD reissue with bonus tracks from the original sessions. Its current digital release boasts twenty-nine tracks, one shy of matching that other famous double album. The brother’s modest beginnings radiate in all the songs and many of these “leftover” tracks are just as rewarding as those on the first release (“Where Has She Flown?” is a heartbreaker). All these years later, it is probably fair to say that neither Salim nor Faris have achieved the status of being called “famous.” They continue forward as songwriters and musicians, pursuing their own individual life’s work, making “art for art’s sake.”