A Stage That Has Seen a Few Things
The Plaza Theatre at 521 W. State Street has been holding its corner of downtown Garland long enough to earn its reputation. On the evening of June 12, 2026, at 8:00 PM, that stage belongs to Jomo Edwards and his band, Jomo and The Possum Posse — a show presented by Garland Cultural Arts that sits comfortably at the intersection of Texas music and flat-out comedy.
If you have spent any real time following the Texas live music circuit, the name Jomo Edwards is not a new one. Edwards is an award-winning songwriter whose work and stage presence have built him a following that spans the kind of audiences who show up early and the kind who stay until the venue starts stacking chairs. The Possum Posse is the vehicle for all of it — the songs, the wit, the particular brand of performance that makes a room feel like a gathering rather than a transaction.
What Garland Cultural Arts Is Doing Here
Garland Cultural Arts has been bringing performers to the Plaza Theatre for years, and the booking of Jomo and The Possum Posse fits the program’s track record of reaching beyond the obvious. This is not a tribute act or a regional cover band filling a Thursday calendar slot. Edwards is an original voice in Texas music, and putting him on the Plaza Theatre stage on a Friday night in June is the kind of decision that rewards people who pay attention to what Garland’s arts programming actually looks like up close.
The Plaza Theatre itself is part of what makes an evening like this work. The venue is small enough that there is no bad seat in the conventional sense — you are in the room with the performance rather than watching it from a distance. That intimacy suits a performer like Edwards, whose appeal depends on the audience feeling addressed directly, not broadcast at.
The Broader Picture on State Street
June 12 is a Friday, which means the show lands at the tail end of what is already shaping up to be an active stretch of downtown programming. The First Friday Music Made Here concert series runs monthly at the Downtown Garland Square at 520 W. State St., just steps from the Plaza Theatre, keeping live music on the calendar through December as part of Visit Garland’s year-round featured events lineup. The Square brings free performances, local food vendors, and family activities to that block on the first Friday of each month, building the kind of foot traffic that makes downtown feel inhabited rather than managed.
Garland Summer Musicals opens Fiddler on the Roof at the Granville Arts Center, just a few blocks away, on the same date — June 12 — running through June 21. The density of live performance happening in a relatively compact stretch of Garland’s downtown on that particular Friday is not accidental. It reflects a sustained investment in programming that the community has supported through its attendance and, more formally, through the May 2025 bond vote that allocated $25 million under Proposition C of the Grow Garland Bond Program toward renovating the Granville Arts Center itself.
The Granville renovation is still in its design phase, with construction not expected until 2027. But the programming happening right now — at the Plaza Theatre, at the Granville, on the Square — is the argument for why that investment matters.
Why This Show Specifically
There is a temptation, when writing about live music in a community context, to reach for the civic angle and leave the music itself underexplained. That would be a disservice here.
Jomo Edwards built his reputation the old way: writing songs that hold up and performing them in front of people who did not already know his name. The comedy element of the Possum Posse’s show is not a gimmick layered on top of music — it is woven into the performance in a way that makes the whole thing feel like a single sustained idea. Texas has a long tradition of performers who can hold a room with nothing but a guitar and a story, and Edwards works squarely within that tradition while doing something recognizably his own.
For Garland residents who have not made it to the Plaza Theatre recently, a Friday night show with a band of this caliber is a reasonable occasion to reconsider the habit. The venue is on W. State Street, parking in downtown Garland is not the ordeal it is in larger venues, and the show starts at 8:00 PM — late enough to be an evening, early enough to be a reasonable one.
Details
Jomo and The Possum Posse is presented by Garland Cultural Arts at the Plaza Theatre, 521 W. State Street, Garland, TX 75040. The show is on June 12, 2026, at 8:00 PM. For tickets and current information, visit the Garland city events calendar at garlandtx.gov.
