By Taylor Adams Cogan

When Chris Lewellyn was a teenager growing up in Rockwall, his path to Deep Ellum wasn’t exactly direct, but it was magnetic. Eventually, it would become the place that helped him rebuild his life.

“When we were young, we’d come into East Dallas to buy booze and take it back to Rockwall to drink,” he says. “And then we’d hear people talk about Deep Ellum, and we’d come down here and go to shows and try to sneak into clubs. It didn’t always work.”

At the time, all-ages venues weren’t much of a concept, but that didn’t keep the underage kids like Chris away from the pulse of the neighborhood.

“Unless there was a pizza place with a band, I didn’t get to go to many shows,” he says. “So, I’d hang out on the street while everyone else was inside the clubs. That’s where the kids would meet up. It was a place for us.”

Even if it meant hearing the bass of a live band while he stood on the sidewalk, being in Deep Ellum was already making Chris fall in love with the neighborhood. The feeling would stay with him, even while life took him on different paths through college, music, faith, and, ultimately, an opportunity for him to blend creativity, community, and commerce in just the right kind of Deep Ellum way.

Chris moved to East Texas for college, thinking he’d major in music business, only to find out the school didn’t offer that degree. He then settled into classic coursework and, while there, found faith through a campus ministry.

“That gave me a home, both for music and for people,” he says. “But I always had it in my head I was going to come back to Dallas and work in the record industry.”

Back in Dallas, he’d get his foot in the door. He says the area only had six small labels at the time, but he was able to intern for Last Beat Studios on Commerce Street. It felt natural for Chris to dive into label life, putting out music zines, organizing compilation CDs, and falling deeper into the neighborhood’s creative fabric.

Growing up in an Army family, Chris had moved a lot in his youth, finding it easy to make surface-level friends, but it was harder for him to connect on a deeper level as an adult.

“Community became the thing I wanted to belong to,” he says. “I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. I was able to find that in Deep Ellum.” Years later, when things fell apart, it would be that same community that gave him a path forward.

He joined the touring crew of Reverend Horton Heat, selling merch and living life on the road for nearly three years. But when he wasn’t touring, he started up a little side business that many people know him by today: screen printing.

“I was doing it out of my folks’ house in Rockwall at first. My first prints were terrible,” he says. “If I didn’t know the people I was working with, there’s no way I would’ve gotten the chance. But my prices were so cheap no one could say no.”

Chris wanted to help bands in any way he could — touring, booking, printing merch — whatever it took to use his creative skills to help keep their momentum going. But the business was (and typically always is) fragile. Around 2010 or 2011, it came crashing down.

“I lost everything. My business, my house, my animals. I had goats. I had to find homes for them,” he says. “I kept the three dogs I had left, and over time, they passed on, too.”

Through all of it, Deep Ellum stayed close. He’d never been able to afford to live in the neighborhood, but he did business here — weekend after weekend, dropping off shirts, staying connected to the scene.

Eventually, he was drawn back to the neighborhood, joining the team at another print shop, which helped him pull out of debt. It was about this time that he was invited to help organize the Deep Ellum Arts Festival.

“That really pulled me back into the neighborhood,” Chris says. “I got involved with DECA and started printing out of their space. Westdale was letting them use it rent-free for years, but just as I started building something, they decided to turn it into a restaurant.”

Chris pivoted yet again, working out of a rehearsal space offered by a friend, and then into a new storefront thanks to property owner Erik Ward, who later sold the building to another developer who Chris says “saved my business this past year.”

Today, Chris helps run the Everything Ellum store, but to him, it’s about more than shirts and souvenirs.

“It’s the same mentality I had with bands: Can I help artists find work?” he says. “The beautiful part is we’ve always worked with artists who were already part of Deep Ellum. The art comes first. We just put ‘Deep Ellum’ somewhere on it.”

During the Arts Festival, his booth showcased 50 artists. You know the one you’ve seen for years, lined up with mind-bending, provocative, or inspiring work that showcases our neighborhood’s name. Now, we have access to shirts like these year-round in the store

“At least 10 of them had never seen themselves as artists before,” Chris says. “We gave them a shot, helped them see their art could sell, that it mattered. Some of them found something they didn’t know they had.”

For Chris, it’s not about making a brand. It’s about keeping the creative fire lit — for the artist, for the neighborhood, for the next kid hanging outside a club, looking for a place to belong.

“This community I wanted so badly to be part of as a kid? As I’ve grown up, I’ve gotten to be part of it,” he says. “And when I needed it most, it took care of me.”