Great Falls Now Has Live Music at Both Ends of the Weekend. The Holiday Calendar Falls In Between.
November 12, 2026
November 12, 2026
At 7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 20, Melissa Quinn Fox plays a room at 9835 Georgetown Pike that used to be a Tex-Mex grill. Two days later, at 760 Walker Road, Piper Jones Band plays the 4:30 seating at The Old Brogue, a Great Falls pub with more than 40 years of history.
This holiday season, the village has a regular music night at each end of the weekend for the first time. Fridays and Saturdays belong to Great Falls Center. Sunday afternoons still belong to the Brogue. Most of the season's community events fall on the days and hours in between, from the tree lighting on the Village Field to Santa at Colvin Run Mill. A weekend that once offered a single evening option now has several.
Great Falls Lodge Bar & Grill took over the 4,689-square-foot space that used to be El Tio Tex-Mex Grill. It is the third Lodge from owner and chef Neel Kamal, after Urbana Lodge in Ijamsville and Clarks Lodge in Clarksburg, Maryland. The opening took longer than planned. In late June, FFXnow reported a target in the first week of July. By September, Fairfax County's permitting and inspection process had pushed that to a Labor Day soft launch, according to a follow-up from FFXnow. In October, Northern Virginia Magazine included it in a roundup of new restaurants in the region.
The center's lineup had a gap before this. The McLean Ledger called the Lodge the first bar-style establishment in Great Falls Center. Its neighbors there are Village Grill, Izumi Sushi Japanese Cuisine, Toastique and Bollywood Bistro. In his June interview with FFXnow, Kamal described the concept this way:
"It's a family-oriented restaurant with a mountain theme … very friendly menu with lots of wine selections, and a basic good American-themed menu."
In the same June article, the team said it hoped to add weekend live music later on. The Lodge's November calendar now has acts on most Friday and Saturday nights, every one starting at 7 p.m. Its posted schedule also goes well beyond the dinner-only hours of the soft launch:
The Old Brogue Irish Pub works on a different clock. Its fall Celtic concerts are on Sundays, with two ticketed seatings for each show, 4:30 to 6 p.m. and 6:30 to 8 p.m. Each seating costs $25. These shows sell out. The 6:30 seating for Piper Jones Band on Nov. 22 is sold out, and the 6:30 seating for the Dec. 13 Christmas concert was down to one ticket in early November.
The Lodge's music nights are on Fridays and Saturdays, and the Brogue's ticketed concerts are on Sundays, so the two November calendars never book a show on the same day.
Katie's Coffee House shares the Brogue's address and serves coffee and breakfast every morning. The pub and the coffee house are also now open on Tuesdays for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
From now through the shortest days of the year, the community events mostly take up daytime hours and early Sunday evenings, which leaves the two music venues on either side of them.
On this weekend you can go from the ArtFest straight to an evening show both Saturday and Sunday.
From Wednesday night through Sunday afternoon, this is the busiest run of live music on the two venues' posted calendars.
The Celebrate Great Falls Foundation runs the tree lighting on a tight timetable. From 4 to 5:45 p.m. there are pony rides, a petting zoo, holiday treats, letters to Santa and performances by local school music groups. Santa and Mrs. Claus pull up on a fire truck and light the tree between 5 and 5:10. Visits with Santa run from 5:15 to 6, and the Live Nativity starts at 5:45, when the ponies and petting zoo close. The event is free. If the weather turns bad, the foundation will still light the tree, but the other activities won't be rescheduled. Santa visits end promptly at 6.
The tree lighting falls in the same late-afternoon Sunday window the Brogue uses for its concerts. On Dec. 6, though, the Brogue's events calendar has no concert.
Santa at the Mill wraps up at 4 p.m. on Sunday, and the Brogue's first Christmas seating starts half an hour later. If you hold a ticket, you can do both in one afternoon.
The mill's last December weekend moves to the evening. The lantern tours start near the hour when the Lodge's weekend shows usually begin, so on these two nights the mill and the Lodge compete for the same evening.
Friday and Saturday nights now center on Great Falls Center, with daily hours, a 3 p.m. happy hour and 7 p.m. sets on the Lodge's November calendar. Sunday's live music is at 760 Walker Road, where seats are sold ahead in pairs of seatings at $25 each. The free community events fill the hours in between. They include the ArtFest at Millen Hall, the tree lighting on the Village Field, and Colvin Run Mill's run from Children's Holiday Shopping on Dec. 5 to the Dec. 21 morning of wrapping and cocoa.
At 15 West Homes, we keep calendars like this because the details of a Great Falls weekend matter to the people who live here. If you'd like to know how your own home on these streets fits into this winter's market, request your free home valuation, and we'll put it together for you.
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