The Drop Everything List

AUSTIN

Inconvenient Truths
Shearwater is its own breed: an environmental rock band. The past three albums by the critically acclaimed Austin band form a trilogy of paeans to the world and its inhabitants, with operatic heft and symphonic attention to detail. The album Palo Santo interprets the life of Nico, the Velvet Underground singer, who died on the island of Ibiza. “She was kind of an island unto herself, a sort of unreachable, unknowable presence,” said Jonathan Meiburg, the band’s choir-boy-voiced singer. The albums Rook and The Golden Archipelago likewise occupy land and sea, war and wilderness, and vanishing human and animal worlds. For one night only—and before the band consciously abandons its elegant sound for a new one that Meiburg calls “more messy, personal, and ecstatic”—Shearwater will present The Island Arc, a single performance of all three albums, in sequence, dispatched at the Central Presbyterian Church, in Austin. There is no better forum for a sermon on creation and apocalypse.
Central Presbyterian Church, Jan 15, 8 p.m.
shearwatermusic.com

SAN ANTONIO

Kingdom Come
Marc Lamont Hill thinks Martin Luther King Jr. has been reduced to “a multicultural action figure” used to further peoples’ agendas. “Instead of focusing on his critiques of American racism, his challenge to American imperialism, his project to eradicate global poverty, or his opposition to the war, we have allowed the image of Martin to be hijacked by the religious and secular Right, as well as the socially conservative Left,” Hill wrote on his website. Hill, a Columbia University professor and leading hip-hop era cultural anthropologist, will aim to reclaim King’s legacy through his delivery of Trinity University’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture. Two days prior, on MLK Day, you can unite with Trinity University president Dennis Ahlburg and his students, faculty, and staff for San Antonio’s annual Peace March through the city’s East Side. It’s an opportunity for a new generation to symbolically walk a mile in the shoes of the freedom fighter.
Lecture: Trinity University, Jan 19, 7 p.m. March: MLK Freedom Bridge, Jan 17, 10 a.m.
trinity.edu

MISSION

Freshly Squeezed
Orange and grapefruit growers in the Rio Grande Valley have reason to party hard at this year’s Texas Citrus Fiesta. The federal government earlier this month lifted a ban on the distribution of Texas citrus to other citrus-producing states, thus restoring a major source of revenue. This small victory (one of the region’s worst droughts still persists) comes just in time for the fiesta, an annual two-week appreciation of the fruits that culminates in a Rose Bowl–type parade and the coronation of King Citrus and Queen Citriana. The affair dates back to 1932, when Paul Ord and the Young Men’s Business League of Mission conceived of the idea for showcasing the area’s agricultural bounty. This year’s festivities begin January 15, with the Product Costume Show, a grand display of outfits decorated with local citrus, other fruits, and vegetables.
Mission Community Center, Jan 15, 2 p.m.
texascitrusfiesta.net

HOUSTON

Sugar-Free Pop
Daniel Johnston, the mentally ill folk singer who Kurt Cobain praised and who quantifies his success by his number of appearances on MTV, is turning fifty years old, and nine bands are joining him to celebrate. The perfect birthday present with which to surprise Johnston onstage is a six-pack of Diet Coke. He will likely down at least that many while alternately cruising and sputtering through a collection of three-and-a-half-minute ditties about ghosts and girls, fame and misfortune. This will necessitate a bathroom break or two for Johnston. It will create the kind of crack-up awkward moments that make him so endearing. Consider it a rare opportunity to bask in the presence of this underground king of pop songcraft. Because on his last album, the overlooked Is and Always Was, Johnston used the song “Freedom” to meditate on his demise: “Last night I dreamed I died in my sleep, only to awake laying in a coffin.”
Fitzgerald’s, Jan 14, 8 p.m.
hihowareyou.com

KERRVILLE

Breakfast Hash
The 7th Annual Hill Country Cowboy Breakfast starts at 6 a.m., but you won’t need coffee when the eye-opening slate of activities includes bowling with frozen turkeys, speed-milking bleating goats, and “throwing the bull” (slang for tossing a dried cow chip in a bucket, like washers).
Kerr County Courthouse, Jan 14, 6 a.m.
hcdjls.org

EL PASO

Freewheeling Four-Wheeling
Aside from the havoc wreaked by Bigfoot, in what will be the granddaddy of monster trucking’s return to the mud pit, the Monster Truck Thunder Slam will feature the Globe of Death, a new x-game where motorcyclists ride the insides of a sixteen-foot circular cage.
El Paso County Coliseum, Jan 14–16, various times.
amptour.com

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