All 144 Willie Nelson Albums, Ranked
The recording career of country music’s greatest artist, surveyed, sized up, and sorted on the occasion of his 87th birthday.
Joe Nick Patoski is a former senior editor for Texas Monthly and a one-time reporter for the Austin American-Statesman. He has authored and co-authored biographies of Selena and Stevie Ray Vaughan, collaborated with photographer Laurence Parent on books about the Texas mountains, the Texas coast, and Big Bend National Park, all published by University of Texas Press, in addition to writing Generations on the Land: A Conservation Legacy (TexasA&M Press) and Texas High School Football: More Than the Game (Texas Historical Commission). His 2008 book, Willie Nelson: An Epic Life, published by Little, Brown, was recognized by the Friends of the TCU Library with the Texas Book Award for the best book about Texas written in 2007/2008. His most recent book for Little, Brown is The Dallas Cowboys: The Outrageous History of the Biggest, Loudest, Most Hated, Best Loved Football Team in America. Patoski’s byline has appeared in the Los Angeles Times,the New York Times, TimeOut New York, Garden & Gun, and No Despression magazine, for whom he is a contributing editor.
Articles by Joe Nick Patoski
Farewell to the “Rambling Boy,” Lonn Taylor
The Fort Davis historian and raconteur knew and loved Texas and its people like no one else.
Feature
G-G-Ghost Stories
All Hallows Eve, which descends from the grand Celtic festival of the dead, was stirring up a cauldron of supernatural activity long before kids started donning costumes to harvest candy from the neighbors. But, alas, for some time, Halloween and the belief in spirits of the departed…
Pro Football’s Biggest Star
Former Dallas Cowboys equipment manager Jack Eskridge, who died earlier this month at 89, didn't just create a logo. He defined the city and the sport.
Hey Jerry, want to win another Super Bowl? Sell the team to its own fans a la Green Bay Packers, says Dallas Cowboys author Joe Nick Patoski.
Still ZZ After All These Years
So what if they’re not cranking out hits and selling out concerts the way they used to? After nearly three decades, no one makes better blues rock than ZZ Top.
The “Drive” Drive
ROUTE: West of Ozona to Sanderson DISTANCE: 85 miles NUMBER OF COUNTIES: 3 WHAT TO READ: James H. Evans’s Crazy From the Heat A drive whose sole purpose is to experience the simple pleasure of being behind the wheel has a few requirements. The route must lead…
The Music Drive
ROUTE: Turkey to Lubbock (the long way) DISTANCE: 366 miles NUMBER OF COUNTIES: 13 WHAT TO LISTEN TO: Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be the Day and Waylon Jennings’s Ol’ Waylon West Texas is the Texas of wide-open spaces, but it is also the Texas of music giants, starting…
Money in the Making
Houston’s new movers and shakers don’t hang with the Wyatts or Sakowitzes. They’re Eightball, Scarface, Lil’ Keke, and the other power players of the city’s rap music scene.
Chili Relations
Food fight: The most ridiculous, overblown squabble this side of the legislature.
Dead On Deadline
Why reporters who cover the border are finding themselves more and more under the gun.
Boone Pickens Wants To Sell You His Water
And you’re going to need it, eventually, since Texas’ most precious natural resource is being depleted at an alarming rate. His plan is to pump vast amounts from his land in the Panhandle and pipe it to parched cities like El Paso and San Antonio—for a hefty price, of course. But other powerful interests have the same idea. Let the battle begin.
The Queen Is Dead
When Selena Quintanilla Perez was killed on March 31, Texas mourned—and around the world, the veneration began.
Some Things Never Change: Doug Deep
He’s a little bit country, rock and roll, and everything in between. That’s why Doug Sahm is still going strong.
The Power Couple—Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellan
A match made in heaven and blessed by Hollywood.
Underground Round
On the first Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in August for the past 61 years, thousands have converged on a park on the outskirts of Dalhart for the XIT Rodeo and Reunion, celebrating the history of the XIT Ranch, once the biggest ranch in Texas. (This year’s dates: August 7—9.) In…
Just Say Snow
Breathtaking scenery, tons of runs, and pillowy, powdery white stuff: If you need a lift this winter, New Mexico skiing won’t leave you cold.
Habeas Corpus
The rap on Corpus Christi is that there’s no there there—but a case can be made that it’s a great weekend destination.
Alive and Kicking
Nothing advertises your Texas bona fides more these days than a pair of handmade cowboy boots. Here's everything you need to know about them - how to tell a vamp from a pull, which toe style is right with a suit - and where to buy the best.
Boot Anatomy
Top The top, also known as the shaft, is the artist’s canvas: Here is where the most detail work is done (although, ironically, if you’re a man, the top stays hidden under your pants legs unless you’re riding or at a cowboy ball). Standard tops are twelve inches high, though…
25 Top Custom Bootmakers
ABILENE James Leddy Boots 1602 N. Treadaway Boulevard 915-677-7811 The nephew of boot king M. L. Leddy is now royalty himself, and he runs a real family business: He does the cutting, his wife and daughter do the stitching, his son-in-law does bottoms, and his former daughter-in-law creates…
Speed
This month, more than 150,000 fans will pack an enormous new venue near Fort Worth to watch the state’s first major stock car race. Clearly, NASCAR is on the right track in Texas.
Pit Stops
Where are the best places to eat barbecue in Texas? Six years ago we published a highly subjective—and hotly debated— list of our fifty favorite joints, and now we’ve gone back for seconds. Ten intrepid souls drove more than 21,000 miles in search of 2003’s worthiest ‘cue. Here’s what they came back with: the top 5 and the next 45, plus honorable mentions, great chains, and meat by mail.
True Fit
Comfort, style, and identity are a few of the reasons why Texans will be forever in blue jeans.
The Widow’s Pique
In Lubbock they call her the "Spanish Yoko Ono," and María Elena Holly, Buddy Holly’s widow, has always had a troubled relationship with his conservative hometown. Some folks rave on that it’s her greed that has killed the city’s Buddy Holly Music Festival. But it’s more complicated than that.
Radio
Play-by-play coverage of high school baseball in Alpine, polka and Pan-American music in El Campo: More than a dozen reasons not to touch that dial.
Turnover!
Two decades ago, a barbarian from Arkansas named Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys and rebooted the franchise from the ground up. Inside the wild first days of the most hostile takeover the NFL has ever known.
The Rookie
Two and a half years ago, the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum asked me to organize an exhibit about high school football. Did I mention I'm not a curator?
Top Fifty
Unless otherwise noted, all places take credit cards. ABILENE: Harold’s Pit Bar-B-Q We didn’t catch pitmaster Harold Christian singing gospel songs to his customers, but we’re told that isn’t an unusual occurrence. This cozy little room, packed with nine picnic tables, seven booths, and a congregation of athletic trophies, is…
The Best of the Best
Cooper’s Pit Bar-B-Q Mason The name “Cooper’s” has long been synonymous with Llano, but now the Mason operation of the same name has overtaken its distant cousin. Cooper’s Pit Bar-B-Q was opened in Mason in 1953 by the late George Cooper, whose son Tommy (also deceased) cloned it a…
Git Along . . .
How Lubbock--epicenter of the prairie dog universe--learned to stop worrying and love the little beasts.
Water Hazard
The mayor of San Antonio says a 2,600-acre golf resort on top of the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone won't ruin the city's sole source of drinking water. Who wants to tee off on that one?
Water Foul
When the City of Marshall wanted to pump millions of gallons of water out of Caddo Lake and sell them to the highest bidder, the state said, "Sure." Residents of Karnack, Uncertain, and other tiny northeast Texas towns said, "Hell, no." Guess who prevailed (for now)?
Yelapa
Beach palapas, blue water, angelfish, Gauguin sunsets, mahimahi al mojo de ajoand a frog in the shower.
Prairie Dogma
Birders and their allies want to preserve the vanishing grassland of the farm and ranch country west of Houston, but time is running out.
Get Your Groove Back
A new book on dance halls explains why Texans are itching to go boot-scootin'.
Driving Music
Sailor, the Steve Miller Band (Capitol) Return to the Wide Open Spaces, Live at the Caravan of Dreams featuring, among others, David “Fathead” Newman, Ellis Marsalis, and Cornell Dupree (Amazing) Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams (Mercury)…
Alternate Routes
South Padre Island to Rio Grande Valley International Airport, Harlingen, on Texas Highway 100 and FM 510 and 106 (33 miles) This narrow two-lane shortcut from the beach to the airport is one way to avoid the congestion and speed traps on U.S. 77. It slices through parts of…
Pretty Drives
Presidio to Lajitas on FM 170 (50 miles) At first El Camino del Rio dips and winds along the Rio Grande through a maze of low, dry arroyos framed by bare lunar landscapes. Before long, the West Texas sky looms so large that it practically swallows the road. The…