John Spong

Jun 16, 2019 — By John Spong

Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones discuss their friend, a Texas legend who leaves behind a brilliant body of work and definitive repository of Southwestern culture.

Jan 30, 2019 — By John Spong, John Nova Lomax, Larry L. King and Michael Hall

Appreciations by current and former staffers who know them all too well.

Feb 23, 2017 — By John Spong

Spoon is my favorite band. Spoon has a new album out. It is my favorite Spoon album. That is all.

Feb 22, 2017 — By John Spong

A tribute to Gary Cartwright, who died February 22, 2017, at age 82.

Nov 23, 2016 — By John Spong

It’s about more than character, recruiting, or staffing; it’s about how doing things the right way sometimes takes time.

Nov 18, 2016 — By John Spong

The King of Country returned to the dancehall—where he and Ace in the Hole once played monthly sets—to celebrate the release of a new box set.

Jun 9, 2016 — By John Spong

Elmo Henderson’s entire life story can be summed up in a single moment: when he stepped into the ring in San Antonio one night in 1972 and knocked out Muhammad Ali. At least that’s the way he tells it. And tells it.

May 17, 2016 — By John Spong

A memory of a songwriting afternoon.

Feb 24, 2016 — By John Spong

Big Bend roared back to life last year after spring rains unleashed a bounty of ocotillos, bluebonnets, and yuccas. Thankfully, photographer James H. Evans was there to capture it in living color.

Nov 18, 2015 — By John Spong

I always knew that the work my dad did as an Episcopal priest and grief counselor was important. But I didn’t understand how important until the birth of my son.

Jun 10, 2015 — By John Spong

A playlist of late-seventies and early-eighties country pop made popular by Urban Cowboy. 

May 14, 2015 — By John Spong

It was part musical, part dance movie, and part love story, and in June 1980 it unleashed an unprecedented fervor for country music, Western wear, and, yes, mechanical bulls. More than three decades later, the film’s stars (including John Travolta, Debra Winger, Mickey Gilley, and Johnny Lee) and many Gilley’s regulars recall the movie that made America fall in love with Texas.

Apr 20, 2015 — By John Spong

How my wife and I got more than we bargained for on a trip to Boquillas.

Mar 23, 2015 — By Texas Monthly and John Spong

To gain pop culture literacy, you could spend a long weekend taking in works produced for the big screen (Giant, Dazed and Confused) and the small box (Lonesome Dove, Friday Night Lights). But the quicker route would be an afternoon surfing YouTube. Search for the terms below, but don’t blame us if you end up falling down a Van Cliburn rabbit hole.

Dec 9, 2014 — By John Spong

He’s the brashest, most generous, most foul-mouthed trial attorney in the country. And at 89, Joe Jamail can still command a courtroom, mother%*!$#@.

Oct 21, 2014 — By John Spong

Lone Star was just a brew for dads and cowboys, until Jerry Retzloff helped turn it into the coolest beer in the country.

Sep 25, 2014 — By John Spong

The photographer from Big Bend known for stunning landscapes gets out of his comfort zone. Here, a first look at several images from his latest collection.

Jul 10, 2014 — By John Spong

The outlaw singer-songwriter returns.

Jun 24, 2014 — By John Spong

It might yet be the craziest thing he’s done for the Texas landmark.

Jun 5, 2014 — By John Spong

During a 1984 tour through Texas.

May 21, 2014 — By John Spong

Listen to all of King George's greatest hits.

May 21, 2014 — By John Spong

“Unwound,” “The Chair,” and “Easy Come, Easy Go” have all sprung from the powerful pen of Dean Dillon.

May 16, 2014 — By John Spong

After a career that’s spanned more than thirty years, George Strait is wrapping up his 48-stop farewell tour this month. For those of us whose lives he has captured so inimitably in song, country music will never be the same.

Mar 20, 2014 — By John Spong

Sixteen photographs of some of the cooler moments of Austin history, as taken by Scott Newton, the longtime official photographer of “Austin City Limits.”

Jan 29, 2014 — By John Spong

In 1978 Punk magazine sent photographer Roberta Bayley to Texas to chronicle the band’s tour through the South. Her photos of the two Texas shows capture the surreal collision of two radically different cultures.

Dec 6, 2013 — By John Spong

How did Guy Clark become the most revered songwriter in Nashville? One hard-won tune at a time.

Dec 5, 2013 — By Texas Monthly and John Spong

You know, when you’re surveying the struggles of Longhorn nation from Joe Jamail’s skybox, things don’t look so bad.

Jun 19, 2013 — By John Spong

Soldiers and their families wait desperately—and courageously—for the moment when they will be reunited. And when, for the lucky ones, it finally comes, it does not disappoint.

Jun 10, 2013 — By John Spong

After more than a decade of combat, Texas soldiers are finally coming back for good. But the real journey home still lies ahead.

Mar 11, 2013 — By John Spong

Ten years after their remarkable fall from grace, no one is quite sure why the onetime Nashville darlings tumbled so far—and never got back up.

Jan 23, 2013 — By John Spong

Austin is booming with jobs, condos, festivals, traffic, hipsters, joggers, and high-concept dive bars (anyone for Lone Star and seared foie gras?). Does that mean it’s no longer Austin?

Jan 21, 2013 — By John Spong

Senior editor John Spong talked with Jan Reid about his new Ann Richards biography, Let the People In. 

Jan 21, 2013 — By John Spong

Bobby Jackson has taught students in the Aransas County school district about the Plains Indians, the Battle of San Jacinto, and Spindletop since the state celebrated its sesquicentennial. How he does it bears no resemblance to the class I took when I was stuck in middle school.

Jan 21, 2013 — By John Spong

In the late seventies, Ted Nugent (a.k.a. “the Nuge” or “Uncle Ted”) had the country’s biggest hard-rock touring act—a wild-ass blend of in-your-face energy, obscene language, and a well-placed loincloth. Now he’s the country’s biggest gun rights advocate—and all that’s changed is the loincloth.

Jan 21, 2013 — By John Spong

Forty years ago, Willie, Waylon, Jerry Jeff, and a whole host of Texas misfits grew their hair long, snubbed Nashville, and brought the hippies and rednecks together. The birth of outlaw country changed country music forever.

Jan 21, 2013 — By John Spong

Before cameras were allowed in courtrooms, artist Gary Myrick and his assortment of colored pencils provided Texas television audiences with a vivid look at the state’s high-profile legal proceedings against figures like T. Cullen Davis, Henry Lee Lucas, and Charles Harrelson.

Jan 21, 2013 — By John Spong

Against all odds, Phil Collins has turned himself into a world-class Alamo buff who will happily talk your ear off about Santa Anna and Davy Crockett. Can you feel it coming in the Bexar tonight?

Jan 21, 2013 — By John Spong

How Matthew McConaughey got discovered, why Renée Zellweger’s part is so small, why some of the actresses can’t eat ketchup to this day, and everything else you didn’t know about the making of the classic high school flick Dazed and Confused.

Jan 21, 2013 — By John Spong

I’m still shocked by the number of people who suggested I didn’t know what I was doing. The first such skeptic just happened to be the Texanist, my housemate that winter of 1995, who was then known to the greater world simply as Dave. When I informed him of my…

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

What’s the secret to writing a great country song? Which comes first, music or lyrics? Looking to answer these and other questions, we gathered a group of singer-songwriters—Guy Clark, Robert Earl Keen, Sonny Throckmorton, Patty Griffin, and Jack Ingram—set out a couple guitars, and let the tape roll.

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

When parents at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, in Austin—where the Capital City’s moneyed elite have educated their kids for more than fifty years—rebelled against the teaching of Brokeback Mountain, it was, you might say, a learning experience for everyone involved.

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

How an angry parent’s e-mail turned an elite Houston private school into a political battleground.

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

The title of James Evans’s new series of Big Bend photographs is “The Camera Never Sleeps.” It doesn’t matter, apparently, that the photographer does.

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

Thanks to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, he’s richer than all get-out, and you’re not.

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

Is Friday Night Lights the best TV show ever made about Texas? Or just the first one (sorry, J.R.! Sorry, Hank!) that’s tried so hard to get the details right?

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

Twenty-five years ago, Larry McMurtry published a novel called Lonesome Dove—and Texas hasn’t looked the same since. Listen in as more than thirty writers, critics, producers, and actors, from Peter Bogdonavich and Dave Hickey to Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, and Anjelica Huston, tell the stories behind the book (and the miniseries) that changed the way we see the West.

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

Lord of the ring.

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

Since the Republicans took over Texas, every plausible Democratic candidate for high statewide office has been the subject of an obligatory profile in Texas Monthly. Here’s yours—only it’s a bit different. It’s a memo containing loads of free advice—the kind you can afford—on how you can beat John Cornyn.

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

The Kinky-for-governor circus pulls into Galveston.

Jan 20, 2013 — By John Spong

It happened in twelve steps, which is not surprising, given the legendary Lufkin lawmaker’s history with booze, broads, and bad behavior. For now, at least, it's taking.