Hot CDsAbra Moore’s wispy, quivering voice works hard to be heard among the loud, rude guitars of Strangest Places (Arista/Austin). It’s a far cry from her earlier, softer work with Poi Dog Pondering and as a solo artist. Even when she falters, the Austinite’s transformation into a rocker adds resonance
A South Texan adds a chapter to the Apollo 13 story.
Texas City lives on, fifty years after the infamous explosion.
After nearly sixty years of collecting information on multiple births, Helen Kirk of Galveston has an obsession of umbilical proportions.
Hot CDsSing, Cowboy, Sing: The Gene Autry Collection (Rhino) is a three-CD set featuring 84 favorites by the singing cowboy from Tioga. But these aren’t always the best-known versions; many are previously unreleased transcriptions from his Melody Ranch radio show that measure up well and thus add to the Autry
Thought the competition between Texas cities was over? Until my daughter was born in Dallas and a friend’s was born in Austin, so did I.
I thought I’d teach my young son’s Laotian friend about all the essentials of American culture, including Dr. Seuss. I just never imagined how much he’d teach me.
How did Susanna Dickinson survive the Battle of the Alamo, and who played her in John Wayne’s movie?
Hot CDsThanks to her auspicious debut, Baduizm (Universal), 25-year-old Erykah Badu is being billed as the hip-hop Billie Holliday, which may be a bit—how do you say?—premature. But working with jazz and hip-hop all-stars and singing originals that are definitely more intimate than gritty, the silky-voiced South Dallas native does
What was Bill Pickett’s nickname, and how did he wrestle steers to the ground?
Hot CDsMiss Lavelle White’s It Haven’t Been Easy (Antone’s/Discovery) is essentially a primer on modern blues. Houston-bred and currently Austin-based, White is equally comfortable with a soul ballad like the title song, an up-tempo scorcher like “Can’t Take It (I Don’t Give a Damn),” the self-explanatory “Wootie Boogie,” or a
For three centuries the Kickapoo Indians moved from place to place across North America to avoid assimilation. Today they live on the outskirts of Eagle Pass: unwelcome, yet unwilling to give up the fight to preserve their culture.
STEPHEN KLINEBERG IS A MAN WHO REVELS IN STATISTICS, finding a pleasure in them so intense it borders on the sensual. We sat at a small round table in his breakfast room as he led me through the arrays of numbers that he has worked each of the last fifteen
To whom were Bonnie and Clyde really married, and whose saxophone was found in their car?
Hot CDsIn the sixties, Mayo Thompson’s The Red Krayola was a Houston psychedelic band with a writer—Frederick Barthelme—for a drummer. Thirty years later, the amorphous experimental outfit has a new lineup that makes music with the help of such guests as Minutemen alumnus George Hurley, but time has not tarnished
The last surviving Teepee Motel in Texas.
In Texas the ultimate arbiter of good taste has always been Neiman Marcus, the Dallas-based department store that marks its ninetieth birthday next year.
Hot CDsAlong with Nat “King” Cole, Texas City native Charles Brown became the father of late-night “cocktail blues” in Los Angeles in the forties. Half a century later, Honey Dripper (Verve/Gitanes) vividly conjures up Brown’s suave, stylish world. His voice is sweet and smoky like a rich cigar and as
Why the big fight between a small town and a small church wound up in the Supreme Court.
Around the State Edited by Quita McMath, Josh Daniel, Erin Gromen, and Cheri Ballew summary: The Smithsonian Institution takes its show on the road (Houston). Plus: Yuletide celebrations that hold a candle (San Antonio); the Tokyo String Quartet gets caught in the fiddle (Fort Worth and Houston); where to meet
What did Uvalde’s John Nance garner think the vice presidency was really worth?
Hot CDsTwo years after their wildly successful debut, Elida y Avante bounce back from label troubles with Algo Entero (Tejas). For my money, Mercedes-born Elida Reyna is tejano’s next female superstar. Her husky, throbbing voice is mature well beyond her 24 years—she has the archetypal blend of innocence and experience—and
Around the State subheading: A selective guide to amusements and events. Edited by Quita McMath, Josh Daniel, Erin Gromen, and Cheri Ballew summary: Members of Bob Wills’s Texas Playboys and Playgirls stage a swinging comeback (Austin and Bandera). Plus: The Day of the Dead lives (Austin, El Paso, Houston, and
Hot CDsSalt? Fat? Excess? You’ll get none of that from the women of Pork. On their second album, Slop (Emperor Jones/Trance Syndicate), the Austin trio gets maximum results from a minimalist approach. Like a modern-day Modern Lovers, the band has a simple, timeless garage-rock sound that thrives on a patchwork
Mexico’s Ballet Folklórico steps lively (Dallas, Galveston, and San Antonio). Plus: the richness of Catalonian art (San Antonio); the brew-haha that is Oktoberfest (Fredericksburg); the keys to jazz piano (Austin, Houston, and San Antonio); and singing the praises of Gabriel García Márquez (Houston). Edited by Quita McMath, Erin Gromen, and
It was strange enough that I returned to my hated Houston high school after twenty years—but stranger still, I enjoyed it.
All over Texas, small ranchers are giving up and moving to the city. But the Stoner family of Uvalde is as determined as ever to hold on to its land—and its way of life.
Thirty years later, the legacy of Charles Whitman’s shooting spree at the University of Texas still towers above us.
Since the late eighties, dozens of big churches in Texas have put rapid growth ahead of financial health. Austin’s Great Hills Baptist is only the latest to pay the price.
Practicing what he preaches.
They worked hard, overcame obstacles, bucked conventional wisdom, and touched our lives. Meet the most impressive, intriguing, and influential Texans of 1996.
East meets Southwest in an unprecedented festival of Japanese culture in Dallas. Plus: Texas rock and rollers shake their Hootie; Lubbock gets down for a four-day celebration of cowboys and cool tunes; the University of Texas Longhorns host the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame—and give one of their own the
Hot CDs The boys from Bedhead wipe the sleep from their eyes with Beheaded (Trance Syndicate), a volume of 1995 recordings that serves as the band’s second album. The brainy Dallas quintet’s three-guitar setup shimmers and creeps, foreshadowing the hypnotic bursts of woozy but assertive riffs and unassumingly catchy tunesmithing.
At the twenty-fifth annual Texas Folklife Festival in San Antonio, you can nibble on Lebanese kibbeh, sample Nigerian suya, gnaw on a Filipino inihaw—or stick to watermelon from Luling. Plus: A Fantastick show in Fort Worth from the boys of Tuna; powerful photos from Richard Avedon in Austin; a hellish
Hot CDsBraver Newer World (Elektra) might well be the record that Jimmie Dale Gilmore has always wanted to make. A radical departure in both instrumentation (the sitar and fuzz guitars of the title track) and arrangements (the overhaul of Joe Ely’s “Because of the Wind”), it’s the closest the Austin-via-Lubbock
MY EIGHT-YEAR-OLD SON is named after a town in Texas. His given name was Daniel Streeter Phillips. When he was born, my wife, Debra, and I broke out the map of Texas and our finger kind of stopped at Streeter. It was actually going to be his middle name, but
A few days in the tiny East Texas hamlet my mom now calls home proved the old maxim: Entertainment value is inversely proportional to population size.
THE MAIN EVENTWillie Powerby Erin Gromen This July 4 in Luckenbach, you can get Kinky, start Waylon, and fall Asleep at Willie Nelson’s annual picnic—.When he first sang “Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas, with Waylon and Willie and the boys” almost twenty years ago, Waylon Jennings forever linked himself and
For years the dusty outpost of Terlingua has been a magnet for renegades and loners looking for a haven from the modern world. No wonder the brother of the suspected Unabomber holed up there.
He never met a man who didn’t like him. L.T. Felty, who died March 17, was born in Hickory Creek, but he spent forty-plus years in Waxahachie, where his genial and helpful manner as a schoolteacher and coach earned him the unofficial title of Mr. Waxahachie. (Christened solely with rhyming
Hot CDsAustin immigrant Bob Mould made two solo records after the breakup of his first band, Hüsker Dü; now the demise of his latest band, Sugar, has led to a third. Self-produced, entirely self-played, and unassumingly self-titled, the Rykodisc release finds Mould’s somber vocals and crystalline guitar lines meandering from
The world-famous rock art of the Lower Pecos has long left scholars in awe—and in the dark. Now a group of Texas archaeologists has unlocked the sacred secrets of the ancient shamans.
summary: From Nanci Griffith to Butch Hancock, the stars will shine at this year’s Kerrville Folk Festival—the kickoff of a year-long twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration. Plus: Dead presidents in Austin, Spanish masterpieces in Dallas, a haunting opera in Houston, and tee time in Fort Worth. Edited by Quita McMath, Erin Gromen, and
Hot CDsYes, it’s that Tiny Tim—albeit with a gruffer voice than you probably remember—singing with Denton polkaholics Brave Combo on Girl (Rounder). Together, the onetime tulip tiptoer and the 1995 Grammy nominees bip and bop through a set of standards (“Stardust”) and pop-rock faves (“Hey Jude”). The collaboration may not
Here’s a World Wide Web page to die for. The Texas State Cemetery in Austin goes online (www.cemetery.statetx.us) late this month, thanks to the General Services Commission. You can scan a list of the more than two thousand luminaries buried there, from father of Texas Stephen F.
Growing up in Austin in the fifties and sixties, I couldn’t play baseball in certain places. In Clarksville, a mostly black area where there were no paved streets, I could usually find a pickup game. In West Lynn, which was whiter, I kind of had to push myself into one.
A new book about Lee Harvey Oswald reveals that conspiracy theorists are still straining to repackage old news into something new.
For Texas baseball fans, April is the cruelest month. Find out if the Rangers go down swinging this year—and if the Astros will be safe at home. Plus: Wildflower power (Austin), head-turning tribal masks (Houston), Russian ballerinas on their toes (El Paso), and the twentieth century by design (Dallas). Edited
The best books and CDs from Texas.
Since the day Stanley Marsh 3 finally went too far and locked up George Whittenburg’s son in a chicken coop, all of Amarillo has been abuzz about the bizarre battle between these intractable foes.
