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.
WHEN WE LIVED IN RIVER OAKS, three or four boys and I would go down to the creek when it was hot, when the dragonflies were louder than the wind and the air was so still that it felt like it weighed a ton—but you’re seven years old and you
Listening to conjunto queen Eva Ybarra.
AUSTINITE MARCIA BALL’s File Under Blues (Rounder), which she is co-producing with guitarist Derek O’Brien and saxophonist Mark “Kaz” Kazanoff, is in production at Austin’s Arlyn studios. The hardest-tinkling pianist in show business is recording songs like “The Right Tool for the Job” between her more than fifty touring dates
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
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
Austin’s Butthole Surfers have always been very strange. But these days, the strangest thing about them is their mainstream respectability.
Hot CDsGrammy award aside, Flaco Jiménez’s last solo album was a big disappointment, for it showed how far Texas’ greatest accordionist had strayed. After all those studio sit-ins with the likes of the Rolling Stones and Dwight Yoakam and those trips around the globe as the ambassador of Tex-Mex, his
Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker—and now Junior Brown? The former community college teacher is the latest outlaw to hijack Texas country music, and he may be the greatest.
Oak Cliff native Roy Hargrove may not have the depth and seasoning of Wynton Marsalis, but the 26-year-old prodigy could still be one of the great jazz trumpeters of our day.
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
When the double life of pioneering record producer Huey Meaux was exposed, it was time to face the music: How well did I really know the legend I once called my friend?
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
Steve Earle feels alright.
Beloved by bubbas and the Butthole Surfers alike, 350-pound yodeler Don Walser is country’s current cross-generational king of cool.
Austin singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin is at Cedar Creek studios this month completing a new album, to be released by Columbia Records as early as this summer. Some songs will be produced by John Leventhal, who did Colvin’s Steady On, and others by Malcolm Burn, who has worked with the Neville
The best books and CDs from Texas.
I had my first dancing lesson in Amarillo with Constance Ferguson. Constance had been out in California studying ballet with Theodore Kosloff, one of Pavlova’s partners, but she came back to Amarillo and wanted to open a dancing school. Up on the very top floor of a great old hotel
The best books and CDs from Texas.
Two mythic cultures, one great love affair: How France has taken us to heart.
The best books and CDs from Texas.
Willie Nelson may not be a radio staple anymore, but a new tribute album recorded by some of rock’s coolest stars shows that his music is still moving to them.
Abra Moore likes herself, a revelation that comes as she grooves to the music piping through an Austin cafe. It sounds good to her—the singer knowing and ethereal, the sound a jazzy, ruminative folk-pop with a fragile ache. But wait: It’s the sound of her own recent solo debut, Sing
Forget Buddy Holly? That’ll be the day. Plus: Boone Pickens’ hellish fight, Norma McCorvey’s heavenly conversion.
The verdict is in, but a complete account of what went on in the Selena murder trial hasn’t come out—until now.
Computer-aided choreography, professional composers to score the music, mammoth budgets: At high schools and colleges across Texas these days, marking bands are playing for keeps.
Lisa Loeb eyes stardom.
Two decades after he played the role of his life in ‘The Buddy Holly Story,’ Gary Busey’s hero worship has made him his own worst enemy.
Freddy Fender has one of the most affecting voices in the music business. So why isn’t he a star?
The music man.
A veteran filmmaker’s new documentary looks at the rich history of tejano.
Jimmy LaFave’s great new CD might propel him from Austin to the big time—if that were what he wanted.
San Antonio accordionist Mingo Saldivar is knocking them dead in northern Mexico.
Each week, record promoters flock to see Redbeard, the Dallas radio programmer with an ear for the best new music.
Never mind the bullocks, here’s Sincola: An Austin band tries to live up to the hype.
Shawn Colvin, the latest pop émigré to land in Austin, sets the record straight on her long and difficult road to stardom.
When country hunk Billy Ray Cyrus his megahit “Achy Breaky Heart” in 1992, country dancing—or at least a modern version of it—returned to vogue. Cyrus’ novelty song was released with a video that showed a line dance specifically created for the song, and—in a flashback to the Urban Cowboy craze of
For twenty seasons Austin City Limits has been the elite soundstage of American popular music. And it keeps getting better.
Bugs Henderson doesn’t lhave an “act” — he’s simply one of the best blues guitarists around.
An Austin arts group is exposing the roots of Texas music to a younger audience.
Diverse styles and a shared devotion to fold music mark new releases by Nanci Griffith and Robert Earl Keen.
The troubled imagination that fuels Daniel Johnston's powerful new album could also prove his undoing.
The sound of assimilation.
The family that plays together stays together. Meet one of the world’s most successful classical music clans.
Some of the brightest country music stars—like Mark Chesnutt and Tracy Byrd—are born in the honky-tonks of Beaumont.
The survivor of a long and torturous journey, George Jones stands alone as the greatest country singer alive.
In Houston a handful of juke joints and beer bars offers blues the way they used to be—a soulful, gritty communal rite.
Can tejano heartthrob Emilio Navaira survive the crossover to country music?
