We Texans have always seemed to drive more, and farther, and for perhaps stranger reasons, than just about anyone else. Young people in the bleak and monotonous landscapes of West and North Texas grew up accustomed to endless, aimless rides around the countryside and to regular trips into the
The Grapevine-raised singer was a star from the word go; her 2002 debut album of jazz-pop balladry, Come Away With Me, sold in excess of 20 million copies. Yet rather than spend the rest of her career repeating the formula, Jones has grown into a curious musical adventurer. Her
Here is a partial list of the nice people Skip Hollandsworth has written about since he joined the magazine as a staff writer in 1989: Charles Albright, a serial killer in Dallas who removed his victims’ eyes; Marie Robards, a Fort Worth teenager who killed her father by poisoning
Director: Joel and Ethan CoenPlot: Bar owner hires hit man to kill his wife and her lover. Double-crossing ensues.Excerpts from our roundtable discussion:BLOOM: I like Blood Simple too. But it’s very cinematic. It is based on images and ideas of Texas from film history and from popular-culture history more
A grand old opry in Mason, a homestyle bakery in Llano, a cabin with a view of the Sabinal Canyon, and sixteen other things I love about the Hill Country.
Who says it ain’t the good life? These sixteen clubs, lounges, and dives (including one Hole in the Wall) are the reason Austin is called the Live Music Capital of the World.
In 1973, when Palacios Mayor W. C. Jackson invited extraterrestrials to visit Texas (“No one has ever made those fellas welcome,” he told reporters), his hospitality came almost a century too late. Long before anyone had heard of Roswell, flying saucers were first spotted in Texas in 1878, according
Willie Nelson, Beck, Lisa Loeb, SwingSeparated at Beck: Some of you may have caught Willie Nelson’s appearance last week on “The Tonight Show” where he held the stage with one of LA’s most original artists, Beck. There’s an interesting story behind that collaboration and behind that whole night in
What’s the easiest way to get to Texas? Well, I reckon that depends on your locale at any given moment. Ringo Starr might have said to take a left at Oklahoma but I think it’s easier if you look for the big blue stars above the front door just
Texas music is as diverse as its people. Nineteenth-century immigrants to Texas from the American South, from Mexico, and Europe, shaped a variety of sounds unmatched anywhere else in the United States. Southern blues and ragtime, Mexican orquesta, the waltzes and polkas of Central Europe, all took root, thrived,
Springtime in Texas. The bluebonnets blanket the Hill Country, the Panhandle starts its active growing season, and the sun-baked Valley hunkers down for a long, hot summer. It’s a perfect time for rebirth, renewal, and maybe, just maybe, cleaning out that damn garage once and for all.The annual house
Though parts of Texas were still considered the wild frontier in the early days of this century, city fathers made sure every town of any size offered some sort of cultural diversion for families of hard working farmers, ranchers and oil-field workers. When movies swept the country as the
As a native of a tiny northeastern state with low self-esteem and a small, dense, and collectively grumpy population, I fell pretty hard for Texas and its contrasting qualities the first time we met. It took very little effort to transplant myself to a happy life in Austin, and
The antique dining room table was set with silver, crystal, and the innkeeper’s best presidential Lenox. Candles flickered as we sipped coffee. This was breakfast Jefferson-style, in the perfectly restored Governor’s House Bed & Breakfast. “A friend will be joining us,” innkeeper Llawanda Golden had informed me when I
When visitors come to San Antonio to see the Alamo, the most common reaction is surprise. “It looks so small!” the tourists say. The reason, of course, is that San Antonio has grown up around the Alamo. City streets and an abandoned post office encroach on the ancient mission’s
Digging Texas OutlawsWild West outlaws died young and left good looking corpses, but is that any reason to keep digging them up?It’s a craze in the name of “historical” curiosity that has seen the supposedly-final resting places of guys like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jesse James, and, most
If one wanted to travel to New York through film, there’d be obvious roads to take: The Godfather, for one; Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Taxi Driver; Breakfast at Tiffany’s comes to mind too; and of course every Woody Allen picture ever made. These are films in which the city plays
Davíd Garza is in seventh heaven following the release of his first major-label album, this euphoria (Lava/Atlantic) in April. It’s no wonder. Since 1989, Garza has been his own record company, selling 30,000 copies of nine albums on his Wide Open Records label and spending most of each year touring
Every season in Texas is rodeo season, but the biggest rodeos in the state are in February and March. Here’s our guide to rodeos—how they got started, how they work, which is the best, and rodeo champions’ secrets to being the best. We’ll also give you valuable tips on how
Winnsboro Autumn TrailYou’ll have to go pretty far east or west in Texas to get brilliant fall foliage, but that’s nothing when the next-closest venue involves a trip to Maine or Vermont. Two areas in Texas are famous for fall color (three, if you count Lost Maples State Park near
• A pair of national titles in college. • An Olympic gold medal. • Nine scoring titles. • A professional world championship. • League Most Valuable Player. <!– –> And there’s another title the 5’10” Comet guard holds that none of the NBA stars can match: proud mother of Tyquon,
“I knew that in order to do this movie right I was going to have to ride a bull myself,” recounts Jeff Fraley, who along with partner Harry Lynch constitutes the two-man team of Trinity Films, an alliance that even in its infancy has proven a passion for seeking out
