Writer at large and former senior editor Jason Cohen has written for Texas Monthly since 1995 (and texasmonthly.com since its first iteration). His 1997 story “The Ice Bats Cometh,” about minor league hockey in Texas, was the basis of his book Zamboni Rodeo (Greystone Press, 2001). He also wrote the magazine's first-ever Matthew McConaughey story, in August 1996. The coauthor of Generation Ecch! (Fireside Books, 1994) and coeditor of SXSW Scrapbook (Essex/University of Texas Press, 2011), he has also written for such publications as Rolling Stone, SPIN, Details, the Austin Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman, Portland Monthly, and Cincinnati magazine. His 1995 Rolling Stone cover story on the band Hole prompted Courtney Love to yell at him from the stage at Lollapalooza in Austin, while his 2007 profile of the Portland strip club Mary's won a Sex-Positive Journalism Award. As one of the two primary writers for the TM Daily Post, Cohen wrote approximately five hundred stories for Texas Monthly in 2012. He has been a blogger since 2002 and has been known to maintain as many as five Twitter accounts.
BEN KWELLER WON’T BE SEEING THE INSIDE of a high school classroom this year, though he could have penned a pretty nifty “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” essay. The fifteen-year-old is the singer, songwriter, guitarist, and pianist for Radish, an astonishingly tuneful alternative-rock trio that has spent the
By Jason Cohen
Fourteen-year-old country prodigy LeAnn Rimes is singing a Blue streak. But she’s not the only Texas teen tearing up the music scene.
By John Morthland, Jason Cohen and Ramiro Burr
He shone in Lone Star; now he’s thrilling ’em in A Time to Kill. How talent and timing made native Texan Matthew McConaughey Hollywood’s hottest leading man.
By Jason Cohen
Austin’s Butthole Surfers have always been very strange. But these days, the strangest thing about them is their mainstream respectability.
By Jason Cohen
Renée Zellweger’s acting résumé to date is a mixed bag of (mostly) generational posturing. The 26-year-old graduate of the University of Texas at Austin had a nonspeaking role in Dazed and Confused, then took on heftier parts in films like Love and a .45 and Empire Records. But Zellweger, who
By Jason Cohen
Steve Earle feels alright.
By Jason Cohen
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
By Jason Cohen
Leaving the popular sitcom Wings for his own show on the Fox network seemed like a risky move, but it’s paying off for native Texan Thomas Haden Church—so far.
By Jason Cohen
Lisa Loeb eyes stardom.
By Jason Cohen
Sorry, Bob Dole. Austin director Robert Rodriguez’s follow-up to El Mariachi may be violent, but it’s also art.
By Jason Cohen
Never mind the bullocks, here’s Sincola: An Austin band tries to live up to the hype.
By Jason Cohen
The troubled imagination that fuels Daniel Johnston's powerful new album could also prove his undoing.
By Jason Cohen
Pitching to a rich niche.
By Jason Cohen