Riders on the Storm
By the end of May, the weather in the Panhandle finally turned nasty, and two real-life tornado trackers cut to the chase.
Former senior editor Joe Nick Patoski has been writing about Texas and Texans for five decades. He is the author and coauthor of biographies of Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Selena, and the Dallas Cowboys, and he wrote the texts for various coffee-table books on the Texas mountains, the Texas coast, and Big Bend National Park.
One of his more recent titles is Austin to ATX: The Hippies, Pickers, Slackers, and Geeks Who Transformed the Capital of Texas, published in 2019. His 2020 book, The Ballad of Robert Ealey and His Five Careless Lovers, is an oral history of the seminal blues band Patoski grew up with in Fort Worth in the early 1970s. He has also written Generations on the Land, published by Texas A&M University Press, and Texas High School Football: More Than the Game, a catalog of an exhibit he curated for the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in 2011, and has contributed essays to the books Homegrown, Conjunto, and My Soul Looks Back in Wonder.
A staff writer for Texas Monthly for eighteen years and a onetime reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, Patoski currently serves as a writer-at-large for Texas Highways and hosts The Texas Music Hour of Power on Marfa Public Radio and Wimberley Valley Radio.
He directed the documentary film Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove about the musician Doug Sahm in 2015.
He lives in the Texas Hill Country near Wimberley.
By the end of May, the weather in the Panhandle finally turned nasty, and two real-life tornado trackers cut to the chase.
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The music man.
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Travel InfoBefore you go, write or call the South Padre Island Convention and Visitors Bureau (Box 3500, South Padre Island 78597; 800-343-2368) and load up on the helpful brochures; or on your way in, stop at the Visitors Center at 600 Padre Boulevard.When to GoDepending on the time of year,
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Unchecked growth of microscopic algae has muddied the water—and threatened the future—of Laguna Madre.
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Building a better Fort Worth.
The sound of assimilation.
The world’s leading expert on rock legend Buddy Holly, Bill Griggs is alive and well and living in the fifties.
It’s harvest time for the green chile—the mild-mannered pepper that adds zest to almost any dish.
Some of the brightest country music stars—like Mark Chesnutt and Tracy Byrd—are born in the honky-tonks of Beaumont.
A new musical from a group of Lubbock expatriates celebrates West Texas’ bawdy past.
Two Arizona ex-hippie publishers are bringing Texas' weekly papers into the mainstream.
With a song on a hit movie sound track, Dallasite Lisa Loeb is ready to make a deal.
The family gift for gab radio is bringing El Paso’s Fred Imus fortune and fame.
Baseball season is here at last, and for the Texas Rangers and their fans, it’s a whole new Ballpark.
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My third year organizing the JFK assassination conference was one year too many.
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The Alamodome is more than an outsized sports arena. It’s a marvel of urban planning that ensures San Antonio’s downtown vitality for years to come.
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Even after his baseball career is over, Nolan Ryan will continue to be a role model for my kids—and me.
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Ward and deejays Murphy, Milton, and Love rap about rappers.