John Spong is a Texas Monthly senior editor who writes primarily about popular culture, and he hosts the magazine’s popular music-history podcast One by Willie. He has been nominated for three National Magazine Awards, most recently in 2021 as coeditor and lead writer on two large Willie Nelson projects: “Willie: Now, More than Ever,” a special issue that was a finalist for best single-topic issue; and “All 146 Willie Nelson Albums, Ranked,” which was nominated for best digital storytelling. He has twice won the Texas Institute of Letters’ O. Henry Award for magazine journalism—for “Holding Garmsir” (January 2009), about a month he spent with a U.S. Marine platoon fighting in Afghanistan, and for “The Good Book and the Bad Book” (September 2006), about a censorship battle at an elite private school in Austin. He is the author of A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove, and his stories have been collected in The Best American Food Writing and The Best American Sports Writing, among others. He lives in Austin with his wife, Julie Blakeslee, and their two boys, Willie Mo and Leon.
Listen as our new season’s lineup of distinguished guests talks about their favorite Willie Nelson songs, from an outlaw classic to a Kermit the Frog cover.
The Lumineers lead singer and cofounder on the power of lonesome songs during the holidays, and an apples-to-apples comparison between Willie and Bruce Springsteen.
The Texas singer-songwriter and country music star on a song she’s been singing since childhood, the origins of inspired lyrics, and how Texas country songs are designed for dancing.
The lauded songwriter behind many of country’s greatest hits talks Willie's picking parties with Darrell Royal and why you should never beat Willie Nelson at poker.
The singer-songwriter talks the surprising complexity of Willie’s songwriting and a special request President George H.W. Bush made while Ingram was playing for him.
In the first episode of our new series, the Grammy-winning artist talks about writing sad songs and tells a great dirty joke she learned from Nelson himself.
Before he moved his home and his headquarters out to the Hill Country, Willie conducted an experiment in communal living right in the heart of Austin. It was as crazy as you might expect—and helped turn a sleepy college town into the Live Music Capital of the World.
Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones discuss their friend, a Texas legend who leaves behind a brilliant body of work and definitive repository of Southwestern culture.
Big Bend roared back to life last year after spring rains unleashed a bounty of ocotillos, bluebonnets, and yuccas. Thankfully, photographer James H. Evans was there to capture it in living color.
I always knew that the work my dad did as an Episcopal priest and grief counselor was important. But I didn’t understand how important until the birth of my son.
It was part musical, part dance movie, and part love story, and in June 1980 it unleashed an unprecedented fervor for country music, Western wear, and, yes, mechanical bulls. More than three decades later, the film’s stars (including John Travolta, Debra Winger, Mickey Gilley, and Johnny Lee) and many Gilley’s regulars recall the movie that made America fall in love with Texas.
To gain pop culture literacy, you could spend a long weekend taking in works produced for the big screen (Giant, Dazed and Confused) and the small box (Lonesome Dove, Friday Night Lights). But the quicker route would be an afternoon surfing YouTube. Search for the terms below, but don’t blame us if you end up falling down a
The photographer from Big Bend known for stunning landscapes gets out of his comfort zone. Here, a first look at several images from his latest collection.
After a career that’s spanned more than thirty years, George Strait is wrapping up his 48-stop farewell tour this month. For those of us whose lives he has captured so inimitably in song, country music will never be the same.
Sixteen photographs of some of the cooler moments of Austin history, as taken by Scott Newton, the longtime official photographer of “Austin City Limits.”
In 1978 Punk magazine sent photographer Roberta Bayley to Texas to chronicle the band’s tour through the South. Her photos of the two Texas shows capture the surreal collision of two radically different cultures.
Soldiers and their families wait desperately—and courageously—for the moment when they will be reunited. And when, for the lucky ones, it finally comes, it does not disappoint.
Soldiers and their families wait desperately—and courageously—for the moment when they will be reunited. And when, for the lucky ones, it finally comes, it does not disappoint.
Austin is booming with jobs, condos, festivals, traffic, hipsters, joggers, and high-concept dive bars (anyone for Lone Star and seared foie gras?). Does that mean it’s no longer Austin?
