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.
When parents at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, in Austin—where the Capital City’s moneyed elite have educated their kids for more than fifty years—rebelled against the teaching of ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ it was, you might say, a learning experience for everyone involved.
You’ve heard enough from the politicians and the activists, the demagogues and the bleeding hearts. Here’s my story. I only wish I could put my name on it. By Immigrant X
With the military stretched thinner than ever, Staff Sergeant Christopher Schwope’s skill as an Army recruiter is undeniably important. And it’s a thing to behold.
To hear John Poindexter tell it, he’s one of the good guys—a faithful steward of his West Texas land and therefore a worthy bidder for 46,000 acres of Big Bend Ranch State Park. But sometimes having your heart in the right place simply isn’t enough.
The tragedy of the Von Erichs—the state’s first family of pro wrestling—is well known not just to fans of the sport but to the many groupies who oohed and aahed at the matinee-idol athletes over the years. Still, you haven’t really heard the story until it’s told by the sole
He asked me if I was going to be white my whole life. I was, of course. But because of our friendship, I’m no longer the clueless upper-middle-class kid I once was.
There was something irresistibly romantic about the gutter punk’s description of stowing away in freight cars. No wonder I wanted to try it—even if, at 38, I probably should have thought to myself, “You’re too old for this.”
Elmo Henderson’s entire life story can be summed up in a single moment: when he stepped into the ring in San Antonio one night in 1972 and knocked out Muhammad Ali. At least that’s the way he tells it. And tells it.
According to Time, the Austin rock-pop trio Spoon "just might be your next favorite band." But Britt Daniel and the boys have been burned by such pronouncements before, so this time they’re carefully considering their options—and, as always, putting their music first.
If Texas politics is your thing and you live in Austin, sometimes you want to go where every lobbyist knows your name. And they're always glad you came.
Never mind that he got kicked out of St. Mark’s and dropped out of UT, or that his line readings seem a little . . . off. Somehow, Owen Wilson is the kind of guy who gets movies made. And he gets $10 million a pop, dude.
Unless otherwise noted, all places take credit cards.ABILENE: Harold’s Pit Bar-B-Q We didn’t catch pitmaster Harold Christian singing gospel songs to his customers, but we’re told that isn’t an unusual occurrence. This cozy little room, packed with nine picnic tables, seven booths, and a congregation of athletic trophies, is where
Why is James Evans so good at photographing the mavericks and renegades who make Big Bend one of the most interesting places on earth? Because he is one himself.
As a "recovering" attorney with a mixed record at picking juries, I always wondered what made them tick. After receiving a summons this year, I'm still deliberating.
Once upon a time I thought I wanted to be a bullfighter (and not the kind that wears sequined tights). A legendary cowboy named Leon Coffee and an animal named Pretty Boy changed my mind.
Russell Erxleben and Brian Russell Stearns were first-rate frauds who cheated scores of unsuspecting investors. So how did the prominent law firm of Locke, Liddell, and Sapp get stuck footing a $30 million bill?
In 1988, when former Houston Oiler Billy “White Shoes” Johnson ended his fourteen-year NFL career, he was the league’s all-time leading punt returner and one of only seven men to have returned four kicks for touchdowns in a single season. But despite all the juking and jetting that earned
On the April morning that opened the last day of shooting the Walker, Texas Ranger series finale, the center of attention was not the all-American star of the show but a retired heavyweight boxer who played a bloodthirsty galoot. Randall “Tex” Cobb had barely twenty words of scripted dialogue, but
Texas is changing before our eyes, but fried pies, drive-in movie theaters, and other vestiges of earlier days are all around. To find these treasures, we risked life, limb, and cholesterol count-and had a blast from the past.
Corpus Christi's Manuel Bañales believes that some sex offenders should post warning signs in their yards. He says it's about good law; his critics say it's about good publicity.
Austin's new Bob Bullock museum sports six bas-reliefs that tell the story of Texas. Here's how a sculptor and a team of artisans made them, like the museum's namesake, larger than life.
In the fourteen years since Steve Earle released his debut LP, Guitar Town, and carved “Dwight Yoakam Eats Sushi” into an elevator wall at MCA-Nashville, he has given a generation of songwriters the courage to buck the Nashville suits. But somewhere in Earle’s well-documented war with authority (a dollar for
From Bush’s good try on property taxes to Bullock’s grand finale, from savvy Sadler to weaselly Wohlgemuth, from Duncan’s beginning to Howard’s end: Our sorting of the session’s standouts—best, worst, and in between.
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.
