Exercise of Flower
Seven Texas photographers do their best to reinvent that time-honored, heartwarming, slightly cheesy tradition: the bluebonnet photo.
April 2012 Issue
That ’70s Show
Forty years ago, Willie, Waylon, Jerry Jeff, and a whole host of Texas misfits grew their hair long, snubbed Nashville, and brought the hippies and rednecks together. The birth of outlaw country changed country music forever.
By
John Spong
![John Spong's Profile Photo]()
Features
Feature
Home on the Range?
Texas Parks and Wildlife has embarked on an ambitious plan to restore the desert bighorn sheep population in Big Bend Ranch State Park. To accomplish this goal, the department has had to make hard choices about which animals live, which animals die, and what truly belongs in the Trans-Pecos.
The World at Her Feet
Twenty-year-old Jane Aldridge draws 400,000 readers to her style blog, Sea of Shoes, each month; has appeared in Vanity Fair; and once attended a private dinner with Karl Lagerfeld. The secret to her success? That she won’t leave Dallas behind.
Web
Woodshed Smokehouse
HOLY SHIN! THE SIGNATURE dish of the two-month-old Woodshed Smokehouse is so paleo that you can almost hear drumbeats when they deliver it to your table. Tipping the scales at a minimum of three and a half pounds and smoked over hickory to an ebony turn, the brazen bone-in beef
A Tribute to Mr. Bojangles
Todd Snider's latest album reflects his deep-seated admiration for Jerry Jeff Walker's free-spirited style.
The Drop Everything List
Carol Burnett, Texas State Gospel Singing Convention, the Runaway Scrape and the Kemah Crawfish Festival. . .
The Drop Everything List
The Sulphur Creek Iron Chef Cook's Challenge, Spoon, the Aurora Picture Show, and Battle on the Bernard. . .
Web Exclusive
Justice in Time
Fifteen years after being released from death row, Kerry Max Cook is still looking for freedom.
By
Michael Hall
![Michael Hall's Profile Photo]()
The Drop Everything List
The Memorial Hermann Ironman 70.3 Texas triathlon, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and the Avocado Takedown . . .
Prison Rodeo Gone, but Not Forgotten
Another piece of Texas history was razed in mid-January when bulldozers unceremoniously demolished the prison rodeo arena in Huntsville, but the memory of the event rides on.
The Drop Everything List
The Art of Recycling, an interview with Darrell K Royal, Texas Onion Fest, and the LBJ 100 Bicycle Tour . . .
A Q&A With John Spong
The senior editor on writing about outlaw country, hearing Jerry Jeff Walker tell stories, and listening to good music.
Where Are They Now
Updates on the cosmic cowboys, redneck rockers, and other notables of the outlaw country scene.
Web Exclusive
A Q&A With Nate Blakeslee
The senior editor on Texas Parks and Wildlife’s program to reintroduce bighorn sheep in the Big Bend.
See Jane Shop
Style blogger Jane Aldridge on where she likes to go in Texas to get her goods.
A Q&A With Bryan Curtis
The special correspondent on talking to former-football-star-turned-politician Craig James, understanding the “Real Street” rhetoric, and making predictions about sports.
Reporter
The Mars Volta
Omar Rodríguez-López on the meaning of Noctourniquet, doing a reunion with At the Drive-In, and getting bored.
By
Jeff Salamon
![Jeff Salamon's Profile Photo]()
Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas
“The Trinity River is the biggest problem you have in Dallas today,” declared landscape architect George Kessler in his comprehensive plan for the city a century ago. And so it has remained: an undeveloped flood-prone eyesore that requires an extensive system of levees to protect residents and property. On March
Secret Agent Man
Retired Border Patrol officer Hipolito Acosta remembers his time on the beat in The Shadow Catcher.
Kerrville
The annual folk festival celebrates its fortieth anniversary next month, but there's more to this Hill Country town than banjos and fiddles.
Rick Reichenbach, Lighthouse Keeper
Reichenbach is the caretaker for the Aransas Pass Light Station. Built in 1855 to mark entry into Corpus Christi Bay, the now privately maintained lighthouse—which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is owned today by H-E-B CEO Charles Butt—is the only manned lighthouse in operation on the
James Buescher’s Home Office
The NASCAR driver gives us a glimpse of his life away from the racetrack.
The Horse's Mouth
Becoming a Pro Soccer Player
Brek Shea on scoring goals, getting free cleats, and doing the faux-hawk.
Hollywood, TX
Her Bust Interests
In The Client List, Jennifer Love Hewitt tries to the breast of her ability.
Miscellany
Kind of Blue
Two framed letters hang side by side in the main conference room at the offices of TEXAS MONTHLY, both of them written and signed by the magazine’s founder and former publisher, Mike Levy. The first is a note that prefaced the inaugural issue, in February 1973. The second is a
Roar of the Crowd
Roar of the Crowd
Smoke SignalsThe fantastic and engrossing “Of Meat and Men” left me flashing back to childhood weekends spent at my dad’s place in Waco: Hugh’s Pit BBQ [February 2012]. We’d go with him to Buffalo to get special wood and then kick the sawdust on the floor while consuming insane
Columns
Behind the Lines
General Admission
Will Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin help the U.S. Supreme Court decide affirmative action once and for all? Not likely, which is why it's time to let public universities make their own decision about which students to accept.
Letter from Matagorda County
A Grain of Doubt
For more than 75 years, rice farmers in Matagorda County and elsewhere along the Gulf have shared the waters of the Colorado River with urban residents in the Hill Country. But with city centers booming and an almost-certain drought ahead, the state is being forced to choose between a water-intensive
Offering Fine Advice Since 2007
How to respond to those weird bumper testicles, pledge allegiance to the flag, ask to see the top of someone’s boots, and decide between sweet and dill.
Hail Mary
Craig James—former star football player, onetime ESPN commentator, eternal antagonist of Texas Tech fans everywhere—is polling at about 4 percent in this year's Senate race. Does he really want your vote? Or just your sympathy?
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