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.
In 1973, when Palacios Mayor W. C. Jackson invited extraterrestrials to visit Texas (“No one has ever made those fellas welcome,” he told reporters), his hospitality came almost a century too late. Long before anyone had heard of Roswell, flying saucers were first spotted in Texas in 1878, according
Willie Nelson, Beck, Lisa Loeb, SwingSeparated at Beck: Some of you may have caught Willie Nelson’s appearance last week on “The Tonight Show” where he held the stage with one of LA’s most original artists, Beck. There’s an interesting story behind that collaboration and behind that whole night in
What’s the easiest way to get to Texas? Well, I reckon that depends on your locale at any given moment. Ringo Starr might have said to take a left at Oklahoma but I think it’s easier if you look for the big blue stars above the front door just
Texas music is as diverse as its people. Nineteenth-century immigrants to Texas from the American South, from Mexico, and Europe, shaped a variety of sounds unmatched anywhere else in the United States. Southern blues and ragtime, Mexican orquesta, the waltzes and polkas of Central Europe, all took root, thrived,
Springtime in Texas. The bluebonnets blanket the Hill Country, the Panhandle starts its active growing season, and the sun-baked Valley hunkers down for a long, hot summer. It’s a perfect time for rebirth, renewal, and maybe, just maybe, cleaning out that damn garage once and for all.The annual house
Though parts of Texas were still considered the wild frontier in the early days of this century, city fathers made sure every town of any size offered some sort of cultural diversion for families of hard working farmers, ranchers and oil-field workers. When movies swept the country as the
As a native of a tiny northeastern state with low self-esteem and a small, dense, and collectively grumpy population, I fell pretty hard for Texas and its contrasting qualities the first time we met. It took very little effort to transplant myself to a happy life in Austin, and
The antique dining room table was set with silver, crystal, and the innkeeper’s best presidential Lenox. Candles flickered as we sipped coffee. This was breakfast Jefferson-style, in the perfectly restored Governor’s House Bed & Breakfast. “A friend will be joining us,” innkeeper Llawanda Golden had informed me when I
When visitors come to San Antonio to see the Alamo, the most common reaction is surprise. “It looks so small!” the tourists say. The reason, of course, is that San Antonio has grown up around the Alamo. City streets and an abandoned post office encroach on the ancient mission’s
Digging Texas OutlawsWild West outlaws died young and left good looking corpses, but is that any reason to keep digging them up?It’s a craze in the name of “historical” curiosity that has seen the supposedly-final resting places of guys like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jesse James, and, most
If one wanted to travel to New York through film, there’d be obvious roads to take: The Godfather, for one; Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Taxi Driver; Breakfast at Tiffany’s comes to mind too; and of course every Woody Allen picture ever made. These are films in which the city plays
Davíd Garza is in seventh heaven following the release of his first major-label album, this euphoria (Lava/Atlantic) in April. It’s no wonder. Since 1989, Garza has been his own record company, selling 30,000 copies of nine albums on his Wide Open Records label and spending most of each year touring
Every season in Texas is rodeo season, but the biggest rodeos in the state are in February and March. Here’s our guide to rodeos—how they got started, how they work, which is the best, and rodeo champions’ secrets to being the best. We’ll also give you valuable tips on how
Winnsboro Autumn TrailYou’ll have to go pretty far east or west in Texas to get brilliant fall foliage, but that’s nothing when the next-closest venue involves a trip to Maine or Vermont. Two areas in Texas are famous for fall color (three, if you count Lost Maples State Park near
• A pair of national titles in college. • An Olympic gold medal. • Nine scoring titles. • A professional world championship. • League Most Valuable Player. <!– –> And there’s another title the 5’10” Comet guard holds that none of the NBA stars can match: proud mother of Tyquon,
“I knew that in order to do this movie right I was going to have to ride a bull myself,” recounts Jeff Fraley, who along with partner Harry Lynch constitutes the two-man team of Trinity Films, an alliance that even in its infancy has proven a passion for seeking out
The cries of Ana Salazar Esparza rang through the stone walls. She had survived the attack, but her husband Jose Gregorio was killed while manning a cannon lose to where his wife was hidden. Ana watched as her dear young soldier suffered a mortal blow to the side by a
Many coaches compile successful won-loss records, some win championships, and, after years and years of hard work, a select few are elected to the Hall of Fame. And once in a generation a coach comes along that changes the way the game is played forever. Don Haskins has done
Along about May the nuts begin to form, in close-growing clusters at the tips of stubby twigs. Inside each green husk is a droplet of nutrient-filled liquid—the substance that will eventually become a pecan. As the kernel takes on shape and size, a papery skin develops around the jellylike matter.
An uneasy peace has long existed between Texas and literature, a peace the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL) has tried for fifty years to preserve and protect. Threats have been constant. In several cases, foreign emissaries have found themselves treated in alarming ways. British poet Stephen Spender, invited to speak
If you’ve ever wondered about Texans’ penchant for big hair, waving to strangers, shirts with snaps instead of buttons, and belt buckles with our names engraved on the back, consult Read Me. Texas, a primer that will get you through Texas 101 easy as falling off a log. From Fritos
Rivers of fire. Gnashing metal claws. Burning buildings. Army surplus rocket engines and abstract mechanical dinosaurs. Lumbering steel insects armed with flamethrowers and rotating cow skulls.A capacity crowd of 5,000 Texans packed Longhorn Speedway to witness the spectacle—a chaotic evening of well-managed explosions, choreographed pyromania and all-purpose destruction—courtesy of
People are interesting (sometimes heroic) and government is bad (sometimes evil). As sweeping a generalization as that may be, it is precisely the kind of Big Truth that is at home in Texas, and valid—if you are to believe the picture of our state that emerges from this hodgepodge
LET’S FACE IT, despite a long literary history—one as rich and as varied as that of New York or even Paris—Texas isn’t bookish. How can it be, when its storytellers began as rough-riding myth-makers, outlaws and freedom fighters, cowboys and cattlemen whose larger than life escapades didn’t warrant putting
On Halloween morning at Barton Springs Pool in Austin, Ben Lecomte could have passed for an extraterrestrial manatee, or maybe even a mermaid convalescing with a respirator. But he wasn’t costumed in observance of the holiday. He breathes through the neon green tube and wears a single enormous fin
When you’re a child, camp—whether you like it or not—is one of those defining activities of summer. These days for millions of sports fans camp continues to be a feature of the hot months, but it’s no longer about riding horses, swimming holes, or capture the flag. It’s about
The dying November sun glistens off the tight plastic packaging around our Earl Campbell’s Hot Links. My companions Heinrich and Jack are busy re-staking the tents in the midst of a growling wind while I prepare a pre-expedition delicacy of sausage wraps and beans, the wholesome meal that will
Although the assassination of President John F. Kennedy occurred 33 years ago, the controversy over the events surrounding the assassination has never died down. On this anniversary we visited the crucial sites connected with the assassination, from Lee Harvey Oswald’s boarding house on West Beckley to the site of
No wilderness experience in Texas is quite like Big Bend National Park, more than 800,000 acres of mountains, desert, and river so stark and dreamy that it’s difficult to distinguish where reality ends and apparition begins. Jagged peaks sheltering pine forests more typical of New Mexico or Colorado, canyons that
