It’s a long way from Lubbock to Nashville, but Wade Bowen has made the trip with integrity and roots unharmed. His latest, Lost Hotel, is country with a bluesy, rebel spirit, rural music about simple concerns that is never condescending. “God Bless This Town,” the leadoff single, is a hit…

Rarely does a band continue to adjust its vision in more creative ways than the Appleseed Cast. After growing out of the confining emo genre, this Kansas-based quartet continues to tackle innovative sounds and arrangements on their dense and satisfying new effort, Peregrine. Sporting yet another new drummer, the band…

Former Dallasite Nick Wright is the odd duck behind Dogme 95. Songs on his recently released thematic gem The Regal Beagle are the hypothetical musings on what a singer-songwriter might have come up with if he went to the Galapagos with Darwin. Brash and wonderfully pretentious, Wright’s dense melodies and…

With a deep appreciation for legends of jazz, soul and funk as well as a keen eye for contemporary talent, Timothy Parker (aka Gift of Gab) and partner Chief Xcel have incorporated into their brainy Blackalicious mix talents as diverse as Gil-Scott Heron, George Clinton, ?uestlove and Zack de la…

Signed while still in high school, Slightly Stoopid’s Miles Doughty and Kyle McDonald were probably the “raddest” of all dudes “gnarly,” smoking more weed than humanly possible and tossing out generic SoCal skate-punk. Nearly a decade later, the two may still love to party, but their sound has grown up…

Van Morrison has been called many things: mystical poet, New Age guru, reclusive genius. Above all those, he’s a guy who doesn’t bother with the formalities of promotion or touring, making his March 6 concert at Nokia Theater quite special–it will be his first metroplex stop in more than two…

After a seven-year hiatus, Chicago’s Smoking Popes reunited and recorded the live album At Metro in November 2005. A gloriously loud and unsurprisingly sloppy reunion in front of an inebriated and rowdy lot of Midwesterners, the show featured most of the band’s best tunes, highlighting their unique fusion of punk…

Amarillo native Kevin Fowler may look like a generic country bumpkin, and sometimes his music is just a brain cell above hayseed, but looks do indeed prove slightly deceiving in his case. Fowler’s recent Loose, Loud & Crazy revels in just about every conceivable redneck cliché; half the songs are…

“If I could make enough with this band to buy a house, some beer and a dog, I’d be happy,” says Jake Webster, drummer of the Cut*Off, Cowtown’s fascinatingly languid conglomeration of ’60s garage/psychedelia and ’90s grunge leftovers. The quartet, together since 2002, got their name from the fact that,…

Flogging Molly’s “Screaming at the Wailing Wall” may be the best real punk song in half a decade. A blazing rush often accompanies the best political rants and “Screaming,” from the band’s latest album Within a Mile of Home, is no exception. With nods to the Sex Pistols and the…

Gerard Dirkx fidgets in his chair, dancing around any questions about his age. Obviously annoyed, he finally declares, “I’m 35 but extremely dyslexic.” Despite his receding hairline and gray beard, his edginess is nearly the same as when he fronted Dallas’ first–and best–new wave band, the Telefones, more than two…

Mary Sims (aka Dinah Cancer) formed this cheesy gothic punk quartet in the early ’80s. Best remembered for the “Partytime” single that was featured in the campy film classic Return of the Living Dead, 45 Grave appeared to have packed it in by 1985. A spirited live CD seemed to…

Norman, Oklahoma’s Starlight Mints are a perfect example of why bigger isn’t better. Beginning in 2000 as a seven-piece, complete with orchestra, the inevitable (and hometown) comparison was the Flaming Lips. The Mints seemed content with such an association, creating dubiously weird “pop” that was about as manageable as a…

Inevitably linked to the semi-legendary Dream Syndicate, Steve Wynn has spent the better part of two decades running away from the legacy of his first band. Always a great tunesmith, but one with a nagging, clichéd sentimentality, Wynn’s early solo releases were filled with then-trendy guest appearances and overwhelming production…

You might expect a Scandinavian band to revel in the standard death-metal throes of unintelligible caterwauling, exaggerated tempo shifts and anal-retentive instrumental prowess, yet the well-coifed members of Sonata Arctica embrace a naïvely dated and, dare I say, sweeter notion of phallic guitars and high-pitched pyrotechnics. The Finland band’s recent…

Out of Birmingham, Alabama, comes this Southern-fried greasy punk, all snarling lips and attitude, equal parts Axl Rose and Keith Richards with a fashion sense copped from Bowie to boot. Hollingsworth’s second effort ups the ante considerably over last year’s Shoot Me, Shoot Me, Heaven, presenting a charmingly ramshackle loser…

Niece of acclaimed songwriter Vic Chestnutt, Liz Durrett is a 20-something Southern gothic wunderkind, a Georgia native who understands the poignant effect of the deliberately slow pace, the impact of space and dirge, the value of lament and loss set to music. Full of emotionally distraught tunes that take full…

Geek rock, whether by über-nerds like Weezer or more abstract purveyors of insignificant detail like Pavement, has rarely transcended the jab that it’s music for and by losers, soundtracks for the dateless–in the end, guy music. The Willis seems fine with that. The five Wisconsin natives who make up this…

If it were 1978, Mute Math would definitely be called a “skinny tie band.” With obvious influences in the Police and, um, the Fixx, this New Orleans foursome thankfully updates its sound with ambient textures and some kinetic psych-pop songwriting. Heralded on several religious websites (uh-oh), the songs on their…

Lyle Steadham needed a break. He was managing a Web site consulting business, a record label and a band at the same time, so he took time off from all of them in late 2004 to relax. Maybe throw a barbecue or two. But a brush with death changed that–no,…

Decades ago, I was dragged to a concert in Austin for a funky roots outfit called Stick People. For the most part, it was a mess, but despite a claustrophobic hole-in-the-wall as the setting and even with pedestrian backing, lead singer Malford Milligan was a revelation, a lanky Prince-like figure…

Uncle Tupelo made explicit how the roots of punk and hard-core honky-tonk intermingled: the rejection (often drunken) of instrumental competence, the politics of desire and its immediate and sometimes disastrous effects. Whether it has been cowpunk in the ’80s or alt-country the following decade, these two seemingly disparate genres have…