Hobart Rowland

Jim Lauderdale will be the first to tell you that, try as he might, he lacks the goods for Nashville megastardom. After all, the prolific singer-songwriter knows himself better than any Music City imagemaker could ever hope to; he has heard all about how he's too much of this, too...

The phone call finally arrives around 6 p.m., four hours late. The connection crackles and hisses as though it resents the human intrusion; Tito Larriva's voice on the other end sounds hollow, distant. The imagination reels. This is, after all, the primary orchestrator behind what is possibly the meanest rock...

"They just found a syringe full of cocaine here." This, my introduction to the more off-color side of singer-songwriter David Garza, is delivered via a muddy answering-machine message called in from a Texas nightclub that will remain nameless. Curiously, the second thing out of Garza's mouth is a rebuttal of...