How the Eli Young Band Stays Grounded As It Takes Off

The Eli Young Band is, by now, a household name, at least in households across North Texas, where three of its four members still reside, and in other households whose speakers blare with country. With each single released by the four-piece, formed in Denton in 2000 and led by lead…

Dallas’ Madison King On the Road To Her Great New Record

Perhaps more than any attribute making Madison King’s songs burst with cochlea-catching appeal is the unvarnished honesty that pops from them. It’s in her lyrics, and it’s in her retelling of significant events from the past few years of her life, especially since the release of her twangy 2011 debut,…

The Best Band & Beer Pairings For Untapped Fort Worth

The North Texas region has become a national hotbed of craft breweries and general good times that circle around sudsy concoctions. Aside from the growing numbers of top-notch brewers and hops-focused gastropubs of the Dallas area, the burst of can’t-miss beer festivals has been as enjoyable a benefit of the…

Top 10 Places to Grab Grub and Catch a Concert in One Spot

It’s Friday night, and after leaving work a bit later than you had hoped to, battling the traffic to get home, and finally making it out the door again for a night of steam-blowing revelry, mapping a night out is often more daunting a task than you’d prefer. It’s late…

Chris Thile at the Kessler: A Concert in Four Movements

Last night in Oak Cliff, Chris Thile proffered far more than a solo acoustic concert. As it often is when a noted artist performs without an opening band, the show was presented as, “An Evening with Chris Thile.” What an evening it was. Part classical history lesson, part stand-up routine…

At The Ticket, Some of the Best Bits Come in Small Bites

There are myriad reasons The Ticket has dominated Dallas-Fort Worth airwaves for 20 years, all part of a formula that’s proven to be impossible to replicate. One ingredient that builds a sense of culture around the station is the so-called “Drops.” Small sound bites, usually taken out of context, inserted…

The Wild Feathers Grew Up on Dallas Blues

If you were to listen the intro to “The Ceiling,” the song that’s garnered some serious praise for Los Angeles-based The Wild Feathers, you might quickly – and prematurely – assume that the fresh-faced five-piece act is yet another entry into the Mumford-fueled folk-rock revival. Of course, after listening to…

Five Bands We Need to Stop Calling Alt-Country

There’s a case to be made that Alternative Country, or Alt-Country as it’s more often called, hasn’t ever really been a legit genre. One will be hard-pressed to get any of the artists lumped in with the moniker to claim it as their sonic home, and even the original journalistic…

Mike Bacsik’s Radio Rebirth

It’s late in the morning, New Year’s Eve, and most of Dallas is still reeling from another of the Cowboys’ trademark December meltdowns, their team sent home early yet another year. For the city’s vast army of professional sports yappers, Christmas has come again. Inside the Central Expressway studios of…

Whiskey Myers Leads an Unlikely Texas Country Revolution in Tyler

It’s less than an hour’s drive from Palestine, Texas to the World’s Rose Capital, Tyler, Texas. Both are considered to be the “Big City,” for the folks living outside of their borders. Though that Dogwood-scented pocket of East Texas isn’t a Metropolis by most standards, there’s a great deal of…

The Ten Best Texas Country Songs of 2013

This past June, we provided a list of the 10 best Texas Country/Red Dirt/Whatever tunes in 2013 up to that point of the year. With 2014 looming, we’re still not sure what the nebulous terms slapped onto the songs and bands that made up that list really mean. With an…