Last time I checked, getting shot in the head could earn you some serious street cred. However, for singer-songwriter Marc Cohn, best known for the 1991 adult contemporary hit “Walking in Memphis” and making babies with 20/20 anchor Elizabeth Vargas, it was simply an opportunity to get back on a…
The best country singers always come from tiny, one-horse towns, whether it’s Mount Olive, Alabama (Hank Williams), Kingsland, Arkansas (Johnny Cash), Ferriday, Louisiana (Jerry Lee Lewis), or Abbott, Texas (Willie Nelson). If you haven’t already, add Tokio, Texas, resident James Hand to that illustrious list. After releasing his first nationally…
You, dear readers, are good people, so we’re gonna give it to you straight: We have a big problem keeping our innermost fears in check. Like the time we saw a cockroach in our friend’s salad at a fancy restaurant (It was just a date. Whoops.). Or the time when…
We’ve yet to see the 2006 Thai film Dynamite Warrior (AKA Kon fai bin), but we think several such warriors might have been active in our neighborhood on the evening of July the 4th, illegal or no. The film, however, follows Jone Bang Fai—a young warrior with a knack for…
We wouldn’t have believed it three months ago, but 92.5 KZPS’s recent format change has actually turned us back into occasional FM radio listeners. Save for the overabundance of Stevie Ray Vaughan, George Thorogood and Steve Miller on the station’s playlists—seriously, if we hear “Pride and Joy,” “Bad to the…
It’s been more than a year since Dallas proper last heard from Centro-matic, but that doesn’t mean Will Johnson and Co. haven’t been busy. As one might expect from the prolific Texans, a new double record—a split release from Centro-matic and its slower, atmospheric sister band South San Gabriel—sits nearly…
Keith Urban is the musical equivalent of your average big-box Texas suburb—bland, slick and lifeless—which is why soccer moms in Frisco, Plano and Allen love him and want to have his half-Australian babies. It’s almost like he was created in a laboratory (and come to think of it, that’s pretty…
We’ve never really understood tribute bands. It’s one thing for a band to play some covers, but to devote your entire musical career to aping one particular artist—especially one that sucks like, say, Sublime—seems the opposite of rock ‘n’ roll dreams come true, as Meatloaf might put it. In fact,…
Ten years on, it’s nothing short of mind-boggling that the Great Swing Scare of 1997 ever happened in the first place. I’m sure you all remember the horror—swing dance nights at your favorite bars, frat boys incessantly quoting Vince Vaughan’s character from Swingers, and of course, left-field radio hits from…
Nothing completes a good Southern meal like a tall, sweaty glass of sweet tea, and thankfully, more and more local restaurants are serving it up these days, spreading Southern tradition westward and mercifully allowing us all to limit our use of pink, yellow and blue cancer packets (We swear we…
Jason Woelfel’s photographs are the stuff of glossy calendars, “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy” and those inspirational posters on the ceiling of your dentist’s office, which is to say—they’re damn scenic. His Web site, after all, can be found at scenicimages.com, where you’ll see nature photographs of Texas, Oklahoma, New…
Eleven Hundred Springs’ tour dates are full of Texas towns you’ve probably driven through but never stopped in (Gainesville, Stephenville, Helotes, Spring Branch, West Tawakoni, Alpine, Chilicothe, etc., etc), which just goes to show you why they’re one of Texas’ most beloved true country bands—they work hard at it. Like…
Just in case you haven’t read John Steinbeck or listened to Woody Guthrie lately, here’s a news flash: living in the Dust Bowl sucked. How else could you explain thousands of Texans wanting to move to California? Playwright Allison Moore, a Texas expat living in Minneapolis, has brought the story…
I’m not gonna lie to you. I’ve hated Sublime for a decade now. Hated them ever since high school, when a bunch of my friends would go around singing that song about hand jobs. You know the one—”And then she pulled out my mushroom tip/Goin’ over it just went drip,…
If you’re like us, you don’t give a lot of money to charities like Make-A-Wish, but you do give a lot of money to restaurants that put food in your belly. And maybe, hypothetically, you’d like to do both. If so, Maggiano’s Little Italy is here to help make your…
Child actress Kaitlin Cullum played Libby Kelly on the mid-’90s sitcom Grace Under Fire, acting as the freckle-faced foil to recovering alcoholic Brett Butler and her gaggle of Everyman blue-collar suitors. Then, presumably, young Cullum went on to an adolescence plagued with drug addiction, promiscuous sex, convenience store robberies and…
In his quest to conquer the Orient in the late 1700s, Napoleon Bonaparte led the French army into Egypt, hoping to wrest its valuable resources from the British and pave the way east. He took with him 160 of France’s most notable scholars, artists and engravers in order to document…
One of my favorite parts of the State Fair is the arts building, where one can see a fine selection of jams and jellies, scale models of aircraft carriers and, of course, prize-winning patchwork quilts. The fair is only a few short months away, but you can get a head…
At times it seems the Dallas Observer’s own Matt Pulle has seen every gangster flick ever made. If it’s got a De Niro or a Pacino (or even a Liotta or a Pesci) in it, he’s seen it at least three times, if not more. I think he even saw…
Is there anything cuter than a children’s theatrical production of a classic fairy tale? Probably not. And of course there’s no better fairy tale than the book of Genesis, which takes flight as a musical this weekend at the Creative Arts Theater and School, 1100 W. Randol Mill Road in…
When I think of wine, the usual suspects come to mind—Italy, France, California, wherever Boone’s Farm is, etc., etc.—but I almost never think of Australia. Guess I’m out of the loop. Apparently somewhere in the Outback, the Aussies have trained kangaroos crushing grapes the old-fashioned way, producing fine wines such…
I’ve never had much use for Harry Connick Jr.’s music—in my opinion, it’s about as slick as his hair—but I do have to give him props for his amazing turn as Will Smith’s wingman in Independence Day. Ditto for his turn as a tail gunner in Memphis Belle. Unfortunately, his…
