Over the course of four LPs and one kick-ass live album, Joe Pernice and his rock and roll brothers have produced some of the finest power-pop ever made. One of rock’s most literate tunesmiths, Pernice has honed his craft for over a decade now, first with his dour countrypolitan outfit…
Rodney Crowell has long been country music’s answer to Paul McCartney. He may have been raised in blue collar Houston honky-tonks, but beneath his twangy exterior beats the heart of a pub rocker. Unlike McCartney, however, Crowell is doing some of his best work in the latter part of his…
Between songs, Mara Lee Miller receives a signal from the man behind the boards at Sons of Hermann Hall. Her band, Bosque Brown, only has time for one more song, he says. At this point, Miller lowers her wide-eyed look at the crowd, turns to her band members and whispers…
The “woohoos” in “Sympathy for the Devil” have been begging for the high and lonesome treatment ever since the Stones laid them to tape in 1968. So when Danny Barnes launches into the tune five songs into Get Myself Together, it’s nothing short of exhilarating. With just his banjo and…
Brave Combo is, hands-down, the most dependable band in local music. They almost always play “The Chicken Dance,” they never fail to start a party in concert and they add another platter of polka goodness to their merch table nearly every year; their 26th album in 26 years, Holidays, arrives…
Ever since Doug Sahm passed away in 1999, there’s been a Sahm-sized hole deep in the heart of Texas. Sir Doug was the consummate Texas musician, equally adept at country, blues, rock, conjunto and Western swing–combining all these genres into an innovative brand of music that sounded like nothing but…
Robbie Fulks has made a career out of pissing people off in creative ways. After building a cult following with two mid-’90s platters of hardcore ’50s honky-tonk, Fulks took an ambitious twang-pop turn on Let’s Kill Saturday Night and 2001’s Couples in Trouble, confusing some fans but never abandoning the…
Elliott Smith may be dead, but his spirit and voice haunt every track on Pajo. David Pajo, the former Slint member who has previously recorded as Papa M and Aerial M, uses his own name this time, and with such personal songs, the return to his real name is quite…
Holopaw’s songs are a lot like the clouds on the cover of their newest album, Quit +/or Fight–beautiful, delicate and seemingly apt to float away at any time. Led by whisper-quiet singer John Orth, who also contributed to Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock’s Ugly Casanova project, Holopaw specializes in bleary-eyed…
I loved the University of Texas, but college was expensive, and there was a lot of crap to deal with–student loans, expensive housing and a bus that smelled like a baby’s diaper. The Zooniversity, on the other hand, costs next to nothing, and the faculty is nice enough to take…
When Bob Dylan’s most favored axman handles your album, you have to be doing something right. On her new album, Geronimo, produced by Austinite Charlie Sexton, singer-songwriter Shannon McNally explores the same crossroads of country, soul and rock frequented by sisters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer, singing in a voice…
Besides the White Stripes, the Volebeats might be the best band the Motor City has to offer. Like the Jayhawks drenched in reverb, they make classic folk-rock that’s part Everly Brothers harmonies and part Byrdsian 12-string jangle. Firm believers in quality over quantity, the Volebeats have released only six proper…
Make no mistake–Grey DeLisle loves the hell out of Dolly Parton, and as female country artists go, it’s hard to find a better model to follow. Like Parton, DeLisle has a voice as pure and fragile as a mountain stream, and her story-based songs are equal parts lovin’, lustin’ and…
Singer-songwriter Richard Buckner has a voice that could shift tectonic plates. Live, it practically pours out of him, shaking the room with sound as his eyes roll back into his head, trance-like. On recent tours he’s taken to performing song suites, tying songs together with instrumental interludes created with the…
The Fruit Bats’ Eric Johnson was definitely born in the ’70s. On his band’s third album, Spelled in Bones, he comes right out and says it, but even without a song title like “Born in the ’70s,” the sounds of SiB stir up images of Astroturf, bell-bottoms and all things…
On last year’s From the End of Your Leash, Bobby Bare Jr. proved once and for all that the critical success of his first solo album was no fluke. With a sound combining country, blue-eyed soul and fuzzed-out rock, Bare hearkens back to the freewheeling experimentation of ’70s singer-songwriters like…
Rodney Parker is sneakier than he looks. At Fort Worth’s Horseman Club, he and his band, 50 Peso Reward, looked like any number of other Texas country combos. A clean-cut singer in a polo shirt with a rough-hewn voice, Parker easily could have passed for a Pat Green or a…
Back in 1996, every mutton-chopped songwriter with a rhyming dictionary wanted to be Jay Farrar. These days, most of them would be happy if Farrar would just be himself and go back to rocking like Neil Young’s bastard son. After two mysterious solo albums filled with abstract instrumentals and Eastern…
Jeff Klein wants to sex you up–indie-rock style. Between his raspy voice and intimate Southern gothic slow jams, who could resist? He even recorded his latest album, The Hustler, in sin-filled New Orleans, enlisting producer and fellow panty-dropper Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers) to turn up the bedroom ambience…
Mary Gauthier (pronounced go-shay) didn’t write her first song until she was 35. Before that, she lived one helluva life as a restaurateur, a runaway at 15 and an alcoholic, accumulating some great stories by the time she sat down with a guitar. Over four increasingly excellent albums, Gauthier has…
Mara Lee Miller’s voice is a wondrous instrument, combining the breathy beauty of Chan Marshall and Hope Sandoval with the childlike wonder of Joanna Newsom. After receiving her demo at a tour stop in Denton, singer-songwriter Damien Jurado was so impressed that he invited her to a Seattle studio to…
On a Denton-filled night at Lowest Greenville’s Cavern, the welcoming committee must’ve skipped town. The double-booked show forced three out-of-town bands to cut their sets to ridiculously short times, and equipment trouble was so bad that Erik Thompson, lead singer of headliner Lo-Fi Chorus, was continually shocked by his microphone…
