Opinion & Commentary

As the indisputable king of country music, George Strait is still riding high after his farewell to life on the road in the summer of 2014 in Dallas. The show at AT&T Stadium was sort of the end of an era, twenty-plus years of Strait selling out stadiums across the…

It’s October in Texas, which means only one thing: festival season. With it comes the eternal question for Dallas music fans: Will I go to Austin, and if so, for which festival? Today kicks off the first of back-to-back weekends for Austin City Limits, with Fun Fun Fun Fest set to…

Six Shooter is a recurring feature where we highlight six new releases by North Texas based musicians with some extra ammo to spare. Yesterday we announced voting for the 27th Annual Dallas Observer Music Awards is now open. If you’ve been keeping up with Six Shooter you’re probably familiar with…

Very rarely do the paths of the Great White Way and Nashville cross, but they certainly have in Dallas. Following its world premiere at the Dallas Theater Center, Moonshine: That Hee Haw Musical is poised to make its way to Broadway. Propelled by an all-star cast, including American Idol alum…

For the past couple months, the indie music blogosphere has been practically buzzing at the prospect of everyone’s favorite mop-haired and melancholy singer, Ryan Adams, releasing a song-by-song cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989. In the beginning, most people just assumed that Adams was playing a big practical joke on the…

Selena fandom is serious business. Ever since the beloved Latino singer’s tragic death 20 years ago, the devotion of her fans has reached the level of cult status and then some. From homemade art to full-on festivals and even lookalike contests, there are no tributes that are too good or…

It was 25 years ago, almost exactly to this week, that Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” reached the No. 1 spot on the Billboard country charts. With it, the Oklahoma native shot into a realm of popularity and success that country music hadn’t seen before — or since, for…

As music journalists, we come into contact with every industry stereotype imaginable. From the most humble rockstars, to the divas, to the wannabe music bloggers and the overly confident promoters — we’ve seen them all. It’s tempting to feel cheated when you pour so much of your energy into creating…

Now that “bro-country” is now part of the broader musical lexicon — in that you can look it up in the damn Oxford English Dictionary — it would appear that we’re stuck with this sub-par sub-genre of country music. Made famous by guys like Luke Bryan, Cole Swindell, and other…

Six Shooter is a recurring feature where we highlight six new releases by North Texas based musicians with some extra ammo to spare. The biggest Dallas-related release of August was undoubtedly Dr. Dre’s grand finale, Compton. Debuting at No. 2 on Billboard and selling over 295,000 units in its first week,…

Alpine Valley is tucked away off the interstate in southeast Wisconsin. Most of the state, flattened out by glaciers during the last ice age, is plains and farm fields, but around East Troy — near where Alpine Valley is, at the edge of Kettle Moraine region — are green, rolling…

As much as we’ve lamented the death of good, authentic country music, our eulogies may have been a little premature. 2015 has already proved to be a pretty good year for country music, particularly its female-fronted acts. Releases from Kacey Musgraves, Carrie Underwood and now Maddie & Tae all seem…

Do you want slimmer eyeballs? Maybe your elbows are looking a little heavy these days? Do you want to wake up, look in the mirror and love what you see so much that you invite yourself to sex? Do you want rock-hard abs and a new haircut? Do you want…

There’s simply no argument to be made: When it comes to Texas country and Americana radio, North Texas has it better than anywhere else in the state. The Range (KHYI 95.3 FM) is primarily heard to the eastern end of our region, while The Ranch (KFWR 95.9) mainly airs for those…

We got a spot of rain last week, but for weeks beforehand the weather person on the evening news had been warning me in increasingly dire tones about the drought. The region had gone 40 days and 40 nights without rain, she said, returning us to drought conditions. So what…

2015 is shaping up to be the year that women in country music make a comeback, and it’s about damn time. Since the beginning of the year, many of the genre’s strongest releases — Kacey Musgraves’ Pageant Material and Ashley Monroe’s The Blade, among others — have come from the…

On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “disparate impact” as a key principle in racial desegregation law, ruling that what matters is the effect, not the intent of government practices. That day the headline over Emily Badger’s item on “Wonk Blog” in The Washington Post exulted: “The Supreme Court’s…

After an absence of over six years, a proper new record from Texas country kingpin Pat Green hit the streets this past Friday. Called simply Home, it marks a return to form from the last we of heard Green, but it’s not the rootsy, “Screw Nashville,” prodigal son-style record many have…

Just about any night of the week, you can hear fine Texas country music in Dallas. This month alone, Randy Rogers, Sunny Sweeney, Bri Bagwell and Western swing kings Asleep at the Wheel will make their way through Dallas, each playing their own unique interpretation of what country music actually…