This Week In Dallas Music History: Chris Flemmons Finally Moves Upstream With His Band, The Baptist Generals.

In a few weeks time, established Denton songwriter and Baptist Generals frontman Chris Flemmons will kick off his third annual Denton music festival, now known as the 35 Conferette. Twelve years ago, though, Flemmons was just a newcomer in the Denton music scene -- even if it didn't take long for the Baptist Generals to gain notoriety.

In this week's edition of This Week In Dallas Music History, former Observer writer Christina Rees compared the newcomer to the likes of Robbie Robertson, Will Oldham, Kevin Russell and Shane McGowan -- and all that just from a demo cassette tape that Flemmons had released called excretio: the difficult years.

The no-budget debut featured, as its title suggests, songs about hard times. It was recorded, with the help of Slobberbone's Brent Best, around the time Flemmons' father battled with cancer. After the release of excretio, Flemmons continued to carve out his niche in the Denton scene, making friends with guys like Best, Will Johnson and Matt Pence, who, at the time this piece was released, was already working on production for Flemmons' follow up.

That, and more, can be found in the entire story after the jump.

Part of the first page seems to be cut off, so check out the entire story in the Observer archives.