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Roy Kasten

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Band of Horses, Midlake

Thursday, April 7, at Verizon Theatre, Grand Prairie

By Roy Kasten
Apr 7, 2011

Given the restless impulses of Band of Horses principal singer and songwriter Ben Bridwell, it's no wonder that any cease-and-desist letters the My Morning Jacket legal team may have sent were returned to sender. Giving up on Seattle, where he formed the band, Bridwell recently retreated to the land of...
Alejandro Escovedo's Music Hides His Age.

By Roy Kasten
Mar 3, 2011

Alejandro Escovedo sounds happy. And he should be: After nearly succumbing to Hepatitis C in 2003, the Austinite is touring steadily, writing songs with friends such as Chuck Prophet, recording them with heavy hitters such as producer Tony Visconti, working with Bruce Springsteen's management company and making some of the...
Slobberbone, Telegraph Canyon, Scott H. Biram

Wednesday, December 30, at Granada Theater

By Roy Kasten
Dec 24, 2009

More bands should study the elegant, almost neoclassically refined career arc of Slobberbone. The flight path goes like this: Drink beer, play for your friends, take your name from a porch dog's chew toy, tour, rock, tour and, above all else, rock. The Denton, Texas, foursome of songwriter and singer...
Ha Ha Tonka, Ludo, Meese, Without a Face

Friday, November 13, at the Prophet Bar

By Roy Kasten
Nov 14, 2009

Ha Ha Tonka caught the new wave of ersatz old-time stompers and pickers churned up by the Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show, but the Springfield, Missouri, band rides the twang with an idiosyncratic style and the electric confidence of self-made Ozark shit-kickers. The title of the band's 2009...
Sea Wolf, Port O'Brien, Sara Lov

Tuesday, October 27, at The Cavern

By Roy Kasten
Oct 22, 2009

Jack London's novel Sea Wolf is a tale of the destructive potential of a single, domineering vision. For all his gifts, Alex Brown Church, who named his band after the parable, isn't one to go it alone. Were it not for his big canvas collaborations, he'd drown in Bright Eyes comparisons (and...
Los Straitjackets, The Von Ehrics

Saturday, September 5, at Trees

By Roy Kasten
Sep 3, 2009

Fans of Los Straitjackets might have first come for the novelty, but they've stayed for the sound—a furious instrumental assault of twangy surf, hard rockabilly and psychedelic garage. Oh, the Nashville band still sports the Mexican wrestler masks and Chuck Taylors, and it still knows a marketing angle (can you...
Marcia Ball

Friday, January 9, at the Granada Theater

By Roy Kasten
Jan 8, 2009

Geography partly explains the power and appeal of blues belter and boogie-woogie piano banger Marcia Ball—but, again, only partly. Raised on the Texas border in the small Southwestern Louisiana town of Vinton, Ball discovered her own voice at ground zero of American roots music. Rockabilly, zydeco, country, R&B, swamp rock...
Marc Brousssard

Wednesday, January 7, at House of Blues

By Roy Kasten
Jan 1, 2009

In 2002, Marc Broussard gave up on the Christian-rock circuit for a solo career that sizzles like a bayou barbecue, where sinners jam and the saints keep a keen eye out for the law. The son of legendary Boogie Kings guitarist Ted Broussard, the Carencro, Louisiana, native creates a version...
Slaid Cleaves

Sunday, November 2, at Dan's Silverleaf, Denton

By Roy Kasten
Oct 30, 2008

Slaid Cleaves is known as a "songwriter's songwriter," which is usually a polite way of saying "he can't sing." But there's no need for decorum with the Maine-born, Austin-based troubadour: For all of his command of songcraft, Cleaves would still be working as a pharmaceutical guinea pig were it not...
Iron & Wine's Sam Beam Takes Songs Seriously, Maybe Too Seriously

By Roy Kasten
Sep 25, 2008

Judging from the trance-inducing, whispered meditations of Iron & Wine, the group's singer and songwriter, Sam Beam, should be far less affable and more nonchalant. But his music, starting with the homespun demos of The Creek Drank the Cradle and stretching to the rhythmic and melodic layers of last year's...
Peter Case Spreads the News

By Roy Kasten
Dec 6, 2007

From a truck stop in western Pennsylvania, Peter Case runs down the route he's traveling: "[I'm] just about to jump on Highway 81, down to Chattanooga, switch to 40 then jump on 75 and then I'll be in Knoxville in about 11 or 12 hours." Case knows the roads. He's...
Goldrush

The Heart Is the Place (Better Looking)

By Roy Kasten
May 17, 2007

Keyboards blur and bubble, guitars loop like a Möbius strip, chorale arrangements and found sounds (muted trumpet, birdsong and static) stack and stack, a bereft acoustic guitar or piano anchors the melodies, and Robin Bennett sings with a quizzical, not-quite-falsetto voice. The critical gossip? The Oxfordshire, England, quartet is crushed...
Raising Arizona

By Roy Kasten
Aug 17, 2006

In one sense, Arizona nearly killed Alejandro Escovedo; in another, it saved his life. In April 2003 he collapsed after a Tucscon performance of his musical drama, By the Hand of the Father. He'd been living with hepatitis C since the late '90s (although most people didn't know). He still...
The Last Laugh

Willis Alan Ramsey's cult keeps growing, 28 years after cutting his first--and final?--record

By Roy Kasten
Nov 16, 2000

Willis Alan Ramsey is the most reluctant and least likely of Texas singer-songwriters. With the requisite three names (the calling card of most Texas singer-songwriters, from Townes Van Zandt to Robert Earl Keen, and, of course, serial killers), the dashing looks, the heroic narratives, and the memorable songs that became...