Cooder Graw

Despite the first blush hokeyness of their name and enough TV play on the Dodge truck commercial that featured their hyper-tonk song “Llano Estacado” to sear the number into the brain cells with almost painful familiarity, Cooder Graw turned out to be one of the genuine bright spots within the young Texas country movement of recent years. Bereft of the often shallow ‘n’ callow youthfulness of the collegiate fledgling songwriter crowd, while at the same time refreshingly unaffected by Nashville clichés, the West Texas band developed a Panhandle country-rock style—”loud county,” as they called it—that played well with fans of both as well as dedicated honky-tonkers and even fussy music critics. Now, after nine years, Cooder Graw is calling it quits, making this last metroplex show their coup de grace.