Best Music Gadfly

A guitarist, songwriter, music journalist, record producer and bandleader, Guy Schwartz is omnipresent on the Houston scene. His New Jack Hippies "band" now boasts more than a hundred members, based on Schwartz's open admissions policy: If you jam with him once, you're a New Jack Hippie for life. Schwartz's recent collaborations and productions include the pro-marijuana compilation Texas Homegrown Collective, blues albums with Gloria Edwards and Little Joe Washington, a platter with honky-tonker Opie Hendrix and street poet Kool B, numerous columns in Houston Music News, weekly gigs and a variety of jam sessions. And that's not all: His remembrance of Lionel Hampton, posted to the "Music Thoughts" mailing list (groups.yahoo.com/group/musicthoughts/message/27806) was selected by Canadian rock critic Jason Weiss as one of the 25 best music-related stories of 2002, ranking Schwartz alongside The New York Times's Ben Ratliff and music-writing dilettantes such as Tom Waits and Roger Ebert.