2007 Houston Press Music Awards Showcase

Hard Rock Café 502 Texas 713-227-1392

The Jonx Nominated in: Best Punk www.myspace.com/thejonx 5 p.m. "Frashitic," "risquous," "aeliaer" and "smabtabulatial" are just a few of the adjectives this madcap trio has minted to apply to themselves. (Drummer Daniel Mee is a Press contributor.) Mining the rich vein of jazzy modern rock Television unearthed, the Jonx claim to have been born as purveyors of "punk rock with some jammy stuff" that "one day woke up as a prog band." When not gracing the stage or greasing the barstools at fave hang Rudyard's, the band enjoys singing the praises of other prominent stars in their constellation: Really Red, Sharks and Sailors, God's Temple of Family Deliverance, Minutemen, NoMeansNo, Wire and the Jesus Lizard. Looks pretty "goobulist" to us.

Katie Stuckey and the Swagger Nominated in: Best New Act; Best C&W; Best Female Vocalist; Best Folk/Acoustic www.katiestuckey.com; www.myspace.com/katiestuckey 6 p.m. Conservatory-trained chanteuse Stuckey doesn't care what you call her twangy acoustic music, so long as you don't label her a "hard-core rapper — not that I'm opposed to it!" And in fact, the redhead has much more in common with heroes like Carole King and Patty Griffin, which is to say the best kind of Americana — that stuff that edges toward darkness and never goes treacly.

Miss Leslie & Her Juke-Jointers Nominated in: Best C&W, Best Female Vocalist (Miss Leslie) www.missleslie.com 7 p.m. "I've played my best to a crowd of 12," says Leslie Lindley, Miss Leslie to her many fans at the Continental Club and other honky-tonks around the Lone Star State. "And I've played and sounded my worst to a crowd of 2,000 that couldn't tell." Her gig at a retirement community where everyone line-danced to the waltzes falls somewhere in between. "Something's just wrong about line-dancing to a waltz." Preserving the pristine sounds of George Jones, Connie Smith, Wynn Stewart, Ray Price and so many others for today's audiences, the Juke-Jointers recently pared down to four members from seven and aspire, Leslie says, "to have more fans in Houston than the UK."

D.R.U.M. Nominated in: Best Reggae/ World Music www.myspace.com/drumtheband 8 p.m. The next two bands combine to form an inspired bit of sequential booking. As the Sideshow Tramps are to European-based sounds (see below), so the global visionaries in D.R.U.M. are to the music of the African diaspora. The band's shows feature everything from the gumbo funk of the Wild Magnolias to the tightly wound grooves of Fela Kuti to the breezy riddims of Dennis Brown's roots-reggae, sometimes all in the same song. Since they are mainstays of this shindig, and multiple winners to boot, not to mention quite eloquent, we'll let them take it from here, at some length: "Funkier than a cane cutter's armpits, hard enough to cut titanium, hot enough to melt tungsten, cool enough to make the devil go home, saying he might catch a cold, sweet enough to make you need some insulin, smooth enough to put colicky babies to sleep, taking troubled minds and spirits to the light from the deep."

Sideshow Tramps Nominated in: Best Folk/Acoustic; Best Miscellaneous Instrument (Uncle Tick) www.myspace.com/sideshowtramps 9 p.m. The band formerly known as Medicine Show has just ditched their band name, redubbed themselves the Sideshow Tramps and released their first album, which is calledÉThe Medicine Show. Got that? Good. By any name, these punk-raised hillbillies have been becoming more and more citizens of the world of late, moving towards something very much like a music that could only be called polyethnic slamgrass. It's too bad they only get an hour here — the Tramps are one of the few bands in town that could play at least three times as long.

Life Lounge 308 Main 832-489-7910 Ryan Scroggins and the Trenchtown Texans Nominated in: Best Drummer (Patrick "Beans" Wheeler) www.myspace.com/ryanscroggins; www.ryanscroggins.com 4 p.m. One of several bands to have emerged so far from the implosion of Los Skarnales, the Trenchtown Texans are led by the organ-playing of former Skarnal Ryan Scroggins. (Others from the same camp include accordionist Robert Rodriguez, bassist Nick Gaitan and guitarist Jeremy Peña.) As the name suggests, the band is way traditional, taking cues from artists like Jackie Mittoo and comps like Club Ska '67, while adding what Scroggins describes as "country-sounding melodies." The Trenchtown Texans already have a better record on the road than a certain other batch of Texans in town, winning over fans from California to New Jersey. What's more, there is a rumored national record deal in their immediate future.

Wayside Drive Nominated in: Best Alt-Rock www.waysidedrive.com 5 p.m. Hoping to pick up where Japanic left off with some well-known ringers behind him, Wayside Drive's Jeremy Osborn didn't let a discouraging reply get him down. "I wrote a very personal and sincere letter to U2 asking them to be my backup band," he says. "They kindly replied that I should seek professional help, so I just found my own people." Taking their name from the street all three have worked on or near at various times, Wayside has scared off the crowd at a kicker bar on Richmond and found the backstage at Numbers by accident. They're also hiring. "Roadies," says Osborn. "Dear God, we need roadies."