Subject: Bob Wills

• The Houston 100: From Charles Brown to Sippie Wallace

  September 26, 2007

• Pop Numerology: How High Can You Go?

  October 10, 2007

• Best Non-2007 Music of 2007

  December 27, 2007

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: Justin Townes Earle, Dustin Welch and Jubal Lee Young Crawl Out of the Shadows

  May 29, 2008

• Pure-D Purty

  June 23, 1994

• Somber News from Nashville

  September 29, 1994

• Rotation

  December 15, 1994

• Live Shots

  December 15, 1994

• Postmarked Texas

  August 31, 1995

• Master of the Universe

  February 29, 1996

• Jazz Friendly

  July 25, 1996

• Right Number

  December 5, 1996

• Album of the Day: Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel's Willie and the Wheel

  Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel Willie and the Wheel www.willieandthewheel.com The late Jerry Wexler, who passed away last August at age 91, was best known as an advocate and producer for top R&B and soul artists like Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. But Wexler was also a huge fan of country music, dating back to the days the kid who spent his teenage nights in Harlem jazz clubs discovered Western Swing in Kansas City while in college. Credited as executive produ

  February 13, 2009

• Tonight: Greg Ginn & the Taylor Texas Corrugators at Last Concert Cafe

  If we were to tell you that one of the most influential guitarists and innovators in the early '80s hardcore movement was living in the tiny town of Taylor (30 miles outside Austin) you would call us crazy. But that's where Greg Ginn, founding guitarist of hardcore's lode-bearing Black Flag has been making his home since 2007, when he moved there from Long Beach, California. When BF dissolved in 1985, after four different lead singers and a storied, discordant catalog, Ginn drifted from one

  February 17, 2009

• You're Not from Texas

  April 16, 1998

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: Western Swing Royalty at iFest

  Looking ahead to the Houston International Festival - never mind the SXSW bollocks - I was pleasantly surprised to see that Jody Nix and the Texas Cowboys will be playing on the Texas Stage at 6 p.m. on April 18. Not long ago in these cyberpages, we examined the gloom and doom that surrounds the musical art known as honky tonk. Well, these guys are as legit as it gets - so legit they were featured at last year's Smithsonian Folklife Festival. And looking at their schedule, they don't show an

  February 26, 2009

• Album(s) of the Week: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, The Tiffany Transcriptions

  [Yes, that's right, it is Western Swing day on Rocks Off today...] Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys The Tiffany Transcriptions www.collectorschoicemusic.com Western Swing is an enigma for people outside Texas and the Southwest, who - if they spare a thought for it at all - tend to write it off under "country" and move on. (To be fair, it is where the "western" in "country & western" comes from.) But about the only thing it shares with the Appalachian-descended music adopted by Nashvil

  February 26, 2009

• Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys: The Tiffany Transcriptions

  March 5, 2009

• Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel: Willie and the Wheel

  February 19, 2009

• Greg Ginn and the Texas Corrugators

  February 12, 2009

• Truth Be Told

  Lee Roy Parnell finds his roots everywhere but Nashville

  August 23, 2001

• A New Official State Song for Texas?

  A case for a new — or different, anyway — state song

  February 21, 2008

• Merle the Pearl

  Is the Hag the greatest three-tool talent in country music history?

  June 28, 2007

• Spencer Durham

  Much More Than Words Cavender Castle

  February 15, 2007

• The Full Nelson

  A Rhino rerelease celebrates Willie's new concept for country

  July 6, 2006

• Mercy Eventually

  More than 20 years down the road, Mary Gauthier is finally an emerging artist

  February 2, 2006

• Goodbye Joe, Me Gotta Go

  There are 25,000 Cajuns in Houston. Almost none of them play Cajun music. Why not?

  January 25, 2007

• Close to the Vest

  Some HPD officers aren't so hot about safety

  August 25, 2005

• Best Place to Hang Out with Local Rock Stars

  September 23, 2004

• Letters

  September 16, 2004

• Defending the Dirty Thirty

  And coping with Yankee slander

  May 6, 2004

• Grupo Fantasma

  Wednesday, April 7

  April 1, 2004

• Stone Country

  Sean Reefer and the Resin Valley Boys spark up some primo Western swing and trad C&W

  February 26, 2004

• Endless Boogie

  Former Squirrel Nut Zipper Jimbo Mathus gets back to basics

  August 7, 2003

• Dirty Mothers For Ya

  The Supersuckers clean up their act offstage, but the songs remain the same

  June 5, 2003

• Jorma Kaukonen and Blue Country

  Wednesday, February 5

  January 30, 2003

• Playbill

  Willie Nelson's Family Picnic

  August 9, 2001

• World Class?

  Houston can't join the ranks of other cities until it has an anthem of its own

  June 14, 2001

• Achy Breaky Voice

  Despite a vocal cord disorder, Johnny Bush still sings the praises of traditional Texas country music

  December 21, 2000

• Best Jukebox

  Warren's Inn

  September 21, 2000

• Hillbilly Wheelies

  July 8, 1999

• Cool Country

  June 10, 1999

• Junior or Joke?

  Bob Wills' family disowns the man claiming to be the prince of Western swing

  July 27, 1995

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: Jody Nix Does Western Swing Right

  As we reported some weeks ago in this column, if you're down with hardcore Western Swing twin fiddle dance music of the Bob Wills variety, you should be in heaven Saturday when Jody Nix and the Texas Cowboys make a rare Houston appearance on the iFest Texas Stage. Nix is old-school, so old school he doesn't drink and the members of his band don't either, at least not when they're on the road with him. He harkens back to a more innocent time when the Saturday-night dance was what people look

  April 17, 2009

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: Hoyle Nix and Big Spring's Stampede Club

  Photo courtesy of Jody NixHoyle Nix (left) and Bob Wills, mid-1950sThere's an old saying in West Texas about Midland and Odessa, two oil towns only 20 miles apart in the middle of nowhere: raise your kids in Midland, raise hell in Odessa. True enough, Midland has all the soul of a loaf of Rainbow bread - come on, George W. Bush was raised there. Odessa, with its rows of bars up and down Highway 80 and the Andrews Highway, has always been thought of as a den of iniquity. But in spite of all of Od

  June 8, 2009

• Defending the Polka

  June 18, 2009

• George Strait Week, Part 5: Texas George

  Like the man himself said, easy come, easy go. Happy as we are that it's Friday, and almost quitting time to boot, Rocks Off a little sad too, because that means George Strait Week is almost over. But not quite. We're putting it to bed the only way we know how - with the King's five best Texas songs. "All My Exes Live In Texas" (Ocean Front Property, 1987): A masterpiece of whimsical honky-tonk with the dark implication that sooner or later, Strait's playboy lifestyle is going to place him at t

  August 7, 2009

• Hot Club of Cowtown

  August 20, 2009

• ACL Fest Preview: School of Seven Bells and Prescott Curlywolf

  Amanda MertenSchool of Seven Bells​For the next three weeks, Rocks Off will be bringing you two or three short previews a day of artists playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Zilker Park October 2-4. That's right, ACL is 17 days away - where is this year going? (Same place as all the other ones, we suspect.) It's for our own edification as well; we're trying to figure out who among the 120-something acts we're not that familiar with might be worth skipping, say, Thievery Corporation

  September 15, 2009

• Wednesdays are Honky-Tonk Heaven In Houston, and Thursdays are Hillbilly Hell

  Photos by Chris GrayRobert Ellis & the Boys, under the blue neon​ It's no secret Rocks Off is a big fan of the country music, which is why we're starting to get a little excited about the inner-loop honky-tonk scene that's taking root. Over the weekend, we caught Sean Reefer & the Resin Valley Boys doing their hemped-up Hank Williams thang at the West Alabama Ice House, and Miss Leslie & Her Juke-Jointers' Sunday-evening sets (6-9 p.m.) at the Continental Club, a fine way to wind d

  November 5, 2009