Chris Gaffney
Right on the heels of Wednesday's announcement of Vanguard's new Doug Sahm tribute album comes Yep Roc's tribute to Chris Gaffney, The Man of Somebody's Dreams. Ironically, it includes some of the same high-profile roots artists who pay tribute to Sahm: Dave Alvin, Los Lobos and Alejandro Escovedo. Gaffney was a Southern California barroom legend, the kind of player and man for whom the cliché "musician's musician" was coined.
Before he died of liver
Mike Barfield, "Lonesome Train"
Mike Barfield and Danny Gardner have been around the Houston roots-rock/country scene so long they remember Club Hey Hey and Blues Burger. Back before they parted company - Barfield moving to front the Hollisters and Gardner working with Mitch Jacobs in Romeo Dogs - they teamed up in the Rounders with guitarist Eric "Eddie Lee Dale" Danheim and scorched the earth at every bar in town.
I mainly remember the Rounders from the Fabulous Satellite Lounge; they opened
Chris Gray
Black Joe Lewis and a couple of HoneybearsWell, thank God that's over. SXSW 09 is history now, so before we completely block it out of our mind for another 11 months, here's Rocks Off's top five reasons it was worth going to after all.
Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women: L.A. roots-rocker and all-star band honored his late best friend Chris Gaffney with roadhouse fire, Cajun zeal and honky-tonk sensitivity.
Austin Music Awards: The Dicks, Alejandro Escovedo, the Fire
William Michael SmithLance Smith (left) and Mike Stinson
LOM grew up in the oil patch, made a good living in it, saw the world because of it. So it made sense to want our son, Lance, to grow up to be a petroleum engineer. Alas, it was not to be.
Now he's a guitar player.
Two years into the petroleum engineering program at University of Houston, LOM and the wife pulled the plug on Lance's financing. The logic? Exxon doesn't hire engineers with C averages who majored in frat party and skirt-cha
