Jim James

Transcribing Is a Bitch: The Collected Craig Hlavaty Interviews

My last official day at the Houston Press is tomorrow, so these past two weeks I have been sifting through my body of work here at Rocks Off, almost seven years of words. I've been gleefully overdosing on nostalgia here at my desk, and I have (almost) no regrets. I'll have some more words on my depa ... More >>

Son Volt's Travel Guide to Five Bizarre Tour Stops

Son Volt is heading down the highway with a new album in tow, Honky Tonk, but instead of lamenting still waters and beatnik poets, Jay Farrar and company have gone strictly Bakersfield, even naming a track after the legendary country-music mecca. Yep, Farrar has gone back to his roots mixing steel ... More >>

The Best Shows In Houston This Week: Rihanna, Suzanna Choffel, Wavves, etc.

Rihanna Toyota Center, April 15 Rihanna has combined her athletic stature, formidable vocals, down-for-whatever attitude and some alarming life choices to become a flashpoint pop star, a lightning rod for controversy that even Lady Gaga would have trouble rivaling these days. Musically, the Barbado ... More >>

ACL 2013 Predictions & Rumors: Is This Jimmy Buffett's Year?

2013 marks the first year that the Austin City Limits Music Festival -- Texas' other large outdoor music festival, never to be confused with Houston's own Free Press Summer Fest -- expands to two consecutive weekends with identical lineups. At this point the lineup for the festival, scheduled for Oc ... More >>

The Best Shows at SXSW This Year

This year Rocks Off and DC-9 at Night, the music blog at our sister paper Dallas Observer, teamed up to bring you only the choicest moments from last week's SXSW madness. John Fogerty: Creedence Clearwater Revival survivor John Fogerty gets overlooked as a riff-happy rocker, with most people concen ... More >>

The 10 Worst Things at SXSW This Year

This year Rocks Off and DC-9 at Night, the music blog at our sister paper Dallas Observer, teamed up to bring you only the most unfortunate moments from last week's SXSW madness. Security and Cops Gettin' Wild: Look, I get it. Every drunken dickhead in town "knows someone" or thinks he has pull at ... More >>

Top 20 Things We Need to See at SXSW Next Week

Next week the Rocks Off Action Team goes to Austin for Ess Ex Ess Dubya for another four days of fun, sun, eavesdropping, and live music. And swag, of the free kind, not the kind that Justin Bieber is still trying to make happen. This year at SXSW we're looking forward to many, many things, includ ... More >>

Flaming Lips And Their Fwends Set To Weird Up Record Store Day

In a few weeks on April 21, Record Store Day is yet again set to obliterate the wallets of record collectors around the country, and the Flaming Lips will have quite a release for fans on that day. What would you think if I said that they have been recording with none other than Ke$ha, Bon Iver, Nic ... More >>

Towering Townes

Fifteen years after the death of a legend, there are a few stories left untold.

Where Did Matisyahu's Beard Go? We Found It!

​Rapper Matthew Paul Miller, stage name Matisyahu, made waves this week by tweeting a picture of his face, shorn of the trademark Chassidic beard, along with a message promising "an amazing year filled with music of rebirth." The message on his personal site also mentioned "rules" in his chose ... More >>

Last Night: My Morning Jacket At Verizon Wireless Theater

Photos By Marc Brubaker​Check out our slideshow of photos from the show. My Morning Jacket, at least to me, are a festival band. It's their natural habitat. Their records are built to be projected across city parks. Out of the half dozen times we have settled in front of Jim James and company ... More >>

My Morning Jacket

Touch the Sky

The 2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival in exactly 12 paragraphs.

ACL Last Night: My Morning Jacket, Loud And Extremely Amplified

Jim BrickerJim James of My Morning Jacket​While one side of Zilker Park was vibing with godhead Stevie Wonder, the other was being bathed in volume and industrial melodies by My Morning Jacket, who continuously make good on their tag as one of the best, if not the best, live American rock band ... More >>

Five Can't-Miss Acts At ACL Fest This Year

Craig HlavatyWe're running this picture of My Morning Jacket's Jim James now because this will be the last we see of him all weekend.​For weeks after we skipped last year's Austin City Limits Music Festival to man the controls in Houston, Rocks Off found ourselves thinking, "Man, I wish I woul ... More >>

2 Become 1: Musical Match-Ups We'd Like To See

​Kanye "Hitler" West and Jay-Z released their (overused music writer word alert) epic Watch the Throne album this week, to mostly great reviews. This fall the first fruits from the recently announced Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration should be on the store shelves, which still sorta weirds us o ... More >>

Band of Horses

ACL Fest Schedule Released; Your Guide To The "Death Duels"

Stevie Wonder on FacebookStevie Wonder: Even My Morning Jacket will be watching.​This morning, the organizers of the Austin City Limits Music Festival announced the schedule for the September 16-18 Zilker Park throwdown. We all knew there would be some tough choices, but Rocks Off found that w ... More >>

Out Today: My Morning Jacket Back In Form, Vedder's Ukulele Slays

​This week brings a new My Morning Jacket album, an Eddie Vedder ukulele outing, the umpteenth Dave Matthews Band live collection, and Ozzy's past barks at the moon. We are just now hitting the busy summer release period, so these blogs in the next few weeks will be getting jam-packed. In th ... More >>

On The Road Again: Bikinis And Bands At The Hangout Festival

Photos by Craig Hlavaty Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, duh.​See the bands and bikinis of the Hangout Festival in our slideshows. Imagine the Austin City Limits Music Festival or even the rapidly approaching Free Press Summer Fest on pure, white sand just feet away from a (variably) blue ocea ... More >>

Out Today: Tyler, The Creator's Goblin, The Cars Restarted...

​We now live in a world where Adele is a chart-topping artist, placing at number one slot the past few weeks, rubbing shoulders with the Foo Fighters, Katy Perry, Mumford & Sons, and Britney Spears. If Adele's 21 isn't on the top of everyone's best-of 2011 lists, there is no justice in the wor ... More >>

James Taylor

Solo Albums: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

​Tomorrow night, former Audioslave lead singer and (thankfully) current Soundgarden member Chris Cornell will be at House of Blues for a long-sold-out acoustic show. Recent set lists have included a number of Temple of the Dog songs, some solo work, the usual 'Garden and 'Slave tracks, plus a ... More >>

Last Night: Iron & Wine At Fitzgerald's

Photos by Jim Bricker​Iron & Wine Fitzgerald's November 21, 2010 When Hill Country transplant Sam Beam, who played a sold-out pre-Thanksgiving show at Fitzgerald's Sunday night, was still signed with Sub Pop, the Seattle label's founder Jonathan Poneman wanted to see the South Carolina native ... More >>

Saturday Night: Dr. Dog At Warehouse Live

Photos by Jim Bricker​Dr. Dog Warehouse Live November 13, 2010 Fans packed into Warehouse Live Saturday as Houston's temperatures dropped from balmy to brisk in what seemed like minutes. But the crowd had clearly braced themselves for such conditions, breaking out their seldom-used winter acc ... More >>

SXSW: Dios And The Black Angels Warm Up A Frigid Saturday Night

Photos by Craig HlavatyDios​ Saturday night was a frigid one for the last full night of SXSW, and Aftermath's musical choices seemed to fall directly in line with the torrid temperament of the weather gods. The night before we found ourselves dabbing sweat of our brows, and exactly 24 hours later ... More >>

A&M Assault Case and Abortion Super Center?

Highlights from the Blog at HOUSTONPRESS.COM

The Aggie Assault Case Gets A Trial Date, Somewhat To The Surprise Of the Victim's Family

​A judge in Brazos County set a date -- June 21, 2010 -- for trial in the case of a Texas A&M student who was allegedly assaulted by two members of the Corps of Cadets, an incident the Houston Press wrote about in a January 2008 cover story, "Rotten to the Corps." The court date might not seem ... More >>

2009 Concert Rewind: The 2009 Houston Press Music Awards Showcase and Ceremony

Showcase Sunday, Part 1 Shea SerranoRunaway Sun​ Dominique: "We guess critics would call her style 'neo-soul,' but it didn't seem very 'neo' to me, more like 'jazzy soul.' She fronted a piano-led trio with two backing vocalists and from the first sultry Fender Rhodes groove to the final explosive ... More >>

Five Hour Energy

The 2009 Houston Press Music Awards Showcase in 300 minutes or less.

HPMA Aftermath: Ozeal & the Eulypians, Nosaprise, Benjamin Wesley, Tha Fucking Transmissions, Kristine Mills, Peekaboo Theory, Versecity and Spain Colored Orange

Chris Gray​Five hours is not a long time. It is if you're driving from Houston to Texarkana or Uvalde, maybe. But when hopscotching all over downtown trying to take in as much of the Houston Press Music Awards showcase as you can until your feet and your ears cry uncle, those 300 minutes go by in ... More >>

Top Ten Americana Albums of 2008

Picking the best folk and Americana records of the year isn't nearly as hard as discarding those great records that just didn't feel right stuck in the category. Releases by Calexico and DeVotchKa felt far too worldly to pigeonhole as folk or country, for instance, while Blitzen Trapper's fantastic ... More >>

Northern Soul: Portugal. The Man

Straight outta Sarah Palin country

Indictments In A&M Assault Case

My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges

Yo La Tengo in Hoboken

A Hanukkah pilgrimage

Drenched In Blog: Bob Dylan, Robert Earl Keen, Billy Joe Shaver, Wilco and My Morning Jacket Round Out the Weekend

New Orleans Legend Al "Carnival Time" Johnson and a Guilloteen's Swan Song

McManus plays his last Houston gig this week, while a Big Easy piano-pounder plays his first

My Morning Jacket

It Still Moves (ATO/RCA/BMG)

Jana's story

Everyone in Brenham was shouting about the rape case. Now the victim has her say.