Lubbock

The Incredible, Hilarious Memo On How To Make Texas Tech & Its Coach "Cool": A Quiz

The guys at Deadspin have gotten their hands on a piece of comedy gold -- a memo on how the school can make itself and its football coach, former Red Raider QB Kliff Kingsbury, into ultra-hip, highly cool icons that the kidz of today will flock to just so they can be hip and cool too. A tall order ... More >>

The Best Concerts In Houston This Weekend

Terry Allen McGonigel's Mucky Duck, January 19 It doesn't take long to notice that country-folk musicians from Lubbock are a little different. Whether it's all that flat surrounding them, the supposed UFO visits, or something else, they always seem a little more metaphysical than their peers. With ... More >>

Terry Allen

Trail Of Slime: Tommy Tuberville Bolts Texas Tech For Cincinnati, Skips Out On Dinner Tab

This past Saturday night at the Heisman Trophy presentation ceremony in New York, ESPN host Chris Fowler was interviewing Notre Dame senior linebacker and Heisman finalist Manti Te'o about his mostly amazing, sometimes tragic senior season. Ever the positive thinker, Te'o at one point in the convers ... More >>

The First Alt-Country Record? Flatlanders Rediscover The Odessa Tapes

A lot of stellar music came out of that flat land known as West Texas. Bob Wills, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Terry Allen, Guy Clark, and the Sparkles are just a few artists who found something in the wind, the dust, the heat, the cactus, the mesquite, the sandstorms, the blizzards, t ... More >>

Lubbock County Judge Tom Head: 5 Factors To Consider As You Protect Your Homeland From Obama's UN Invasion

As you might have heard, Lubbock County Judge Tom Head has taken the bold, possibly insane stand that if President Obama is re-elected, a civil war will arise in the land and Panhandle pols will need a 1.7-cent tax increase to bolster their defenses against a United Nations invasion. Head made the ... More >>

Please To Kindly Eff Off: Texans Apparently Both Polite and Potty-Mouthed on Twitter

One side effect of social networking that is rarely discussed by the public at large is the massive amounts of data gathered every day about our habits online. Every time you publish something on Twitter or Facebook or, God help you, MySpace, it is cataloged, not by some evil secret government (that ... More >>

Lubbock County Judge Tom Head: Raise My Salary, Or Face Wrath of Obama's UN Minions UPDATED: with Judge Head's "Clarification"

Panhandle politicos. Just when you think they can't get any crazier, they keep talking. Case in point: Lubbock County judge Tom Head. On Monday night, flanked by Lubbock County Commissioner Mark Heinrich, Head went on Lubbock's FOX TV affiliate and warned the flatlanders of the dire consequences of ... More >>

Laura Botkin: Opera Singer Killed in Second Fatal Traffic Accident for Houston's Art Scene This Week

Still reeling from the death of local artist Jeremy Choate, Houston's fine-arts scene was reeling again with word of a promising opera singer dead from a Lubbock car crash. Laura Beth Botkin, 27, died late Sunday when the vehicle in which she was a passenger was hit by a truck driving the wrong way ... More >>

The Flatlanders

4 Disimprovements Outgoing A&M AD Bill Byrne Made to Aggieland

"Dollar Bill" won't be receiving a paycheck from Texas A&M any longer because on Tuesday, A&M athletic director Bill Byrne announced his retirement. A few weeks earlier, Aggie president R. Bowen Loftin said that Byrne, who held the job for nearly ten years, would "transition" out of his position, ... More >>

Melissa Borrett, Woman Behind Lubbock's Nude Maid Service, is Kinda Awesome

It's been all over the news these last couple of days: Lubbock's once-staunch moral fiber has slipped even further with the arrival of Lubbock Fantasy Maid Service, a business concern whose name pretty much describes what it offers: nekkid girls cleaning your house. Rates are $100 an hour for one m ... More >>

Tasting Notes: This Week in Wine Blogs

Vintage Texas: Top Texas wine authority Russ Kane chronicles the bankruptcy filing and botched sale of one of the state's leading wineries, CapRock, in Lubbock. According to his report, New Mexico winery Gruet has been ordered to pay $4 million for a breach of contract after bidding in a bankruptcy ... More >>

Happy Birthday Joe Ely: The Lubbock Flash Turns 65

Courtesy LC Media​I was living in Holland in 1977 when my younger brother, who had attended Wayland Baptist University on a track scholarship until booze and girls were discovered in his dorm room, came for a visit. While living in Plainview, his stomping grounds had been the gin joints of Lub ... More >>

Bobby Keys: iFest Nabs Rolling Stones Sax Maniac

The Rolling StonesBobby Keys takes an Exile on Main Street breather, Nellcote, France, 1971​Born in Lubbock and raised just east in Slaton, Joe Ely's home town, saxophonist Bobby Keys left Lubbock in 1960 looking for kicks. At 14, he was playing with Bob Dylan influence, Bobby Vee, before movi ... More >>

Oh, Joy: Another "Affirmative Action" Bake Sale, This Time at Texas Tech

Watch out -- that kid looks sorta Hispanic.​The Texas Tech group called the Young Conservatives of Texas -- yes, they're the ones who protested a campus sculpture because it allegedly included lesbians and commies -- have had yet another bright idea. Well, a bright idea that's getting pretty ... More >>

West Texas Teardrops: On Tour With The Last Place You Look

Ed. Note: This past weekend, Houston alternative/screamo rockers The Last Place You Look opened for Unwritten Law in Lubbock, Odessa, and Austin, and invited Rocks Off's Matthew Keever along. This is his first of three reports. The Last Place You Look on FacebookCasa Oh No: The Last Place You Look' ... More >>

Joe Ely's Top Five Live Shots, By iFest's Rick Mitchell

Jason WolterJoe Ely (left) and David Grissom at iFest 2010​Next Friday, Feb. 11, the Joe Ely Band returns to Rockefeller Hall for the first time in more than a decade, since the legendary Washington Avenue showcase club stopped presenting live music to focus on the less risky business of priva ... More >>

Butch Hancock, Flatlanders Still Chasing The Horizon

​Pound for pound, Rocks Off's choice for greatest living Texas songwriter is Butch Hancock, who happens to play in the same band as his closest competition for that title - old Lubbock buddies and fellow Flatlanders Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. At McGonigel's Mucky Duck over Labor Day week ... More >>

CraftTexas 2010

Texas Tech's "Silent Treatment": Oooooh, Be Scared, Longhorns

Texas Tech, innovating again​As if the Texas Longhorns didn't have enough troubles, what with struggling to beat Rice and Wyoming to open the season, now they face their most severe challenge ever.They go to Lubbock this weekend to play Texas Tech, and the student government at Tech is asking stud ... More >>

Before the Flood

West Texan Ned Sublette reflects on pre-Katrina New Orleans in a new memoir.

You Can Fight City Hall Over A Parking Ticket, But It's A Pain In the Ass

​Gordon Ducoff was taking a quick trip to the doctor on Binz street southwest of downtown for a blood test. He put enough in the old-fashioned meter to cover an hour and a half.He came out 20 minutes later to find he had a ticket.Bad enough, but then he started looking into fighting that $25 ticke ... More >>

One Wolf

Why Notre Dame Will Win The BCS And Texas Won't, Part 8

​We didn't watch the Longhorns this weekend, we have to admit. Subjecting the country to a prime-time match-up of UT and Missouri seemed unnecessarily cruel, but such is the heartless world we live in these days.But we're assuming two things: First, UT won, because come on, it's Missouri. And seco ... More >>

A Musical Guide to Post-Secession Texas: "Palo Duro"

View Five States of Texas in a larger map As any proud Texan can tell you, the Lone Star State is entitled constitutionally to split into five states if it so wishes. The scenario has rarely been more in the news than it has relatively recently, when Gov. Rick Perry played to the wingnut gallery in ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: My Son, the Guitar-Slinger

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 petrol ... More >>

Life On The Rodeo Road: Follow The Ten-Minute Rule

Photo by Paul KnightName: Luke ButterfieldAge: 24Hometown: Ponoka, Alberta    Event: Saddle Bronc RidingI got into rodeo because my family rodeos, my dad and mother. They have a feed lot up there [in Canada] so I've always been around cattle and livestock. I played hockey all through ... More >>

Soldier Suicides

Surviving our War on Terror calls for more than an ability to dodge bullets and IEDs

Close Up The Still, Clem, They're Comin' After Our Moonshine

Thrift Store Cowboys

Lubbock sextet stays true to country, bluegrass and blues

Classiness, Thy Name Is Texas Tech

Andrea Lazar’s Passionate Picks

Andrea Lazar’s Passionate Picks

Geese, Ganders and G-strings

Football U: Week Four

Football U: Week Four

Joe Ely

Friday, June 9, at McGonigel's Mucky Duck, 2524 Norfolk, 713-528-5999

Various Artists

Uptight Tonight! The Ultimate '60s Garage Collection

Swoopes: Hardwoods Homie

A Comets star helps redefine Houston basketball

Allen's Alien

See the surreal side of the Texas Panhandle in Dugout III: Warboy (and the backyard blues)

After the Fall

An abuse victim says she lied to convict her cousin 15 years ago

Playbill

Bot Love

Schoolkids go techno

A Figure to Die For

Community Health Systems cashed in big on the stomach stapling rage. It almost cost Kaye Parsley her life.

Getting Stomped

Texas boasts the soil, the climate and the grapes for a strong wine industry. So what stands in its way? Bad taste and politicians.

Postmarked Texas

Joe Ely sends a sad, beautiful Letter to Laredo

Pushing the Artistic Borders

Mexico, America and La Frontera find expression in "Poison Amor"

Press Picks

Ely, Allen and BBQ: The next best thing to Lubbock