Mavis Staples

Music Festivals Remain a Man's, Man's, Man's World

The Alabama Shakes' Brittany HowardAs we round out the end of the week, all of the festival hangovers from the full-blown fuckery at FPSF have subsided and we're all a bit less foggy, it's time to look back at the festival in a slightly different light. Let's put aside the rants about overpriced wat ... More >>

Free Press Summer Fest: The Best Acts of Sunday, 6/2/2013

Cat Power/Social Distortion Cat Power has such a spotty live reputation that she's hard to pass up, epecially at a music festival. We all want to see the implosion when it happens. However, she once pleased me greatly (and made me somewhat of a fan) at one ACL Fest around the time her R&B-heavy The ... More >>

Free Press Summer Fest: The Best Things We Overheard In the Crowd This Weekend

"I like the red douchebag tanks." "I know this song!" -- at the beginning of Paul Wall's "Smile For Me Daddy" "Fuck your fuckin' water!" -- a testy exchange in the Fancy Pants tent

Seven Recent Albums By '60s Artists That Don't Suck

Age gets us all eventually. I'm only in my early twenties and already I'm having to do stupid things like eating healthier, quitting the smokes, and watching my blood pressure. So it really shouldn't come as any surprise that musicians start to slow down in their old age, especially if they've been ... More >>

Free Press Summer Fest Releases 2013 Schedule & Stage Times

The moment many of you have been dreading has arrived: this morning Free Press Summer Fest announced this year's schedule and stage times for its fifth year, scheduled for June 1 and 2 in Eleanor Tinsley Park. The festival's eightysomething performers this year are spread across six stages from the ... More >>

Mumford & Sons Strum Into Woodlands Pavilion June 12

This afternoon Live Nation announced that Mumford & Sons, the UK acoustic-rock quartet that has already, um, borrowed more than one page from U2's playbook -- the anthemic songs, Old Testament imagery, missionary zeal and sometimes overwhelming earnestness -- will make its Houston-area debut somewhe ... More >>

Raw Power

Iggy & the Stooges headline the fifth Free Press Summer Fest.

Free Press Summer Fest '13 Announces Postal Service, Stooges, Cat Power, TV On the Radio, Social D, Geto Boys, Calvin Harris, etc.

Moments ago, the lineup for the 2013 Free Press Summer Festival was announced online at fpsf.com. Let's get to it, shall we?

Dear Grammys, I'm Breaking Up With You

Dear Stupid Grammys, I have a bone to pick with you. I sat through Taylor Swift's uninspired opening act while she half-sung/half-yodeled at a guy on a spinning bullseye. It was complete with an insulting and transparent Alice in Wonderland costume ripoff (which I'm not getting, by the way... is s ... More >>

Jazz Fest Scores With Willie, John Mayer, Frank Ocean, Fleetwood Mac, Patti Smith, etc.

Well, I never thought that I would have John Mayer and Patti Smith together in the same headline with Willie Nelson and Frank Ocean, but that's why I kinda love New Orleans Jazz Fest 2013, whose lineup was released earlier this morning. Rewind: A Texican in New Orleans: Lessons Learned from Jazz F ... More >>

Your 2013 Music Festival Outlook (Texas Edition)

I don't know about you, but I am not totally in love with winter weather. Yes, it affords you the ability to wear beanies and cool fingerless gloves and dress like a hoodlum, but it's the heat that I love the most. That's why I love thinking about music festivals, because that's where we all get t ... More >>

A Texican In New Orleans: Lessons Learned From Jazz Fest

This past weekend was the last for this year's edition of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which started way back on April 27. The festival runs over two weekends, usually Thursday through Sunday. Obviously since it is a uniquely Nawlins institution going back to 1970, it's not a festival t ... More >>

A Dream Austin City Limits Weekend For Houston

Craig HlavatyColdplay at The Woodlands, July 2009​Summer is creeping in, which means the fall concert calendars are filling up fast, and we should know which Austin City Limits Music Festival artists will book side dates in our area sooner rather than later. The standard disclaimer: Rocks Off ... More >>

Stevie Wonder, Coldplay, And Kanye West Lead ACL 2011 Lineup

Marc BrubakerGoin' back to Zilker: Arcade Fire at The Woodlands, May 4​Moments ago, the Austin City Limits Music Festival announced its lineup for the 10th-anniversary weekend, scheduled for Sept. 16-18 in Zilker Park. Top names include Stevie Wonder, Coldplay, Kanye West, and Bright Eyes. P ... More >>

Arcade Fire On For ACL; Kanye Expected In Midnight Lineup

​Tonight at midnight, the folks at C3 Presents who book the Austin City Limits Music Festival are expected to drop the lineup in full onto the festival's official Web site. And like, duh, Rocks Off will of course be up and about to post it to the blog once it goes live. You are more than welco ... More >>

A Fistful of Soul

One righteous vintage vinyl party.

Sane - and Afraid

The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C., leaves our correspondent hoping for true activism from the alleged silent majority.

The Rally To Restore Sanity: Did It Succeed?

Preaching to the choir?​What's the point?It was a question I asked myself more than once in the last month: while I was booking the hotel room, then sitting on the flight from Houston to Washington, DC, and finally walking with tens of thousands of others down Pennsylvania Avenue to attend the Ral ... More >>

Mavis Staples Will Take You There - Conroe - Friday Night

​Apparently there are still plenty of tickets for Mavis Staples in Conroe Friday night. Part of the Sounds of Texas Music Series at the Crighton Theater, the show also includes gospel-rocker Mike Farris. Staples, a recent Best Contemporary Blues Grammy nominee for her Live: Hope At The Hideout, is ... More >>

No Turkeys Allowed

Our annual holiday shopping guide to recent local releases

Hill Country Hoodoo

No record deal, no recordings — no problem for the South Memphis String Band.

iFest: This Is Our Party

Better music than ACL and fewer hippies

Young Mammals Chow Down on First LP Carrots

Dynamically Yours

iFest Unveils Complete Lineup

Photos courtesy of iFest BeogaSince we're already playing hangman today, here's another riddle: What do America's finest genre-hopping Latino band, Houston's best Guinness-chugging rockers, a daughter of the nation's premiere gospel family, a perennially unsung honky-tonker who sounds like th ... More >>

A Musical Guide to Navigating the Economic Crisis

Down Payment Blues

Patty Griffin and Jenny Lewis: Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls of Fire

RIP, Rory Miggins

Mavis Staples

The Solid Blues show is solid gold

Leela James, with Kem

Friday, March 17, Verizon Wireless Theater, 520 Texas, 713-230-1666

The Chocolate Bayou Festival, Featuring Angie Stone

Saturday, September 3, and Sunday, September 4, at Sunnyside Park, 3502 Bellfort. Step Rideau, Sherman Robertson, Rick Marcel, Kyle Turner, Bridgette Taylor, Michael Ward, Werner Richard, Rayvon Foster, Caliente and Ernest Walkerd are also on the bill.

Americana Pie

Grab a slice of 2004's best roots music while it's still hot

Americana Pie

Grab a slice of 2004's best roots music while it's still hot

Playbill

Los Lobos

The Ride (Hollywood/Mammoth)

Higher Ground

The Blind Boys of Alabama can bring church to the people if not the people to church

Rotation

Rotation