Subject: Merle Haggard

• Playbill: Two High String Band

  February 2, 2007

• Off and Running

  July 2, 2007

• Snoop Dogg Goes Country, Y’all

  April 25, 2008

• Re-Scattering Willie Nelson's Stardust, 30 Years Later

  July 5, 2008

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: John Doe & the Sadies' Country Club

  Lonesome, Onry and Mean likes him some country music done right, so it was with considerable delight that we listened to Country Club by X bassist/singer John Doe and the Sadies. An L.A. rocker and a Canadian alt-country outfit seem like unlikely musical bedfellows, but Country Club works from the first note of the Carl Belew/W. S. Stevenson classic made famous by Patsy Cline, "Stop the World and Let Me Off." Doe's bruised-and-damaged-man vocals work perfectly with Roger Miller's tearjerker "Hus

  June 1, 2009

• Townes Van Zandt

  Texas Rain: The Texas Hill Country Recordings and The Best of Townes Van Zandt (Tomato)

  May 30, 2002

• The Meat Purveyors

  Pain By Numbers (Bloodshot)

  July 22, 2004

• Merle Haggard

  June 4, 2009

• Static

  January 11, 1996

• Rotation

  January 11, 1996

• Master of the Universe

  February 29, 1996

• Hats Off

  August 14, 1997

• Rotation

  January 15, 1998

• Real Deal

  June 18, 1998

• Night & Day

  July 30, 1998

• Tonight: Blacktop Gypsy at the Firehouse Saloon

  Not many acts on MySpace list as their influences Merle Haggard and Fleetwood Mac. Or George Jones and Sheryl Crow. But Dallas outfit Blacktop Gypsy does, and it doesn't take many listens to their music to get the connections. Certainly the template is country but with three women in the mix there's lots of room to paint outside the lines of traditional country. And while there's no testosterone, that doesn't mean there's no muscle.

  March 20, 2009

• Best Place to Meet Single Men

  September 21, 2000

• Kelly Hansen Joins "Hot Blooded" Rockers Foreigner

  Head games

  April 2, 2009

• Santa Baby

  What a few musicians want under their trees this year

  December 25, 2008

• Racket

  Cedric Turner ventures into an abyss far deeper than ones traveled by most bluesmen

  October 4, 2001

• Vinyl Ranch’s tribute to Urban Cowboy

  Leon’s monthly country-music installment pays tribute to classic country cinema

  June 5, 2008

• Notable tour sponsorships in U.S. history

  May 22, 2008

• Texas Sapphires

  November 29, 2007

• Nothing Happening Here: Protest Music, Then and Now

  October 18, 2007

• Meat Puppets, Rise to Your Knees

  CD Review

  October 4, 2007

• Gene Watson, In a Perfect World

  CD Review

  September 27, 2007

• KAY'S LOUNGE

  Three Wise Men

  August 2, 2007

• Merle the Pearl

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

  June 28, 2007

• Mercy Eventually

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

  February 2, 2006

• Redneck Renaissance

  Gretchen Wilson’s return to town makes us wonder, What’s really behind all these songs about Wal-Mart, cheap beer and NASCAR?

  November 3, 2005

• Heybale

  Saturday, October 15, at the Continental Club, 3700 Main, 713-529-9899.

  October 13, 2005

• David Allan Coe

  Friday, September 2, at Texas Tumbleweeds, 13101 Kuykendahl, 281-872-7829.

  September 1, 2005

• He's Gone Country

  The Nightfly tries out as the next Bocephus at Sam Houston Race Park

  February 17, 2005

• Rotation

  February 10, 2005

• Radio Daze

  February 10, 2005

• Owed to Billy Joe

  Today all the best poets are singers. That's why a singer should be Texas's next poet laureate.

  December 30, 2004

• Midtown Honky-tonkin'

  Trains and the vintage sounds of the Swank Countrypolitans bring a time warp to the Continental Club

  January 15, 2004

• Best Radio Station

  Star 790

  September 25, 2003

• This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

  July 10, 2003

• Chicago Oasis

  T.K. Bitterman's Sex with an Alligator

  December 26, 2002

• Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash

  Walk Alone (Ultimatum Music)

  March 22, 2001

• Picking Away at History

  Singer-songwriter Tom Russell explores his past to understand his present

  November 30, 2000

• Merle Haggard

  If I Could Only Fly (Anti/Epitaph)

  November 9, 2000

• Mama Tried: A Mother's Day Playlist

  Where would we be without our mothers? Ummm... nowhere. So even though mothers come in all forms, from the highest quality (such as the kind the Gray boys are blessed with) to the absentee variety to the just plain crazy, you've got to at least remember that they're the reason you even exist at all. Here are some selected songs to get you in a proper Mother's Day state of mind, hopefully get those creative juices flowing to make this Sunday as special as you can for the first lady in your life,

  May 8, 2009

• George Strait Week, Part 2: Cajun George

  After Tuesday's look at the shockingly Morrissey-like sentiments of the many George Strait songs where his love interest is either already gone or on her way out the door, Rocks Off thought today we'd take a look at a much happier - and, it should be said, significantly smaller - subcategory of King George's prodigious catalog.​Distinguished by lively fiddle/accordion interplay and an up-tempo two-step or waltz rhythm, Cajun music has been cropping up in country at least since Hank Williams'

  August 5, 2009

• Gary Allan

  October 15, 2009

• Listology: Honky-Tonk Man Mike Stinson Chooses His Favorite Drinking Songs

  Markus Cuff​Honky-tonk man and recent Houston transplant Mike Stinson knows a thing or two about a bottle. Lonesome Onry and Mean asked him to list his all-time favorite drinking songs, many of which you will no doubt hear this evening at Under the Volcano. "So many classic drinking songs, I could put together a box set in a hurry," Stinson says, "but here are a few of my faves." 1. Webb Pierce, "There Stands The Glass" "The first song I sang at my very first show. So grateful that no tape exi

  October 14, 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

• Artist of the Week: Country Store Buffalo on Breast Implants, Beer-Drinking Bison and That Old Devil Cocaine

  Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com.​ You are in the enviable position of someone about to witness history. Get ready for it. To help with the mood, why don't you go ahead and pretend like there are horns blaring in the background and somebody just released a f

  November 11, 2009

• Honky-Tonk Revival

  November 19, 2009