Nashville

SXSW's 2013 Panels: EDM, Nashville, and Tony Bennett's Headphones

Since 2010 or so, while I am at SXSW in Austin I have started to make the panels during the day a priority for my time at the conference. The trick is waking up by 10 a.m. most days. They are usually filled with industry celebs I can geek out on (like singer-songwriter Paul Williams) and almost al ... More >>

Civil Twilight

Notes on Nashville: Drama and Deceit In TV's Music City

I barely watch episodic TV, let alone write about it, but ABC's Nashville made the idea irresistible. A 9 p.m. network drama set in the glamorous and backstabbing world of country music, amid the landmarks and tourist traps of the modern-day "Athens of the South," it offers sudsy tension and hopeful ... More >>

Rockabilly Filly Rosie Flores Slings a Working Girl's Guitar

Rosie Flores, known these days affectionately by many as the Rockabilly Filly, has had several careers: Punk rocker, cowpunk alt-country badass, potential country star, rock and roller, and rockabilly queen. Born in San Antonio, she spent her teen years in San Diego before striking out to find a car ... More >>

Houston Scores Big-Time In Latest Edition Of Encyclopedia Of Country Music: Part 6

Mickey Newbury paved the road from Houston to Nashville for a Hells Angels-ish, hard-drinking, hard-drugging gaggle of songwriters who, like Newbury, would go on to make a serious mark on Music City. Ornery, belligerent, cocky, literary, opinionated, and super-talented, this group of Houston transp ... More >>

Houston Scores Big-Time In Latest Edition Of Encyclopedia Of Country Music: Part 5

While Houston played a huge part in the early history of country music, by the end of the 1950s a new breed of artist was coming on the scene. Western Swing, for all purposes, was a relic, and although honky-tonk was still a force in the charts and on radio, its share of the pie was waning. The arr ... More >>

Pollen Is Coming On Strong

Guess what? If you're not sneezing, battling a runny nose or sore throat, then count yourself lucky. For everyone else, high levels of pollen are kicking their ass. The drought, an early spring: a number of factors are combining to make it a bad pollen season. It could be worse: You could be in Te ... More >>

Guy Clark To Play Galveston's Old Quarter In May

Houston boys gone to Viet Nashville​ Guy Clark, the quintessential Texas singer-songwriter, has just announced a one-off gig at Galveston's historic Old Quarter Acoustic Café for May 15. According to club owner Wrecks Bell, he had been negotiating to get Clark to Galveston for some time, but ... More >>

Elizabeth Cook

Blind Boys of Alabama

The Gourds on Italian Sandwiches, Jaded Nashville and Life in a Van

Photo courtesy Miller Outdoor Theater​The Gourds, Austin's loosest and most literate roots band, rolls into Dan Electro's Guitar Bar tonight. The occasion is the release of the band's latest album, Old Mad Joy. Produced by Bob Dylan/Levon Helm sideman Larry Campbell, the album has been getting ... More >>

Peter Cooper: Nashville Scholar, Fake Hillbilly Hater

Eric Brace (left) and Peter Cooper​The senior music writer and columnist for Nashville daily The Tennesseean and a professor of country music history at Vanderbilt University, Peter Cooper also steps out as a performing songwriter when his schedule permits. He rolls into town Friday night at M ... More >>

Saturday Night: Robert Ellis Wins Nashville's Heart

Photos by Marc Brubaker​Robert Ellis & the Boys, Those Darlins, Old 97's Mercy Lounge, Nashville July 9, 2011 "It takes a lot of balls to do that in this town, but y'all pulled it off," a man in the second row yelled towards the stage amidst a wave of applause. Robert Ellis and his Boys had ... More >>

Sheet Rocker

Rod Picott's Welding Burns is bursting with hard-bitten blue-collar songs.

Midnight Flyer

Amber Digby, honky-tonk traditionalist, is a busy woman.

Happened in a Honky-Tonk

Jon Wolfe returns from Nashville.

Flaming Lips Still On For Summerfest... For Now

Neuski via flickr.com​ The Grand Ole Opry, which was supposed to celebrate its 85th birthday party May 25, is currently underwater, like most of Nashville (above). Nashville Public Radio is reporting that the Cumberland River crested at a whopping 52 feet. When does hurricane season start aga ... More >>

Cashville Latino Anthem Makes a Cultural Statement; Dat Boi T Has A "Cracc Flow"

Whether they know it or not, the recently released "Cashville Latino Anthem" music video by the Seis Uno Cinco, ten Latino hip-hop artists out of Nashville (yeah, we said Nashville), could make a bigger statement outside the 615 area code, than the self-proclaimed impact of a "movement that is boun ... More >>

Your Sex Is On Tour: Kings Of Leon Announce Second Houston Date In A Year

Nashville alt-rock pin-ups the Kings of Leon are hitting Houston again for the second time in a year, with a newly announced date at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion September 22. The band has been on a tear since the release of 2008's Only by the Night, shedding their scruffy, twangy indie imag ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Vince Gill Confirms for Conroe's Crighton Theater

Lise Liddell​ Lonesome Onry and Mean has been holding his breath for a few days, keeping a secret. We've been waiting on one last signature on the contracts before announcing one of the biggest shows ever at Conroe's Sounds of Texas music series. But Wednesday night we got an email from Mark Germi ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: John Conquest Turns Both Barrels on Country-Music Poll

People have often referred to Lonesome, Onry and Mean as a curmudgeon (look it up), as a guy with a permanent hangover, bad temper and well... you get the idea. But compared to Austin-based 3rd Coast Music publisher (and main writer) John Conquest, LOM is a pussy cat, a cookie and a warm glass of m ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: "Nashville Phantom" Goes Off on the Scene's Country Music Poll

​Another 30-plus-year vet of Viet Nashville got his bowels in an uproar about the Nashville Scene's country music poll. In a long email to Lonesome Onry and Mean, this denizen of the songwriting trenches and the recording alleys who has had songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and other g ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Nashville Veteran Has A Few Issues With Paper's Country Music Poll

Some people are downright up in arms about the Nashville Scene's Best of Country Music poll. One of LOM's correspondents who went ballistic is a longtime Nashville musician and producer. To say he thinks the whole argument that Brad Paisley and Miranda Lambert deserve to be winners because they are ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Nashville Royalty Waylon Payne Plays Mucky Duck Thursday

The son of music royalty - his father is Willie Nelson guitarist Jody Payne, his mother was Nashville hitmaker Sammi Smith of "Help Me Make It Through the Night" fame - Waylon Payne is one of the best of the new breed of Nashville's young writers in Nashville. So good, in fact, he's nominated for a ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: That Sucking Sound You Hear? It's KILT's Upcoming "Ten Man Jam"

What a something-for-everyone mish-mash local radio station KILT's annual "Ten Man Jam," its tenth, is this year. For one thing, the two performers that Lonesome, Onry and Mean would most like to see are women: Miranda Lambert and young Nashville phenom Michelle Branch. KILT might want to consider ... More >>

The Daily Beast: Houston -- You Are "Mildly Retarded"

​The Daily Beast has ranked the IQ of each of America's 55 metro areas with populations over a million. Here is how they arrived at the concept of a municipal IQ.They measured how many residents had bachelor's and graduate degrees, nonfiction book sales, the ration of institutions of higher educ ... 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 >>

Aftermath: Mark Germino at Heritage Place, Conroe

Photos by Michael Pittman After an extended hiatus from gigs with a band, it didn't take veteran Nashville songwriter Mark Germino long to knock the rust off. A larger than usual crowd packed Conroe's open-air Heritage Place THursday night to hear Germino, and he didn't disappoint from the opening s ... More >>

Mail Call: Post-AC/DC Edition

AC/DC may be gone (sniff), although the ringing in several of Rocks Off's friends' ears (and his own) lingers on, but the mail goes on... Waylon Jennings & the .357s (Littlefield/Nashville, R.I.P.), Waylon Forever (by request): "'I'd been playing my dad the music I was inspired by at the tim ... More >>

Just How Texan are Hayes Carll and Miranda Lambert?

Lonesome, Onry and Mean: The Death of Honky-Tonk? (Part 1)

Lelia Rodgers's Matagorda Island Discs

The SteelDrivers: The SteelDrivers

David Olney

Nashville lifer is nobody's dummy

Mark Germino

Looking for a hit

Mike Stinson, Nashville and an eight-minute bottle of wine

Starry Lullabye

Ailing Houston-area native David Schnaufer has taken the Appalachian dulcimer to the mountaintop

Down-Home Delights

Ten of the best from Nashville and elsewhere

Playbill

Bowling for Bands

Pinmonkey scores a strike against Nashville's solo-singer system

Prodigal Hijos

Nashville was no place for Los Lonely Boys, the future of Texas roots rock

Various Artists

Sharp Dressed Men: A Tribute to ZZ Top (RCA)

Hick Hop

Trent Summar puts the booze and bad attitude back in country music

Behind the Music (City)

Is she rock? Is she soul? Jonell Mosser keeps 'em guessing

Fill 'Er Up

Ten-gallon hats and ten-gallon gas tanks come to mind when BR5-49 plays

Under(ground) Achievers

Can Nashville's creative underbelly save country from Music Row?

Last of the Hard-core Troubadours

Static

Beat It, Bud

... And don't let the door hit you on the way out

Heavenly Fire

Jason and the Scorchers reunite, and get hot in the process