Ry Cooder

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 >>

The Rocks Off 100: Kimberly McCarver, Missouri City's Meadowlark

Welcome to the Rocks Off 100, our portrait gallery of the most compelling profiles and personalities in the far-flung Houston music community -- a lot more than just musicians, but of course they're in there too. See the entire Rocks Off 100 at this link. Who? Sometimes a hunch will pay off. Kimber ... More >>

Coming Next Week: The Texas 30

One day this summer, it must have been, a certain Mr. Craig Hlavaty brought a book he had found at a Houston-area thrift shop called (the) Genuine Texas Handbook into the office. This book is about everything you ever loved about Texas in the early '80s condensed into 200-something pages -- big hair ... More >>

Gen. Petraeus: A Possible Glimpse at the Spymaster's iPod

Nuge the Stooge knows what CIA director needed. Enough already about Gen. David Petraeus and his private harem ... err, his embedded biographer with the flashy wardrobe and bad vision. Petraeus is a patriot, a winner of wars, a brilliant strategerizer, a man dedicated to little beyond his own caree ... More >>

Shemekia Copeland: Never Count Out the Blues

She's never lived here, but Shemekia Copeland is Houston blues royalty all the same. Her late father Johnny Clyde Copeland was one of the guitar princes of the Third Ward scene from the '50s to the mid-'70s, lighting up clubs like Shady's Playhouse alongside Albert Collins, Joe "Guitar" Hughes, John ... More >>

The Great Taj Mahal, Still Whistlin' the Blues

It's been a long time so it's hard to remember exactly, but some time in the winter of 1970-71, Taj Mahal played the Houston Music Hall. Between 1968 and 1971, he had put out five albums and become a staple of the hippie music scene. Yet with his soulful reinterpretations, permutations and homages ... More >>

Grammy Sham: Americana Artist Gets Nominated Through the Web

The subtle front page of Chorney's website.​As if the Grammys didn't have enough credibility issues, NARAS, the organization that controls the process, has left a loophole large enough for a complete unknown to manipulate her way onto the final ballot in the Americana category. The news broke ... More >>

Top 10 Texas Movie Soundtracks

​This weekend, as the rest of the world catches Harry Potter mania for (perhaps) the final time, Houston gets a serious dose of Urban Cowboy nostalgia. Theater Under the Stars' production of the Tony-nominated 2003 musical - which The New York Times called "a conclusive demonstration that it's ... More >>

Vive La France: 14 French Lessons From English Pop Songs

Shutterstock/faqs.org​Happy Bastille Day, everybody. Today France celebrates the day in 1789 when an angry mob stormed the eponymous (our new favorite word) prison in central Paris, freed all seven prisoners - they were really after the guns and ammunition, Clash-style - and touched off the Fr ... More >>

Last Night: Lyle Lovett & John Hiatt At The Grand

Photos by Jason Wolter​Lyle Lovett & John Hiatt The Grand 1894 Opera House, Galveston June 27, 2011 Coming soon to an Improv near you: The comedic stylings of Lyle & Hiatt! Almost sounds like one of those old-time yukster duos, doesn't it? It certainly played out like that Monday night in Th ... More >>

Top 5 Off-The-Wall Musical Instruments In Regular Use

John Cage is playing a cactus. Your argument is irrelevant.​ Last year at Free Press Summer Fest, we saw Stars haul out this little thingy that was basically a tiny keyboard with a mouthpiece you could blow into. It was the first time we'd ever seen a melodica played live. Since then, Rocks O ... More >>

Captain Beefheart, Houston Misses You

"An electric guitar attracts Beelzebub..." ​Today's comment of the day comes to us from Friday afternoon's announcement that artist and avant-garde rocker Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet, had passed away in Southern California at age 69. radiocitizen: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo ... More >>

The Ballad Of Beans Barton, Captain Beefheart And Stomach Pump Ruland

​Lonesome, Onry and Mean likes us some Beans Barton and the Bi-Peds. Loves us some. No act in town comes close to the joyous pandemonium of one of the Bi-Peds' performance-art sets at Dan Electro's Guitar Bar. Belly dancers, children, hippies, hula-hoopers, and other weirdos - in both the band ... More >>

Buena Vista Social Club Screens At Domy Tonight

Greetings from Florida. By the time you read this, Hollywood Shuffle will be well entrenched in the Sunshine State on our annual pilgrimage to visit family, douse ourselves in cuba libres and eat our body weight in Cuban pulled-pork sandwiched and plantains. It's long been a dream of HWS's to visit ... More >>

Screen Plays

Various Artists: Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm

Album of the Week: Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm

As much as he deserves one - make that several - Doug Sahm is a tricky subject for a tribute album. The late San Antonio native known as "Sir Doug" was a true musical polymath, a master of just about every form of post-WWII popular music, both the big ones - country, blues, rock ... More >>

SXSW 09 Will Be a Groover's Paradise

A few weeks ago, Rocks Off could barely contain his enthusaism when he opened the mail - a momentous enough occasion in itself - and found an advance of Vanguard Records' Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm. He put it on as soon as he got home (his piddly office CD player is just not gr ... More >>

Doug Sahm Tribute Album Due March 24

Vanguard Records (Billy Bob Thornton & the Boxmasters, Kim Richey, the Watson Twins) announced today it will release Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm, a 14-song disc honoring the late musican known as Sir Doug, March 24. Artists include Delbert McClinton, Los Lobos, Alejandro Escovedo, Da ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Miss Leslie Takes Top Honors in Freeform Americana Radio Awards

Miss Leslie and Her Juke-Jointers, "Yes Ma'am" Houston's own Miss Leslie Sloan of Miss Leslie and Her Jukejointers was tipped for a slew of honors in the most recent Best of 2008 voting by FAR (Freeform Americana Radio) members. She was voted Female Artist of the Year over Eliza Gilkyson and C ... More >>

Chatter's Ever-So-HandyAC/DCtionary

Rock Around the Clock

Flaco Jimenez

America Cannes

Art imitates life as U.S. directors command this year's fest, with only China rivaling for celluloid domination.

Classic Cuban CDs

Reissues of six classic Cuban CDs

New Angels in Rock Heaven

Scoring the grim reaper's 2004 harvest

Reconsider Him

At the end, Warren Zevon's past is finally unearthed

Ibrahim Ferrer

Buenos Hermanos (World Circuit/Nonesuch)

Low Fidel-ity

There's more than just the Gulf of Mexico between musicians in Cuba and those from Cuba

Minibill

Flaco Jimenez

Racket

"The Big E" isn't your typical DJ

Emerald Bayou

The Irish take center stage at the 2001 Houston International Fest

The Tony Furtado Band

It's not just a jam band

Rotation

Ladies Luck

Five Barenaked Canadians conquer a fickle America with patience

PatiencePays

Decades down the line, Sherman Robertson has finally made an album he likes

The Wizard of Weird

After two decades of oddity, Beans Barton still has a lock on the inexplicable

Odd Man Out

Van Dyke Parks, the invisible legend of L.A. music, finally goes live

Rotation

Keeping His Cool

Nick the Knife's regained his edge, and the world's a better place for it

Rotation

Rotations

Celting Point

Plus: Less Donna McK., archiving Texas folk music, and Iggy's eats Jelly

Hiatt Regency

Spend a few stolen moments in the grand hotel of songwriters -- a perfectly good performer lives there too. Plus: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.