Subject: The Gourds

• Last Night: The Gourds at Warehouse Live

  August 13, 2007

• Speaking of Umbrellas...It's Bumbershoot Time

  August 31, 2007

• If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On

  May 16, 2008

• Aftermath: Shinyribs at Under the Volcano

  June 26, 2008

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: The Gourds, Part 1

  LOM recently conducted a wide-ranging interview with Kevin Russell of the Gourds. The Austin roots-rockers - for lack of a better term - released their 9th studio album, Haymaker! (Yep Roc), today, and play a Cactus Music in-store January 9 and later that night at the Continental Club. The Gourds will be featured in the January 8 - i.e. tomorrow's - print edition of the Press, but Russell is much too verbose and erudite to be confined to a 1,0000-word f

  January 6, 2009

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: The Gourds, Part 2

  Andy Goodwin [Note: Part 1 of this interview is here.] Lonesome Onry and Mean: You guys have been on several labels, have probably heard all the too-good-to-be-true come-ons, been to the meetings with label radio gurus and all. How do you look at the label system and the way things are done in the business today? Kevin Russell: The Gourds still operate from the position that radio should be free-form directed by DJs who are well-versed in the history of the music they play, and the label shou

  January 7, 2009

• Lonesome Onry and Mean: The Gourds, Part 3

  [Note: This is the final installment of Lonesome Onry and Mean's interview with the Gourds' Kevin Russell. Don't miss Part 1 and Part 2.] John Carrico Lonesome Onry and Mean: To a lot of critics, "Steeple Full of Swallows" on Heavy Ornamentals was singled out as a new quieter, serious sound for the band, almost like they were saying it didn't sound like a Gourds song. Did that carry over consciously as you put the new album together, or was that just something that happened and went? Kevin R

  January 8, 2009

• The Country Soul of R. Kelly's "Feelin' on Yo Booty"

  The Gourds didn't invent the idea of a ragtag roots-rock band spicing up its set with hip-hop and R&B covers, but thanks to their cover of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" (endorsed by the Doggfather himself), everybody probably thinks they did. But Gourds co-frontman Kevin Russell, playing as solo alter ego Shinyribs, managed to outdo even "Gin and Juice" Wednesday night at the Volcano. Although his excellent hour-plus set included other standouts like "Shreveport" from the Gour

  January 16, 2009

• 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, Dave Alvin, Terry Allen, Charlie Sexton and former Afghan Whigs lead singer Greg Dulli. Sahm's two sons, Shandon and Shawn, are also featured on Keep Your Soul. Shandon, who now fronts his own heav

  January 21, 2009

• In Gourds' Country

  October 24, 1996

• Can't Get It Out of My Head: "New Madrid"

  Wilco, "New Madrid," live at the Fox Theater, Boulder, Colorado, May 1995 Rocks Off is never really not on an Uncle Tupelo kick, but it sure came flooding back after he heard "New Madrid" on Fred Imus' Saturday-morning Trailer Park Bash satellite-radio show last weekend. Even among such future alt-country touchstones as "Acuff/Rose," "The Long Cut" and killer Doug Sahm duet "Give Back the Key to My Heart," "New Madrid" has always been Rocks Off favorite song on the late St. Louis band's

  February 11, 2009

• Weird Ways

  September 3, 1998

• Texas Music 1998: The Year That Wasn't

  December 31, 1998

• Hot Country Punksters

  February 4, 1999

• 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 and roll - as well as more regionally specific genres like conjunto, Norteno, Cajun and swamp pop. More often than not, Sahm would roll several of the aforementioned styles into one son

  April 7, 2009

• Tonight: The Magpies at the Continental Club

  [A review from the Magpies' January Continental show is here.] Chris GrayMy son, a guitar plunker raised on huge doses of Rockpile and Joe Ely, tipped me to the Magpies. He saw them at Hayes Carll's Stingaree Festival about a year ago and pronounced them the hardest-rocking band of the whole soiree. Tooling over to MySpace, it only took a brief introduction to the band's work to convince me that he might be onto something. Not only does the band rock, it has smart lyrics and, with keybo

  April 14, 2009

• Bam, It's Kam!

  March 12, 2009

• Moments the Grammy Awards Would Rather Forget

  February 5, 2009

• Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. in Song

  January 15, 2009

• The Gourds land a real Haymaker!

  January 8, 2009

• The Magpies

  January 1, 2009

• Texas Music on Sirius/XM's Outlaw Country

  December 4, 2008

• Big Smith

  December 13, 2007

• Weary Boys

  August 23, 2007

• Local Motion

  August 16, 2007

• The Gourds

  concert preview

  August 9, 2007

• No Phishing

  July 27, 2006

• Hello, Houston!

  April 23, 2009

• The Gourds

  The Gourds perform Saturday, December 30, at the Continental Club, 3700 Main, 713-529-9899.

  December 28, 2006

• The Gourds, with Last Train Home

  Saturday, February 4, at the Continental Club, 3700 Main, 713-529-9666.

  February 2, 2006

• The Gourds, with the Sidehill Gougers

  Thursday, August 4, at Heritage Place Amphitheatre, 500 Collins Street in Conroe, 936-525-4782. Free.

  August 4, 2005

• Rotation

  January 20, 2005

• Playbill

  January 13, 2005

• Playbill

  December 30, 2004

• Playbill

  October 7, 2004

• Bash-ing the Bigwigs

  Come Super Bowl week, you can still party downtown, even if you're not very important

  January 22, 2004

• Drive-By Truckers

  Decoration Day (New West)

  September 18, 2003

• This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

  September 4, 2003

• Reckless Kelly

  Saturday, July 12

  July 10, 2003

• Dancers and Daredevils

  April 24, 2003

• This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

  February 27, 2003

• Barnyard Boogie

  Former Houstonian Kev Russell talks about Snoop Dogg and Cow Fish Fowl or Pig

  August 29, 2002

• Racket

  In his first 24 years of life, Brad Turcotte has already become a music-business veteran

  September 6, 2001

• North and South

  Tranquil Canada flavors San Antonian Doug Sahm's rustic music

  July 22, 1999

• State of Shock

  July 2, 2009

• A Musical Guide to Post-Secession Texas: "New Texas"

  In the third in our continuing series on the music of the five states of Texas, we examine the fictional state of New Texas, comprising Austin and the Hill Country. See Part 1 here and Part 2 here. New Texas Capital: Austin Patron Saint: Willie Nelson ​Lesser Icons: Roky Erickson/Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Alejandro Escovedo, Jon Dee Graham, True Believers, Freddy Fender, Nanci Griffith, Marcia Ball, Big Boys/Randall "Biscuit" Turner, Fas

  August 13, 2009

• A Musical Guide to Post-Secession Texas: Houston and "Brazoria"

  The final installment of our Five States of Texas project brings it all back home, to the new state of Brazoria, encompassing all of Southeast Texas from the Brazos Valley to Sabine Pass. ​Patron Saint: Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. A master of rock and roll, country, Cajun/Creole, blues and jazz, no one area musician sounded more like Southeast Texas. That he spent his life moving all over the area, on both sides of the Sabine, only serves as evidence in favor of one of our geographical hypothe

  August 18, 2009

• Upstairs, Downstairs: Drive-By Truckers, "The Living Bubba" and the Steep Price of Radioactive Ice Water

  ​After many, many years, Rocks Off is beginning to realize that it's possible to have a worthwhile musical experience nowhere near a stage. Ironically, the band responsible is Drive-By Truckers, whom we've seen live more often than probably any other save Wilco, Rev. Horton Heat and a handful of old Austin favorites like the Gourds, Grand Champeen and Lil Cap'n Travis. Our history with the Truckers goes back at least a decade, when they used to blow in from Athens, Georgia, and wreck Austin's

  August 21, 2009

• The Living Bubba

  August 27, 2009

• Ghosts of Washington Avenue

  September 10, 2009