William Michael Smith

Hayes Carll Playing Cactus Music Next Thursday, Reissuing 2002's Flowers and Liquor

While we wait for his follow-up to 2011's damned fabulous KMAG YOYO, Cactus Music has announced that Hayes Carll will be playing in-store on Thursday, December 13 at 5:30 p.m. That's next Thursday, you turkeys. Carll, one of the most vocal Houston Texans fans on Sunday afternoons on Twitter, is ... More >>

The Best Rockabilly Beauties From Rock Baby Rock It

See even more pinup queens in our Rock Baby Rock It slideshow. As William Michael Smith put it in his review, hot the operative word at Saturday's Rock Baby Rock It hot-rod show/musical extravaganza. Ladies were dolled up pin-up style all over the Island off Main, with tall hair, heavy make-up, and ... More >>

Best Of Free Press Summer Fest Day 1: Quintron, Big Freedia, Morris Day, Etc.

See Rocks Off's complete Free Press Summer Fest coverage. Be sure to also check out our slideshows: the sexy, sweaty Summer Fest crowds and the bands of Summer Fest 2012. Cory Garcia: Stage 7 isn't the most glamorous. Most of your set will be spent playing to the handful of people who came out to y ... More >>

Summer Fest Round Table: What About Next Year?

Assuming we all survive this weekend, and then the supposed Mayan apocalypse, Free Press Summer Fest will return to Eleanor Tinsley Park in June 2013. Pegstar's Jagi Katial and Jason Petzold told the Houston Press this week that they'll start booking next year's acts in about a month, so Rocks Off p ... More >>

Uh-Oh: George Jones Is Sick

It's never really not old, but since we've already been going through it with Levon Helm and the Bee Gees' Robin Gibb (who, gratefully, is at least out of his coma), this isn't good news at all. Saratoga native and Country Music Hall of Famer George Jones, the man who could break the Tin Man's pre-E ... More >>

iFest's Jesse Dayton: "I'm Ready To Throw Down"

The last time Rocks Off caught up with Jesse Dayton, he was up to his eyeballs in alligators with his film project Zombex, working on an album of Kinky Friedman cover songs, and playing Kinky for a bunch of New York art types in Marfa. One of the hustling-est hustlers in show business, Dayton has pl ... More >>

Houston and the Blues

Viva the Houston Blues Scene.

Friday Night: Sideshow Tramps CD Release At Fitzgerald's

Photos by Jason WolterHayes Carll (left) and Craig Kinsey go down the road.​Sideshow Tramps Fitzgerald's September 9, 2011 If Aftermath doesn't have to be at the office first thing in the morning, sometimes we let our personal hygiene slide a little. Some days stretch well into the afternoon ... More >>

The Best Local & Texas Albums Of 2011 (So Far)

​Chris Gray: My pick is a dead heat between a pair of Lost Highway albums by a couple of artists who just happen to be appearing at Summer Fest this weekend, Hayes Carll's KMAG YOYO (& Other American Stories) and Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears' Scandalous. Though he's been one of my favorit ... More >>

Women of Rock

Readers discuss Slutwave genre.

Rocks Off's Favorite Non-2010 Music Of 2010

Editor's Pick: It was probably Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne, same as last year. So how about Nirvana's In Utero, which I dragged out of mothballs when we did our article about Nevermind's anniversary in September. In Utero fried my hair all over again, and then got me thinking about the band's cover of ... More >>

Music's Biggest Disappointments Of 2010

​Editor's Pick: I'm tempted to say myself on this one. I just didn't connect to a lot of music this year. Especially new music, most of which I was either indifferent to or outright loathed. I'm not really the navel-gazing type, though, so I'll just chalk it up to an off year and move on. I do ... More >>

Music's Biggest Surprises Of 2010

Faith Silva​Editor's Pick: The renewed, and continuing, interest of local indie-rockers and hipsters (and people who are a long way from neither) in traditional honky-tonk as played by Robert Ellis & the Boys and as documented by a certain Lonesome Onry and Mean and myself this summer. Encoura ... More >>

Things We Never, Ever Want To Hear Again

​Editor's Pick: Vampire Weekend's "Holiday." Everything I hate about indie rock (cloying, fey, highly irritating) and car commercials (they're car commercials) in about 15 seconds.. Repeated seven or eight times a fucking hour. Marc Brubaker: "Check us out on Twitter!" or anything else Twitt ... More >>

R.I.P.: Notable Passings Of 2010

​Editor's Pick: Dio, man. Neph Basedow: 2010 commenced on a sad note with the passing of Memphis garage rocker Jay Reatard (aka Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr.). I'd seen him play a tiny show at Chicago's Empty Bottle in 2008 and still consider it one of the best shows I've ever seen. It was definitive ... More >>

Houston Music's People Of The Year

Craig Hlavaty​Editor's Pick: Grandfather Child. It was a good year for the blues all around - the Black Keys' well-deserved radio breakthrough with Brothers; Lightnin' Hopkins' long-overdue historical marker in Third Ward - but Lucas Gorham's crew is a razor-sharp reminder that the best blues ... More >>

Willie Nelson's "Green Friday" Leads To Teapot Party

​If you are a cop in Texas - OK, a cop anywhere in the world - when you pull over a tour bus and out pops a gnomish man with grayish-red hair and you smell pot smoke, you smile and nod, get an autograph and go on your way. It's 2010, and we live in a world where Willie Nelson can still get a ... More >>

Rocks Off Thanks You Very, Very, Very Much, Houston

​Rocks Off has tunnel vision. If something's not right in front of us, we're apt not to notice. Therefore, we were pleasantly surprised to open this week's print edition of the Press and discover we are the readers' 2010 choice for Best Music Blog. We are humbled and flattered, especially sin ... More >>

The Rolling Stones At Hofheinz Pavilion In 1972, Firsthand

Ed. Note: Rocks Off's own Lonesome Onry and Mean himself, William Michael Smith, attended the Rolling Stones concert at Hofheinz Pavilion in June 1972 that was filmed for the movie Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones. Since the movie screens at 7:30 p.m. tonight at several Houston-area theaters ... More >>

Riding The Musical Wave At Saturday's HPMAs

The American Heist at Walter's on WashingtonJim Bricker​Saturday didn't start out very promising: Almost as soon as Rocks Off arrived at the intersection of Washington and Silver, where the Bud Light main stage was set up, the sky darkened, then drizzled, then began pouring rain. The downpour ... More >>

Live from the Houston Press Music Awards Showcase

GroovehouseSatin Hooks at Sugarcane​We're hanging out all day on Washington Avenue watching some of the best bands in Houston perform at the Houston Press Music Awards Showcase. We'll be checking into Rocks Off periodically to keep you up to date as well. You can also follow us on Twitter at @ ... More >>

9 Places We'd Send The New York Times

Mark C. AustinJandek (right) and trio at Rudyard's... who says we're not hip?​ As we may have mentioned, Rocks Off was none too pleased when we read The New York Times' most recent article on Houston in this past Sunday's travel section and found exactly zero mentions of anything music-related. Th ... More >>

Happy Anniversary Texas Music Magazine, or "Austin and (Maybe) Everything After"

​Towards the end of last week, Rocks Off got the latest issue of Texas Music magazine in the mail, which just happens to mark the quarterly periodical's tenth anniversary. Naturally, as just about every publication does when it reaches such an august milestone - no mean feat for a magazine in this ... More >>

2009 Concert Rewind, July: Beyonce, Coldplay, Aerosmith/ZZ Top, Judas Priest, Rod Stewart... and the Trae Day Gunplay

Craig Hlavaty​ Wooden Birds, Other Lives, Walter's on Washington, July 2: "This is Andrew Kenny's latest project away from American Analog Set. That band is currently on hold while Kenny and the rest of the group go off to pollinate elsewhere. The Birds don't fall far from the AmAnSet tree at all, ... More >>

2009 Concert Rewind, May: No Doubt, Dave Matthews, Fleetwood Mac, Steve Earle, Fischerspooner, Bob Log and, Um, BuzzFest

Craig Hlavaty​Dave Matthews Band, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, May 1: "It's hard to label what exactly they do, but it can't be called 'jam.' As limitless and expansive the bands who get stuck in that genre may be, folks like String Cheese Incident, O.A.R. and Dispatch cannot hold a flickering ... More >>

Could Alternative Country Work at the Rodeo?

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Macon Greyson Puts the Moves on The Wrestler

The Press has touted Dallas rock band Macon Greyson numerous times. Music Editor Chris Gray had its 20th Century Accidents as one of his top albums of 2007. National mags like No Depression, Paste and Amplifier have all raved about the band while our sister paper in Dallas, the Observer, ... More >>

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 th ... More >>

Aftermath: The Magpies and Sideshow Tramps at the Continental Club

Photos by Chris Gray It didn't look good at the beginning. A few minutes after 9 p.m. Wednesday, the posted start time for visiting Cleveland roots-rockers the Magpies, the "count" at the Continental Club front door was all of 16 paying customers, and the band was nowhere in sight. Two chicken t ... More >>

Tonight: Hayes Carll at Warehouse Live

Woodlands native turned Austin dweller Hayes Carll had an up-and-down year in 2008. His first Lost Highway release, Trouble In Mind, garnered worldwide attention. As he relaxed in the Ozarks with his in-laws before heading to Warehouse Live for tonight's gig with Band of Heathens a ... More >>

Tonight: Thunderado and the Handsomes at the Continental Club

After packaging delays and the usual record-business snafus, we finally got our hands on a copy of the new Thunderado, a project of Paul Beebe and Hunter Perrin. Like Thunderado's live shows, the album features a stripped-down, three-piece power trio; for the purposes of this recording, the third ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Voices of a Grateful Nation

As has been noted in these pages before, my daughter is in the Air Force. I'm not too happy that right now she is on a six-month assignment in Qatar while her two-year-old daughter is in San Antonio. So her active duty certainly colors my opinions regarding the new discs Voices of a Grateful N ... More >>

Tonight: Tejas Brothers at Greenspoint Mall

Tejas Brothers, "She's About a Mover/Give Me Back My Wig" If you're looking for a poster band for the Texican thing, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better one than Fort Worth's Tejas Brothers. Currently gaining momentum due to heavy play on Sirius/XM's Outlaw Country station, the B ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Gwil Owen's Gravy

Gwil Owen Gravy www.gwilowen.com Here's another good record that fell through my cracks this year but deserves to be mentioned. Gwil Owen lives in Nashville and can write to the country form anytime he wants to - or his checking account tells him he needs to. But on his latest project, Gravy ... More >>

Tonight: Thunderado and the Small Sounds at the Continental Club

Thunderado's Paul Beebe (center) and friends at the Continental, Christmas 2007 Thunderado doesn't play around much. This is not to say it's not one helluva band, but guitarist Hunter Perrin has a day job that keeps him busy most of the year: backing legendary Credence Clearwat ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: New Records from Nicholas Tremulis and Felix Cavaliere

Nicholas Tremulis with Robbie Fulks, "Mystery Train" Some killer records have recently fallen through Lonesome Onry and Mean's cracks, either due to a lack of space in the paper or LOM having just found the CDs under the seat of his truck. Yeah, stuff happens. The Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra's Pin ... More >>

Steak Night: Under the Volcano

Houston Astros, Dengue Fever and Felix Mexican Restaurant

Last Night: Gram Rabbit at Super Happy Fun Land

Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart

Tombstone Blues

The Nightfly

Tori Amos

American Doll Posse

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