Willie Nelson

Five Waylon Jennings Albums You Should Own

"Ladies love outlaws," Waylon Jennings once sang, and well knew. Yes they do, and so do plenty of fellers, who may love the late Littlefield-born musician -- who was a losing coin flip away from being on Buddy Holly's doomed plane in February 1959 -- even more. Jennings would have been 76 this past ... More >>

Working With Willie Nelson: Houston's Joe Sample Takes Us In the Studio

Working on this week's cover story on Willie Nelson was a blast -- and a blast from the past. One minute I'd be typing and the next the phone would ring. "Hey, this is Johnny Bush, I hear you're doing a story on Willie. Why didn't you call me?" Stuff like that just kept happening. Willie's world ... More >>

Willie Nelson's Houston Years -- Struggling to Get By in the Murder Capital of the Nation

We usually let our sister blog Rocks Off handle the music business, but in case you don't regularly check them out (for shame!), allow us to point you to a story worth reading. William Michael Smith takes a long and deep look at Willie Nelson's early years struggling to get by in Houston, in this w ... More >>

Goodbye, George?

Strait's "The Cowboy Rides Away" tour closes out this year's rodeo.

10 Musicians Who Should Grow Their Own Kind of Weed

Turns out Flesh N Bone -- yes, of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony fame -- has quite the green thumb, and he's using this super-power to spark up a little buzz. In a move that makes him a viable candidate for my favorite rapper of all time, Mr. Stanley "Flesh N Bone" Howse has developed a new strain of medical ... More >>

Behind "Pancho and Lefty": "That Son of a Bitch Is a Smash"

"Pancho and Lefty" long ago became more than just a song and something closer to a pop-culture touchstone, particularly in Texas and the Southwest. According to Urbanspoon, you can even dine at Pancho & Lefty's Tex-Mex restaurant in St. George, Utah. Unforgivably, it charges separately for chips and ... More >>

The 30 Best Texas Albums

Ranking the 30 best Texas albums of the past 30 years seemed like an impossible task. We did it anyway.

UPDATED: Railroad Revival Tour With Willie, etc. Cancelled; Band of Horses Adds House of Blues Date

UPDATED (3:15 p.m.): According to Live Nation, Band of Horses has added a show October 24 at House of Blues. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at noon at livenation.com. The Railroad Revival tour, featuring Willie Nelson, Band of Horses, Jamey Johnson and actor John C. Reilly's band, has been canceled, a ... More >>

The Rest of the Best: Houston's Top 5 Restaurant Playlists

The only times I notice the music in a restaurant is when it's really bad (Christmas music playing year round at Sichuan Cuisine), really out of place (Nine Inch Nails blaring out of the speakers at now-closed Tony Vallone joint Ciao Bello or Cannibal Corpse washing over the line of patrons at Amy's ... More >>

Best Of Free Press Summer Fest Day 2: Willie Nelson, Avett Bros., Wallpaper, Etc.

More FPSF 2012 Coverage: • Summer Fest line-up reviews on the Rocks Off blog. • Free Press Summer Fest 2012: The Sexy, Sweaty Crowds • Popsicles and Pizza: The Food of Summer Fest • FPSF: The Bands from Saturday • FPSF: The Bands from Sunday Nathan Smith: The best part of Summer Fest Day ... More >>

Oh My, A List!: 7 Tips For Free Press Summer Fest Newbs

This will be the Rocks Off team's fourth Free Press Summer Fest outing since the festival began that summer of 2009. I remember it well: The small stages, the blistering August heat, The Sword, rolling in the grass with Hippie Mike, all of it. The main stage headliners were Of Montreal, Explosions ... More >>

Flaming Lips Return To Summer Fest With Avetts, Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson, Descendents & Many More

Under cover of darkness, Free Press Summer Fest announced its 2012 lineup around 5 a.m. Monday morning. We'll get right to it: The Avett Brothers Snoop Dogg Willie Nelson Afrojack Primus The Flaming Lips (Performing Dark Side of the Moon)

Look Who Showed Up At The Rodeo Cookoff

Country stars Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton both dropped by the World's Championship BBQ Contest at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo Thursday night, reports KHOU. Rocks Off has no idea what they were doing in town, besides both of them probably love good barbecue. That we know of, neither of the ... More >>

Goodtime Moonshine: 8 Brands Of Musician-Backed Booze

warmingglow.uproxx.comShirtless hillbillies, backyard stills, and Cletus from the Simpson = things we normally associate with moonshine.​Tuesday, representatives for Colt Ford announced the Georgia-born singer best known for 2010's Chicken and Biscuits would be the first country music star wit ... More >>

Snoopcounters: Snoop Dogg Knows A Lot Of People

​This week, rapper Snoop Dogg turned 40 years old. Tha Doggfather actually seems ageless to us, and we don't mean his 1996 album. Like, we fully expect him to become the hip-hop Willie Nelson: Rapping into his late 70s, relentlessly touring, smoking people a fraction of his age out in tour bus ... More >>

Celebrity Tax Cheats: Five Pieces of Crap Produced to Pay the IRS

Tax time is looming, and even though you get a weekend reprieve this year -- the deadline is April 18, not the 15th, because of an obscure Washington, D.C. holiday -- you'd no doubt like to skip the whole thing altogether. Some famous people have taken that same route. Unfortunately for them, they ... More >>

Willie Nelson's Sentence: Sing "Blue Eyes" In Court

​Readers will recall that Willie Nelson, red bandana and all, was stopped last November and arrested on charges of marijuana possession. We wrote a little something about it. Let's try to forget that arresting Willie on possession charges of what officially amounts to under three ounces is rid ... More >>

Sunrise With Willie Nelson, Mickey Newbury And Darrell Royal

Courtesy of Lynda Higdon​Back when Willie Nelson had returned to Austin from Nashville and suddenly become the hillbilly crown prince of the Live Music Capital of the World - which was not yet known by that somewhat dubious nickname - one of his most visible supporters was then-University of T ... More >>

The Worst Local Crowds Of 2010

Jason Wolter​Editor's Pick: I am so sick of complaining about Houston crowds, ill-behaved as they are, but I will say to whoever decided it would be funny to take Bobby Bare Jr.'s glasses off the stage at Hayes Carll's Warehouse show Tuesday night and put them on: That was not cool. Neph Bas ... More >>

Rivers, The Dead Revolt

Which Rockers Are Best Suited For Autumn?

​What season are you? It's a question that doesn't get asked often enough in the world of rock and roll, but if the half dozen fashion and beauty Web sites Rocks Off consulted while writing this are any indication, seasonal color analysis is big. The phenomenon took off in the 1980s, which as ... More >>

Died and Gone to Houston

City is ready for another honky-tonk close-up.

R.I.P. Hank Cochran, Author Of "I Fall To Pieces"

​Hank Cochran, one of the elite songwriters in country music, died earlier today. He was 74. Born in Mississippi, Cochran worked for a while with rocker Eddie Cochran (no relation) in a California band styled The Cochrans. In 1960, Cochran moved to Nashville and teamed up with songwriting le ... More >>

Aftermath: Willie Nelson and an Arena Theatre Audience Apparently Raised In a Barn

Photos by Jason Wolter​ Congratulations, Houston music fans! We are barely a week into the new year, and you already proven to Aftermath that our dreams and hopes for a new decade of change and decorum during live shows was just that: A wish that will never come to fruition, right up there with ho ... More >>

Willie Nelson

Somewhere Trouble Don't Go

The best Texas albums of 2009...or what we could squeeze in.

Complete List of Texas' 2010 Grammy Nominees

​Rocks Off was pretty sure we missed a few Texas (or Texas-connected) artists in Thursday's writeup of the 2010 Grammy nominees, and it turns out we were right. We don't even remember scrolling past some of these categories over at Grammy.com, to be honest, but thanks to the Texas Music Office's C ... More >>

Honky-Tonk Revival

Is Houston ready for country? Again?

Eyeballin': The Willie Nelson Special featuring Ray Charles

​This 1985 TV special was filmed at the Austin Opry House, and finds the two music icons sharing the stage - and a lot of laughs - for part of the proceedings in a 14-song set. Not surprisingly, it's the tunes with both of them side-by-side at the piano, that shine. An emotional "Angel Eyes," epic ... More >>

Aftermath: Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cosmopolitician/​Sunday night's Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Bob Dylan gig out at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion was an exhibition for an artist in his comfortable twilight, another on the cusp of a new revolution and the last one stoically fighting the violent ... More >>

Mickey Raphael on Willie Nelson, Naked and Clothed

www.mickeyraphael.comFor a disarmingly large number of his worldwide fans, Willie Nelson burst onto the country music scene in the mid-'70s, fully hirsute, sporting an earring and proclaiming the joys of being on the road again. Real aficionados know that his "overnight success" came only afte ... More >>

Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel: Willie and the Wheel

Chart Check: Texans on Amazon.com

[Rocks Off scrolled through the various Top Sellers lists on Amazon.com this afternoon to see which albums by Texas artists are moving, and where.] Top Sellers Overall 2. Steve Martin, The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo 7. Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel, Willie and the Wheel ... More >>

Aftermath Extra: The Best Concerts of the Year, Part 8

Cheech & Chong/Willie Nelson, Verizon Wireless Theater/House of Blues, October 31: "This morning Aftermath thought his notes had vanished entirely before realizing he had simply mistook the back cover of his notebook for the front. Halloween 2008 was high times indeed." Randy Weeks, Discover ... More >>

November 2008 in Photos

Over the past few weeks, we've seen the National, Usher, Baby Bash, Metallica, Madonna and Willie Nelson, not to mention voting, posing, drawing, partying, bikinis and face paint. And now you can see it all in one place. Yep, it's that time of the month.   -- Keith Plocek

More Willie Nelson Tickets Released

Willie Nelson: A Moment of Forever

The Scene Is Dead. Long Live the Scene!

Ideas toward a Houston-style musical Day of the Dead

The Houston 100: From Guy Clark to Don Williams

Hey, Look Over There

Wheel Good Time

Houston Press Music Awards 2000

Your guide to the Music Awards Showcase

It's a Family Affair

Willie Nelson brings along his pals for his annual musical picnic

Rotation

Burying the Brakeman

Press Picks

Rotation

Devilish Boys

Are people warming up to the Supersuckers' nasty ways?

Rotation

Full Nelson

With a new disc and a boxed history, Willie Nelson wonders who'll buy his memories