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Doc Celebrates 50 Years of Houston's Own ZZ Top

By Bob Ruggiero

Mar 16, 2020

ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas 125 mins./DVD + Blu-Ray $29.98 Eagle Rock Entertainment Last year, the three members of ZZ Top — singer/guitarist Billy Gibbons, singer/bassist Dusty Hill, and drummer Frank Beard — celebrated 50 years together, the longest of any major rock band without any lineup...

The Godfather of Swamp Pop is Honored with New CD and Book

By Bob Ruggiero

Dec 6, 2019

He’s known as the “Godfather of Swamp Pop”—but not because any rivals to the title met an unexplained end in a river while wearing concrete shoes. It’s because at 82 years of age, Warren Storm is the oldest of the genre’s originators still actively performing. Swamp pop, which began in...

The Steel Woods Start Spreading the News - Old and New

By Bob Ruggiero

Jul 8, 2019

In terms of health, influence, and popular usage, in 2019 it’s pretty safe (but sad) to say that printed newspapers have had their best days in the rearview mirror. But Tennessee-based Southern rockers The Steel Woods are conjuring up at least the spirit of ink-smeared broadsheets to deliver their contemporary...

American Aquarium Dips Their Toes into Political Waters

By Bob Ruggiero

Nov 27, 2018

Like about half the people in the country, BJ Barham and his wife went to bed late on the evening on November 8, 2016 a bit shocked in how the U.S. Presidential Election was trending, but confident the tide would change when the final results came in. When that didn’t...

Tour Manager Recalls "Brilliant Wreck" of Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown

By Bob Ruggiero

Jun 21, 2018

In 1997, Thomas O’Keefe got a call from the management of a rising alt-country band Whiskeytown, asking if he’d be interested in taking on the job of the group’s road manager. He was at something of loose ends professionally at the time. And as the bassist for the punk group...

The Mount Rushmore of (Good) Bro-Country

By William Michael Smith

Dec 31, 2014

One term will brand 2014 for the sub-par music year it was: bro country. First used in print in August 2013 by New Yorker music writer Jody Rosen to describe mainstream-country boy-band Florida Georgia Line's hit single "Cruise," the term has taken on a decidedly derogatory coloring as tools like...

Is Country Music Ready for Sturgill Simpson?

By William Michael Smith

Dec 18, 2014

So the big new noise in the increasingly noisy -- or static-y -- genre known as Americana is this Kentucky guy Sturgill Simpson. With 2014 appearances on Letterman and Conan and a first-ever Grammy nomination for his sophomore album, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, Simpson has been branded (not by...

The 10 Funkiest Chicken Songs Ever Recorded

By William Michael Smith

Nov 19, 2014

Lonesome Onry and Mean was hanging with some folks the other night when Rufus Thomas' classic Memphis dance tune "Do the Funky Chicken" came on the jukebox. The owner happened to be standing near the volume control and cranked it; the energy level in the place went off the meter,...

Jim Mize Falls Down the Rabbit Hole

By William Michael Smith

Oct 3, 2014

"Tie me to the chair and lock the door/ Take my shoes and nail 'em to the floor" Nothing short of an envelope stuffed full of crisp new payola $100 bills moves Lonesome, Onry and Mean like hearing a new recording from an unknown artist that causes insomnia to set...

South Mouth: Alt-Country Firebrand Robbie Fulks Returns

By William Michael Smith

Jul 25, 2014

It's been interesting to watch the career transformation of Robbie Fulks. The Chicago picker and writer grabbed some notoriety -- and a decent alt-country cult following -- after his frustrations with trying to "make it" in Nashville in the mid-'90s led to his did-he-really-say-that tune, "Fuck This Town." The entire...

Excess of Talent: Meet Austin Super-Ensemble the Eightysixxed

By William Michael Smith

Apr 29, 2014

If Lonesome, Onry and Mean was a betting man, we'd bet our entire bankroll that while Warehouse Live or Fitz are filled to capacity with folks checking out the latest hyped-up, flash-in-the-pan, cover-of-Paste-magazine band that's been in existence, oh, at least a year or two, Austin's worn and weathered the...

The Everlasting Joys of "Let's Work Together"

By William Michael Smith

Apr 16, 2014

Lonesome Onry and Mean was pondering the greater meaning of all things with the aid of a cold bottle of Thought Elixir when Dwight Yoakam's version of the old Wilbert Harrison R&B smash "Let's Work Together" came up in the iPod mix. Harrison's original has been part of our DJ...

Our Top Five Hank Williams Sr. Covers

By William Michael Smith

Sep 20, 2013

Kids, there's a reason Hiram "Hank' Williams, who would have been 90 years old September 17, is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Dead of an overdose of pain killers in the back of his long white Cadillac at 29, Williams was, in his brief interval in Nashville,...

Outlaw Book Takes Wild Ride with Waylon, Willie & the Boys

By Bob Ruggiero

Jul 2, 2013

Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris and the Renegades of Nashville By Michael Streissguth It Books, 304 pp., $26. A recent Rolling Stone cover story on Johnny Depp was titled "An Outlaw Looks at 50." To what extent that a multimillionaire movie actor who won the genetic lottery could be viewed as...

The First Alt-Country Record? Flatlanders Rediscover The Odessa Tapes

By William Michael Smith

Sep 4, 2012

A lot of stellar music came out of that flat land known as West Texas. Bob Wills, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Terry Allen, Guy Clark, and the Sparkles are just a few artists who found something in the wind, the dust, the heat, the cactus, the mesquite, the...

Austin's New (C)KOKE-FM Can't Beat The Real Thing

By William Michael Smith

Aug 31, 2012

Lonesome, Onry and Mean had been hearing about the new KOKE-FM progressive country station in Austin for a few weeks. One friend in particular kept raving about the station, so today we finally sauntered over to KOKE-FM (99.3) on the world wide web. Back in the day when we were...

The Coolest and Uncoolest Songs About America's Coolest City (Us)

By William Michael Smith

Aug 16, 2012

Above is Dean Martin doing "Houston" on his television show. Epic fail, but nice outfit. As you may have read, Forbes magazine recently determined that, by their measurement criteria, Houston is now America's coolest/hippest city. Of course, while the rest of the world has looked down its nose for years...

L.A.'s Tremoloco Drops Smokin' Salsipuedes With Local Help

By William Michael Smith

Aug 14, 2012

Nothing gets Lonesome, Onry and Mean's blood pumping like opening the mail and finding a long overdue album from Los Angeles roots outfit Tremoloco. The band's previous release, 2008's Dulcinea, was in heavy rotation on the jukebox at our local water hole for several years, and the album seldom left...

A Feisty Texas Radio Road Trip with the Mike Stinson Band

By William Michael Smith

Jul 6, 2012

Lonesome Onry and Mean hasn't been out on the road with his son, Mike Stinson Band guitarist Lance Smith, in quite a while. But due to a propitious routing that took us to my father's place in Gatesville for a couple of days, LOM hit the highway with the band...

8 Keepers From Mail Call: Hacienda, Elvin Bishop, Janiva Magness, Etc.

By William Michael Smith

Jun 12, 2012

Once again, the mailbox has overflowed like a backed-up sewer and Lonesome Onry and Mean has had to make some space decisions: Does this record go on the shelf (keep it, it's good, but I want to listen to something else now), in the Goodwill box (what were they thinking...

Lonesome Onry and Mean

Austin City Limits Celebrates 50 Years of Asleep at the Wheel Live

A Survivor's Story: Lynyrd Skynyrd's Plane Crash Gets the Movie Treatment

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