Willie next for State MusicianStep aside, ShelleyKing, and make wayfor the new officialTexas StateMusician: none otherthan Willie Nelson.Nelson’s appoint-ment by the Texas
Commission of the Arts as the 2009 TexasState Musician was announced on May 20. “Iconsider it a great honor,” remarked Nelson,“and I want to thank everyone who helpedmake it happen.” Nelson’s successor was alsonamed: singer-songwriter Sara Hickman. Theposition, open to artists who are either nativeTexans or who have lived in Texas for at leastfive years, honors artists distinguished “forthe exceptional quality of their work and fortheir outstanding commitment to the arts inTexas.” Previous appointees, in addition toKing, include Ray Benson, Billy Joe Shaver,Dale Watson, Johnny Gimble and James Dick.
Texans score AMA nomsIt’s not really news that Texas talents figureprominently on the list of Americana MusicAwards nominees, but we figured we’d giveyou the specifics. The Sept. 17 event will rec-ognize the year’s top achievers in the singer-songwriter-dominated genre, with the Lone
Star State represented in every category.Alejandro Escovedo and Justin Townes Earleboth scored coveted nominations for Albumand Artist of the Year; New & Emerging Artistnods went to Earle, the Belleville Outfit, andthe Band of Heathens. Group & Duo recogni-tion went to the Flatlanders and RecklessKelly, and Gurf Morlix for Instrumentalist ofthe Year. Song of the Year nominees were asTex-centric as you could hope, with RodneyCrowell, the Gourds and the Flatlanders onthe short list. The full rundown is available atwww.americanamusic.org. Last year’s awardsproved to be a Grammy preview, with theRobert Plant/Alison Kraus collaborationRaising Sand taking top album honors.
Festival time in the Hill CountryHopefully the rivers of New Braunfels and SanMarcos will stay within their banks this sum-mer; several anticipated festivals are alreadypromising to flood the towns with talent. June12 & 13, the Sake of the Song Festival comes tothe Whitewater Amphitheatre, with headlinersthe Randy Rogers Band hosting veterans likeHal Ketchum and Kevin Welch alongsideupstarts like Jason Eady and Texas Renegade.On June 26-28, San Marcos’ Cheatham StreetWarehouse will be home to this year’s BigFest,hosted by veteran singer-guitarist Big JohnMills and featuring talents like Walt Wilkins,
June ‘09
Brandon Jenkins, and dozens more yet to beannounced. Another wave of country andAmericana performers will be pouring in forthe Rowdy Float Trip on July 15-18, hosted byRadioFreeTexas.org and headlined by yetanother admirable mix of newcomers(Rodney Parker & 50 Peso Reward, RichO’Toole, Slow Rollin’ Lows) and old hands(Walt Wilkins, Phil Pritchett, John Evans) atNew Braunfels’ Mountain BreezeCampground.
MusicRanch brings Texas to worldMusicRanch.com has earned thousands ofviewers by streaming an eclectic array of liveconcerts over the World Wide Web. More thana few Texas-bred talents have found their wayonto the site’s bandwidth, with Web viewers
seeing the performer onstage in a virtualenvironment populated by avatars of the sitesubscribers (it does sort of have to be seen tobe believed). On May 22, the site promotedtheir “VideoRanch” festival, a multi-artistlineup featuring Austin-based stars SlaidCleaves and Carolyn Wonderland, as well asTexas-born musical eccentric (and formerMonkee) Michael Nesmith, who sells his musicand merchandise exclusively through the site.
Trio raises money for educationThough he grew up in Arkansas, Texas-bornTracy Lawrence gathered fellow Texans ClayWalker and Tracy Byrd, along with NealMcCoy, Three Doors Down and others, to par-ticipate in his final homecoming concert inForeman, Ark., on June 6. The homecomingis a fundraiser event for the Tracy LawrenceFoundation, which raises money to improveeducational opportunities for children inwestern Arkansas. The foundation has raisedmore than $1 million since its establishment in1993. And coming soon after the homecom-ing event is Lawrence’s new album, The Rock.
George Strait honoredFilmed in April after the Academy of CountryMusic Awards, the ACM Artist of the Decadespecial honoring George Strait aired in lateMay. The special featured numerous Texasartists paying their respects to King George,including Brooks & Dunn, Miranda Lambert,John Rich, Lee Ann Womack, Jack Ingram,LeAnn Rimes, as well as Taylor Swift, KeithUrban, Dierks Bentley, Alan Jackson, andmore. Actor Jamie Foxx, a Terrell native, tooka break from the silver screen to put an R&Btwist on “You Look So Good In Love.” Eventhe “retired” Garth Brooks, the ACM artist ofthe decade for the 1990s, made a specialappearance to pass the torch to Strait. Inaccepting the honor, Strait said, “This is like afarewell deal, but I ain’t ready to go yet.” He
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hit the stage to perform “Ocean FrontProperty” and then invited all the participantsto join him to sing his 57th No. 1 hit,“Troubadour.”
Ingram: USO tour & Army WivesAfter recently performing for U.S. troops atGuantanamo Bay, Cuba as part of a USO tour,Jack Ingram continued on the military pathand traveled to Charleston, S.C. to film anepisode of Lifetime network’s ArmyWives.The series, which focuses on the lives of mili-tary families, will feature Ingram in an episodecurrently scheduled to air in August.
Former Geto Boys rapper arrestedWilliam James Dennis, or Willie D, as fansknow him from his time with 1990s Houstonrap group Geto Boys, has been arrested andcharged in a wire fraud scheme involvingApple iPhones. If convicted, Dennis could faceup to 20 years in federal prison and a$250,000 fine. In 1991, the Geto Boys toppedthe charts with “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”off their We Can’t Be Stopped album.
Wall featured on E!E! Entertainment recently featured Paul Walland his wife Crystal on a special Rapper Wivesinstallment of the network staple TrueHollywood Story. The episode, which airedMay 13, takes an in-depth look at Wall’s rise tofame, and how it’s affected the couple’s rela-tionship and their family. As Crystal said, “Yousee the family man side of him — just every-thing aside from the grills, the gold teeth, andthe diamonds and all that.” Checkwww.eonline.com for scheduled re-runs.
Lambert’s hawkin’ cottonAs if she wasn’t already busy enough, MirandaLambert has joined “The Fabric of My Life”
advertising campaign for Cotton Incorporated.She’ll appear in one of three commercials inwhich she puts a country twist to the familiarjingle. “My style in three words is comfortable,funk, my own,” Lambert said. “Cotton is a bigpart of that style, so I was very excited to bepart of this.” Other musicians in the campaigninclude actress-singer Zooey Deschanel andR&B artist Jazmine Sullivan.
Simpson heading backto reality TVAfter recently being undermedia scrutiny for her yo-yoing weight, Jessica Simpsonis pitching a new reality seriescalled The Price of Beauty. Thereality show would sendJessica and a friend off on aworldwide road trip in search
of what people find beautiful and why, andhow society affects opinions of women’s bod-ies. The show is yet to be picked up by anetwork.
An evening with the Old 97’sProving yet again that solo careers and aheavily touring band aren’t necessarily mutu-ally exclusive priorities, the Old 97’s are aboutto barnstorm America throughout the sum-mer with a unique but ingenious approach.Each date (including nights in Hoboken,Philadelphia, Los Angeles and St. Louis) willfeature separate solo sets by frontman RhettMiller and guitarist Murry Hammond, followedby a full-band electric set. Both Miller andHammond have completed solo albums sincethe last 97’s release (2008’s Blame It OnGravity). Hammond’s I Don’t KnowWhere I’mGoing But I’m On MyWay has been in storessince late last year, and Miller’s self-titled thirdsolo album comes out on June 9.
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Texas artists rock kidney benefit
Several Texas musicians joined in the funand offered a helping hand for the seasonfinale of the NBC comedy series 30 Rock.The plot had Alan Alda in the role of recentlyrevealed biological father of NBC exec JackDonaghy (Alec Baldwin’s character on theshow). Alda’s character turns out to be inneed of a kidney transplant, but Donaghyturned out not to be a match; thus the bigidea to hold a benefit, ala “We are theWorld,” complete with star-studded musicalnumber. Texas artists Steve Earle, NorahJones and Rhett Miller joined Sheryl Crow,Elvis Costello, Adam Levine (Maroon 5), ClayAiken, Moby and Wyclef Jean among othersonstage for the big finish. The song “HeNeeds a Kidney,” written by the show’smusic supervisor (and Tina Fey’s husband)Jeff Richmond, can be purchased on iTunes.Proceeds from downloads go to the NationalKidney Foundation. For more information,visit www.kidney.org.
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Steve Earle brings tour to TexasSteve Earle swings through Texas promotinghis newest disc, Townes, a tribute to his men-tor and friend, Townes Van Zandt, who died in1997. The 15-song set is comprised on songsthat are favorites of Earle written by VanZandt. After several shows on the East Coast,Earle kicks off the Texas leg of the tour at theCrighton Theater in Conroe on June 18 aspart of the Sounds of Texas Music Series, fol-lowed by stops in Austin (6/19), NewBraunfels (6/20) and Dallas (6/21). The tourcontinues with dates in the Midwest andCanada, with dates in Germany scheduled forNovember.
In memoriam:Randle “Poodie” Locke1948-2009Willie Nelson lost more than a longtime stagemanager with the passing of Randle “Poodie”Locke; he lost one of the most beloved mem-bers of his extended family, as did the rest ofthe Texas music world. Locke, who in additionto working with Nelson on the road for 34years also owned his own beer joint —Poodie’s Hilltop Bar & Grill in Spicewood —died of a heart attack on May 6, just fourdays after his last Willie show at Carl’s Corner.He was 60. Locke — whose nickname“Poodie” came from his sister being unable topronounce the word “pretty” when he was ababy — was buried May 11 in his native Wacoat a service that drew an estimated 1,000mourners. No doubt even more will turn outto celebrate his memory at a memorial con-cert scheduled for June 28 at the Backyard inAustin.
In memoriam:Turner Stephen Bruton1948-2009On Saturday, May 9, while the Texas musiccommunity was still reeling from the death ofPoodie Locke, a second devastating blowlanded: Fort Worth-raised, Austin-basedsinger-songwriter, guitarist and producerStephen Bruton had succumbed to his longbattle with throat cancer in Los Angeles. Hewas 60. Bruton died at the home of fellowFort Worth legend T Bone Burnett, who hadcalled Bruton out to L.A. to work with him onmusic for the film Crazy Heart. Burnett toldthe Los Angeles Times that the project hadbeen finished two weeks earlier, and thatright up until the last few days of his life,Bruton seemed like he was going to be ableto pull through. “I think everybody thought hewould kick it quickly because he was StephenBruton,” Burnett said. “We all thought he wasinvincible.” Before working on Crazy Heart,Bruton was in the studio with longtime friend(and employer) Kris Kristofferson, recordingtracks for Kristofferson’s Starlight and Stonealbum due out later this year. Bruton, whowas born in Delaware but moved to Texaswith his family at age 2, was friends withBurnett since their teens, when they bothhung out at the Fort Worth record storeowned by Bruton’s father. Bruton later hit theroad with Kristofferson and was off on acareer that also found him playing guitar for,among many other notables, Bonnie Raitt. Healso released five solo albums (the last being2005’s From the Five), produced records byartists like Jimmie Dale Gilmore andAlejandro Escovedo and performed andrecorded with the Austin band theResentments.
14Live at the Lake SeriesThe Mother TruckersLakeway Resort and SpaLakewaywww.kgsr.com
County Line Music SeriesRay Wylie HubbardThe County LineSan Antoniowww.countyline.com
22–31Girls Rock Camp AustinThe Khabele SchoolAustinwww.girlsrockcampaustin.org
25–28Luling Watermelon ThumpKyle Park and moreDowntownLulingwww.watermelonthump.com
calendar
KGSR’s Blues on the Greenreturns for its 19th season.Austin’s free concert seriesmoves to Waterloo Park inthe heart of Austin just forthis year as Zilker Parkundergoes major improve-ments. Next to Waller Creek,Waterloo Park’s shade trees,picnic tables and easy acces-sibility will provide a comfort-able and pleasant environ-ment for this annual concertseries. Every otherWednesday evening Junethrough August, WaterlooPark will host favorites likeRuthie Foster (June 3) andCyril Neville (June 17). And,you can join the Blues on theGreen text alert club by tex-ting “blues” to 68704 to beeligible for VIP passes as wellas special offers from restau-rants and sponsors through-out the series. All shows startat 7:30 p.m. For more detailsand full schedule, visitwww.kgsr.com.
Blues on the GreenWaterloo ParkAustin, Every Other Wednesdaythrough August 12
J U N E
Ruthie Foster playsBlues on theGreen onJune3.
TheMother Truckers play LIve at the Lake onJune 14.
new releasesJune 2 Morakestra Witness toConnection Stratking RecordsJune 2 RyanBingham RoadhouseSun Lost HighwayJune 2 Tanya Tucker MyTurn Saguaro RoadJune 9 RhettMiller RhettMiller Shout! FactoryJune 9 ToddSnider TheExcitementPlan Yep RocJune 9 BettySoo HeatSinWaterSkin www.bettysoo.comJune 9 George Jones BlueAndLonesome Righteous
(remastered)June 16TheJonasBrothers Lines,VinesAndTryingTimes HollywoodJune 16 SarahJarosz SongUp InHerHead Sugar HillJune 23Charlie Robison Beautiful Day DualtoneJune 23DarrenKozelsky Arrivals & Departures Major 7th EntertainmentJune 23TheMarsVolta Octahedron Warner Bros.July 21 TheSteps Take ItAll In (EP) Playing in TrafficSept 22 Soulhat Liveat theBlackCat (re-release) Dualtone
Charlie RobisonBeautiful Day(Dualtone)Sure to be highly anticipatedby longtime fans (it’s beenfive years since his last
album) and celebrity rubberneckers (hisdivorce from Dixie Chick Emily is still fairlyfresh) alike, Bandera-born country artistCharlie Robison delivers again with his fifthstudio album. That delivery is still dust-dry,but he retains the unique knack he’s alwayshad to make hurt, lust and wisdom resonatewithout too much unseemly emoting. As onmost of his past releases, Robison takes theJerry Jeff approach of borrowing great tunesfrom his buddies (Keith Gattis, Bobby BareJr.), while daring himself to write somethingjust as striking. Those looking for tidbitsabout the fallout of a celebrity divorce won’thave to look farther than the standout titletrack, breezy and hopeful but bitter aroundthe edges. Nothing else on the album man-ages to top it, though the bluegrass-tinged“Feelin’ Good” and the reeling “If The RainDon’t Stop” keep the mixed emotions flowingconvincingly. Even arguable missteps likedabbling in psychedelia (“Yellow Blues”) orcovering Springsteen (how do you top“Racing In The Streets”?) serve their pur-pose, giving voice to the sort of discomfortand ambition that must result when one’spersonal ups-and-downs make the tabloids.ETHAN MESSICK
Ryan BinghamRoadhouse Sun
(Lost Highway)Like his label-mate, HayesCarll, Ryan Bingham is one ofthe few young guns to comeout of the Texas scene inrecent years to garner critical
cred on par with his Lone Star draw. Winninga following with the frat crowd is one thing;but Bingham’s ragged-beyond-its-years voiceand equally world-weary words earned himraves from elder statesmen of Texas cool JoeEly and Terry Allen long before his 2007major-label debut, Mescalito. Fittingly,Roadhouse Sun swaggers a lot more than itspredecessor; who wouldn’t swagger withaccolades like that? Sometimes, all that blus-ter trips Bingham up; “Endless Ways” is morebark than bite, and “Day is Done” comes sad-dled with the kind of tired “I was born a badman’s son” schtick best left to ShooterJennings. But more often than not, Binghamdoes his reputation proud. Song titles like“Tell My Mother I Miss Her So,” “CountryRoads” and “Snake Eyes” may suggest a veri-table minefield of lyric and musical clichés,but Bingham, his band and producer MarcFord artfully dodge them all. The tour deforce is “Dylan’s Hard Rain,” which rides aringing guitar straight out of Byrdsville andfinds Bingham deftly wrapping his own razor-sharp lines of social commentary around anindelibly catchy melody. Nothing else onRoadhouse Sun is quite that perfect, but fewnext-big-things ever even get quite that close.RICHARD SKANSE
BettySooHeat Sin Water SkinIf her first album since adding“Kerrville New Folk Winner” toher resume isn’t quite the rev-elation that Betty-Soo’s sec-ond album was, that’s only
because 2007’s Little Tiny Secrets didn’t leavea whole lot of room for improvement.Heat SinWater Skin adds producer Gurf Morlix to themix — an inspired, left-field pick — but morethan anything, this outing’s more of a rein-forcement of the Spring native’s considerable
strengths as a singer and songwriter than a rad-ical change of pace. And that’s a complimentboth to BettySoo and Morlix. BettySoo’s moreNanci Griffith than Lucinda or Ray Wylie, but sheholds her own just fine under Morlix’s trademarkgritty touch, and he respects the artist enoughto let the beauty of her songs and voice carrythe big stick. Sometimes their seemingly dis-parate styles collide in ways that show BettySoo
can snarl convincingly when cornered (“GetClean,” “Never Knew No Love”), but she stillroars the loudest when she takes the beautyway: “What We’ve Got,” “Just Another Lover”and “Whisper My Name” all prove that a gor-geous melody and voice to match can be as dev-astating as a deep and dirty groove. RICHARD SKANSE
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Ryan Bingham
The voice may notmatch the face ofRyan Bingham, butthere’s a tremen-dous amount ofwisdom in thewords of this 28-year-old Texastroubadour. Somepeople may firstsee it as an act,but learn quickly
Bingham has lived hard and been throughthis tough and tumble world more thanonce. Bingham is a road dog, and it’s no sur-prise his newest album is titled RoadhouseSun. Once a rodeo bull rider, Bingham nowtakes on bigger beasts with his introspectiveand hauntingly descriptive songwriting. Thescratched voice of one too many cigarettes,in one too many honky tonks, adds thatWest-Texas soul to his songs of love, regret,redemption and making it through thisworld. Roadhouse Sun is scheduled forrelease on Lost Highway Records on June 2.
Everyone has some sort of opinion of you.How do you view yourself as a musicianand as a person?Compared to all the great musicians inAustin, I’m just a needle in a haystackaround here. I’m just another guy with a gui-tar, writing songs on the road, you know? Ithink traveling a lot opens you up to seeinga lot of things firsthand, as far as the econo-my in different cities and towns across thestates and over in Europe as well. Seeing itwith your own eyes always gives you a lot ofinspiration to write songs about that kind ofstuff. That’s basically all I have been doing istraveling a lot and writing songs about thethings I have been seeing down the road.
Is that the inspiration for Roadhouse Sun?I feel like I should just tell it like I see it. For
being my age or my generation, I just feelit’s not necessarily my duty or my job, but Iwould feel bad if I didn’t say anything aboutthese things with some songs. I don’t wantto look back on this record 10 or 20 yearsfrom now and be like, I never said anythingabout anything. It’s not really that I am stat-ing my opinion on how I feel about it, butjust describing what is going on more thananything.
Not many musicians are doing that…I think a lot of people are just scared of say-ing something that somebody doesn’t like.That’s the risk you take when you step onsomebody’s toes. If you say somethingabout the church or the government, youare liable to have somebody come spit inyour face. It’s whether [or not] you areready to deal with that. For me, I am who Iam. I am a lot more comfortable in my skinsaying how I feel and I don’t have anyregrets about that. You can’t just sit backand agree with everybody all the time.You’ve got to let that stuff out and get it offyour chest with everybody. It builds healthyrelationships if everybody is honest abouthow they really feel about things. Obviously,there are a lot of things going on that aren’treally that cool, and if everybody sits backand has a Coke and a smile and watches itall happen and doesn’t ever do anythingabout it, what’s the point?
Marc Ford produced Mescalito (2007Lost Highway) and you brought him backfor Roadhouse Sun. What led you back tohim?We really got to know him a lot more overthe past year and a half. When we first didthe Mescalito stuff, we had just met him andwent right into the studio that we hadn’tbeen in before. We had all those tunesready to go, and we just wanted to gosomewhere that we were comfortable. Weknew we could all talk about it before wewent in there and everybody had the sameidea and the direction and just make it hap-
pen. Instead of spending half the time tryingto figure how it’s going to come together, wealready knew that before we went into thestudio and all we had to do was to go in thereand play.
Where does the album title, RoadhouseSun, come from?It’s more of an imaginary thing. It’s some-thing I see in my mind. It’s something Idescribe from going down the road. From mybackground where I was raised in these oldroadhouses that my family used to have outin New Mexico, I used to go in the bars all thetime with my dad and my uncle and shootpool, drink beer and listen to jukeboxes. It’san image that I wanted to use to set a tonefor the whole record. It describes the moodof it more than anything.
So what does the rest of 2009 look like foryou?Burning up van tires. That’s our main job,burning up van tires [laughs].
What goals do you have for the rest of theyear?The main goal is for me to be happy andmake a living playing music. We’ve gotten toa point where we can do that now. Now it’sjust about keeping it going. If it gets bigger,then that’s cool, too. But if it doesn’t, I thinkwe are all pretty happy just where we are.Just playing the songs we like to sing, doingour own thing, and we don’t have anybodytelling us what to do all the time, what towear or how to sound. As long as we canhave fun and play music, and make a littlecash on the side, man, we don’t need any-thing more than that. JOSH SHEPHERD
Q&A
Photo: CindyRoyal
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