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Erykah Badu
Nine months after her triumphant 1997 debut, Baduizm, Erykah Badu released a live album containing only two new songs. Since then, she has focused on raising the son she had with her then-boyfriend,...
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Leslie Satcher
This Paris native’s debut album hopes to have it both ways, and it sometimes succeeds. Like most Nashville-based singers, her voice is largely twang-free, suited for pop as much as country, but it’s...
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Jon Emery
With his sense of humor, his down-and-out songs, and his wordplay that turned country convention upside down, Leroy Preston gave Asleep at the Wheel dimensions it has lacked since the seventies. Kyle’s...
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Tennison, Anyone?
You can’t get more country than singer Chalee Tennison. The Texas native has a rich, powerful voice, full of knowing tears as well as unabashed twang. Her phrasing echoes Loretta Lynn and Tammy...
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Presumed Innocent
Always more in demand on the road than at home, pianist Marcia Ball has developed into one of the most dynamic and dependable performers in Texas. A native of Orange and a resident of Austin for nearly...
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Whole Other Country
You really ought to see Bob Dunn’s Hawaiian-style lap-steel guitar. In 1934 Dunn was playing with western swing founder Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies when he attached a small metal pickup to...
View ArticleShaggy
Sweat drips off Nancy “Shaggy” Moore’s face as she lifts the front leg of a horse, coaxes the animal into bending it at the knee, clamps it between her own legs, and drives a nail through the hoof. “I...
View ArticlePolka Dotty
IT ALL STARTED WITH THE GRAMMY. Two years ago Brave Combo touched off no small controversy when Polkasonic won best polka album, beating out such pillars of the traditional genre as Jimmy Sturr and...
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We Are the World
SOMETIME BETWEEN THE involuntary hip spasms brought on by Congolese singer Ricardo Lemvo’s soukous band as I nibbled on fried bananas and the melancholy induced by Irish folk-rocker Paul Brady’s...
View ArticleSharp Shooter
A GREEN-AND-WHITE STRIPED SHIRT, a red garter belt hugging the right sleeve just above the elbow, cream-colored, button-fly pants tucked into black custom-made boots, a battered black cowboy hat....
View ArticleProdigal Son
MY FRIEND AND FORMER EMPLOYER RUSS Barnard, who published Country Music magazine in New York for more than two decades, hails from the Panhandle town of Pampa. About a year after entering Yale...
View ArticleTop Fifty
Unless otherwise noted, all places take credit cards.ABILENE: Harold’s Pit Bar-B-Q We didn’t catch pitmaster Harold Christian singing gospel songs to his customers, but we’re told that isn’t an unusual...
View ArticleBuried Treasure
IT’S THE TIME OF YEAR WHEN EVERYBODY’S supposed to be buying box sets like ZZ Top’s four-CD retrospective, Chrome, Smoke & BBQ, as Christmas presents and critics are supposed to be preparing their...
View ArticleO, Canadian!
BACK IN 1997, THE MEMBERS of the CanadianHemphill County Economic Development Council (EDC) took a look at the numbers and cringed. The Panhandle town of Canadian had not known prosperity since the...
View ArticleMusic
AlamoIn this agricultural town just east of McAllen, the Alamo Flea Marke offers a weekend’s worth of norteño, the northern Mexico accordion music—similar to Tex-Mex conjunto—that’s taking over the Rio...
View ArticleGrease
IT IS SAID THAT YOU CAN MAKE ANYTHING TASTE GOOD if you batter and fry it. I cannot confirm this for sure, because there are still some foods prepared this way that I have not sampled—but not many....
View ArticleClifford Antone (1949-2006)
Clifford Antone (1949-2006)The legendary Austin club owner, who died May 23, helped launch many a Texas musician, from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Charlie Sexton. ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons remembers the...
View ArticleClifford Antone
The Howlin’ Wolf was supposed to play Antone’s for a week, but Wolf passed in 1976. So, Antone hired the band, Wolf’s band, ’cuz I was in there. The band was Eddie Shaw and the Wolf Gang. We came, and...
View ArticleCemeteries
IT’S OFTEN SAID THAT GRAVESTONES TELL more about how people lived than how they died. Likewise, the small-town cemeteries of Texas reveal much about their communities. The impressive headstones in the...
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A Good Mango Is Hard to Find
Chocolate was oozing from the molino (“mill”) at el Mercado de Abastos, the central market in the city of Oaxaca—thick rivers of deep brown chocolate. I was there with Susana Trilling, who owns the...
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Pit Stops
This smokin’ thing is getting out of hand. The custom of cooking meats over wood fires has been going on since before there was a place called Texas, but in recent years the concept has gotten so...
View ArticleGone To Kansas City
I went; I ate; for the most part I snickered. Of all the alleged barbecue capitals in the United States, the only serious rival to Texas is Kansas City, Missouri. This is because Kansas City barbecues...
View ArticleVoice of Amerykah
TWO DAYS AFTER HER DEBUT ALBUM, Baduizm, began shipping to distributors, Erykah Badu got up at six in the morning to ride a white stretch limousine to a personal appearance at a Burger King in North...
View ArticleThe 100 Best Texas Songs
LET’S BACK UP FOR A SECOND. Before you pore over our picks for the best Texas songs, you’ll probably want to know about the methodology behind the list, starting with how we define a Texas song. No...
View ArticleUnsentimental Journey
Ornette Coleman loves repeating the story about giving saxophone lessons to his grandson, Ornette Ali Coleman. When the child had become competent at fingering, the jazz master asked him to show “the...
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