Indie Record Stores Are Turning the Tables on Texas Music Sales
For some time now, prognosticators have been predicting the total demise of records—you know, the old-fashioned discs that play musical sound—as well as the brick-and-mortar establishments that sell them. And yes, it’s true that CD sales are down, and more than a few record stores have shut their doors. But there’s good news for those of us who can’t imagine life without flipping through bins, admiring the physical objects for their creative covers, and listening to the tunes imprinted in their grooves. Read More »
Photographer Captures the Evening Light of Texas’ Blackland Prairie
On most evenings, as the sun sinks below the horizon in the Blackland Prairie, photographer Andy Sharp is in his aged Honda chasing the light somewhere on a country road or in a small town. Sharp has rambled about for 10 years, since he and his wife moved to Taylor in Williamson County. Read More »
Dearest Dumplin’: Ya Novelist Julie Murphy Talks Teen Empowerment, Dolly Parton, and Her Netflix Movie
Julie Murphy was on the law school track when a little book named Twilight came out during her senior year at Texas Wesleyan University. The young adult vampire novel reignited a love of reading in Murphy that she hadn’t felt in years. It also gave her the writing bug. “It was the first book that made me feel like maybe writing isn’t so far out of reach,” Murphy says, sitting at the kitchen table of her home just east of Fort Worth. “Maybe if this woman can write this admittedly ridiculous book about a sparkling vampire, maybe I can write one book that one person will read at least once.” Read More »
Willie Nelson Opens up About His Musical Family, His Love of Texas, and Why He’s Still on the Road to the Next Stage
There’s nothing like the feeling of stepping onto Willie Nelson’s tour bus. Whether you do it once or a hundred times, it’s a thrill to be invited onto Willie’s rolling roadshow. Stories will be told. New songs may be played. Jokes that may or may not be suitable for print will be exchanged. And laughter will definitely ensue. It’s Saturday night in the Fort Worth Stockyards. A sold- out crowd is already finding their seats just a few steps from Willie’s bus, which is parked behind the world’s largest honky tonk, Billy Bob’s Texas. I’ve come to see an old friend and to hear what might be my 100th Willie concert. Or maybe my 300th—I lost count long ago. Read More »
Houston Exhibition Offers Rare Chance to See Van Gogh Masterworks in Person
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will unveil a new Vincent van Gogh exhibition this Sunday, offering a rare—perhaps once-in-a-lifetime—opportunity to see the iconic Dutch painters’ masterpieces up close and in person. The exhibition runs through June 27. Read More »
New Book Chronicles the Life of San Antonio Artist Jesse Treviño
In over 30 years as a journalist, San Marcos writer and Texas Highways contributor Anthony Head has covered everything from high school basketball in Indiana to politics in Chicago to the culinary arts of Los Angeles, where he was an editor with Bon Appétit magazine. Read More »
Antiques Roadshow Star Bruce Shackelford’s Eye for Objects Has Taken Him from Abilene to Reality TV
Bruce Shackelford is one of those enviable characters who’s developed a notable career by pursuing his own particular interests. Once dubbed a “scholarly cowboy,” the 65-year-old parlayed his fascination with Native American art, Western history, and horsemanship into a job as the Texas history curator at The Witte Museum, San Antonio’s elegant and enlightening repository of Texas history and culture. He’s also one of only a handful of appraisers to have appeared on every season of PBS’ perennial reality show favorite, Antiques Roadshow. For 23 years, viewers have tuned in to watch Shackelford—who mans the Tribal Art table—and other experts as they appraise the significance and value of antiques and collectibles brought in by the public. Read More »
Explore the Birthplace of Boogie Woogie Along US 59 in East Texas
The heavy left hand mimicked the rumble of steam locomotives on iron rails, while the right played melodic cross-rhythms that whistled up and down the tracks. A national craze during World War II, the hard-driving piano style known as boogie woogie set the stage for the musical revolution of rock ’n’ roll. Read More »
Terry Allen Dishes on Lubbock (And Everything)
Terry Allen wears many hats, not that you’ll catch him in a Stetson. Twangy as all get out, the pioneering Texas country singer still enjoys a cult following for his first two albums. Read More »
Q&A with The Iron Orchard Screenwriter Gerry de Leon
Set and filmed in West Texas, the oil boom period piece starts screening Feb. 22. West Texas wildcatters have long been mythologized on screen in classic films like Giant and There Will Be Blood. This month, The Iron Orchard follows in those footsteps with its dramatic tale of greed, lust, and hunger during the oil boom of the 1930s through ’50s. The Iron Orchard is based off a novel of the same name written by Tom Pendleton (a nom de plume of Fort Worth writer and oil producer Edmund Van Zandt). The book caused a stir when it was published in 1966 and has since become a beloved classic for many in the Texas oil industry—in fact, a group of oilmen subsidized the independent film, directed by Midland native Ty Roberts. Read More »
Texas Highways Managing Editor Among New Members of the Texas Institute of Letters
The Texas Institute of Letters has spent the past eight decades recognizing the state's literary achievements. Lone Star pride hit fever pitch in 1936. Amid statewide celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Texas Revolution, statues, monuments, and commemorative museums were going up everywhere from Huntsville to Alpine and Corpus Christi to Lubbock. Read More »
Historian and Author Lonn Taylor on Growing up in the Philippines and Settling in the Big Bend
Now 78 years old, Taylor is an old-fashioned raconteur with a bushy mustache, Stetson Open Road hat, and an assortment of snappy bow ties. He’s also the author of more than half a dozen books and a historian who draws inspiration from his adopted home of the Big Bend. Read More »
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