texas music

Dallas Celebrates 150 Years of Deep Ellum

September 19, 2023 | By Mary Beth Gahan

A little more than a mile from where Dallas founder John Neely Bryan’s reconstructed cabin marks the first settlement of the city, Elm Street crosses under the Central Expressway and ushers in a different vibe.

Bluegrass Music Is Alive and Well in Lockhart

September 8, 2023 | By Omar Gallaga

Step inside the new shop off Main Street, near the heart of Lockhart’s famous historic downtown square, and the first thing you notice, just past the guitars, is the large assortment of banjos.

In Appreciation of Echo Bridge, the Coolest Music Venue in Texas

May 31, 2023 | By Joe Nick Patoski

Set on the San Antonio River, where live oak, pecan, mesquite, and willow trees line the banks and create a shady, bucolic scene, Echo Bridge in San Antonio is the coolest music venue in Texas you’ve never heard of.

On His 90th Birthday, Willie Nelson Proved It Ain’t Over Yet

May 5, 2023 | By Turk Pipkin

Musicians Go Wild on New Album Celebrating Texas State Parks

May 2, 2023 | By Joe Gross

A few years ago, Anne Brown had an idea. As the executive director of Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, she started contemplating the centennial of the Texas State Parks system in 2023 and how the organization could celebrate it.

Texas State Music: Western Swing

March 20, 2023 | By John O. Lumpkin

On ‘Roll On, Cowboys,’ Lubbock’s Andy Hedges Captures Western Music Traditions

February 13, 2023 | By Gene Fowler

When I spoke to Andy Hedges for a 2006 Texas Highways feature on the cowboy music revival, his initial response was, “Well, first off, I’m not a cowboy.” And when I reached out last week to talk about the Lubbock-based singer’s new double album, Roll On, Cowboys, which features duets with a dozen fellow curator-performers of the traditional and modern Western repertoire, he stuck to his guns.

“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” Hitmakers The Triumphs Call It Quits One More Time

December 27, 2022 | By Joe Nick Patoski

After 63 years, The Triumphs are finally hanging it up. This time they mean it.

Michael Martin Murphey Is Having a Ball Celebrating 30 Years of His Cowboy Christmas Tour

December 6, 2022 | By Heather Brand

For 30 years, Michael Martin Murphey, 77, has been ringing in the holiday season with his Cowboy Christmas tour, which includes multiple stops throughout Texas and a few surrounding states.

Joe Ely Looks Back on His 50-Year Career Ahead of Austin City Limits Hall of Fame Induction

October 21, 2022 | By Joe NIck Patoski

It has been quite a month for Joe Ely. The Flatlanders, the Lubbock trio he first played and recorded with in 1972, headlined the Back to the Basics Music Festival at Luckenbach in late September.

Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel Puts Texas Music History Up for Auction

October 13, 2022 | By Joe Gross

There comes a time in every person’s life when they must look around at their many possessions and declare: This all needs to live somewhere else.

A Century of Recorded Country Music Started With Texas Fiddler Eck Robertson

June 30, 2022 | By Michael Corcoran

His tombstone is inscribed with “World’s Champion Fiddler,” as his virtuosity dominated contests in North Texas since his teen years in the early 1900s.

With a New Album Out, 81-Year-Old Delbert McClinton Reflects on His Six-Decade Career

April 22, 2022 | By Joe Nick Patoski

“You’re 81. What the heck are you making a new record for?”
It’s an honest, semi-innocent question to pose to singer-songwriter Delbert McClinton when I get him on the phone the other day.

21 Texas Albums That Defined 2021

December 21, 2021 | By E. Ryan Ellis

The Return of Texas’ Live Music Scene

September 23, 2021 | By

Add New Music by Kacey Musgraves, Leon Bridges, and Cody Jinks to Your Fall Road Trip Playlist

September 13, 2021 | By Joe Gross

Autumn has arrived in Texas. For some (heck, for most), fall doesn’t seem terribly different from summer, especially given the comparatively mild temperatures much of the state experienced in 2021.

Songwriter Guy Clark Takes Center Stage in Filmmaker Tamara Saviano’s New Documentary

February 25, 2021 | By John Nova Lomax

If you’re talking about Guy Clark, there’s no place better to do so than at the Texas Chili Parlor in Austin.

20 Texas Albums for 2020

December 18, 2020 | By E. Ryan Ellis

Four musicians sound off on the creative inspiration of the Lone Star State

March 17, 2020 | By Joe Nick Patoski

Roky Erickson, the Texas Psychedelic Rock Pioneer who Made a Remarkable Comeback, has Died

June 3, 2019 | By Michael Corcoran

Psychedelic rock legend Roky Erickson, former lead singer of the 13th Floor Elevators, has passed away at age 71. He didn’t play a single concert from 1986 until 2005, but in the last 14 years, Erickson toured the world, rocking as hard and singing as introspectively as ever before. 

Death of Singer Leon Rausch Marks the End of an Era in Western Swing

May 15, 2019 | By Michael Corcoran

Hired by Bob Wills in 1958, Leon Rausch was the voice of the Texas Playboys for six decades, so his death Tuesday in Fort Worth at age 91 marks the end of an era.

Charley Crockett Takes His Texas Sound on a World Tour

April 6, 2019 | By Matt Joyce

On a recent sunny afternoon in Dripping Springs, Charley Crockett finished a song and looked out from the stage over the crowd scattered across a bright-green lawn. “I’ll tell you what,” said the Texas troubadour, a singular practitioner of soul-steeped honky-tonk and blues. “The grass looks a little greener for me today; the air smells a sweeter.”

That mid-March performance at Revival Experience, a one-day event held during Austin’s SXSW music festival, was sweet indeed for Crockett: It marked his return to the stage after an 11-week break during which he had two heart surgeries and a surgery to repair a hernia. The long-nagging hernia had prompted Crockett to schedule a medical appointment, and that’s when doctors discovered a congenital heart defect—one that had afflicted him since birth—that required open heart surgery and a January “vacation at the Seton Medical Center Hotel” in Austin, as he puts it.

Mapping Texas Music

March 14, 2017 | By Melanie Haupt

There are more than 2,000 bands from all over the world performing at SXSW Music in Austin this year, and there’s definitely something for fans of every genre imaginable.

In Country’s Country

September 16, 2015 | By Randy Mallory

I grew up in a Texas family that does country-western music. The lilt of a fiddle breakdown, the rhythm of a shuffle drum beat, the soulful wail of a steel guitar—these sounds seeped into my pores in the 1950s and ’60s, forevermore setting a button on my internal radio dial to “classic country.”

The October 2023 issue of Texas Highways "Tastes Like Home"

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