Listening

In the clubs

Hot Nut Riveters.

Any band featuring “Scrappy” Jud Newcomb. Those cheekbones. The way he holds his guitar.

Will T. Massey. A melodic poet. With a bad-ass band.

Spinning records

James Hyland, Celestial Navigation.

Small Stars! Man, this is a band with some great pop tunes, I think Miles Zuniga is the Doug Sahm of our time. Consider his number one hit (Fastball). The fact he sounds like Paul McCartney way too often, but also pops out tunes in Spanish, such as Bombaderos and Pistoleros.

James McMurtry. Just us kids. We can’t make it here anymore. So much character and dialogue packed into poems set to a rock beat. The guitar rocks a lot harder live than on the recordings. The DVD Live in Europe is like comfort food when I travel.

On the radio

KDRP. Wow. Just when I’m weary of bluegrass, a bit of Led Zeppelin clears the airwaves of that high lonesome sound. When I’m driving and need to hear that Waylon Jennings beat, KOKE-FM probably has it. Both stations have veterans of the Austin radio world who could not to be squelched by corporate interests at Emmis, ClearChannel, or national public radio.

On the web

The Paste weekly subscription is worth the $3 a month, and my Amazon cloud player – free for the first 250 songs – lets me play music at work at through the Roku to the speakers hooked up to the TV.