Townes Van Zandt is one of those musicians that you don’t know that you know.
His song have been covered by Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Bob Dylan, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, Guy Clark, Steve Earle and Willie Nelson did a little tune of his called Pancho and Lefty.
A little bit like the Texas version of Gram Parsons, Townes grew up in a wealthy family and headed off to college in the ’60s. He left school, partially to become famous and partially due to the onset of mental health problems that would plague him the rest of his life.
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It’s not the kind of music you’d necessarily put on at a party, but James McMurtry’s epic songs of relationships, politics and the injustices inherent in both make you think.
The lyrics are rarely sung, but rattled off in an angry recital type of way that can make the rhythms blend together in the casual ear. It’s careful listening that is rewarded with richly painted characters and intricate plots.
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Junior at the Thirsty Ear Music Festival 2008
Most musicians are content to use the standard-issue instruments. In the case of Junior Brown, none of the available instruments fit his needs, so he created his own.
Called the “guit-steel,” Junior plays a combination of the 6-string guitar and the steel guitar which allows him to switch back and forth quickly on-stage.
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Upon first listen, Daniel Johnston appears to be crazy. Or brilliant. Or perhaps both.
Either way, there’s something in his sound that catches your attention.
And he’s the epitome of indie music, his earliest recordings were passed around on cassette tapes that he would re-record as he needed more.
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If She & Him were a party, I’d be the one pulling up about an hour after the “fashionably late” period ended. My tardiness caused not by hours in the salon or picking the right dress but rather by months of mental gymnastics, trying to get past the hurdle of envisioning Zooey Deschanel as a musician.
Luckily, there’s still plenty of cake to go around for all the latecomers. And it’s good cake too.
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“My governor is a Jewish Cowboy.”
“He ain’t Kinky, he’s my governor.”
“Why the Hell not?”
If you weren’t in the general vicinity of Austin, Texas in 2006 you probably missed these bumper stickers as well as some of Kinky Friedman’s other campaign slogans which included, “How hard can it be?” and a whole series of television ads featuring the likes of Willie Nelson, Billy Joe Shaver and the Dixie Chicks.
While he lost the gubernatorial race and with it the opportunity to start the “dewussification of Texas” the former child-chess-player-turned-musician-turned-author is just as funny, and potentially offensive as he ever was.
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It takes a certain kind of man to shoot someone in a bar fight.
It takes a whole different type of man to fess up, surrender himself to the police, make bail and show up the next night to play an in-store show asking his fans to pray for him.
But that’s Billy Joe Shaver for you.
The 2007 event may scream the ending of a Lifetime movie even though it’s just one side of the singer, songwriter and country music renegade.
He’s been making music for over 35 years and is responsible for songs such as “Live Forever,” “Way Down Texas Way,” “I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train,” “Old Chunk of Coal” and “Old Five and Dimers Like Me.”
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Heard It on the X
What happens when you toss Rick Treviño, Ruben Ramos, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, Joe Ely, John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett with just about every other fantastic musician within a few hundred miles? You get Los Super 7 – the Grammy winning super group singing songs from both sides of the border.
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