Galleywinter

As he confidently, strode out into the crowd during “Big Night in the City”, Josh Weathers had a knowing smirk and a poised gleam in his eye.  Strolling down the middle row of flimsy tables Billy Bob’s offers as glorified beer coasters, Weathers was in the midst of the show of his life.  It was all a boy from Tarrant County could have ever dreamed of.  A sold-out show at the “world’s largest honky-tonk.”  People were jammed from one end to the other of the place and singing along to all his songs.  No small feat for a musician and band without any radio play or hits.

It took Weathers a decade to get to this point.  Thousands of gigs in dingy dive bars from Amarillo to Austin and everywhere in between.  Ten years of grinding it out had enabled him to become one of the most dynamic live performers Texas Music has ever seen.   His vocal chops are second to none and his stage repertoire that mixes country deftly with soul, r&b and rock is a unique slice of music that comes off quintessentially Texan.

A headlining spot on the LJT Festival mainstage, back to back appearances at Greenfest and a 2013 viral video ride off this clip, gave Weathers a taste of what he’d been working for all those years.  And, when he finally got to taste it, he realized maybe that large scale success wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  Business was getting … Keep Reading

Whiskey Myers have brought an old sound to a new generation with their spin on classic southern rock.  Cody Cannon’s tales of east Texas life, love and folklore resonate much the same way that those of Van Zandt and Allman did nearly 40 years ago.  Famed producer Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson) presided over WM’s latest effort, Early Mornin’ Shakes, which hits the street on Feb 4th.  Cobb takes the strength’s of all the band members and amplifies them to great success.  Longtime fans will find something to dig, and yet the music is still accessible enough for new fans to jump on board.  It’s often hard for a great live band to capture that special energy in a studio setting, yet Whiskey Myers have done just that with Cobb’s help.  

Our compatriot at the Dallas Observer, Kelly Dearmore, did a fantastic feature on Whiskey Myers that goes into much greater detail on the new album, as well as, the band’s origins, rise and future.  In a year that will see many highly anticipated releases, Early Mornin’ Shakes just may be the record with the most riding on it.  Below is a link to the lead single, “Home”, on The Drop and the official video for it.

Whiskey Myers – “Home” on The Drop

… Keep Reading

Steve Fromholz was never the biggest name, but the influence he and his songs  had on the biggest names of his heyday still reverberate in the present.  To that end, while the records he recorded and released on his own never found wide acclaim, artists such as Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker and Lyle Lovett took Fromholz’s creations to worldwide audiences.  Fromholz was purely Texan and had a knack for making every lyric drip with his quintessential Texan-ness.  There was a constant mystical whimsy under the surface of Fromholz’s songs.

Fromholz’s musical career began when he attended North Texas and met Michael Martin Murphey.  Together they knocked around in various musical formations before Fromholz did a hitch in the Navy. After the Navy, Fromholz found some minor success based out of Colorado as part of a duo called Frummox.  The most fruitful moment to come out of this incarnation was Fromholz’s legendary “Texas Trilogy”, where he uses three songs to tell three seemingly unrelated stories of small-town Texas, that in fact have more in common than they or the listeners may ever truly know.

After bouncing around various scenes, tours and bands, Fromholz found his way home to Texas in the early-mid 70′s.  It was here that his unique and entertaining style bent the ears of such rising, local luminaries as Nelson and Walker.

It would be Nelson’s cover of “I’d Have To Be Crazy” that would bring Fromholz his greatest renown.  The modern generation of Texas Music fans grew … Keep Reading

This is the story of how an innocuous tweet led to an examination of the modern concert experience.  (ed. note-having issues with tweets embedding properly.  Will fix ASAP)

So, this past Friday night the wife and I took a last minute, spontaneous roadtrip to see Will Hoge at Billy Bob’s.  It had been a minute since I’ve been to a show at Billy Bob’s.  We got there early enough to see the house band doing an admirable job tearing through that awful Tyler Farr redneck stalker song.  Once they finished though, we still had 45 minutes until Mr. Hoge took to the mainstage.  So, we did what anybody would do.  Walked around, people watched and enjoyed the scene.  We took in a bit of the bullriding, which seemed to be a little more intesne than normal on this evening due to the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo being in town.  There were an abundance of tourists and an odd mix of people that had all congregated for, as we’d soon learn, a wide variety of reasons to see Will Hoge.

Many longtime fans had come to take part in a type of celebratory success story after watching Hoge perform for the past decade in dingy dives of Deep Ellum and beyond.  Others came because they knew he was the one who’d written “Even If It Breaks Your Heart” which Eli Young Band covered to great acclaim.  Yet, a great majority of the more western attendees solely knew Hoge as … Keep Reading

Jeff Strahan was a musician’s musician.  A true, kind-hearted soul who just longed to share his talents with the world.  He was a straight shooter and a guitar slinger.  While many of the largest acts in Texas claim New Braunfels as their home, it was Jeff who led the local music scene in the 830 with great poise.  I only met him a handful of times and was only lucky enough to see him jam once.  I love the blues and he was a great champion for them.  He played the blues with great passion and now we weep the blues with great sorrow.  His friend and bandmate, Chris Compton – “Saying Goodbye To My Friend”- eulogized him much more eloquently than I can due to my limited interactions and knowledge.  But, it is safe to say we’ve lost a large piece of the soul of music being made in Texas.

 … Keep Reading