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BEST OF 2012 – Third QuarterJULY Drew Womack – Sunshine To Rain – Similar to Radney Foster in talent, approach, and versatility but too often overlooked, Drew Womack drew from a deep well of country, soul and classic pop to make a record of crisp, earnest odes to what modern radio country could be if they dialed down the pandering and amped up the originality. Whether... [Read more of this review]
BEST OF 2012 – Second Quarter
APRIL Atwood-Childs – Trading Pains – Honky-tonker Mark Allan Atwood had a banner year by most standards, putting out one fine album with his band Brimstone and this winning collaboration with fellow unjustly obscure Central Texas songwriter Heath Childs on the side. It’s as simultaneously fraternal and heartbroken as its title, with Childs’... [Read more of this review]
BEST OF 2012 – First Quarter
OK, let’s try it a little different this year. Everyone’s welcome to their favorite album of the year, me included, but perhaps trying to rank 30 albums (all ranging from worthy & solid to downright excellent, to these ears) is a fool’s errand. It’s a music scene, not a horse race or a cage fight, and under the right... [Read more of this review]
Your Christmas playlist companion
This isn’t the usual “essentials” set … figured I’d be even looser than usual here. I’m a fan of Christmas music, within reason. The secular songs are usually insanely catchy, even if it’s a little hard to identify with numbers about snowy fields and horse-drawn sleighs (the latter is probably problematic... [Read more of this review]
Best of 2012 preview
For people that read this on anything resembling a semi-regular basis, sorry for the absence. Been working on something for awhile in that sliver of time I get to play music writer instead of singer/songwriter/day jobber/consultant/dad/husband … last year I came up with a Top 30 albums for 2012 because the year was rich with good music and... [Read more of this review]
Halloween Special – The 5 Creepiest Songs of Robert Earl Keen
Attempts to make an “Essentials” article about Halloween-friendly Texas tunes stalled out with the realization that just about everything that fit the bill (big exception: Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Every Day Is The Day of the Dead”) was a Robert Earl Keen song. The fairly clean-living and level-headed alt-country trailblazer might have won... [Read more of this review]
Under The Radar – John Edward Baumann
Like a handful of his similarly compelling peers, John Edward Baumann has the gift of writing smart songs about folks making dumb decisions, and of tempering his youthful gusto with a well-traveled eye for detail, dignity, and world-weariness. His voice isn’t huge in range or volume, but there’s a lend-me-your-ears earnestness in it that... [Read more of this review]
Album Review – Deep In The Heart: Big Songs For Little Texans
Deep In The Heart – Big Songs for Little Texans (Bismeaux Records) Well, the timing is right … most of the folks throwing up on their dates at Pat Green concerts ten or twelve years ago are at about the right age to be raising toddlers at this point (myself included, even though little Luke isn’t quite toddling yet). This might be our... [Read more of this review]
The Essentials – College Cowboy Soundtrack, 1994-1998
In “The Essentials” series, our official blogger, singer/songwriter/journalist Mike Ethan Messick, dives into the catalog of one of the Texas Music Scene’s brightest stars or biggest legends and comes up with a handful of essential songs to recommend. Alternately he might tackle a theme, regional scene, or subgenre and list off just enough... [Read more of this review]
Under The Radar – Blue Bear
“Under The Radar” is a regular feature on the Texas Music Scene where our official blogger, singer/songwriter/journalist Mike Ethan Messick, shines the spotlight on a deserving but lesser-known artist. Some of these subjects are just getting started and might be tomorrow’s headliner (or Texas Music Scene star); some are music veterans who’ve... [Read more of this review]
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