Houston, Texas is home to at least one REALLY famous musician - Beyoncé Knowles. In fact her and three other members of the original Destiny's Child group can all claim this big Texas city as their own. Who would have thought the singer was any relation to this over the top Texas town? Beyoncé has a large fan base and has touched many parts of the music industry. She is, much like Texas, is bigger than average - at least when it comes to fame. There are certainly many bands and famous residents to claim Houston for themselves - but Beyoncé is arguably the largest.

What are your thoughts about Houston Music? What are your favorite bands and radio stations? Where are the best clubs to hear Beyoncé and other great artists? How do you feel about the music scene in Texas, the performance venues, and all things music in this rapidly expanding Texas city?

Grateful Dead - Truckin'

 My favorite verse of this song is as follows:

"Lately it occurs to me What a long, strange trip it's been.Truckin', I'm a goin' home. Whoa whoa baby, back where I belong,Back home, sit down and patch my bones, and get back truckin' on.Hey now get back truckin' home"

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It’s interesting to land upon a group that birthed the careers of two pretty well known players, but remains relatively unknown. Not that Country Cooking is either the greatest thing you’ve ever heard or the worst. It’s a really solid band able to mix rough hewn tempos and a sense of Appalachian otherworldliness while referencing the most progressive of progressive of bluegrass music.

Comprising Tony Trishka and Russ Barenberg, two eventual stalwarts of the Americana genre, Country Cooking arose from the meeting of college students during the late sixties. Of course, the music the band choose to investigate had very little to do with academia, it’d be difficult to differentiate between this ensemble and one from Kentucky.

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Auctioning in Chicago, Elvis' cold dead bones -- no, but as close as you can get to Elvis' remains.

On August 12th, a few days before the 33rd anniversary of Elvis' Presley's death, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers will hold a public auction.

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Country rock, as birthed from the mid sixties, is an odd genre. At times, dependent upon whose plying the style, country rock might mean something vaguely psychedelic. Other times, it all just sounds like supped up country songs with a pronounced electric element. But as the decade pushed on, there were greater and greater variations on the form that came to include concepts as wide ranging as organ jazz and the most messed up SF conception of psych.

Skip Battin, who’d eventually play a role in the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, cut his teeth in a few bands which gigged around the Los Angeles area. Some of his ensembles earned a bit of notoriety, but even those group’s that were able to find its way into the studio didn’t possess the same bite or the same sort of thoughtfulness his latter groups did.

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I think the majority of the American public relates Charlotte, North Carolina to bill collectors and credit cards than they do beautiful music - but this "little" big city has a lot going for it musically. The musical scene of Charlotte is heavily influenced by country music due primarily to its geographical location in the heart of the Southern United States but Charlotte is home to many venues that play a variety of tunes for the diverse population.

In case you are wondering the band "Good Charlotte" has no relation to the city - they are well known pop-punk band from Maryland.

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The music in Austin, Texas is as lively and unexpected as the residents of this capital city. The music of the city has many different flavors but the dominant types of music are country, blues, and urban music (like hip hop). There is also a strong following for bluegrass and other types of folk music. Bluegrass (a form of jazz) consists primarily of one or more instruments improvising and taking turns on the melody, while the others play to acompany the leading sound. It is described as music that can touch your soul and that tells a great story through song.  

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It’s odd to think that more than any other genre, country and bluegrass have offered up stars in pairs or in the configuration of a family. The Carter Family ostensibly laid the foundation, and the songbook, for subsequent generations. And while Bill Monroe made his name fronting a band, it was his earlier work with his brothers that allowed for his following success. In that band, the Foggy Mountain Boys, he fronted though, was a guitarist and fiddler that would leave his employ and gain a wider renown than even Monroe.

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Everything about the David Grisman Quartet is related back to jazz music – even the bluegrass the group plays is indebted to that other American art form. Counting innumerable sidemen over time, each making a unique contribution to the ensemble and subsequently having solo recording careers of their own cements the tie between the DGQ functioning like group’s sporting horn players out front.

But what of those folks who’ve moved through the ranks of David Grisman’s ensemble?

Two – well these two, at least – continued on in solo capacity, but also shared the recording studio a few times.

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England had a lot to feel silly about during the first half of the twentieth century.

Its empire was in the process of being dismantled, the threat of two wars fought on the continent proper had threatened autonomy and the culture was basically required to demur to art forms (literature, painting, etc.) coming from France, Italy and the rest of Europe. Even today, most folks would be hard pressed to name a specific art movement tied to that island nation. Punk might have been its largest, international contribution, but even that music really came from the States.

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