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The National Weather Service is forecasting warmer and drier-than-normal conditions for the Austin area this winter — but high-impact storms are still possible. What city officials and Austin Energy are doing to keep potential winter storm outages to minimum.
Austin music legend Joe Ely has died at 78. Jeff McCord, KUT and KUTX’s former music director, reflects on the life of Texas-born singer-songwriter.
We’ll also hear from another KUTX-er Marnie Castor gives us her favortie song coming out of Austin for 2025.
If you’ve lived in Austin long enough, you’ve seen the words “violet crown” around town — but what does it mean, and why are there so many? ATXplained digs in.
The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Miles Bloxson [00:00:09] Temperatures are dropping, but the National Weather Service is forecasting warmer and drier than normal conditions for the Austin area this winter. But high impact storms are still possible as the year wraps up and the new one kicks off. Find out what Austin City officials and Austin Energy are doing to keep potential winter storm outages to a minimum. And yesterday, musician Joe Ely passed at the age of 78. We speak with Jeff McCord, KUT and KUTX’s former music director about the life of Texas-born singer and songwriter.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:43] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Miles Bloxson.
Miles Bloxson [00:00:49] We’ll also hear from another KETXer, Marnie Castor. She gives us her favorite song coming out of 2025. That’s next right here on the Austin Signal. It’s Tuesday, December 16th. I’m Myles Bloxson and this is The Austin Signal. Thanks so much for joining us. As the weather is getting colder, high impact storms are possible this winter. The question is, what is the City of Austin doing to prepare us for these possible storms? In the studio today, Austin City Hall reporter Luz Moreno-Lazano is here to tell us all about what Austin is doing to keep potential winter storm averages to a minimum. Luz, great to have you today. Hey Myles. Okay, so the National Weather Service is forecasting warmer and drier than normal conditions for the Austin area this winter, but some meteorologists are actually saying that that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in the clear, right?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:01:50] That’s true. Yeah, I think we have historically have seen these kinds of weather patterns in the winter where it is warm and dry in December. And we tend to get these winter weather storms around January and February. And it’s at least once during that time period. And so this is really the kind of lead up to how can we be prepared. We got a little bit of a taste this week. But yeah, as you’re looking at the forecast, you’ll see it’ll warm up before the end of the week is done.
Miles Bloxson [00:02:16] Yeah, February is always a scary month for me because I never know what’s going to happen. So what is the city of Austin doing to make sure we are prepared if a round of severe cold weather does actually hit this winter?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:02:29] Yeah, great question. I think one of the things that we should really talk about and focus on is utilities. One thing that we’ve heard a lot from residents that gives people anxiety is whether or not we’re going to have power and water when the ice hits. So the city of Austin has been working really hard to do tree trimming around power lines and things. They’ve also been looking to weatherize or basically kind of like weatherproof equipment as well to make sure that those are ready to go. They have crews in place in case something happens and they can respond quickly. But the mayor did say like, it is inevitable power outages will happen and Austin apparently isn’t the only city that deals with this kind of thing. And so they have plans in place to make sure that that does if that does happen that they can response as quickly as possible. They’re also ensuring that there’s plans in places for for roads to make sure those are clear. Communication plans are in place. You know, all of these things are kind of coming into big. One big thing as we kind of lead into this next few months.
Miles Bloxson [00:03:32] I know you said it doesn’t seem like we’re the only one, but it does seem like it does.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:03:37] Isolating for sure
Miles Bloxson [00:03:38] Yeah, so what happens if somebody doesn’t have a place that they can go to keep warm?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:03:42] Yeah, one thing that they will do as this kind of starts to ramp up, they will open what they call warming centers. These are like facilities that open during the day, libraries, recreation centers, other city facilities, county facilities spread out throughout the city and in the county. People can go there during the days, stay warm. Usually there’s a place for people to just kind of sit. Overnight, depending on weather and the threshold of how cold it gets, they’ll open overnight shelters for people who need that, including options for families who might want to be in a hotel, for example. And some also allow pets as long as they’re on a leash and well-behaved, and so there’s options for that as well.
Miles Bloxson [00:04:25] And it’s not just on the city. What can we do to make sure that we are prepared for this type of weather?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:04:30] We heard a lot about this yesterday. Making a preparedness kit was one of the things that we heard, you know, extra blankets, extra batteries, flashlights, extra medications, if you’re a person that needs that. And then, yeah, making sure that you’re getting to know your neighbors. One of the thing that we’ve heard a little about is like make sure that your neighbors are, we all are all in communication in case someone has perishables, non-perishables, there’s elderly folks next to you. So yeah, definitely making plans to be safe at home. One of the things we’re also hearing about right now is because of all of the holiday decorations kind of happening, making sure to keep those kinds of things away from flammable areas.
Miles Bloxson [00:05:09] And Luz, before I let you go, you also reported on former Austin Mayor Frank Cooksey, who died Monday at the age of 92. Can you tell us a little bit about him?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:05:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a big civil rights activist attorney, is what he did. But as mayor, he did a lot of environmental work. So he helped create the Comprehensive Watershed Ordinance. He helped champion the creation of the Edwards Aquifer underground water district. Oh, wow. Lots of environmental works that he did, and yeah. And as a civil rights attorney, he helped focus on voting rights cases. So.
Miles Bloxson [00:05:44] Oh, wow. Legacy. Definitely. We’ve been speaking with Luce Moreno-Lazano, KUT City Hall reporter. Luce, thanks so much for talking with us today. Thanks for having me, Miles. Today Austin and the Texas music world are mourning the loss of Joe Ely, a storyteller, road warrior, and one of the voices that helped define the sound of Texas and the wider American roots movement. He died yesterday at the age of 78. From the Flatlanders to stages around the world, his influence ran deep.
Joe Ely [00:06:21] Early morning rain With a dollar in mind And an aching in my heart Empty pockets for sale
Miles Bloxson [00:06:40] To help us reflect on Joe Ely’s life, music, and legacy, I’m joined by former KUT and KUTX music director of more than 20 years, Jeff McCord. Jeff, it’s great to have you here with us.
Jeff Mcord [00:06:53] Yeah, it’s great to be here.
Miles Bloxson [00:06:54] Jeff, can you tell us the type of impact that Joe had on the Texas music scene and around the world?
Jeff Mcord [00:07:01] To me his impact was just, uh, immeasurable. It was, um, for me and for so many others, I think Joe was the bridge between Willie Nelson and the big boys, you know, he made it all, all the stuff that’s Texas music, he make it all make sense because he was so musically Restless and ambitious and eclectic. There really has never been anyone like him in Texas music
Joe Ely [00:07:39] Down on the dry I’m bad.
Jeff Mcord [00:07:56] He started out as the younger apprentice of sorts to Jimmy Gilmore and Bitch Hancock and Terry Allen and all these loveick singer-songwriters. And he wasn’t really a songwriter to begin with. He was just, you know, this slightly younger guy that was tagging along. When they made that Flatlander’s record, Butch, Jimmy and Joe, it was an eight-track that virtually got… Unnoticed and years later got reissued on vinyl. By that point, they’d all made their own reputations, but the Flatlanders originally were Jimmy DeGrammer’s band, and he wrote all the songs, he sang them all. Joe wasn’t a songwriter, but in the interim, he became one. But he also found out that he was something else, and that was a performer and a natural bandleader. These shows that he put on. I mean, you just had the feeling you were in the right place at the right time, you know? These shows that just seemingly went on forever. Joe would just grin ear to ear, and you’d think he’d be done. He was just drenched with sweat. You know, he’d just keep going.
Joe Ely [00:09:16] Please understand me, everything’s alright, I just need I got, I got a lot of sleep last night
Jeff Mcord [00:09:24] Joe seemed unconcerned with success. Even said this in interviews, that he didn’t care if people liked his records or not, you know, he was making them for him, and, uh, you know, when he turned in a synthesizer record to MCA records, you now, they were just like, what is this guy doing, but he didn t care, he just following his muse all the time, and that’s what made him so special to me, I mean, and to so many others. You realized it was okay to like Willie Nelson and the Dicks, you know, it was okay to, you, know, just enjoy everything that was coming out of Texas and and the fact that you know when Bruce Springsteen would come to town or the Clash and Joey Lee would be there on stage with them, it was a validation of everything great about Texas music, you Because you they understood and it just gave you the sense of pride that here is this guy that just he was one of a kind
Miles Bloxson [00:10:43] When future generations look back, what do you think Joe Ely’s lasting legacy will be?
Jeff Mcord [00:10:49] I hope it will become more widespread than it is now. Joe was not that concerned with success, but rightfully he should have been a superstar. He certainly was in the state of Texas, but I would love to see it go beyond that. It’s a difficult thing to translate when someone is so musically eclectic. There’s not an easy way to describe their music. Joe certainly falls in that category. He’s as great as anyone ever was.
Miles Bloxson [00:11:33] That was former music director of KUT and KUTX for over 20 years, Jeff McCord on the life of Joe Ely. Thank you so much, Jeff. We’ve got more coming up for you on the Austin Signal. Stay with us.
Marnie Castor [00:11:53] You’re listening to Austin Signal. My name is Marnie Castor and I am the Saturday morning host from 7 a.m. To 10 a. M. On KUTX. And one of my favorite songs out of Austin this year is Back Home Feeling by Paige Plaisance.
Paige Plaisance [00:12:12] Pulling into town and the time slows down no one’s in a hurry yeah we don’t have to hurry it’s good to be back as a matter of fact i forgot all my worries Yeah, we don’t
Marnie Castor [00:12:33] and it’s a song I think about a lot or I think more about the concept of coming home or can you come home and what it feels like to go back to a place that was one’s home.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:12:47] Something about my mama’s
Marnie Castor [00:13:14] She grew up on the Mississippi and Tennessee and is now stationed in Austin, Texas. And there’s just something about it that I, it captures my heart in terms of just a nostalgic feeling, I believe, or just that like trying to sing about what she loves about her hometown.
Paige Plaisance [00:13:39] I’m always changin’, yeah we’re always changi- Something about my mama’s opium
Marnie Castor [00:13:51] The first impression when I heard that song was like, oh, that speaks to my heart. It was just a song that, you know, just kind of hit me right in the chest. My name is Marnie Castor, I’m the Saturday Morning Host at KUTX, and you can find all of our favorite songs from 2025 at kutx.org. This is Austin Signal.
Miles Bloxson [00:14:30] If you live in Austin long enough, you see a lot of Violet Crown themed things around town. But what is Violet crown? Well, someone asked about this for ATXplained. KUT’s Juan Diego Garcia went to find out.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:14:44] Violet crowns are all over Austin.
Jenna Guzman [00:14:47] The Violet Crown coffee shop. There’s a church named after the Violett Crown. There’s the shopping center.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:14:52] Jenna Guzman noticed them while biking around North Austin, but if you go pretty much anywhere in town, you’ll see them. There’s also a Violet Crown tattoo shop, the Violet crown trail, the violet crown movie theater. Jenna wanted to know.
Jenna Guzman [00:15:06] What is the significance and the origin of the violet crown motif throughout Austin?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:15:11] It didn’t take much to figure out it was one of Austin’s many nicknames, the City of the Violet Crown. But unlike other nicknams, there didn’t seem to be an obvious reason for it. The capital city just means the state capital is here in Austin. Live music capital of the world is pretty self-explanatory. The earliest reference I could find to a violet crown was from the 1890s. Writers like O. Henry and William Cowper Brand described Austin’s sky as a violet Crown. They were talking about the pretty purple hue you can sometimes see at sunset. To find out what causes Austin’s violet crown, I spoke to KXAN’s former chief meteorologist, David Yeomans. He said the unique purple sky we get at sunset has to do with particles in the atmosphere that act as a kind of filter for light waves. It’s the same reason the sky is blue. It has to with the amount of atmosphere the light has to pass through, and what the light hits before it reaches our eyes.
David Yeomans [00:16:12] You think of the earth as a round sphere covered by this thin layer of atmosphere. Sunlight coming in to hit the earth’s surface and to hit our atmosphere is actually white. It contains every color on the spectrum.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:16:26] The light from the sun goes through a kind of filtering process as it passes through the atmosphere. The light particles bounce off all kinds of microscopic stuff on its journey to our eyeballs.
David Yeomans [00:16:36] So as it does that, the little particles that are naturally occurring in the atmosphere, gasses, smoke, dust, pollution, those are scattering most readily blue light, which is why when the sun is right overhead, the sky is blue.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:16:50] As the sun dips low on the horizon at sunset, the light now has to pass through much more atmosphere to get to our eyes. That bends the light further, making it interact differently with the particles in the atmosphere.
David Yeomans [00:17:02] When it does so, it not only scatters the blue light, but it scatters some of the longer wavelengths of light, the reds, oranges, yellows that we think of as a beautiful sunset.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:17:13] So far, none of this is unique to Austin. Anywhere you are in the world, the color of the sky at sunset has to do with the amount of atmosphere it has to pass through and the stuff in the atmosphere. But Austin was really into this sunset. In the 1890s, there were lots of references to the Violet Crown, but that seems to have faded. Susan Bernison has lived in the Crestview neighborhood in Austin since 1985. She started collecting stories from the in the early 2000s. Later sharing what she collected on her website, Voices of the Violet Crown.
Susan Bernison [00:17:48] I actually made it all the way back to 1888, there’s a reference in the Statesman.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:17:56] It was around this time that writers in Austin started throwing the Violet Crown around in their stories set in the city. Most folks credit O. Henry for christening Austin as the City of the Violett Crown in his work Tick-Tock the French Detective in 1894.
Susan Bernison [00:18:12] The occasion is the entree into society of one of the fairest buds in the city of the violet crown.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:18:19] He might have taken inspiration from another Austin-based writer at the time. William Cowper Brann wrote about the Violet Crown in 1891. An Edison dollar with its lion legend more beautiful in his eyes than even Austin’s Violet crown. Starting in 1920, the first ever Violet-Crown festival added another layer to the nickname’s lore.
Susan Bernison [00:18:39] There was a group called the Order of the Violet Crown that was kind of a civic group, and they started this big thing with, they had a parade, they had coronation of queen. I’m not exactly sure what it grew out of, but it was really popular in the 20s.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:18:53] A few years later, in 1925, there was a project in Austin to build the ideal home for the time. The house was called…you guessed it…the Violet Crown Home.
Susan Bernison [00:19:04] 25 was the first time I saw that kind of in a real estate mode, you know, where you were trying to promote houses that had a view of the Violet Crown Hills.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:19:12] This would continue in real estate marketing all throughout the early 20th century, but few had the impact Dr. Joe Koenig and Clarence McCullough had when they started selling land in what used to be North Austin in the 40s. They called their subdivision Violet Crown Heights. Right alongside the subdivision, the pair built a shopping center in 1951. They called it the Violet Crown Shopping Center, which had a handful of Violet crown-themed businesses. You might even recognize it as the Emporium from Dazed and Confused.
Paige Plaisance [00:19:45] Hey man, you sure I’m okay in here?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:19:47] Oh yeah, man, you’ll be okay. Look, if anyone starts messing with you, just play it cool. But despite its prevalence here, Austin wasn’t the first violet crown city in the world. Athens, Greece beat us to the nickname by a couple thousand years. The earliest reference to their violet crown dates back to 400 BC. And there’s something else we have in common with Athens that might explain the coincidence. Juniper trees. Both cities have these trees that produce everyone’s favorite light-scattering particle, what we call cedar pollen. Here’s David Yeomans again.
David Yeomans [00:20:22] Most of the stuff in the atmosphere that’s naturally occurring or from pollution is like two and a half microns, maybe up to ten microns in size.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:20:30] A micron is a millionth of a meter.
David Yeomans [00:20:33] Now cedar pollen is many times bigger than that. It’s 30 or 40 microns instead of five or 10.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:20:39] In other words, cedar pollen particles are much bigger than most of what’s in the atmosphere, so it scatters different wavelengths of light. David believes this might explain why Austin and Athens became the only two violet-crowned cities in the world.
David Yeomans [00:20:53] They too have this enemy allergen floating around, and that could explain why we both have the similar atmospheric effect, the violet crown.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:21:02] David also has a theory about why the name went out of style. The Violet Crowns nickname’s popularity took off in the 1880s, around the time early environmental movements were rising in response to the Industrial Revolution.
David Yeomans [00:21:15] The industrial revolution changed our atmosphere drastically when you look from now back until that point.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:21:21] Pollution isn’t the only thing that affects the colors of the sky. Natural stuff like wildfires and our yearly encounter with Saharan dust can also color the sunset. But there’s no doubt we’ve had an impact on the colors we see at sunset.
David Yeomans [00:21:36] Maybe those contributions are starting to overpower the Violet Crown effect. Maybe it was even more prominent. Maybe that was the prominent feature in our sky.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:21:44] And how could it not be the biggest deal in town? In the 1880s, Austin had a university, the state capitol, and that’s about it. Our city has since grown and adopted a few other nicknames along the way. But before the tech industry turned us into Silicon Hills, before the Austin Chamber of Commerce labeled us the live music capital of the world, and before we were reminded to keep Austin weird all the time, We had our awesome Violet Crown Sunset. I’m Juan Garcia, in the City of the Violet Crown.
Miles Bloxson [00:22:28] Rayna Sevilla is our technical director. Kristin Cabrera is our managing producer. Thanks for doing all that you do. I’m Miles Bloxton and for my buddy, Jerry Quijano. Austin Signal is back tomorrow. We’ll talk to you then.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
