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KUT and KUTX news and music podcasts for Austin, Texas and beyond

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Music Festivals

Today, thousands of fans from all over will pile into Austin’s Zilker Park for the first weekend of the Austin City Limits Music Festival. And while the locals love to hate the event, deep down, we’re proud to host one of the best events for music lovers. We’ll still complain about traffic, though.

Homesick for Texas: Songs & Tributes to the Lone Star State

To my mind, the signature song about longing for Texas is this one:

I wanna go home with the Armadillo;
Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene;
The friendliest people and the prettiest women you’ve ever seen.

That’s “London Homesick Blues” sung by Jerry Jeff Walker and written by Gary P. Nunn.

But there are dozens of songs that make Texpatriates (Texans forced to live outside of Texas a
while) a little misty eyed. Like “Amarillo By Morning” by George Strait:

Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone.
Everything that I’ve got is just what I’ve got on.
When that sun is high in that Texas sky
I’ll be bucking it to county fair.
Amarillo by morning, Amarillo I’ll be there.

And what Texan isn’t moved by these immortal words?

Let’s go to Luckenbach Texas
With Waylon and Willie and the boys

The theme of Texas homesickness is a common theme in our music, our folklore, and our literature.

Did you ever hear the story about the Montana cowboy who died and went to heaven? St. Peter was giving him a tour when the Montanan looked up to see a bunch of cowboys in jail, struggling to get out. The Montanan said to St. Peter: “I’m a little surprised to see a jail in heaven!”

St. Peter said, “Oh that’s not a jail. That’s the Texas Detention Center.”

Montanan said, “Oh I understand. I did some drovin’ with those ole boys. When they get to a new town they can do some damage.”

“That’s not the problem,” said St. Peter. “The problem is they get so homesick they keep tryin’ to sneak out the Pearly Gates to go back to Texas. So we have to keep ‘em locked up a while till they learn to like it here.”

We find the theme in Larry McMurtry’s work, too. In his little masterpiece of a novel, “All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers,” the central character, Danny Deck, is leaving Texas for the first time in his life. He is driving just west of El Paso and about to cross the border when he says:

“It was strange, leaving Texas… It was all behind me, north to south, not lying there exactly, but more like looming there over the car… some genie, some god, towering over the road. I really felt it… I had left without asking permission or earning my freedom. Texas let me go, ominously quiet. It hadn’t gone away. It was there behind me.”

When he returned to Texas after several months, Danny realized what many a traveler has realized – that there is no place like home. He says:

“It was the sky that was Texas, the sky that welcomed me back… The sky was what I had been missing, and seeing it again in its morning brightness made me realize suddenly why I hadn’t been myself for many months. It had such depth and such spaciousness and such incredible compass, it took so much in and circled one with such a tremendous generous space that it was impossible not to feel more intensely with it above you.”

Reminds me of what my brother Redneck Dave once told me. He said, “I reckon everybody everywhere misses their home, but if there was a way to measure the mightiness of missin’, I’d betcha big that Texans would come out pretty much on top.”

I can’t argue with that.

W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.

Texas Standard: August 9, 2016

It’s the story with more twists and turns than the best Hill Country ride you could imagine…yep, we’ve got news for the bikers caught up in the Twin Peaks shootout. Plus the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas started as a prison gang, but the violence hasn’t stopped inside prison walls. We’ll look at what a massive federal takedown means for one of the most infamous hate groups of Texas. Also, startup news is often buoyed by hype…but there are real jobs and economic numbers below the surface. Plus, in this summer heat, we’ve chosen a few refreshing songs to keep you cool, both morning and night. All that and more just for you on today’s Texas Standard:

Is Austin Still Keeping It Weird?

“Keep Austin Weird.” The phrase is printed on T-shirts, bumper stickers, posters; it’s part of Austin’s national reputation. But, it seems that for every pocket of weird, there’s a new corporate chain from California moving in.

Texas Standard: March 4, 2016

In a messy political season a war of words dominates the front pages–as a war in real life simmers half a world away. The cost for Texas, today on the Texas Standard.

It’s being called a watershed moment in the American conservative movement—as a top gathering of conservatives embraces a gay rights group.

Crosses on cop cars in Texas: how does that square with, you know, the constitution?

Also, tips for Texas musicians, how do you get your music played on the radio, anyway?

Plus, the week in politics and much more – no matter where you are, it’s Texas Standard time.

Think There’s No Poetry In Texas? Think Again

A New Yorker told me that he never uses the words Texas and poetry in the same sentence.

He thinks Texas poetry is an oxymoron because he doesn’t see how such a refined art form could be produced in a macho culture. But he is wrong. Cowboys and vaqueros were reciting poetry in the warm glow of firelight on the Texas plains hundreds of years ago.

A modern inheritor of this tradition is Walt McDonald. He gives us this poem that celebrates country music in Texas. It’s called “The Waltz We Were Born For.”

“I never knew them all, just hummed
and thrummed my fingers with the radio,
driving five hundred miles to Austin.
Her arms held all the songs I needed.
Our boots kept time with fiddles
and the charming sobs of blondes,

the whine of steel guitars
sliding us down in deer-hide chairs
when jukebox music was over.
Sad music’s on my mind tonight
in a jet high over Dallas, earphones
on channel five. A lonely singer,

dead, comes back to beg me,
swearing in my ears she’s mine,
rhymes set to music that make
her lies seem true. She’s gone
and others like her, leaving their songs
to haunt us. Letting down through clouds

I know who I’ll find waiting at the gate,
the same woman faithful to my arms
as she was those nights in Austin
when the world seemed like a jukebox,
our boots able to dance forever,
our pockets full of coins.”

Here is another one I enjoy from well-known Texas poet, Chip Dameron. It is printed in the shape of Texas. You begin in the Panhandle and work your way down to the Rio Grande. The words celebrate the part of Texas in which they reside. It is called “A State of Mind.”

Last, here is Violette Newton, Poet Laureate of Texas in 1973. She wrote this humorous poem which speaks directly to the problem of getting respect for Texas poetry:

Up East, they do not think much
of Texas poetry. They think Texans
have no soul for aesthetics, that all
they do is pound their own chests,
talk loud and make money.
But every time I’m nearing Austin,
I look up at a painted sign
high on the side of the highway
that says, “Bert’s Dirts”
and to pyramids of many-colored soils
sold by Bert, and I swell with pride
at that rhyming sign, I puff up
and point to that terse little title
and wish we could stop
so I could go in
and purchase
a spondee of sand
to make a gesture of my support
for poetry in Texas.

Take that, New York.

W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.

V&B – Paramount Records

In this episode of Views & Brews, KUT’s Rebecca McInroy joins co-founder of Revenant Records and lawyer Dean Blackwood and Grammy-nominated author of We Agreed To Meet Just Here and See How Small and co-producer of The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records Volume 1 & 2, Scott Blackwood, to discuss music, authenticity, memory, sound, and the human voice in the history of Paramount Records.

V&B: Austin Music Census

In this episode of Views & Brews, guest host Matt Reilly of KUTX talks with Nikki Rowling, of the Titan Music Group, and Don Pitts, from The City of Austin Music Office, to discuss what recent data, published in The Austin Music Census, tells us about the health of the Austin music scene. Is the live music capital of the world on the verge of losing it’s musicians, because they can’t make a living in the city? Is Austin a place to discover new music? What can be done, by the city, the musicians, and the general public to ensure Austin music remains alive and kickin’?

 

Klezmer & The Art of Mixed Dancing

Views and Brews is a discussion show taped live at the Cactus Cafe. In this episode KUT’s Rebecca McInroy talks with Rabbi and jazz historian Neil Blumofe, Itzik Gottesman, and David Gilden about the past, present, and future of klezmer music. Along with the interview, five bands join the stage to illustrate the various styles of klezmer.

Jazz and The Art of Patronage (3.30.14)

What does it mean to be a patron of the arts? Perhaps you have the means to support art innovation in your community, or maybe you are a producer of music or art and you work behind the scenes. Maybe your way of supporting art is just showing up. All of these are means of developing an artistic community and building a creative environment for future generations.

Nat King Cole (3.16.14)

Singer Nat King Cole is well known for his smooth baritone voice, but he started his career as a jazz pianist. His popularity grew through radio and eventually television as he sang a broad range of tunes, including pop music.

V&B: Cowboy Poetry Set to Music

Graphic designer DJ Stout and Austin-based composer and pianist Graham Reynolds talk about their collaboration that illustrates the power of regionalism and the beauty of home on a global stage. Stout of Pentagram, the world’s largest independent design consultancy, will discuss his latest publication featuring cowboy poets from West Texas, as Reynolds performs a live score along with the presentation. This will be a version of the performance they gave at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town in February 2014.

Along with their presentation they’ll talk about what it means to bring your home and your place into your work, however international it may be. Why is it important to “go back to your roots”? What is the role of home and history is 21st Century graphic design? What was the reception in Cape Town to this Texas project?

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