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.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Miles Bloxson.
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?
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.
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?
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.
I know you said it doesn't seem like
we're the only one, but it does seem
like it does.
Isolating for sure
Yeah, so what happens if
somebody doesn't have a place that
they can go to keep warm?
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.
And it's not just on the city.
What can we do to make sure that
we are prepared for this type of
weather?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Early morning rain
With a dollar in mind
And an aching in my
heart
Empty pockets for
sale
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.
Yeah, it's great to be here.
Jeff, can you tell us the type of
impact that Joe had on
the Texas music scene and
around the world?
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
Down on the dry
I'm bad.
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.
Please understand me, everything's
alright, I just need I got, I got a
lot of sleep last night
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
When future generations look back,
what do you think Joe Ely's lasting
legacy will be?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Something about my
mama's
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.
I'm always changin',
yeah we're always changi-
Something about my
mama's opium
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.
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.
Violet crowns are all over
Austin.
The Violet Crown coffee shop.
There's a church named after the
Violett Crown. There's the
shopping center.
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.
What is the significance and the
origin of the violet crown
motif throughout Austin?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I actually made it all the way back
to 1888,
there's a reference in the
Statesman.
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.
The occasion is the entree
into society of one of
the fairest buds in the city of
the violet crown.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hey man, you sure I'm okay in here?
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.
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.
A micron is a millionth of
a meter.
Now cedar pollen is
many times bigger than that.
It's 30 or 40 microns instead
of five or 10.
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.
They too have this enemy
allergen floating around,
and that could explain why we both
have the similar atmospheric effect,
the violet crown.
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.
The industrial revolution changed
our atmosphere drastically when you
look from now back
until that point.
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.
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.
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.
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.