An Austin doctor is using vinyl
records to help patients cope with
serious illnesses and difficult
treatments.
KUT's Olivia Aldridge has a look at
how music is helping in the healing
process.
And Texans have access to some of
the best bird-watching opportunities
in the country.
We'll go behind the scenes of an
annual census of the area's bird
population.
The Austin Signal is a production of
KUT News, hosted by Syeda
Carrillo.
You may have spotted him stopping
for photos with fans outside the
Paramount Theater or the Continental
Club.
Austin's Santa on horseback,
Samuel Gray Horse, is back in
the saddle after a difficult year.
KUT's Greta Diaz-Gonzalez-Fasquez
brings us his story.
That and much more coming up today
on Austin Signal.
Merry Christmas Eve, Austin.
I'm Syeda Carrillo.
This is Austin Signal.
Great to have you with us.
The holiday season is a time
of celebration and rest for many
of us, but for those who are
struggling with an illness, it can
be particularly difficult.
KUT's Olivia Aldridge tells us about
how a doctor and a team of
volunteers at Dell Seton Medical
Center in downtown Austin are
bringing a little bit of cheer and
comfort to patients and their
families.
With the help of good old-fashioned
vinyl records.
Tyler Jorgensen started all this
a few years ago.
He had just begun his palliative
care fellowship at Dell Medical
School.
After years of working in emergency
medicine, he'd now be helping
patients manage difficult ongoing
conditions, including some
at the end of life.
And there was this one patient he
was having trouble making a
connection with.
I felt like he was really struggling
and suffering and just seemed very
isolated and one day just
had this idea to like play a little
classic rock with him.
The boys are back in town, the
boys are Back in town
Jorgensen harnessed the power of
Thin Lizzy and watched the patient
begin to change.
This guy, this patient, who was
totally walled off, completely came
out of his shell.
He started telling Jorgensen old
stories about his life, and being
honest and vulnerable about the
health challenges he was facing and
how he felt about them.
And it just struck me that all
this time I've been practicing
medicine, and there's such a
powerful tool that is almost
universal to the human experience,
which is music, and I've never
tapped into it.
He asked his supervisors if he could
make a project of it, music therapy
with a novel delivery system,
an old school record player on a
rolling cart.
Today, he keeps one in an office at
Dalceton, along with a growing
collection of 60 or so records.
A little of his handbob.
Ha ha ha
ha. Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown?
This is home base for the ATX
vinyl program.
Volunteers check in with the nursing
staff to see who might benefit from
some music that day.
And they ask the patient or their
family what kind of music might be
special to them.
UT Austin sophomore, Daniela Vargas,
is lead volunteer.
We get.
To curate kind of their
playlist for the
evening and then we
get to take the vinyl and
the record player and set
it up leave it there and
kind of let the patient
just be there with the music.
Fleetwood Mac's Rumors is the most
popular album in the collection,
with Etta James, Willie Nelson,
and John Denver also getting a
lot of play.
This time of year, the Vince
Guaraldi trio's A Charlie Brown
Christmas is also a hit.
But 64-year-old patient Pamela
Mansfield had different ideas when
the record player came by her room
last week.
Don't have
What
Definitely no Christmas music.
Country all the way.
Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard,
George Jones.
I've been tasting New Year's.
Then on the other hand, ehhh.
I think my picker's broken.
Mansfield has been through a lot
this year. She had a pretty serious
fall in April, followed by six
neck surgeries.
But it hasn't diminished her sense
of humor, and though she's still
working to regain much of her
mobility after her most recent
surgery, she finds a way to
move to the music, her feet swaying
in time.
That seems to be the worst part is
the stiffness in my ankles and then
no feeling in the hands and I'd be
good to go.
My music makes everything better.
Yes
This is the music of Mansfield's
childhood.
She says it reminds her of when her
parents were alive.
Dr. Jorgensen says it's that
nostalgic quality that makes music
and particularly vinyl records
effective.
I think of this record player as a
time machine, you know, something
starts spinning an old familiar song
on a record player and now you're
back at home, you're
out of the hospital, you're with
your family, you are with your loved
ones.
Mansfield is working painstakingly
towards recovery.
On the day the record player visited
her, she had stood up for three
minutes, a milestone following
her most recent surgery.
But many of the patients Jorgensen
works with have terminal conditions.
They're close to the end of life.
For them and their families,
things can be very heavy.
The record player is a curiosity
that can break up that heaviness.
Now you're sort of looking at it
together and thinking, what are we
gonna do with this thing?
Let's play something, you know,
for mom. Let's place something for
dad.
And you are creating a new
positive shared experience
in the setting of something that can
otherwise be very sad, very heavy.
Suddenly, with the record spinning,
they've made a new memory, something
to hold onto.
I'm Olivia Aldridge in Austin.
One of the many reasons visitors
flock to Texas in the wintertime
is for the chance to see the various
birds that migrate here on their way
to warmer climates.
Residents can also get in on the
birding action while helping gather
data for scientists.
It's called the Christmas Bird
Count, and it runs until January
5th.
Host Miles Bloxson sat down with
the Texas Standard Bird enthusiast
Raul Alonzo to ask all about
it.
What exactly is a
Christmas bird count and does it
have anything to actually do with
Christmas?
So the story I was told is
that this really began out
of these hunting expeditions that
would go on around Christmas time,
around the holidays way back when,
and hunters would go out and
essentially kill as many birds as
they can.
There was an ornithologist, I
believe, who basically said one day,
you know, let's count them instead,
right? And they agreed.
And ever since then, over a year,
folks have been going out on these
Christmas bird counts and
Essentially, a good way to think
about it is kind of like a bird's
census.
What it looks like is groups of
birders will get together in what is
called a circle, which is about 15
miles in diameter, and
within that circle, it's divided
even further into smaller regions,
right? And so these groups of
birds are divided amongst, and
each group has its own kind of
leader that leads the group into
various trails, little nature
areas, and essentially What they do
is they try and count
and log as many birds and
bird species that they can in a
given area.
And that in a way kind of provides
a snapshot of what the bird
population looks like in the area.
As far as a tie to Christmas, I
mean, the only real thing I can say
is it just takes place around the
holidays.
And the story of that, it goes back,
I mean this is 126th year of
the bird count and it goes that
far. It just kind of one of those
things that, you know, happen in
this time of year.
Yeah, that's interesting that you
say that because I was actually on
a plane and the girl
next to me, she pulled out
a book of birds.
It's all about birds.
It seems as though there's a lot of
bird enthusiasts out there.
Yeah, the growing trend of birding
really catching on in recent
years is something to watch.
I mean, I'm one of those who kind of
caught on. I feel like a lot of it's
kind of tied to pandemic years.
That's whenever I really started
getting out there in the time of
social distancing of wanting to
see birds, see what I could see
in, you know, in my home
region.
And I don't know, I think people
crave these kind of cozy,
Pure hearted
Hobbies and and birding has
certainly caught on as one of those
and I think honestly part of me is
curious that it's also like The
Pokemon generation there's an aspect
of it. That's like you got to catch
them all you got a spot them all I
think there's a little bit of that.
Maybe I'm speaking of myself, but
you know
No, I can see that, I could see
that. And you went to a bird
count recently.
Can you take us through your
experience?
Like, how do you set up?
You know, what can you expect when
you arrive to this event?
Yeah, I think, you
know, you really want to approach it
like you would kind of any outdoor
event, kind of think about it as a
hike, wear some good walking
shoes, you know,
take along some binoculars if you
got them, you know,
birding manuals if you have them.
A lot of popular apps are Ebird is
what they use to log the birds that
they spot.
Merlin, if you want to get a glimpse
of bird calls.
But from my experience,
unfortunately, it was a little bit
of an outlier because
this is the 10th year that the
San Marcos bird count had been going
on, that's the one I went to.
And this year was exceptionally cold
and, you know, this is early in the
morning, so we were kind of getting
the brunt of it. We were being
battered by this like
30, 40 degree windchill.
And the birds were also
feeling as well.
We did not see as many birds as
we would have liked to.
And the person leading it, Rebecca
Rylander, a very experienced
birder herself, she was
saying that, you know, this will
kind of affect the data that they
find. It will be listed as
a factor in the final tally of birds
that they see.
But yeah, I mean, it was still fun.
Now, honestly, to be out there
traveling or walking
these trails with other folks who
are into it, and I think that's also
one of the draws of birding in a
group is it's one of those hobbies
that you often do on your own, but
when you do it in a groups, you kind
of bounce off each other.
The energy of the excitement of
seeing something,
spotting it together,
it lends itself to the experience,
I feel.
What do the people organizing these
outings, what do you feel like they
hope to achieve?
So there's actually kind of like, I
feel like a dual purpose.
For one, like I said, it provides
a snapshot of what the population
looks at a given period of time.
And it also helps
kind of chart trends that the
data that they gather helps to
add to these studies and determine,
you know, needs for conservation
and things like that.
But you know one thing I often heard
is that because it is a citizen
science project, anyone can
participate. So it
also helps bring in the community.
It helps, you know, make folks who
want to be more out
in the natural world want
to really engage with the world
around them, engage with nature.
It gives them an outlet, and I think
that's one other benefit
and one other aim that some of
the folks organizing these events
really try and achieve
with them.
And you said that anybody can
participate.
So how can they do that?
So this is, again, this is a yearly
thing.
You know, it stretches from December
14th through January 5th,
and there's multiple events in the
central Texas region.
To keep up with any that are coming
up, you can go to travisautobahn.org,
and you can find a list of some of
the events that are comin' up in the
area, and, you
know, kinda bookmark that.
If you missed out on one this year,
again, it's a yearly event.
There's gonna be another one.
Birding in general is something that
you can do at any time as well.
Just go out on your balcony and see
what you can see.
We've been speaking with the Texas
Standard's Raul Alonzo.
We'll have a link to his reporting
in today's podcast show notes.
Raul, thanks so much for being here
with us on Austin Signal.
Thank you, Miles.
Coming up, this is Austin Signal.
Christmas feels a little different
depending on where you live.
For some, it means cold nights by
the fire, carolers on every
corner, and kids playing in the
snow. Here in Austin, we do things
a little differently.
No snow, sometimes shorts
on Christmas Day, and of course,
a man dressed as Santa riding around
town on a horse or mule.
KUT's Greta Diaz-Gonzalez-Vasquez
has his story.
Merry Christmas!
His name is Samuel Greyhorse,
and on any December night, he can be
found at the Continental Club,
riding down the central lane of
Congress Avenue or outside the
Paramount Theater.
He's a Native American man who's
been riding his horses around Austin
since 1977,
but about a decade ago, he started
doing it dressed as Santa.
People wave at him and honk from
their cars, others ask him
for photos.
1, 2, 3!
Yes!
The horse is a natural.
Yes, yes!
You want a picture too?
While he enjoys taking photos,
his favorite part is riding his
horses and seeing the city from up
there.
It's a different energy and it's
beautiful, it's very beautiful.
Also a known musician, Sam has
become an Austin staple.
Mackenzie Mitchell works at the
Continental and is Sam's friend.
It's a sort of a symbol in
Austin.
Fickerheads.
Mitchell says some nights, when Sam
comes to play or listen to music,
he brings his horse into the bar as
well.
Yes, you heard me right.
He brings the horse into the bar.
The mule and the horse are over 21,
so...
Sam brings joy to many in Austin,
but 2025 was a bumpy
ride for him.
His house burned down, he had to
move out of Austin, one of his
horses, Big Red, died.
His eyesight is getting worse and
he's lost all hearing in his left
ear.
All of it made him ask himself.
Why do I keep doing this?
You know, nobody cares.
But people do care.
When his house burned down in early
January, the community put together
a GoFundMe and raised over $30,000
for him.
People that would never talk to me.
A woman he barely knew offered him a
place to stay in return for taking
care of 105 acres of
land in Lockhart, a perfect
place for his horses, cats,
pigs, and mule, a mule he often
rides around town.
When he lived in Austin, Sam used to
get his horse ready and hit the road
right from his backyard.
Now he has to drive an hour each
way. A friend of his gave
him an old truck so he could move
around and he sure uses
it.
And it's still going.
It's 389,000 miles.
He gave it to me with 267,000.
When Big Red, his horse, died in
November, Sam was heartbroken,
but even so he now says
Yeah, I'm kind of very happy
because I know I'll see him again,
but not now.
And I miss him very
much every day.
Sam knows he'll never replace
Big Red or anything of what he lost
in 2025.
I went from rock bottom,
and I'm still rock bottom but
to me health is wealth.
Health is everything to me now.
And so even after a hard year,
Sam is out and about on the streets
of Austin this December.
Ho, ho, ho.
He takes photos with anybody who
asks for one.
And everybody asks, even cops.
For Constable Tanya Nixon, this is
the second photo she's asked for in
two weeks.
I like to see him.
Yeah, I like it brings joy and then
even when I posted our pictures
other people in Austin knew him
because one of the girls got on the
post she said that's Samuel Greyhorses.
I say it sure is.
While seeing Santa riding a horse
might be a cultural attraction,
for Sam, it's also a way of
reminding people that at some point,
Native Americans rode around this
part of the country and that they
still do now.
Indigenous people are
the real horsemen of this country.
You know, they mastered the
horsemanship before the
cowboy world came here.
You know what I mean?
For Sam, the connection with his
horses is sacred.
The horse is our brother and
I just want to show that too to
the city of Austin.
In a time when many creatives have
been pushed out of the city, Sam's
the kind of guy that always sees the
glass half full.
Sure, he now has to drive into
Austin, but he gets to be Santa
and ride around Lockhart as well.
He's also closer to family and he
has new horses he's training.
Oh absolutely, yes,
I'm what's left of what's weird.
After all that he's been through,
when he asks himself, why
do this?
Why be Santa?
I do have an answer, because that's
what I'm supposed to be doing.
Sam says he's just happy that Austin
allows him to be who he really
is. I'd saddle every evening
and ride my fateful mounts.
I'm Greta Diaz-Gonzalez Vazquez
in Austin.
I don't know where I'm going and
I don't know who I'll see But
I know I'll a see a smile that's
good enough for me I'm
the 6th Street cowboy on Congress
Albee Sometimes at
the White Horse Continental Gallery
I live in Austin, Texas,
that's where I got my name
Arrested on horseback
my life has changed.
The holidays are a time for
celebration and music for a lot of
people. You can't escape Mariah
Carey this time of year, not that
I'd want to.
KUT's Jimmy Moss asked the KUT
news team what their favorite
holiday songs are and why.
It is the most wonderful time of the
year, at least for Andy Williams and
me. And why not?
With the kids jingle-belling and
everyone telling you be of good
cheer.
We spent 11 months working as
hard as
we could and now we sit back
and listen to some of our favorite
songs that remind us of days
of yore.
This is the only period of year
where we use the word yore,
so we asked the KUT staff What
they like to listen to during this
time of year And we started with
a familiar voice.
My name is Jerry Quijano, and I'm
the All Things Considered and Austin
Signal host.
When I mention holiday songs, what's
the first thing that comes to mind?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, the first things
that come to mind are a lot of sad
songs, about it being white and
it being snowy, and so a
lot songs that I grew up in
South Central Texas, so most of the
time we're wearing like shorts,
you now, and in the daytime it's
like 75 degrees on a Christmas day.
And so for that reason, one of my
favorite Christmas songs is Little
Saint Nick by The Beach Boys.
The music sounds like, you know,
the sun is shining and the
sky is blue.
One of my favorite things about the
Beach Boys is the harmonies, you
know, and I think like that reminds
me of spending time with my family
as well, you know, singing the
songs together or humming them
along, but...
You know that part, you know, so
it's not just the one person
singing. It's the whole group is in
on it
Hi, my name is Kristen Cabrera.
I am the managing producer for
Austin Signal.
And my favorite
holiday song is
Christmas, Baby
Please Come Home, by
U2.
I love the song because I
remember visiting my grandparents
in Dallas and it
was always on the radio.
But I really love every version
of the song.
I've heard it.
But YouTube specifically has
this just like this 90s
grip on that song.
Here's KUT Arts Desk Editor
Stephanie Federico.
Father Christmas, give us some
money We've got no
use for your silly toys
We'll beat you up in
No, no, no
We want your breath So don't make us
alone Give all the
time
Yeah, The Kinks, Father Christmas,
best Christmas song at Barra.
Luz Moreno Lozano, I am the
city hall reporter.
I think my favorite one is
Feliz Navidad.
Growing up, you know, we made
the males and we
would do the posadas and just like
our family tradition on Christmas
Eve always included
Christmas music and Feliz navidad
was probably the one that we played
the most.
Hi, my name is Andy Yeho.
I'm on the web team here at KUT.
My favorite holiday song
is Joy to the World by Mariah
Carey because it's great
to sing along with in the car.
No.
I'm Chelsea Zhu.
I'm the digital producer at KUT.
My favorite Christmas song is Frosty
the Snowman.
The snowman was a cowl-
I was really scared of Frosty
when I was a kid, the animated
cartoon version, and the song made
it better.
Mose Buchele, longtime reporter here
at KUT.
What is your favorite Christmas
or holiday music, and
why?
I can't decide, Jimmy.
I just can't decided.
When I was growing up, we listened
to Willie Nelson's Pretty Paper
all the time. And that still just
evokes such great childhood memory
for me.
It's usually the first song I give.
Pretty paper, pretty ribbon,
the way I watch
the blue. When that song comes on,
I am a kid again.
You know i grew up in uh...
In in the northeast in a colder part
of the country and it's cold outside
would fire is going
and uh...
It's but it's warm inside and
uh and that and that music from the
lp and that means that start playing
and it it takes me right back to
that christmas feeling those
childhood memories but you might
have more oh yeah i mean ever
since idea i'm a huge christmas
that you know so is so my life
is just been Gathering up more and
more Christmas Music
to throw on the other
year. I was going through going
through a bin at Goodwill And I
found someone's old collection tons
of old Christmas disco albums
There's a band called
The Sal Sol orchestra
It was a studio band and they
came out with an album and I think
was in 76 called Christmas Jollies
And it's got this disco rhythm
this party sound that
now I put that on I find myself
putting that on almost More than
anything else decorating the tree
Having a little eggnog
Uh, it's great.
I love it.
S-uh, Sol Sol like to strut.
Oh, nah!
Andrew Weber from KUT here,
my favorite Christmas,
not Carol, song,
uh, cause it's more of a hymn, is Oh
Holy Night, specifically the
Nat King Cole version of it.
My granddad, Mr. England, always
listened, and my grandmother still
does, listen to Nat King Cole on
Christmas Eve, and I have
very fond memories of that,
celebrating the holiday, and just
the sound of that song.
It just, you can hear the room.
It just has this like reverberation
to it. And it's obviously Nat King
Cole's voice.
So it's, it gets me.
It gets me every time.
My name is Jennifer Staten and my
favorite holiday song, Oh Holy
Night, a more traditional Christmas
song, the notes,
the chords, the dynamics, I just
find it calming and
inspiring all at once.
I'm Olivia Aldridge.
I'm a reporter here at KUT,
and my favorite Christmas song is
Oh Holy Night, because
the drama is simply
unmatched.
I have performed it in the church.
I would not like to perform it now.
Ha ha ha!
It's a big song, Jimmy.
I'm well aware.
Oh
Holy night
The stars are brightly
shining
It
is the light of
our dear Savior's
birth
I'm Trey Scharr, an editor with
KUT News and Jack of
all trades.
My favorite is Vince Guaraldi Trio's
Christmas Time is Here, the
instrumental, which everyone
instantly recognizes from a Charlie
Brown Christmas.
My name is Nathan Bernier and I'm
the transportation reporter at KUT
and my favorite holiday
song is Christmastime
is Here.
It's happy and sad at the same time.
It's warm but it's also
melancholy.
It's like uplifting and
kind of cute, especially when they
bring in the Charlie Brown.
Chorus.
It's laid back, peaceful, and those
brushes on the snare drum are
suggestive of walking across new
fallen snow on a quiet winter day.
It is like lonely.
Like you're walking
through a snowstorm
by yourself.
I don't know. It's just the perfect
Christmas song because Christmas is
both happy and sad.
Oh, this is Moe's again.
I love Christmas music
so much, I taught myself that, you
know, Christmas time is
here. That piano, that
piano kind of version.
Just so poignant,
so heartbreakingly beautiful.
A little...
Tend to lean toward the melancholy
outside of the disco.
Absolutely, you know, it's a weird
thing, like, if you think about
classic Christmas music, a lot of it
is, like joyful, but then also
deeply sad and depressing.
Have yourself a merry little
Christmas. I mean, that it's...
It's sad.
It's just sad.
Right, pining for something that may
or may not actually occur.
Yes. Yeah, I mean, that is really,
that's part of the essence of
Christmas. It's like, yeah, there's
a nostalgia to it that's almost
baked in that is
part of the magic.
You're thinking about when
you were younger, you're thinking
about family, and it's
a time to celebrate but also kind of
maybe recognize loss and
all that too.
But then you've got the Salsall
Orchestra coming in and lifting
it back up.
Coming in hot, yeah.
Hehehehehehe
Happy holidays to all from the KUT
team, but before we
go, Syeda, what is
yours?
Well, thanks for asking, Jimmy.
I'm gonna go with a classic.
Mariah Carey's All I Want for
Christmas Is You.
You truly can't escape it this
season, but why would you want to?
It's great.
It's gonna stick in your head
forever. It is just so
fun. And there's only a certain time
of year you can enjoy it.
So I'm all for it.
That's it for us today on Austin
Signal. Rayna Sevilla is our
technical director.
Kristen Cabrera is our managing
producer.
I am Syeda Carrillo.
Happy Holidays and thanks for
listening to Austin Signal.