Our favorite songwriters who have paid their dues and earned their stripes. Many have Texas roots and many more have been impacted by the Austin music scene. It’s a pretty long list, and it just keeps growing.
Songwriter Profiles
Jeff Plankenhorn is a larger than life presence on stage. A big man with a kind smile and generous demeanor, he is often the bedrock that binds a...
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Songwriter Profiles
Will T. Massey’s boyish voice bears little trace of his San Angelo, Texas roots, and his fragile lyrics hint at hidden fears and turbulent waters....
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Songwriter Profiles
Kevin Higgins has been around awhile, fronting Austin’s "Cosmic Dust Devils" and now touring and recording as “Ghosts of the American...
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Songwriter Profiles
K Phillips leads mostly from the keyboard, singing and occasionally grabbing a guitar in the course of his barn-burning live performances. Sort of...
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Songwriter Profiles
Having been mentioned, with other visionaries, in Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Name Droppin’”, Mary Gauthier has plenty of Texas cred and the life...
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Songwriter Profiles
Some artists channel a calm wisdom that is as comforting as a father’s voice. We listen because their words feel right and true, gifts that might...
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Songwriter Profiles
It’s like you finally started listening to your old drunk uncle from Shreveport and realized he was channeling an enlightened hillbilly cocktail of...
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Songwriter Profiles
“Journeyman” usually refers to a seasoned and reliable guitarist or drummer, but what does it mean for a songwriter? In the case of Walt Wilkins,...
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Songwriter Profiles
Few songwriters have achieved Eliza Gilkyson’s poetic soup of inventiveness, gravitas and sheer emotion. Her songs are a flowing literature of joy,...
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Songwriter ProfilesTrue Things
Ryan Bingham is the real thing. A real Texan, a real rodeo cowboy, a real songwriter. An old friend once remarked, after listening to a young Bingham...
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Songwriter Profiles
Kris Kristofferson is a living testament to the ethic of the singer-songwriter. Introspective and gregarious, astute observer of the ebb and flow of...
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In Tribute
Guy Clark, who left this world on May 16, 2016, was one of the Texas songwriters who made the path and led the way. His work embodies all that is...
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In Tribute
The songs of Mickey Newbury came from a place of serenity and sadness, beautiful recollections of the ones we left behind, pretty portraits of...
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Songwriter Profiles
Someone, can’t remember who, once said that Van Morrison was the only musician to have invented a personal emotional equivalent of the...
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Songwriter Profiles
Lucky for us, natural musicians are drawn to Austin like honeybees to a sunflower. For every writer with a dream and a beat up Martin guitar, there...
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Songwriter Profiles
Following the 1986 release of Guitar Town, Steve Earle was hailed as the savior of country music. Three decades later, and despite personal detours...
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Songwriter Profiles
Born in Oklahoma City and reared in Lubbock, David Halley blew into Austin in 1983 and commenced blowing minds with 1990’s Stray Dog Talk, a stone...
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Songwriter Profiles
John Hiatt was born in Indianapolis, but you'd swear from his lyrics that he was a southern son of Memphis or New Orleans, maybe even Muscle Shoals....
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Songwriter Profiles
Ana Egge’s voice pulls from some deep well, somber and strong, calming but bracing. With roots in North Dakota, New Mexico, Austin, and now...
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Songwriter Profiles
Robert Earl Keen married careless soul with country smart-ass and came up smiling. He has captured the coarse irony of good people tumbling across...
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Songwriter Profiles
Eric Taylor’s voice sounds a little like God’s might, starting off low and considered and ending up booming and insistent, as though he were...
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Songwriter Profiles
In 1977, Joe Ely came blowing out of Lubbock with his first record, Joe Ely, after sowing the early seeds of the High Plains scene with other hardy...
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Songwriter Profiles
Jason Isbell’s music is raw in substance but perfectly polished in execution, sort of like Neil Young sitting in with Crosby, Stills & Nash...
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Songwriter Profiles
Drew Kennedy bases out of New Braunfels, a lovely Texas Hill Country town nestled along the banks of the Comal and Guadalupe rivers between Austin...
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