Lyle Lovett
Lyle Lovett is an artistic renaissance man with an impeccable Texas pedigree and a life that testifies to Lone Star independence and... Read more →
Songwriter Profiles
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.
Ruthie Foster
Many fine artists had their beginnings in gospel. Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Al Greene, even Elvis and Jerry Lee. A surprising progression,... Read more →
Jimmy LaFave
Jimmy LaFave, who passed away on May 21, 2017, was another Austin artist who took the building blocks of folk and country, strength, soul and an... Read more →
Jim Lauderdale
Jim Lauderdale's baritone twang is booming and earnest and sketches a roadmap of the roots and pedigree of real American country music. The... Read more →
Jo Carol Pierce
The empty spaces of West Texas have proven a petri dish for the fashioning of powerful but unorthodox art. Music, of course, but also literature,... Read more →
Townes Van Zandt
Perhaps the purest poet of all Texas songwriters, Townes Van Zandt wrote essential love songs and portrayed the shattered lives of lonely... Read more →
Jon Dee Graham
Jon Dee Graham was raised on a Texas ranch down near the Mexican border and moved to Austin to attend school. By 1979 he was playing guitar for... Read more →
Max Gomez
Max Gomez was raised in the starkly beautiful terrain that surrounds Taos, New Mexico. Nothing that the average American would recognize. Tall,... Read more →
Gram Parsons
Gram Parsons was born Ingram Cecil Connor III, in 1946 in Winter Haven, Florida, to Coon Dog and Avis Connor. By his death at the age of... Read more →
James McMurtry
Nobody writes lyrics like James McMurtry. Brilliant, piercing and wry. Sweeping vistas of ordinary lives, set mostly in small towns and dark... Read more →
Patty Griffin
Patty Griffin lays herself bare in achingly beautiful meditations on love and all the things that bear on love. Work that is completely fresh... Read more →
Jimmie Vaughan
Jimmie Vaughan learned to play the guitar while growing up in Dallas, and headed south in the late sixties to help create the emerging Austin rhythm... Read more →
Adam Carroll
Hailing from Tyler, the rose capital of Texas, Adam Carroll is revered by listeners and other artists alike as a prolific and authentic chronicler of... Read more →
Kevin Higgins
Kevin Higgins has been around awhile, fronting Austin’s "Cosmic Dust Devils" and now touring and recording as “Ghosts of the American... Read more →
Will T. Massey
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.... Read more →
Chip Taylor
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... Read more →
Shinyribs
It’s like you finally started listening to your old drunk uncle from Shreveport and realized he was channeling an enlightened hillbilly cocktail of... Read more →
Ryan Bingham
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... Read more →
Walt Wilkins
“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,... Read more →
Guy Clark
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... Read more →
Steve Earle
Following the 1986 release of Guitar Town, Steve Earle was hailed as the savior of country music. Three decades later, and despite personal detours... Read more →
David Halley
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... Read more →
Robert Earl Keen
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... Read more →
Justin Trevino
If you’re a two-stepper, find Justin Trevino in a Hill Country beer joint and travel back a few decades. Born in Brownsville, raised in Austin and... Read more →
