In the past year, no one has been a better ambassador for country music than Kacey Musgraves. The Mineola, Texas native’s first release Same Trailer, Different Park was arguably the most critically acclaimed country album of the year, and perhaps the genre’s biggest crossover success since Taylor Swift. Even avowed country…
Father’s Day is Sunday, which means it’s time to celebrate the man that taught you how to tie your shoes, slipped you your first beer, and kept your rebellious ass in line all those years. You have a number of elaborate ways to let Dad know he’s special to you,…
Class. We don’t get enough of it. We’ve gone to enough shows to accumulate a raging case of tinnitus and enough T-shirts to clothe a small village, and when it comes to concert going in Dallas we’ve noticed our fair share of bad behavior. It happens to the best of…
Take a good long look at that guy in Charleston with the apartheid patches on his jacket and the Lee Harvey Oswald stare. Now try to think. Is there any imaginable circumstance, any remotely possible scenario in which you could be in that picture with Dylann Roof, the man suspected…
The universe of country music has always been made up of completely different planets. The music made in Nashville has always determined the prevailing sound, but artists across the country have always been doing their own thing. Nowhere is that more true than in Texas. The country music here has…
When it comes to reviewing Hollywood, these are the days of orderly miracles and pragmatic wonder. A gritty, fastidious realism often takes over Hollywood’s biggest marvels, and we analyze it as such. Why would Superman leave vapor trails in the sky? Would Sandra Bullock really be able to use a…
All of a sudden nobody remembers what teenagers are? They’re stupid. They’re wonderful. They’re awful. And they run from the cops. Many of their parents tell them to run from the cops, especially during the college admissions years. If they come from rich enough families, their parents hire bartenders, bouncers,…
Oh, I do so love it when the little people pull a swiftie on the big shots. Yesterday, just shy of the deadline, a neighborhood group ducked into the city planning department and posted a $150 fee to postpone the Trammell Crow zoning case next to Klyde Warren Park. Gotcha!…
So much has been said – umm, maybe by me – about the role of the trinity toll road in the still ongoing Dallas city council elections, you could have gotten the idea the road was the only thing it was about. Ummm. I think I had that idea. But…
The suits of the Music Row machine have been putting their shiny boots in their less-than-polished mouths in recent months. The most recent example occurred last week when, in an interview with Country Aircheck magazine, prominent radio consultant Keith Hill stated, “Trust me, I play great female records, and we’ve got…
On June 6, 1965, London Records released the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction in the United States. Keith Richards’ devastating fuzz distortion riff launched a salvo on the Beatles-dominated pop music scene every bit as powerful as the Allies landing on Normandy Beach, 21 years earlier to the…
Maybe flooding is always a glass half-empty. Who wants it full? Monday, some of the 200-plus evacuees in the area were still out of their homes; some houses were still inundated and two deaths had occurred, but The Dallas Morning News editorial page crowed that Dallas had “tamed the great…
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more independent artist than Shelby Lynne. After winning the approval of the music establishment in the form of Grammy and Academy of Country Music Awards, Shelby Lynne has always sort of followed her own path, for better or for worse. After releasing the iconic…
Laughing like they were listening to a Louis CK monologue, more than 300 young cosmopolites at the Hickory Street Annex earlier this week cheered and jeered while the comedians of Bar Politics solemnly read the text of a business community Super PAC TV ad tied to the June 13 Dallas City…
Six Shooter is a recurring feature where we highlight six new releases by North Texas based musicians with some extra ammo to spare. Welcome back folks, or maybe welcome back for the very, very time. Anyway, last month gave us some truly stellar releases from some folks that get a…
The other day Nancy Nichols wrote a post on Side Dish complaining about too many burger restaurant in Dallas (just after a list celebrating 20 local burgers was published on the same blog). “Do we need more mac and cheese, burgers and braised short ribs?” she asks, prompted by an announcement…
Andrew Revkin of The New York Times, on PBS the other day talking about floods in Texas, spoke of our propensity for building stuff in areas at high risk for flooding, which he attributed in part to an emphasis on property rights in Texas culture. I’m not going to say…
We already told you that Dallas Police Chief David Brown has issued new police body cam rules. A cop can’t make static-noises in his mouth and then switch the camera off just before whacking somebody in the head with his flashlight. Things like that. But don’t think that’s the end of…
Did you see – you couldn’t miss it – the video over the weekend of a white jeep getting swept down a creek by a flash flood near Beorne, northwest of San Antonio? San Antonio TV says the guy in the jeep made it out OK, which is amazing. In…
Last week President Obama banned certain types of equipment from federal grants to local police agencies, ruling that the federal government would no longer provide cops with tanks, bayonets, grenade launchers, ammunition of .50 caliber or higher and some types of camouflage uniforms. The president said: “We’ve seen how militarized…
You spent Memorial Day weekend doing your holiday thing, whatever. I spent it doing mine – watching the flood levels on the Trinity River downtown. Takes all kinds, right? Most of my flood watching – the more gripping part, in fact – was online, although I did spend some time…
In a private session yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether to allow a new appeal against the University of Texas in the Abigail Fisher reverse discrimination case. We should hear what they decided next Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal suggested a couple days ago that a decision by the court…
