At The Ticket, Some of the Best Bits Come in Small Bites

There are myriad reasons The Ticket has dominated Dallas-Fort Worth airwaves for 20 years, all part of a formula that’s proven to be impossible to replicate. One ingredient that builds a sense of culture around the station is the so-called “Drops.” Small sound bites, usually taken out of context, inserted…

The Wild Feathers Grew Up on Dallas Blues

If you were to listen the intro to “The Ceiling,” the song that’s garnered some serious praise for Los Angeles-based The Wild Feathers, you might quickly – and prematurely – assume that the fresh-faced five-piece act is yet another entry into the Mumford-fueled folk-rock revival. Of course, after listening to…

Five Bands We Need to Stop Calling Alt-Country

There’s a case to be made that Alternative Country, or Alt-Country as it’s more often called, hasn’t ever really been a legit genre. One will be hard-pressed to get any of the artists lumped in with the moniker to claim it as their sonic home, and even the original journalistic…

Mike Bacsik’s Radio Rebirth

It’s late in the morning, New Year’s Eve, and most of Dallas is still reeling from another of the Cowboys’ trademark December meltdowns, their team sent home early yet another year. For the city’s vast army of professional sports yappers, Christmas has come again. Inside the Central Expressway studios of…

Whiskey Myers Leads an Unlikely Texas Country Revolution in Tyler

It’s less than an hour’s drive from Palestine, Texas to the World’s Rose Capital, Tyler, Texas. Both are considered to be the “Big City,” for the folks living outside of their borders. Though that Dogwood-scented pocket of East Texas isn’t a Metropolis by most standards, there’s a great deal of…

The Ten Best Texas Country Songs of 2013

This past June, we provided a list of the 10 best Texas Country/Red Dirt/Whatever tunes in 2013 up to that point of the year. With 2014 looming, we’re still not sure what the nebulous terms slapped onto the songs and bands that made up that list really mean. With an…

Jace Lasek of Besnard Lakes on How Carl Sagan Changed His Life

Since 2003, Montreal’s The Besnard Lakes have produced a catalogue of some of the finest psychedelic rock out there. Led by the husband-wife team of Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, the group released their stunning Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO earlier this year as the follow-up to 2010’s excellent The…

Rodney Parker & Fifty Peso Reward Apologize. Again.

Ask three members of Denton country-rock outfit Rodney Parker and Fifty Peso Reward where the band name came from, and you’ll get three humorous, and ultimately, unrevealing answers. “Nowhere,” say bass player Brooks Kendall. “From drunk 22 year-old idiots.” Multi-instrumentalist Danny Skinner adds, “The story is really not interesting unless…

Video Premiere: Greg Schroeder’s “In Bloom”

IN BLOOM by Greg Schroeder Directed by Josh David Jordan from TWO CANS & A STRING on Vimeo. Since 2008, with his ever-present beard and hat, Greg Schroeder has been one of the great country-folk singer songwriters in the area. Schroeder’s tunes are the kinds that can make the simple…