Houston Makes Great Strides in Selling Its Own Music Scene

By Chris Gray Fri., Mar. 1 2013 at 2:00 PM

It's certainly nice to have Beyonce, ZZ Top and Lyle Lovett -- featured in the bureau's previous national campaign, "My Houston" -- as proverbial feathers in our cap, but the H-Town Presents artists are all on their way up, and likely to be acting as Bayou City musical ambassadors for years to come.

The feedback has been encouraging, according to Lindsey Brown, the CVB's Director of Marketing.

"The wine editor from Travel + Leisure told me he listened to it," she says. "A lot of the chefs in the campaign really like it. I'm glad people are responding to it so well."

H-Town Presents is only destined to become a collector's item, though. Due to various copyright, publishing and licensing issues, is for promotional use only, and not commerically available. About 800 copies are left over from the production run of 2,000, and Brown says the bureau plans to give the remaining copies to its sales team and use in goodie bags for visiting media.

But, she adds, the public can hear the music on the Houston 2.0 pages on the CVB site, and the remaining copies will be offered as "takeaways" at events the bureau sponsors. So there's still an outside chance off snagging a copy yourself.

"It's just a really nice gift for anyone we may be working with," says Brown.

H-TOWN PRESENTS TRACK LISTING

The Tontons, "Golden"
Buxton, "Boy of Nine"
Wild Moccasins, "Gag Reflections"
Young Girls, "Noches"
Featherface, "I Saw You Dancing"
Benjamin Wesley, "Gretch, You Just Wait!"
Robert Ellis, "Friends Like These"
Poor Pilate, "Sundowning"
The Handshake, "I'll Take Mine"
The Manichean, "The Swan"
Shellee Coley, "The Trees"
Grandfather Child, "Can't Seem to Forget"
Folk Family Revival, "Unfolding"
Come See My Dead Person, "Another Goodbye"
Venomous Maximus, "Moonchild"
Teddy Rose & Bun B feat. Bobby Lamar, "Here We Go (Texans Anthem)"
Fat Tony, "Hood Party (Radio Edit)
DJ Sun feat. Leah Alvarez, "Heart Seed"
Tyagaraja, "We Will Meet Again"

The Tontons perform "Golden" and a few other songs at 3 p.m. Saturday at Cactus Music, 2110 Portsmouth.

Tags:

Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, tourism

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jkbennett

New York City Queens should have been on this CD. Awesome band with an awesome CD.

Tom87

1 Like

ha..convoy group is ridiculous.

WhiteLightning

@Tom87 Bullseye. Mikey and the Drags, Featherface? Amateur hour. Pure self interest on Convoy Group's part.

skquinn1

@WhiteLightning @Tom87 Shellee Coley and Folk Family Revival, on the other hand, are solid choices and aren't Convoy Group clients either.

jenkinshouse55

Mark Austin does more to get Houston music out to the rest of the world than anyone I know. Obviously a list like this is never going to make everyone happy. Mark (or you or I) could easily add another 20 songs by 20 more worthy Houston artists but these are excellent choices and honestly even 20 could be considered overload - as if some out of town tourist is going to listen to that many Houston bands. Short of LA and NYC I'm not likely to audition more than 5 bands of any given city.

skquinn1

@jenkinshouse55 I agree Mark does a lot for the Houston music scene. Though I will admit there's some of my own bias in the list of artists I named in my first comment, there's a reason I mentioned Runaway Sun first in that list. I know they have a pretty big Houston fan base, Mark's name is on the liner notes for at least the self-titled EP and The Bridge LP, and I know for a fact they aren't represented by The Convoy Group right now.

skquinn1

1 Like

I like the concept of the CD and I'm glad to see at least a few of my favorites on here, but I'm a bit disappointed that Runaway Sun, Low Man's Joe, Chase Hamblin, Winter Wallace, and Beautiful Contributors (among others) missed the cut. Was this about promoting Houston's best musicians or was it to promote The Convoy Group's artists above those represented by others? The latter should at least clearly be labeled as such.

skquinn1

To clarify: I really don't think Mark intentionally used this as an excuse to "deal himself a winner". I don't have anything against him. But if WhiteLightning noticed that it's heavy with TCG clients, I can only imagine how many others out there noticed too but are remaining silent about it.

Henry McRae Dillard

I was born & raised in H-town. My song "Like A President" is among over 300 finalists out of 20,000 submissions to the 2012 International Songwriting Contest: http://open.spotify.com/track/1thSsTYo9gkWIvd5T4PsdM i make music under the moniker of "Without a Face" y'all have written me up a couple times.