At the Houston Press office, I am usually the first person who finds out when a celebrity or musician dies, usually from a wire or, these days, the fine folks at TMZ. Hell, sometimes even when I am away from my desk I have to be the bearer of bad tidings, like when Adam Yauch passed on a few weeks ago. The "Breaking News" alert app on my phone brings me a lot of bad news, even on the toilet in a hotel in New Orleans.

In the office, I usually take out my earbuds and say, "So-and-So just died," wait for a somber response or a sad groan, and put my buds back in and attempt to get the ball rolling on a blog. When Michael Jackson's last day unfolded, I gave everyone here the play-by-play sequence that went from home to hospital to morgue.

Blame it on my needle-to-the vein addiction to social media and my undying allegiance to being "the first." It's in the job description, I suppose.

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Jason Wolter

Steve Earle (r), another Houston refugee in the Encyclopedia of Country Music

Three former Houstonians who have been included in the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Country Music defy all odds. To call Rodney Crowell, Lyle Lovett or Steve Earle "country songwriters" or "country singers" is the grossest simplification.

All three have a huge streak of the folk tradition in them, and too much integrity and orneriness to have ever stayed in the mainstream spotlight for long. Yet the breadth and depth of their artistic success is undeniable and their influence has been felt far and wide, but especially in Texas.

Fun fact: A little less streetwise than Crowell and Earle, only Lovett hasn't written a song called "Telephone Road."

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Since moving to Nashville in 1995, 52-year-old Darrell Scott has had a career most who take that Hillbilly Highway to Music City USA would envy. A triple-threat talent, Scott was for years a session warhorse, a guy who could play about anything with strings on it as well as possessing a fantastic ear for harmonies and an angelic voice.

He also wrote songs, lots of songs. Many were picked up by mainstreamers like Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, Travis Tritt, Faith Hill, Brad Paisley and Martina McBride. The Dixie Chicks had hits with two Scott songs, "Long Time Gone" and "Heartbreak Town."

His song "Hank Williams' Ghost" was Americana song of the year in 2007, and "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" has been covered by a bevy of artists such as Paisley, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea and Zakk Wylde and been featured twice on episodes of FX's Justified.

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Photos by Marco Torres

Stone River Boys

Houston International Festival
Downtown Houston
April 22, 2012

With a slight north breeze keeping festival-goers from broiling under a cloudless sky, Sunday's iFest turned into a perfect laid-back Houston day of rest and entertainment excess. It didn't hurt that the music lineup was both diverse and stellar, that there were virtually no lines and that things ran with an almost informal efficiency that is so typical of the Bayou City.

We started the day with Austin's Stone River Boys and the hundred or so souls mostly scrunched under the big live oak tree which offered the only shade -- shade and sunscreen being in high demand.

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This week's Houston Press cover story, "Playing For Keeps," dives into the world of vinyl records, with interviews with local collectors and shop owners who are helping keep the medium alive in the Bayou City. Research for this cover story took me as far north as Dallas, where I visited with A&R Records' Stanley Getz II, who showed me around his record pressing plant.

Our trip to A&R was highlighted by getting to see the Flaming Lips' Record Store Day release The Flaming Lips And Head Fwends -- which was pressed and completed at the Dallas plant -- before all 20,000 copies got ready to be shipped to record stores all over the country.

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News emerged late last month that the U.K. date of Sonishphere, the traveling European hard-rock festival, has been canceled. It's a pretty big blow for music fans across the pond -- the headliners scheduled for the event included Queen with Adam Lambert, KISS and Faith No More, and reunited Swedish post-hardcore outfit the Refused were supposed to make their only UK appearance in 2012 at the fest (they've since signed on for the competing Download Festival).

Sonisphere UK has been a major outpost on the European festival circuit since 2009, and its cancellation was disconcerting, to say the least. In a statement on the Sonisphere Web site, organizers released the following statement:

Putting the festival together in what is proving to be a very challenging year was more difficult than we anticipated and we have spent the last few months fighting hard to keep Sonisphere in the calendar. Unfortunately circumstances have dictated that we would be unable to run the festival to a standard that both the artists and that Sonisphere's audience would rightly expect.

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UPDATED to correct an error in the Crystal Castles item. "Suffocation" is a Crystal Castles original, not a HEALTH remix. -- Ed.

March is Women's History Month, and Rocks Off has been thinking a lot lately about the indelible contributions to popular music made by women over the last few decades. After all, where would Elvis Presley be if it weren't for Big Mama Thornton? Probably still dead, we guess, but you get the point.

Artists like Joan Jett, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner and more helped push rock, pop and soul in new directions their male counterparts couldn't, and the world of music is richer for it.

Still, when we think about great female artists, the pantheon remains pretty exclusive. What about the ladies who are making musical history right now? After all, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees of 2037 now walk among us. It only stands to reason that some of them are doing it in heels.

As a favor to Women's History Month researchers of the future, Rocks Off has compiled the following list of 10 ladies whose music we're way, way into at the moment. Savor that spotlight, girls, and remember -- you might be making history.

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A few days back I wrote a less-than-excited review of Bruce Springsteen's latest album, Wrecking Ball. The Boss' official Twitter account has been retweeting every hyperbolic 140-character superfan review of the new disc. One guy claimed that Wrecking Ball made him sob on the side of the highway for close to half an hour.

Born to run set me free; born in USA made me care; Nebraska made me think; working on dream made me happy #WreckingBall comes full circle

Cool. I can relate. Just not with Wrecking Ball. Certainly not Wrecking Ball. But that doesn't mean that I am any less of a Boss fan, or even fallen out of love with his sweaty commentary on the American working man trampled under foot by a great pair of Italian loafers.

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Bruce rocking the DeNiro face hard in this promo shot.

Today sees the release of Bruce Springsteen's newest album, the compact and confounding Wrecking Ball, his first since 2009's Working On a Dream. Recorded and inspired partly by the recent Occupy protests, with most songs coming before the movement was even a physical thing, in any other year it could be a readymade hit.

Is Wrecking Ball a grand treatise on the Great Recession and the fabric and resolve of America in 2012? No, for everyone who just now tuned in, this is all just standard Springsteen operating procedure. I keep reading in other reviews about some sort of fire and grit that these other listeners keep hearing through the album's 11 tracks, but I hear that maybe once or twice.

He's definitely been soaking in the vibes from bands like the Arcade Fire, Gaslight Anthem, Against Me! and the like, who have taken his template into the 21st century, injecting a youthful bite to this album.

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After President Obama crooning Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" at a Harlem fundraiser became an unlikely iTunes sensation, even topping the ringtone chart, history is now repeating itself with his version of "Sweet Home Chicago" caught on an episode of PBS' In Performance at the White House Tuesday night.

Besides Syria, the clip was at the top of the news this morning. And really, what other president has a better reason to sing the blues? He's been nothing but attacked since taking the Oath of Office three years ago. The best part was UK paper The Daily Telegraph mistakenly posting the song as "Sweet Home Alabama" on its YouTube channel.

Bet that took some explaining.

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