Photos courtesy of New West Records

It's noon, and 72-year-old Delbert McClinton sounds like he's just woken up and maybe had the first cigarette of the day. But he's a pro and is ready to talk about his career, his forthcoming New West Records album with old running buddy Glen Clark, Blind, Crippled & Crazy, and his experiences in Houston.

Rocks Off: You've been at this a long time now. Has there ever been a moment when you thought you'd just hang it up, try something else?

Delbert McClinton: Nah, not even once. I was lucky enough to get a little taste of success early on, and I just kept showing up. It's a cliché, but I really wouldn't trade what I do for anything.

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Photo by David McLister

The Randy Rogers Band has become a big enough name on the highly competitive Texas country/Red Dirt circuit that the quintet was chosen to open for George Strait and Martina McBride on Strait's Houston stop of his "The Cowboy Rides Away" tour at Reliant Stadium back in March. Reached by phone from "freezing cold" Stillwater, Okla., where his band was preparing to play the festival know as "Calf Fry," Rogers sounds like he can still hardly believe it himself.

"Aw man, I was tingling all over," says Rogers. "I was freaked out, man.

"I haven't gotten nervous in years," he chuckles. "To have that feeling again, man, was like such a big rush of excitement and joy -- all-time favorite country singer for me, man, George Strait. Being on the same stage as him, and him mentioning our band name during his show, sharing that moment with him, which I would assume for him was a pretty big deal too, you know?"

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Although it was hardly a surprise, country-music fans around the world have heavy hearts today after the passing of George Jones. Jones, a native of the Southeast Texas town of Saratoga who broke into the music business on Houston-based Starday Records, was far and away one of the most-decorated and best-selling male vocalists in country-music history.

Rewind:

RIP George Jones: Texas-Born Country Legend Dies at Age 81

The man once known as "No-Show Jones" and always as "Possum" was arguably best-known for ballads like "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "Color of the Blues," songs that went beyond heartbreaking and landed somewhere closer to despondent. But he had another side of his personality, one that can best be described as a downright rascal. That side would pop up now and again in sunnier songs like "White Lightnin'," "The Race Is On" -- despite the subject matter -- and '80s hit "The One I Loved Back Then."

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Photo by Lisa Rosato

George Jones at the Arena Theatre in May 2011

UPDATE (April 27, 11:20 a.m.): George Jones' "Farewell Concert" was announced, but did not take place, this past February. It had been scheduled for November 22. Rocks Off regrets the error.

George Jones, the Southeast Texas-born Country Music Hall of Famer whom most agree would be a face on Nashville's Mount Rushmore, has died at age 81. According to Fox News, repeating information from Jones' longtime publicist Kirt Webster, the singer died early Friday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Jones had been hospitalized since April 18 for fever and irregular blood pressure, reported country-music Web site The Boot. His numerous health problems in recent years did not stop him from touring, though. He last visited Houston at the Arena Theatre in September 2012, and the list of guests who joined him had been scheduled to join him for his "farewell concert" at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena offered just a small hint of his influence on country music: Garth Brooks, Randy Travis, Brooks and Dunn, Kenny Rogers, Dierks Bentley, Josh Turner, Shelby Lynne, Lorrie Morgan, the Oak Ridge Boys, Jamey Johnson and many others.

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Courtesy photo

Son Volt is heading down the highway with a new album in tow, Honky Tonk, but instead of lamenting still waters and beatnik poets, Jay Farrar and company have gone strictly Bakersfield, even naming a track after the legendary country-music mecca.

Yep, Farrar has gone back to his roots mixing steel guitar and fiddle, the kind of music that's good for sucking down beers while drinking away broken hearts.

And if you happened to take a gander at Music Editor Chris Gray's shame, shame on Galveston post, in which he wondered if Honky Tonk's "Seawall" was written about the island city at the end of 45 southbound, um, nope, Farrar says it wasn't.

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Photo by Craig Hlavaty

Dale Watson at the 2010 Lone Star Bash at the Brewery in San Antonio

Dale Watson has a bone to pick with country music, and you're invited to join in.

See, he misses the twang.

He misses the good old days when songs like "Ring of Fire" and "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line" ruled the airwaves.

Waston blames Nashville music executives who have long ago replaced the Legends with syrupy-sweet country-pop stars who only offer good looks in tight jeans -- and always sound the same.

This, he says, is what killed country.

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Photos by Jason Wolter

L-R: Lance Smith, Matt Johnson, Mike Stinson, Mark Riddell

Mike Stinson
Under the Volcano
April 3, 2013

The motivations people have for going into music are many, and most of them are mundane. People want to be famous, see the world, or prove something to a parent or a lover, so they pick up a guitar or sit down at a piano.

Going unappreciated, too often, are the musicians who do it (and excel at it) because it's their job.

To watch Mike Stinson put his four-piece band through almost 30 songs at an average gig -- say, his monthly Wednesday at Under the Volcano last night -- is no different than observing a fine watchmaker or a mechanic who works on high-performance engines. He's a tradesman, and anyone who doesn't see the art in it is either myopic or just stupid.

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"Pancho and Lefty" long ago became more than just a song and something closer to a pop-culture touchstone, particularly in Texas and the Southwest. According to Urbanspoon, you can even dine at Pancho & Lefty's Tex-Mex restaurant in St. George, Utah. Unforgivably, it charges separately for chips and salsa, but still.

Written by the late Townes Van Zandt, "Pancho" originally appeared on the former Houstonian's mordantly titled 1972 album The Late Great Townes Van Zandt, as did "No Lonesome Tune" and "If I Needed You," among others. According to a PBS interview he gave in the mid-'80s, some time after Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson's version had become a monster hit, Van Zandt and his band were pulled over near Brenham on their way to a gig in Houston. The officers let him out of the speeding ticket because the Washington County dispatchers used the handle "Pancho and Lefty" to identify the two cops.

"I realize I wrote it, but it's hard to take credit for the writing, because it came from out of the blue," Van Zandt tells the PBS interviewer. "It came through me. It's a real nice song."

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Kellychristinephoto.com

Where the weed at?

This week -- today, in fact -- the Golden, Texas native Kacey Musgraves finally releases her eagerly-awaited debut album, Same Trailer, Different Park. Indeed, it's fitting that she's from a town named Golden, as the new album is but the most recent example of some serious Solid Country Gold that's come from the younger generation of major-label maidens.

To add to that, one of Miranda Lambert's fellow Pistol Annies, the uber-talented Ashley Monroe, released 2013's first, great major-label country album, the stellar Like a Rose, just a couple of weeks ago.

The Monroe and Musgraves albums are different in a number of ways. Monroe is all-twang, all-the-time on Like a Rose. Whether she's singing about lovers from the present or past, or telling trashy stories just well-enough to be entertaining instead of, well, trashy, It's unlikely a more thoroughly entertaining country record will be released this year (though, the upcoming Pistol Annies album is sure to entertain, as well).

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Courtesy of Warner Brothers Nashville

Hey, Old Farts. You're Welcome.

"Can't they just shut up?"

That's the question many country music fans proffer when musicians publicly express opinions that dare venture outside of benign Q&A quicksand and into the murky waters of relevant social issues.

Country consumers from both sides of the political aisle can get riled up in these instances. It's not just the left-wingers griping about Toby Keith's need to fill the asses of terrorists with red, white and blue boots, nor is it only the right-wingers who still are unable to forgive Natalie Maines for Bush-bashing on foreign soil.

Recently, a specific sect of fans felt their tighty-whities twist when a prominent contemporary artist went rogue while discussing his musical offerings in a manner that offended them. Sticks and stones still break bones, but name-calling has evidently gained a great deal of destructive power.

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