courtesy of New West Records

L-R: The Flatlanders in Odessa: Steve Wesson, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Tony Pearson, Joe Ely

A lot of stellar music came out of that flat land known as West Texas. Bob Wills, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Terry Allen, Guy Clark, and the Sparkles are just a few artists who found something in the wind, the dust, the heat, the cactus, the mesquite, the sandstorms, the blizzards, the endless horizon, the solitude and isolation that translated into great music.

In January 1972, almost 20 years before Uncle Tupelo recorded No Depression and the media began to use the term "alternative country," a carload of Lubbock guys drove down to Tommy Allsup's recording studio in Odessa to record a glorified demo.

The purpose was to convince Shelby Singleton, the new owner of Sun Records, to sign the group and release an album. The resulting Odessa Tapes, recently released by New West Records, is considered by many to be the first alt-country recording.

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Lonesome, Onry and Mean had been hearing about the new KOKE-FM progressive country station in Austin for a few weeks. One friend in particular kept raving about the station, so today we finally sauntered over to KOKE-FM (99.3) on the world wide web.

Back in the day when we were in Radio/Television/Film school at UT-Austin, KOKE-FM broke the mold for country radio when it announced its progressive country format that featured not only Waylon, Willie, Coe, Jerry Jeff, Jimmy Buffett, Michael Murphy, and Asleep at the Wheel, but also corralled such outlaws as Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen and the newly formed Gram Parsons band with Emmylou Harris.

There was also space for Austin treasures like Freda and the Firedogs and Greezy Wheels.

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Above is Dean Martin doing "Houston" on his television show. Epic fail, but nice outfit.

As you may have read, Forbes magazine recently determined that, by their measurement criteria, Houston is now America's coolest/hippest city.

Of course, while the rest of the world has looked down its nose for years while imagining us to be little more than a city filled with men in large hats and stupid belt buckles, our un-permitted six guns blazing as we ride our gas-guzzler mechanical bulls to work while our beehive-haired, large-chested women mind the homestead and do a little daytime sport-fucking to pass the time, in fact, most of us who live here realize Houston is a lot more like a little rougher, steamier version of Portland or San Francisco than Los Angeles or Atlanta, more like Chicago than New York City.

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Nothing gets Lonesome, Onry and Mean's blood pumping like opening the mail and finding a long overdue album from Los Angeles roots outfit Tremoloco. The band's previous release, 2008's Dulcinea, was in heavy rotation on the jukebox at our local water hole for several years, and the album seldom left our truck.

The band supported the album with a stupidly funny video of opening track "Mi Novella" (the Spanish term for soap opera).

But with the first listen to 16-track Salsipuedes, with its mix of barroom weepers, Spanish-language ballads, and funked-up country-rockers like "Claudine" and "La Mexicana," we immediately knew that Tony Zamora, Bob Robles, Cougar Estrada, Mike Tovar, Johnny "Vatos" Hernandez Jason Lozano, Juan Chacon were back in the same cool East L.A. groove that made Dulcinea so great.

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Photo by Bob Sullivan

Mike Stinson band at Sons of Hermann Hall, Dallas (l-r): Lance Smith, Mike Stinson, Mark Riddell

Lonesome Onry and Mean hasn't been out on the road with his son, Mike Stinson Band guitarist Lance Smith, in quite a while. But due to a propitious routing that took us to my father's place in Gatesville for a couple of days, LOM hit the highway with the band last weekend.

It is worth noting that LOM's CD player in his battle wagon went kaput about two weeks back, so this trip involved extensive radio scanning. And while there is certainly no dearth of terrible radio out there in the Houston/Austin/Dallas triangle, there are some bright spots on the dial.

Once out of range of our favorite Houston radio signals around Brookshire, the scanner kicked in and brought us tons of Tejano music and, on the AM dial, a mother lode of Rush Limbaugh and all sorts of wack-job right-wing politicos.

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Once again, the mailbox has overflowed like a backed-up sewer and Lonesome Onry and Mean has had to make some space decisions: Does this record go on the shelf (keep it, it's good, but I want to listen to something else now), in the Goodwill box (what were they thinking when they recorded this and, more importantly, why'd they send this damn thing to me?), or in the truck (I want to listen to this over and over)?

New albums by old favorites tend to get a thorough examination based on a certain level of previously built-up credibility. And, yes, in spite of the volume of music arriving constantly, an effort is made to listen to every CD that crosses the transom whether the artist is familiar or not, although admittedly the end of some of those isn't reached before the eject button gets a shove (sorry, Evie Ladin Band, it happened on the first Avett Brothers record too).

So here's a summary of some recent albums, released in the past couple of months, worth putting in the truck.

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Courtesy Jacksboro Highway

L-R: Pete Best, John Lennon, Delbert McClinton, Bruce Chanel, Paul McCartney, George Harrison

Lonesome, Onry and Mean didn't get in much trouble in school. So his parents were a little disturbed to find the eighth grader in the principal's office on the afternoon of February 10, 1964. He and his best friends, Mike Clowdus, Brad Rutledge, and Larry "Suitcase" Simpson, had been written up and sent to the office by Mr. Stephen Haynes, the eighth grade honors algebra teacher.

The infraction? Combing our hair like the Beatles.

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Courtesy LC Media

I was living in Holland in 1977 when my younger brother, who had attended Wayland Baptist University on a track scholarship until booze and girls were discovered in his dorm room, came for a visit. While living in Plainview, his stomping grounds had been the gin joints of Lubbock. Upon arrival, he immediately opened his suitcase and pulled out an album he said I had to hear. It was some guy he had seen play in Lubbock who had just put out his first album.

It was what is known as Joe Ely's "white album." Self-titled, it has sometimes been referred to as the "No Loud Talk" album because of the sign on the wall behind the band on the back photo.

Dropping the needle on side one of Joe Ely, my entire musical horizon changed.

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Lonesome, Onry and Mean was sad to learn via Chuck Prophet's Facebook page this morning that Reg Presley, lead singer of Sixties proto-punkers the Troggs, has been diagnosed with lung cancer.

The Troggs are known primarily for their 1966 hit "Wild Thing." LOM was a sophomore in high school when the tune came blaring out of the speakers of the car radio and rocked our world. It seemed that within a week every rock station in the country was playing "Wild Thing" once an hour. It was literally everywhere.

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The comments sections on several articles about Linda Chorney, the woman who gamed the system and social networked her way onto the final Grammy ballot in the Americana category, tend to be pretty negative, although Chorney's publicist, husband and a few friends are trying to staunch the flow of irate bile that has gushed like BP's Gulf well last year.

Lonesome, Onry and Mean has been following Americana music since long before we first went to work in country radio in the early Seventies, and we've never witnessed anything quite as shameful as Chorney's calculated internet march to the Grammy ballot. We were revolted by our first listen to Chorney's tepid folky Emotional Jukebox. We can think of a handful of women in Houston who could kick Chorney's musical ass with one arm behind their backs.

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