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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photo by Jason Wolter

Jesse Dayton onstage in Becoming Kinky: The World According To Kinky Friedman

​In our recent interview with Kinky Friedman, performing tonight at Dosey Doe in the Woodlands, we mulled over Jesse Dayton's on-going project of an album of Friedman's songs. Friedman was very enthusiastic.

"The last time we talked, Jesse had already done the basic tracks for eight songs," said Friedman. "I haven't heard them, but Jesse says he's trying to give them something like a Steve Earle or a Bruce Springsteen treatment. No one's ever really tried to do that with my work, so I'm very excited by this."

"What I'm glad about is that this is not going to be one of those fucking tribute albums," says Friedman. "I hate most of that stuff. I'm really happy that he's trying to put Jesse Dayton's stamp on them, not just do a half-ass regurgitation. But I'm really happy that Jesse's record may find new fans for those old songs."

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​It started as a simple question: What albums would you leave your unborn children, if you knew you were on borrowed time and may not be around to show them the way. At first I asked for albums for sons, but then it grew broader, not out of needing to pacify the PC-thug in me, but to make sure everyone, regardless of gender, had a sort of Rosetta Stone of musical history in their hands.

You could leave them pristine vinyl versions of these, a collection of cassettes, or maybe just a diamond-covered flash drive, if are so inclined. As for me, I will also leave my unborn child my Rdio account. That's not a paid endorsement, that's just me being expedient.

To get some obvious picks out of the way, the entire Beatles catalog will come standard with being my child, like seat-belts in cars. As will George Strait's Strait Out Of The Box, and ZZ Top's catalog.

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​Nutty Jerry's in Winnie has been doing a great job bringing in legacy acts like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Guess Who, Mickey Gilley, Ronnie Dunn, and Blood, Sweat and Tears. But the club really got our blood pumping when they booked the Cajun wildman, Jo-El Sonnier, who plays the club Saturday night.

Sonnier, who had been playing and recording since he was 13 years old, burst upon the national scene in the early 1980s with "No More One More Time" and the rocking cover of Richard Thompson's "Tear Stained Letter." Both singles reached the Top Ten on the country music chart.

Born to French-speaking sharecroppers in Rayne, Louisiana, today Sonnier, who last released an album in 2008, lives in Lake Charles. We spoke to him at his home Thursday afternoon and found him as perky and full of fire as ever.

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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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Photo by Lynne Hawrelko

Gurf Morlix

​Part of a storied singer-songwriter scene, former Houstonians Gurf Morlix and Blaze Foley were living in Montrose during the Urban Cowboy craze but were not impressed. In fact, according to Morlix, they worked so much they "hardly ever had a night off, and if we did we certainly weren't going to drive out to Pasadena to some fake cowboy joint." Somewhat ironically, we had just interviewed Mickey Gilley moments before calling Morlix to discuss his gig and the showing of the documentary Blaze Foley: The Duct Tape Messiah at Anderson Fair Friday night. Morlix, who released an entire album of Foley covers last year, Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream, spent all of 2011 traveling with the film, usually performing a set of Foley songs after each showing. We caught up with the Grammy winner at his studio in Austin.

Rocks Off: Is the Blaze Foley phase winding down for you or does it have more legs?

Gurf Morlix: I think I'm about done with it. I devoted all of 2011 to Blaze and the film and my album, but I've got other stuff to do this year.

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​Who Dat?

When Jimmy Page began to put together his New Yardbirds, he scoured the British scene looking for the right vocalist. Eventually, Page offered the job in his new band -- now called Led Zeppelin -- to Terry Reid.

Reid, who quit school at 15 and had played at the Royal Albert Hall by the time he was 17, had just signed on to tour the U.S. as the opening act for the Rolling Stones, so he referred Page to another young singer, Robert Plant. Reid had heard Plant when Plant's Band of Joy opened a show for Reid. The rest is history.

Rocks Off drove from Houston to Dallas to see the Stones on the fateful 1969 tour that would end at Altamont and forever knock the bloom off Flower Power. Reid's power trio did the usual Brit blues-rock thing. Reid was followed by Chuck Berry on that bill. Yeah, that's a pretty good three-band bill for one night.

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Who Dat?

Ah yes, the '70s, fertile ground for prog-rockers of mostly English descent like Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Jethro Tull and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. But a cult has grown around the (many would say) even more complex and experimental Gentle Giant - a quintet that, among them, could play 30 different instruments.

Formed in 1970 out of the ashes of R&B band Simon Dupree & the Big Sound, which featured Phil, Derek, and Ray Shulman, the brothers added Gary Green, Kerry Minnear, and Martin Smith to form Gentle Giant, with almost all members contributing vocals.

Combining just about every musical genre out there including a healthy dose of classical, they released a self-titled debut the same year and Acquiring the Taste the next. Gentle Giant - in their own words - wanted to "expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of becoming very unpopular."

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"You switched your engine now I ain't got time

For a triflin' woman on my main line

'Cause I'm movin' on, you done your daddy wrong

I've warned you twice, now you can settle the price

'Cause I'm movin on

Thanks to earnest guidance from his parents and maternal grandmother, even as a child Lonesome Onry and Mean understood the difference between true country music and some of the stuff Nashville dumbed down to pawn off as country music. From the first time we ever heard The Singing Ranger, Hank Snow, we knew he was a man among men.

LOM was raised on a diet of Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Bob Wills, and Ernest Tubb, but early on we understood that this little man from Nova Scotia could write 'em and sing 'em with the best. LOM was always partial to Snow's up-tempo tunes, but the little guy with the gaudiest suits in Nashville could also melt us with ballads "I Don't Hurt Anymore" or "A Fool Such As I," which he sang with a sincerity that was undeniable.

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Other than Buck Owens, no artist had a bigger effect on Dwight Yoakam than "The Singing Fisherman," Johnny Horton. This East Texas rockabilly cool cat grabbed Rocks Off's attention every time his name was mentioned or a song of his came on the radio. We suspect it was the same for Yoakam, who channels Horton as well as anyone ever has.

Although born in Los Angeles, Horton was raised in Rusk and Gallatin in deep East Texas before he eventually settled in the Shreveport area, where he was a member of the Louisiana Hayride before stardom found him. Ironically, Horton had begun his music career in Los Angeles, playing Cliffie Stone's "Hometown Jamboree" on KLAC-TV.

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