Word has come that Doc Watson, beloved 89-year-old flat-picking genius and elder statesman of the Americana music scene, has been airlifted to Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after suffering a fall at his home.

According to reports in Bluegrass Today and the Raleigh News & Observer, Watson is being treated for pneumonia and possible kidney failure.

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Mickey Newbury paved the road from Houston to Nashville for a Hells Angels-ish, hard-drinking, hard-drugging gaggle of songwriters who, like Newbury, would go on to make a serious mark on Music City.

Ornery, belligerent, cocky, literary, opinionated and super-talented, this group of Houston transplants would turn staid old Nashville on its lyrical ear. They also set the bar for how to succeed in Nashville without selling your soul to the labels or the conservative machine that runs both the town and the industry.

Steve Young: Young's ties to Houston are minimal, but important nonetheless. He attended high school in Beaumont during a thriving period when people like the Big Bopper and George Jones also lived there, a time when Beaumont's Johnny Preston could have a huge national hit like "Running Bear Loves Little White Dove" and still live down the street.

Absorbing blues, folk, country and regional sounds, even in high school (Johnny Winter was in his graduating class), Young was already on his Zen-mystical musical and poetic journey, which would eventually find him in California at the forefront of country-rock with the Flying Burrito Brothers and Dillard and Clark.

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Photo by Marco Torres

The boys aren't coming back to town just yet.

A few months back, Rocks Off announced that ZZ Top, 3 Doors Down and Gretchen Wilson would be playing the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on June 23.

Now it appears that it isn't happening. After being listed on the venue's site and the Top site, it is now nowhere to be seen. Tickets had not gone on sale yet, either, so it's not like anyone will be looking for refunds.

As we pointed out, The Tops had just played RodeoHouston a few weeks before this, which made this show a pretty quick return engagement. This would have been their first non-spinning-stage gig here in Houston since opening for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers back in September 2010.

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Photos by Cory Garcia

DJ Spooky and the Telos Ensemble on stage, his iPad app on the big screen behind him

The most surprising thing, and maybe the most amazing, about the 2012 edition of the Future Music Summit didn't take place during a presentation or during the concert. It took place during the afterparty at Herzstein Plaza just a little before midnight.

During the day, during presentations and meals, attendees of the festival heard plenty of discussion about music, technology and how humans interact with both. When it was time for the concert portion of the Summit, those attendees were not the only ones in the audience; locals from the Round Top area had stopped by the concert as well.

The locals, used to the more traditional classical performances that take place at the Round Top Festival Institute, seemed at first perplexed by the cyborg orchestra, the augmented violin and the DJ curator. In a concert hall in the present built for music of the past, they got a glimpse of the future.

The locals loved it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

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Casablanca Records was a record company started by Neil Bogart -- no relation to the late legendary actor Humphrey Bogart, although Neil was a big Bogie enthusiast and admirer. In the 1970s, Casablanca Records was the go-to label for disco much like Death Row was the go-to place for gangsta rap in the early '90s.

However, Casablanca Records wasn't totally limited to disco and was also home to such acts as pop artist Tony Orlando, soul singer Dusty Springfield and Motown expats the Four Tops. Casablanca suffered after Neil Bogart left and subsequently died, but was revived in 2000, 2005 and again earlier this year, and is currently owned by Universal Music Group.

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Screengrab via FutureMusicSummit.com

Every year bloggers ask the same questions: What's going to be the song of the summer? How long before a band's reunion tour falls apart? Who is the next big thing?

When we're not reviewing shows, doing interviews, waxing nostalgic or making lists, we love to speculate. But that kind of speculation is limited. It's discussion of the near future, one which we'll know soon enough. It's the type of discussion that we'll get to laugh about in a few weeks; not particularly deep.

Rarely do we discuss the actual future of music. The evolution of not just a genre, but of the entire realm of sound, silence, form and harmony.

If you've ever been curious about the places music is going, you'll be happy to know that there's a group of like-minded people out there looking to discuss the future. And at the Future Music Summit, taking place this weekend in Round Top, they don't just want to talk about it: They want you to experience it.

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Photo by ebnt-photo

Now, speaking for myself as a music fan, hearing is my favorite of the five senses. That's not to say the other senses don't play a part in enjoying music -- the smell of rain in the air during a hot outdoor show, the taste of a cold drink while you're in the club, the sight of bodies colliding in the dark, the feeling of bass shaking your body -- but above all of those is the ability to hear the sounds that move me.

Now that spring is here, more tours are coming to town. More shows means thinking about how you'll take care of your body during them. Comfortable shoes, sunscreen, drinking responsibly -- all easy things your parents probably mentioned at one time or another and all things you've probably ignored once or twice.

And then of course there's the oldest adage of them all. You know the one: turn down your music. Maybe the easiest to ignore.

But seriously, what are you doing to take care of your hearing?

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Courtesy of LC Media

A young David Grissom (l) and the other members of one of the greatest rock and roll bands ever.

David Grissom has a résumé that most guitarists can only dream of. From his early days with Hank III in Killbilly, Grissom went on to playing, along with Jimmy Pettit and Davis McLarty, for Joe Ely from 1985 to 1991. A hell-for-leather band that could hang with the Clash or just about anyone else, for that matter, that ensemble is still one of the top acts ever to come out of Texas.

Grissom left Ely to work with John Mellencamp before forming Storyville, an all-star Austin blues-rock ensemble. Following the shelving of Storyville, Grissom toured with the Allman Brothers as well as the Dixie Chicks.

Grissom also is a seasoned session player and was signed to Houstonian Frank Liddell's Carnival Music in Nashville for some years as a songwriter. He recently released his third solo recording, Way Down Deep, that features the usual deep grooves and monster licks we've come to expect from the lanky guitar slinger.

He comes to town Sunday for a writers-in-the-round session with Lisa Morales and legendary Austin guitarist Casper Rawls. Rocks Off caught up with him at home in Dripping Springs.

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While Houston played a huge part in the early history of country music, by the end of the 1950s a new breed of artist was coming on the scene. Western Swing, for all purposes, was a relic, and although honky-tonk was still a force in the charts and on radio, its share of the pie was waning.

The arrival and public acceptance of Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets and other early rock and rollers blindsided country music's powers that be and forced Nashville to rethink both its audience and its cultural position if it wanted to continue to prosper.

Ten years later, the arrival of the Beatles and the beginnings of the anti-Vietnam, anti-establishment, drug-favoring counterculture uprising presented country music with even more difficult economic and cultural hurdles. As usual, maverick Houstonians who refused to conform to the tepid, poppy "Nashville Sound" and had zero interest in any music described as "countrypolitan" figured heavily in the ensuing changes.

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If you're like us, you've been counting down the days to South By Southwest for months. You've gone over the line ups as they've been announced, watched twitter feeds spring back to life after 11 months of silence, and followed the rumors about all the big names heading to Austin.

You've probably made a ton of lists: Twitter feeds to follow, parties with free food and beer, buzz bands to check out. You have a place to stay, people to hang out with, and cash to tip your bartenders. You're ready to make this a SXSW to remember.

Or at least you think you are. The fun stuff is always easiest to organize because it's fun to think about. It takes more than just a few hours of Web surfing and a smartphone to have a successful road trip.

Rocks Off wants everyone to have a good time out there, so we've come up with a list of tips to help you make it through the next few days.

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