Houston Music Blog

​When Rocks Off learned that Texas countercultural icon and longtime ZZ Top graphic designer Bill Narum passed away Wednesday night, one of the first things we did was reach out to the ZZ camp for a statement. The Lil' Ol' Band from Tejas' publicist just got back to us with a message from the Rev. Billy F. Gibbons himself. Here it is verbatim - we just love the way he talks:

"Bill Narum... Man of many talents as a gifted artist, designer and persistent protagonist on many fronts. As the designer and creator of each and every early ZZ TOP cover, his hand forged the perception of the artist essence of ZZ TOP... Cactus, desert sand, rattlesnakes and javalenas, jalapenos, hot sauce and hot bluesrock imagery from way deep down in Texas.

"Scribble on, Bro Bill. You were the best!"

After the jump, a few of Narum's fellow artists remember their friend and colleague. Thanks to Margaret Moser at the Austin Chronicle and South Austin Museum of Popular Culture for her help.

"You just can't live in Texas if you don't have a lot of soul"

​If the Texas music scene ever had a soul, it belonged to Doug Sahm, the leader of the Sir Douglas Quintet who passed away ten years ago Wednesday. It didn't matter whether he was knee-deep in the blues, hammering on a three-chord rocker, or sawing on his fiddle, Doug Sahm was 100% Texan to his core.

Sahm had a storybook career, from child prodigy who was asked to join the Grand Ole Opry and sat in with Hank Williams to the elder statesman of Texas music as leader of supergroup Texas Tornados. He also had a lot of Houston history, recording his breakout hit "She's About a Mover" here with legendary producer Huey P. Meaux in 1965.

​Bill Narum, a key figure in Houston's counterculture in the late 1960s and early '70s, passed away Wednesday night at his home in Austin. The cause of death was an "apparent heart attack or something that took him quickly while sitting in his studio at the art table in his chair," said Narum's close friend Margaret Moser, who profiled him for the Austin Chronicle in 2005.

Austin native Narum, who was in his early 60s, grew up in Houston and discovered his talent for graphic design early on. "In the fifth grade, I'd been drawing girlie cartoons from Playboy in a notebook, and I left it in my desk after class," he told the Chronicle. "The next day I was reprimanded for disrupting class because they were passing around my notebook."

In the late '60s, Narum co-founded Houston free-form FM rock station KLOL and worked as an illustrator for underground newspaper Space City News. He struck up a long-lasting friendship with a band then just starting out, which had recently rechristened itself ZZ Top. Narum would go on to become ZZ's house graphic artist, moving from posters and album covers such as 1976's Tejas to epic murals for the band's fleet of semis and the famous cactus-and-cattle-skull stage design for the trio's legendary 1975-76 "Worldwide Texas" tour.

​This 1985 TV special was filmed at the Austin Opry House, and finds the two music icons sharing the stage - and a lot of laughs - for part of the proceedings in a 14-song set.

Not surprisingly, it's the tunes with both of them side-by-side at the piano, that shine. An emotional "Angel Eyes," epic "Seven Spanish Angels" and rollicking "Mountain Dew" stand out, the ebullient Charles stealing the show and a grinning Nelson all too happy to let him do it. The two also trade verses on "Georgia On My Mind," a Charles standard that Nelson included on Stardust. (Note: this reviewer's 9-year-old daughter, commenting on Willie's braids, said he "looked like a little girl with an old beard").

Oddly, the set list leans away from country for jazzier ("My Window Faces the South") and ballad fare ("There Will Never Be Another You," "Who'll Buy My Memories?", accentuated by sittin'-in guitarist Jackie King). The Family Band sounds oddly restrained and muted even during "On the Road Again" and "Whiskey River" (a set closer here).

Photos by Eric Sauseda

​

Shortly after Aftermath stumbled across and copied down the Butthole Surfers' set list at House of Blues Thursday night (always check the soundboard), we hit upon what we thought was the brilliant idea of assigning each song a letter grade of sorts based on the following four-point coding system: "M" for melodic, "N" for noise, "P" for psych and "B" for blues.

​We were going to assign each song between one and four letters for each of those categories, but ultimately didn't do it because as the show pushed and pulled against the triple axes of Paul Leary's guitar, Gibby Haynes' "Gibbytronix" noisemaker and the demonic rhythm section of Jeff Pinkus (bass), King Coffey (drums) and Teresa Taylor (additional drums and percussion), it was almost impossible to tell where each one ended and the other began.

Some songs, like, um, "Fast Song" and "Gary Floyd," were unrelenting blasts of withering hardcore, while others like "Hey" and "Dancing Fool" were almost beautiful in a completely-fried-on-acid sort of way. Most leaned fairly heavily in one direction or other on our MNPB compass, but the ones that struck the best balance between the four - "Pittsburgh to Lebanon," "Human Cannonball" - were the most memorable.

​

Admit it, you miss Texas. Lubbock may not have a lot of - okay, any - scenery, Dallas may take a little too much pride in the fact that they shot a TV show there, and Houston might not have the best climate/air quality/traffic, but it's home, dammit. Spend much time in other parts of the country and you'll likely find yourself pining for the state's many intangibles, like Shiner Bock, lack of state income tax, and abusive TABC agents. Most Texas songwriters have a song or three that discuss this phenomenon. Here's a sample:

Don Edwards, "Goin' Back to Texas": We could've done several entries on Edwards, whose distinctive Western style seems out of another time. Seeing as he released his first album a whopping 45 years ago, that sentiment's not too far off the mark.

In less than two years, Kevin "Shinyribs" Russell has developed one of Houston's most successful residency gigs at Under the Volcano. His monthly appearances at the Bissonnet drinkery have become standing-room-only events.

The secret to Russell's success seems to be built on two factors: his visibility as the front man of longstanding Austin roots outfit the Gourds, and his amazing talent for reinventing his show every month. Gospel-hippie hillbilly boogie-tonk might be a good label to put on what Shinyribs does, but the audience never knows whether the emphasis will be on gospel or honky-tonk or rockin' boogie.

Russell adds to the surprise factor by seldom playing with the same set of musicians gig to gig. Tonight he'll have Heybale drummer and Houston native Tom Lewis behind the skins, so in all likelihood this show will be a rocker. But with that sneaky, always inventive Shinyribs, you just never know until the dancing has stopped and the dust has settled.

www.myspace.com/gravityeuphonic

​For some reason, Texas is allowed one dominant electronic band per city. Houston has Asmodeus X, Austin has CTRL and Dallas/Fort Worth has Gravity Euphonic. Intense lobbying has not yet lured GE regularly down to our neck of the Lone Star State - although they did play HAVOK back in '06 - but now Houstonians can at least sample the duo's awesomness in the form of their second album, titled simply Gravity Euphonic (Radio-Active).

More than the VNV Nations and Imperative Reactions of the world, Gravity Euphonic drives its particular brand of beeps and boops with a hard-ass guitar sound. During a live show, guitarist Eric Hunter II is a sight to behold, often abandoning the sad and stale strums and fretwork of yesteryear for pounding along the strings with clenched fists.

This lends an animalistic primevalness to what is usually a more refined and technological genre. That's not to say that the electronic work is sub-par. Far from it. It's just that Gravity Euphonic is a bit angrier than your typical dance music.

​In line with Lonesome Onry and Mean's recent piece on septuagenarians Ian Hunter and Jesse Winchester, we've been listening to new records from a pair of wizened old Texas treasures: 68-year-old Guy Clark and 73-year-old Kris Kristofferson. Both are stellar efforts, although even a producer like Don Was can't make Kristofferson's voice sound like much more than a cement mixer turning wet gravel at low speed.

But let's face it, we don't come to Clark or Kristofferson because they have Pavarotti's vocal chords or Rascal Flatts' haircuts. We come for the words, the songs, the ideas. Both of these albums are a poet's delight.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of Clark's Someday The Song Writes You is the co-writing. One can't help wondering which parts Clark wrote and what the other established or budding talents brought to the writing table. In the end, it doesn't matter because many of these songs are as good as anything Clark has ever put his stamp on.

Photos by Tom Tracy/ click here for more

"Happy" couple Tom Overby and Lucinda Williams' first kiss as man and wife

"Tryin' so hard to be a happy woman," Lucinda Williams sang on the title song to her 1980 album and again Friday night at First Avenue in Minneapolis. Looks like she finally made it.

Four postcards included in the limited edition of The Beatles: Rock Band

​

Looks like Beatlemania 2.0 is in full swing. Rocks Off may have mentioned how excited we are to play The Beatles: Rock Band at Coffee Groundz tonight, with prizes, drink specials and much laughter as we try to gnash our way through "I Saw Her Standing There." Shortly after noon, we called over to Cactus Music to see how the freshly released remastered Beatles catalog was selling. The complete box set sold out in pre-sale, the clerk reported, while about 50 people have already bought individual albums, mostly between two to four at a time (and remember, Cactus opens at 10 a.m.). The store's phone, he added, has been ringing "off the hook."

Obviously the Beatles continue to be as beloved in Houston as they are around the world, so Rocks Off thought we'd salute the perhaps the biggest day in the group's history since New Year's Eve 1970 - when Paul McCartney's attorneys filed suit against the other three Beatles and manager Allen Klein, asking that the group's legal partnership be officially dissolved - by highlighting a few of the Fab Four's Texas connections.

​1. Buddy Holly. The Lubbock-born bespectacled rock and roller is, with apologies to John, Paul, George and Ringo's mums and dads, probably the single human being most responsible for the Beatles' existence. The group's name is a play on Holly's band the Crickets, of course, but even before there was the Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney's earlier groups like the Quarrymen honed their chops on Holly-penned early rock and roll classics like "That'll Be the Day." Even as late as the Let It Be sessions, the splintering Beatles used a Holly medley to warm up in the studio.

​The history of country music - or any music until recent years, for that matter - is largely represented by men, with female artists popping up more and more frequently as time passed and concert/record promoters realized there was a market for women in the business. In country, you started with pioneers like Kitty Wells, who were followed by the next wave (Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee) and then the Big Three (Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette) before female artists became relatively commonplace.

Tanya Tucker represented a new direction for women in country. For better or worse, she brought a more overt sexuality than the relatively chaste Parton or Barbara Mandrell, and branched off into rock and roll for a time, making her - at least temporarily - a pariah among the C&W faithful (and it should be noted that Tucker still hasn't been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame).

This edition of Lone Star Scorecard is therefore dedicated to Tucker, the pride and joy of Seminole, TX. She's performed a number of songs about her home state. We'll be the judge of how accurate they really are.

Barbara Misto

​Shinyribs, Gourds frontman Kevin Russell's side project, has found a safe haven in his old hometown of Houston. Russell's musical oeuvre mixes a large gospel-based element with dashes of country, blues, folk, and rock and ends up being something unique and very Houston-friendly.

Russell has been doing a monthly residency at Under the Volcano for two years now. And somehow he's managed to never play the same set twice. In fact, it is the surprise factor that seems to happen every gig when Russell "gets the spirit" that imbue these Shinyribs shows with art and high spirit.

​

There are thousands of songs about Texas, most of which manage to get some aspect of "it" right about our great state: It's big, for starters, and often seems composed of equal parts wide open spaces, comely women and Lone Star Beer. Cram any two of those elements into a song and you'll probably get at least a month's worth of KKBQ airplay.

And then there are those tunes that, for whatever reason, don't quite hit the nail on the head. Maybe there are too many references to Corpus Christi, or a description of Gulf waters as "blue," or a fond reminiscence of Dallas... whatever. The Lone Star Scorecard is designed to correct these inaccuracies, even - as is the case this week - at the expense of some of our most respected artists.

​

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

​

"Going from musician to politician is definitely a step down," says Kinky Friedman, who announced his Texas gubernatorial candidacy Tuesday morning. "But I'll take it for Texas."

Of course, it's a step that Friedman, author of songs such as "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Any More" and "The Ballad of Charles Whitman," as well as numerous mystery novels, took once before in 2006, when he took about 13 percent of the popular vote as an independent. Running as a Democrat this time, Friedman is a master of the sound bite but hadn't even come up with a campaign slogan until he was leaving the Press offices Tuesday evening.

"Smart president, smart governor - how about that?"

Rocks Off: Why do it again?

​Kinky Friedman: That's a really good question. You'd have to ask a few psychiatrists for the answer to that one. I think you do something until you get it right. I think I shouldn't have run as an independent, in retrospect. No independent's ever won in Texas except for Sam Houston. I've always been a Democrat, my heroes have always been Democrats and it just made sense. A lot of the things that I stood for in my last campaign are still true. George Washington wasn't wrong; there's still a lot of flaws in the two-party system. But that's what we have.

So I've seen the light. I will play by the rules, and I'll run in the Democratic primary and if I were to lose, I would endorse and campaign for whoever does win, and I would assume they'll do the same for me. And spiritually, the Democrats are a very populist party. That's what's made them such a power over the past century. That's where I come in. I see myself as maybe the only man of the people in the race, considering all these other people are flying around in their private jets all the time. I'm a Southwest Airlines kind of guy. By choice.

​Lonesome Onry and Mean recently stopped wasting good notebook paper writing drafts of articles about Best in Texas Music Magazine. We were perusing the current issue and thinking about how bad it is when it suddenly dawned on us: the environmentally pure thing would be to write a column about it on the issue itself. Another little facet of LOM's continuing attempt at going green, you might say.

When I floated a trial balloon of my new idea at our local watering hole, the usual suspects started chiming in with other environmentally friendly uses of BIT. There were the obvious ones, of course: toilet paper in a pinch; drop cloth when painting; bird cage liner; fly swatter; campfire starter; wrapping breakables when you move (one virulent wag noted that hopefully if you are an avid reader of BIT, you're moving out of state); oil change rags; pirate's hat; origami.

After a few beers, things got weird: send to Alaska for use in their next oil spill; cover the windows of your meth lab if you run out of tin foil; serve crawfish on it (although another wag who hails from Dublin stated authoritatively that BIT is not strong enough for genuine Irish fish 'n' chips); Molotov cocktail wick; cut out letters and use for your next ransom note; stack them up for use in ballistics tests.

​

You know the drill: every week we sift through several thousand songs (mostly) extolling the virtues of the Great State of Texas to bring you three that still manage to screw it up. And whether written by native sons or godless Yankee heathens, mistakes abound.

Little Texas, "God Blessed Texas": The Arlington-based band scored a decent hit with this not-so-modest ode to the Lone Star State's surfeit of divine favor. Hey, we're fond of Texas too, but while we realize that even Dallas has to look heavenly compared to Cleveland for Ohio native and co-songwriter Brady Seals, maybe he should spend some time in La Marque before crowing too much about "seeing heaven."

​

Fun Fun Fun Fest, the scuzzier, noisier cousin to the Austin City Limits Music Festival, announced its lineup this afternoon. Held November 7 and 8 in Austin's Waterloo Park, FFFF is up to 91 artists this year, everyone from rappers the GZA, the Pharcyde and the Cool Kids to electronic/dance acts Broadcast, Ratatat and Yeasayer, power-pop (Destroyer) to hardcore (Fucked Up, Gorilla Biscuits), garage rock (Strange Boys, King Khan and BBQ), comedians (Brian Posehn) and lots of bands us thirtysomething geezers remember from back in the day: Face to Face, Jesus Lizard, 7 Seconds, Flipper and, er, Danzig.

Rocks Off is most looking forward to seeing two bands that bookend the U.S. punk saga: Detroit demons Death, whose For the Whole World to See was one of the period's great lost albums until Drag City reissued it earlier this year, and Bostonians Mission of Burma, whose "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" was a grim anthem for the early-'80s underground and completed the transition into post-punk. Oh, and Metallagher, who combine the splatter-thrash of Metallica with the fruit-splatter of the comedian Gallagher.

​Because of Tuesday's We Were Wolves/Satin Hooks show (our ears are still ringing), the Mink moved its weekly movie night to 9 p.m. tonight, but it's worth the wait. They'll be showing the Coen brothers' 1996 classic The Big Lebowski, with $3 White Russians and a pair of Sunny Day Real Estate tickets up for grabs.

Lebowski is an homage to White Russians, nihilism and slack - and, although Kingpin comes pretty close, probably the funniest bowling movie ever made. Rocks Off's favorite part has always been the dream sequence/production number scored to Kenny Rogers & the First Edition's "Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My Condition Was In)." Even if you're not stoned when you watch it - a condition most Lebowski fans know a little something about - these five minutes or so will sure make you feel stoned.

"Condition" has been memorably covered by Willie Nelson and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, but Rogers' original is still our favorite. We never get tired of bringing it up whenever someone argues that all the Roaster was ever good for was treacly pop-country ballads like "Lady" and "Through the Years."

In last week's Houston Music Fight Club, we pitted six of Houston's brightest-shining musical diamonds against one another in a sort of cruel Internet death match. The only blood drawn was the dark crimson blood of laughter that...yeah, we need to work on our metaphors.

Anyhow, we came up with three more semi-local celebrity cage matches. We hope that this actually catches on in real life, so that one day it can be sold to pay-per-view for the rest of the world to gawk at. Finally we will have an excuse to shave our arms and use those roofies we scored the other night.

Bryan Jackson Vs. Jacob Calle

​​Anyone paying attention to these two will know their relationship has been volatile. A few months back, Jackson, the Bon Scott-esque lead singer of Black Congress came under scene fire for allegedly "borrowing" some vinyl from local auteur Jacob Calle. A fight was scheduled to be held at the Graustark Bridge over Highway 59 at 4 a.m. one night, but obviously nothing materialized.

In a real fight though, who would win? Jackson was recently interviewed for Free Press Houston, where he described a litany of extracurricular activities that would make R. Kelly blush and has forever tainted the movie The Color of Money for us. But pooping in a pool table and penchant for "face meat" doesn't make you Chuck Liddell.

Calle, on the other hand, is only vaguely threatening. His life exploits, which Rocks Off can attest to from growing up with him in Pearland, are anything but sane. But he's not a fighter by any means, more of an affable prankster along the lines of a French aristocratic court jester.

By now, the news about former Sugar Land Congressman Tom DeLay's impending appearance on ABC's Dancing with the Stars has had time to sink in, and the long-term ramifications of this colossal melding of two of our greatest loves (reality television and the suffering of others) are starting to become clearer. To say mankind is doomed would be putting it mildly.

But there'll be plenty of time to mourn the collapse of civilization later. Now is the time to concern ourselves with serious issues; specifically, what songs will DeLay actually dance to?

M.C. Hammer, "Here Comes the Hammer" An obvious choice, perhaps, but DeLay and the former Stanley Burrell could swap a few stories about the fleeting nature of success as well as the importance of sound financial and legal advice. Still, it's hard to imagine anything more horrifyingly awesome that DeLay making his entrance on the show to this song, while wearing his own pair of 'Hammer pants.' Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh indeed.

The final installment of our Five States of Texas project brings it all back home, to the new state of Brazoria, encompassing all of Southeast Texas from the Brazos Valley to Sabine Pass.

​Patron Saint: Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. A master of rock and roll, country, Cajun/Creole, blues and jazz, no one area musician sounded more like Southeast Texas. That he spent his life moving all over the area, on both sides of the Sabine, only serves as evidence in favor of one of our geographical hypotheses: In the grand scheme of things, Southeast Texas is less truly Texas than it is Greater Louisiana.

Lesser Icons: Destiny's Child/Beyonce, ZZ Top, Janis Joplin, George Jones, Clint Black, Tracy Byrd, Bobby Blue Bland, Big Mama Thornton, La Mafia, DJ Screw, the Geto Boys / Scarface, Devin the Dude, Chamillionaire, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Lil' Keke, Lil' Flip, Fat Pat, South Park Mexican, BJ Thomas, Roy Head, Kenny Rogers, Johnny Bush, Floyd Tillman, Johnny Lee, Mickey Gilley, Clifton Chenier, UGK / Bun B, Johnny Guitar Watson, Albert Collins, Johnny Clyde Copeland, Arnett Cobb, Milt Larkin, Illinois Jacquet, Kirk Whalum, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson.

​Also: Sippie Wallace, Peck Kelly, Big Moe, Slim Thug, Z-Ro, Trae, the Big Bopper, Blind Willie Johnson, Mance Lipscomb, Lightnin' Hopkins, Calvin Owens, Joe Scott, Fever Tree, Archie Bell and the Drells, Johnny Nash, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Rodney Crowell, Esther Phillips, Robert Earl Keen, the Judy's, Texas Johnny Brown, Goree Carter, Joe Guitar Hughes, Lil' Joe Washington, Percy Mayfield, Joe Tex, Ted Daffan, Jimmy "T-99" Nelson, Charles Brown, Lyle Lovett, Fito Olivares, Baby Bash, Amos Milburn.

And: Gene Watson, Mickey Newbury, Hersal Thomas, Harry Choates, Bubble Puppy, the Crusaders/Joe Sample, K-Rino, Brooke Valentine, Leela James, Hayes Carll, Dobie Gray, Ivory Joe Hunter, Yolanda Adams, Mark Chesnutt, Barbara Lynn, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Clay Walker.

Bastard Sons: Blue October, H-Town.

Chris Gray

Sherwood Cryer at G's Ice House, 1999

​Sherwood Cryer, who co-founded legendary super-size Pasadena honky-tonk Gilley's and watched it rocket to worldwide fame in the wake of 1980's Urban Cowboy before a bitter falling out with his partner Mickey Gilley led to the club's demise, passed away last Thursday at his Houston-area home. He was 83, and the cause was natural causes, abc13.com reported.

Cryer, a native of the tiny East Texas town of Diboll, moved to Pasadena after World War II and worked as a welder for Shell before saving up enough money to buy a string of convenient stores, honky-tonks, beer joints and icehouses. In 1971, he spotted a young piano player named Mickey Gilley and offered to split the take of his club on Spencer Highway with Gilley if the musician would play there six nights a week. It was called Shelly's at the time, and Cryer was already bringing in some notable names.

"It was an open-air affair, and made big money," Cryer told the Austin Chronicle in 1999. "Hell, I had all the stars - Willie Nelson when he was still runnin' a three-piece band, Roy Acuff, George Jones. Used to get him for $250 a night. So it rocked along there for several years. I wasn't settin' the world on fire, but I was bringin' in country music."

Alan Ball was known for his masterful use of music in Six Feet Under. He's lost none of his touch when it comes to his current HBO series, True Blood - which happens to be set in the Louisiana swamps, not terribly far from Houston. Though we're picking up midway through Season 2, from here on out as each new episode airs, Rocks Off will bring you a short report on the featured music.

​The South continues to rise again on True Blood, as Episode 2.8, "I Will Rise Up," features music from a certain Mr. Lyle Lovett of Klein. The good old boy has quietly built himself a reputation as one of America's finest country songsmiths, and "I Will Rise/Aint No More Cane," from his most recent album, 2007's It's Not Big, It's Large, continues his customary synthesis of originality and tradition. The "I Will Rise Up" half of the song is Lyle's usual brand of brilliance, tinged with the darkness that marked Johnny Cash's later recordings, but it's the "Ain't No More Cane" half that interests Rocks Off the most.

"Aint No More Cane" is a prison work song from the South. (Leadbelly recorded it, if you want to set the proper tone.) The song's main refrain is "Ain't no more cane on the Brazos/ It's all been ground down to molasses." The Brazos River is, of course, one of Texas' four big rivers, and has been featured in many prison songs since it runs by nearly all of the state's oldest prisons. The Brazos has also long held a fascination with Lovett, who has mentioned it in two other songs as well.

It's been so quiet in the tropics lately that even Ike-scarred Houstonians were able to forget that it's hurricane season - until this weekend, that is, when not one but three disturbances showed up "down there." (Better than some other things showing up "down there," Rocks Off can tell you that much.) None of them are likely to present any danger to our little corner of the Gulf Coast, but at least the one that showed up last and washed ashore first shares a name with one of Roy Orbison's coolest, if not especially well-known, songs.

​Many songs about Texas are written by residents wishing to celebrate some part of their beloved Lone Star State. Others come from non-Texans who are unable to resist the je ne sais quoi of the place that produced both Walter Cronkite and Karl Rove.

One thing that many of them have in common, however, is how much they get wrong. We at Rocks Off are committed to fighting ignorance wherever we find it, and will be examining the more egregious offenders in a new feature we're calling Lone Star Scorecard.

Alabama, "If You're Gonna Play In Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle In the Band)": You'd think a group that took a state for its own name would be wary of making sweeping geographic generalizations like the unwieldy title of this song. Regardless, there are roughly 1,000 acts playing across Texas on any given night that blatantly flout this edict. Some of them are even... country bands.

In the fourth in our continuing series on the music of the five states of Texas, we examine the fictional state of Rio Grande, comprising San Antonio and Corpus Christi, South and West Texas, and the Valley. See Part 1 ("Palo Duro") here, Part 2 ("Trinity") here and Part 3 ("New Texas") here.

Rio Grande

Capital: San Antonio

Patron Saint: Doug Sahm

​Lesser Icons: Selena, Freddy Fender, Butthole Surfers, the Jimenez family, the Ayala family, Steve Jordan, Mingo Saldivar, Lydia Mendoza, Bobby Fuller Four, At the Drive In/Sparta/Mars Volta, Juan Gabriel, Al Jourgensen, Tom Russell, Bruce and Charlie Robison, Pissing Razors, Girl In a Coma, Don Tosti, Moe Bandy, Rosie Flores, Tish Hinojosa, Adolph Hofner, Emilio Navaira, George Strait, Kris Kristofferson, Rigo Tovar, Juan Gotti, Radney Foster, Johnny Rodriguez, Don Williams, Valerio Longoria, Narciso Martinez, Los Lonely Boys

Bastard Sons: It's hard to find any.

State Song: "Volver, Volver"

​Other Notable Songs: "Hey Baby, Qué Paso" "Seguin," "Nuevo Laredo," "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone?" Doug Sahm/Sir Douglas Quintet/Texas Tornados; "San Antonio Rose," Bob Wills; "Ay te Dejo En San Antonio," Santiago Jimenez/Los Lobos; "San Antonio Girl," Steve Earle; "San Antonio Girl," Lyle Lovett; "Rain," "The Wedding Song," "Desperate Times," Charlie Robison; "By the Banks of the Old Bandera," Rodney Crowell; "Bandera Waltz," Bruce Robison; "South Coast of Texas," Guy Clark; "Pachuco Boogie," Don Tosti; "El Paso," Marty Robbins; "Streets of Laredo," "Texas Rangers," trad. cowboy songs; "Rio Grande Blood," Ministry; numerous songs called "Rio Grande" and "Laredo" by dozens of artists.

In the third in our continuing series on the music of the five states of Texas, we examine the fictional state of New Texas, comprising Austin and the Hill Country. See Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

New Texas

Capital: Austin

Patron Saint: Willie Nelson

​Lesser Icons: Roky Erickson/Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Alejandro Escovedo, Jon Dee Graham, True Believers, Freddy Fender, Nanci Griffith, Marcia Ball, Big Boys/Randall "Biscuit" Turner, Fastball, Scratch Acid, the Skunks, Spoon, ...Trail of Dead, Black Angels, Charlie Sexton, Eliza Gilkyson, W.C. Clark, Storyville, Jerry Jeff Walker, Stephen Bruton, Arc Angels, Austin Lounge Lizards, Asylum Street Spankers, Ghostland Observatory, What Made Milwaukee Famous, the Octopus Project, Bob Schneider, the Reivers, Ben Kweller, Calvin Russell, James McMurtry, Pariah, Dangerous Toys, Junkyard, Ian Moore, Vallejo, Eric Johnson, Rick Trevino, Voxtrot, Dale Watson, Grupo Fantasma, the Dicks, Dale Watson, Kelly Willis, the Gourds, Patty Griffin, Gary P. Nunn, Blaze Foley

Bastard Sons: Timbuk 3, Unloco, Band of Heathens, Christopher Cross, Pushmonkey

​State Song: "London Homesick Blues," Gary P. Nunn

Other Notable Songs: "Luckenbach, Texas," Waylon and Willie; "Hill Country Rain," Jerry Jeff Walker; "Pflugerville Boogie," Bill Neely; "They Call It the Hill Country," Randy Rogers Band; "I Can't Go Back to Austin Anymore," Doug Sahm/Sir Douglas Quintet; "Another Colorado," Jimmie Dale Gilmore; "South of Round Rock, TX," Dale Watson; "Broken Spoke Legends," Alvin Crow/James White; "Austin After Midnight," Jimmy LaFave; "Corpus Christi Bay," Robert Earl Keen

For all Austin's liveliness as a music town, there is an astonishing shortage of prominent songs about the place, and no one you could call remotely definitive.

[Note: This week Rocks Off is looking at the musical heritage, highs and lows, for each of the five possible states that might result should Texas secede from the U.S. like Gov. Rick Perry wants it to. Yesterday we began with the Panhandle/West Texas "Palo Duro" territory; today it's northeastern quadrant "Trinity."]

Trinity

Capital: Dallas

Patron Saint: Blind Lemon Jefferson

​Lesser Icons: T-Bone Walker, Alex Moore, Old 97's, Pantera, The D.O.C., Ray Wylie Hubbard, Ronnie Dawson, Leadbelly, Don Henley, Norah Jones, the Toadies, Tex Ritter, Jim Reeves, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Johnny Horton, Hank Thompson, Ray Price, Roger Miller, Scott Joplin, Brave Combo, Slobberbone, Midlake, Ornette Coleman, T-Bone Burnett., Billy Joe Shaver, Homer Henderson, Freddie King, Willie Hutch Jones, the Light Crust Doughboys, Milton Brown, Cornell Dupree, ZuZu Bollin, Robert Ealey, U.P. Wilson, Bowling For Soup and Hagfish.