Photo by Mary Bruton Keating/ Courtesy of New West Records

Glen Clark (left) and Delbert McClinton

At 72, Delbert McClinton has been about everywhere and done about everything you can do: hung out with the Beatles; worked as a sideman for Bruce Channel where he played harmonica on a national hit, "Hey, Baby;" wrote a No. 1 hit for Emmylou Harris, "Two More Bottles of Wine"; dropped four albums that made it to No. 1 on the blues charts; had hits in both country, pop, and blues charts; and operates the highly successful annual Sandy Beaches blues cruises.

But when you get him on the phone, he's still that Lubbock-raised, Fort Worth-seasoned good old boy he's always been. Here's more of our conversation with him about his career and (drum roll) Houston women.

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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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Photos by Jason Wolter

Robert Earl Keen (left) and Lyle Lovett

Texas Concert For Conservation
Featuring Dwight Yoakam, Robert Earl Keen, Hayes Carll & Ray Wylie Hubbard
Sam Houston Race Park
May 18, 2013

If I wanted to make a dopey analogy, which I'm going to do anyway, I'd say Texas' coastal waters and our wry but soulful singer-songwriters are two of this state's most precious natural resources. Lucky for us, both seem to be renewable too -- up to a point.

Dwight Yoakam, Robert Earl Keen, Hayes Carll and Ray Wylie Hubbard are all busy guys who hardly ever stop touring. They certainly didn't have to waive whatever fee each one commands to help out the Coastal Conservation Association's fight to preserve Texas' coastal ecosystem, particularly on a Saturday night, but there they were at Saturday's second annual Texas Concert for Conservation, none of them visibly phoning it in as performers at such charitable hootenannys are often wont to do.

It was a beyond-pleasant evening even before Lyle Lovett -- who can't live more than 20 miles from Sam Houston Race Park, as the crow flies -- showed up to sing "hey hey" a few times on his old Texas A&M buddy Robert Earl Keen's "That Buckin Song."

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Photos by Sonya Harvey

Scott H. Biram
Continental Club
May 17, 2013

Fans of Scott H. Biram's brand of rusty yelpin' need not worry, because the Dirty Old One Man Band still sheltering us in a hefty dose of antiquated down-home blues.

With slightly less audacity than past shows and sipping Guinness tallboys all night, a tamer Biram cranked up the phaser rich pedal board and reached into his arsenal of Gibsons, pulling out his trusty scratched-up hollowbody, to instigate a night of blues covers with Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf and, by our count, at least three Mance Lipscomb songs in tow.

Leading off with Lead Belly's "Midnight Special," Biram commenced to double-timing tense harmonica riffs and slightly bent choruses to a cozy crowd of about 70, who answered back with fist-pumping rebel yells.

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Texas music lovers have one more thing to celebrate as of today. The United States Postal Service is issuing a new series of stamps titled Music Icons, and Houston's own Lydia Mendoza is the first honoree.

Long before Selena, there was Lydia Mendoza. A master of the twelve-string guitar, Ms. Mendoza became the first female star in the all-male field of Tejano music when, at age 18, she cut her most famous tune, "Mal Hombre" (essentially "Evil-hearted Man") for RCA Victor subsidiary Bluebird Records in 1934. The track has been called the first Tejano music recording.

Mendoza immediately became a regional and then national radio star in the era before television. But under the musical leadership of her mother Leonora and the management of her father Francisco, Lydia Mendoza had already been performing in the streets, markets, and bars of San Antonio.

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Maybe it all comes down to being in the right place at the right time. Maybe luck has something to do with it. Or maybe it's crafting a vintage-era sound with odes of talent that landed Hacienda a lottery ticket to musical gold.

It's no secret that The Black Keys likes to take on extra projects, and singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach is known for plucking bands right off the streets -- just ask Jessica Lea Mayfield, Radio Moscow or the Buffalo Killers.

As luck would have it, a night at Emo's in Austin would forever change the lives of Hacienda brothers Rene (guitar), Abraham (keys) and Jaime (drums) Villanueva, who have become Auerbach's biggest lovefest to date.

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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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It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're doing out best to make sense of the oddest monikers.

Photos courtesy of Ninjas From Texas

Ninjas From Texas is a metal/hardcore act out of San Antonio. It's the sort of music that makes me sad there are no good Van Damme movies anymore. I can totally see him as an aging underground metal musician who deals out ass-beatings and justice from under a mask all set to Ninjas From Texas' "Bitch We Keep it Real." It's angry, it's juvenile, it smacks of being written in the aftermath of a bitter session of masturbation, but goddammit it has punch.

There's even a kind of brutal poetry in something like "Sex, Drugs, and Mopeds." I mean, sure, the growling and the screaming and the call for immediate gratification is still all over the place, but Neil Munoz's vocals honestly have a Salinger quality to them. There's a beautiful, empty futility to the message that he and the band accomplish well under the soulpunch.

That name, though...

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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 courtesy of Columbia Records

Willie Nelson in the studio in the mid-'70s, making gospel album The Troublemaker

This week and into next, the State of Texas and the rest of the world will join together in saluting American hero Willie Nelson on his 80th birthday. Rocks Off would certainly like to add our congratulations, but we woke up today -- well, yesterday -- looking to start an argument.

The standard line in Willie's current bio is that he has released some 200 albums, and recently it sure seems like he has something new in stores every few months. Since 2008, his original, non-compilation titles include Two Men With the Blues (with Wynton Marsalis), Country Music, Willie and the Wheel (with Asleep at the Wheel), American Classic, Ray Charles tribute Here We Go Again, Heroes, and the brand-new Let's Face the Music and Dance. There may not be a stone-cold classic in there, but most of them are above average, and there certainly isn't an outright dog in the bunch.

True, Willie has said before that all he really does these days is play music and play golf. But he's still releasing albums at a clip that -- even considering that the Charles tribute and Two Men With the Blues were largely recorded live in one evening -- would put a man half his age to shame. There are a lot of reasons to admire Willie Nelson, and his laid-back but dogged work ethic is a big one for us personally.

Now, imagine that through some cruel twist of fate, you do not own any Willie Nelson albums. At all. That's where we come in. Of course these are not the only Willie Nelson albums you should buy, just the five we think you should buy first. But please don't stop there.

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