​After many, many years, Rocks Off is beginning to realize that it's possible to have a worthwhile musical experience nowhere near a stage. Ironically, the band responsible is Drive-By Truckers, whom we've seen live more often than probably any other save Wilco, Rev. Horton Heat and a handful of old Austin favorites like the Gourds, Grand Champeen and Lil Cap'n Travis.

Our history with the Truckers goes back at least a decade, when they used to blow in from Athens, Georgia, and wreck Austin's Hole in the Wall with the barrel-chested likes of Denton's Slobberbone and Austin's Meat Purveyors. Halloween night 2000, they debuted what would become their breakthrough a few months later, Southern Rock Opera, and we remember a blood-curdling cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," some broken furniture and, in retrospect, giving thanks we made it out of there alive.

Last month, the Truckers released Live from Austin TX, an unedited-for-television CD/DVD of their inaugural appearance on PBS' s Austin City Limits. Recorded last September, the performances are first-rate - the Truckers, de facto frontman Patterson Hood in particular, are obviously a little nervous about being on the iconic series and put their shoulders to the grindstone a little harder because of it. The set list mixes several songs from DBTs' most recent album, last year's knotty Brighter than Creation's Dark, with well-worn older material like "Let There Be Rock," "Zip City" and "Marry Me."

Houstonians should have a special affinity for the Truckers, who roll into House of Blues October 30. Many of their songs ("Puttin' People on the Moon" and "Space City," to name two from the ACL set) are about Huntsville, Alabama, which is (or was) almost as big a NASA company town as Clear Lake City. But the one that really hit home with Rocks Off this time is "The Living Bubba," which has nothing whatsoever to do with NASA and everything to do with where we find ourselves as we approach the doorstep of 35.

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Every so often, when Rocks Off is lucky enough to spend an evening at home, he'll dig up a pen and paper and start scratching away. So it was Monday night...

Joshua Black Wilkins

Here Comes Trouble: Th' Legendary Shack Shakers

​The longer you're in this business, the more you learn to appreciate the nights when no one goes out. Rather, the nights when the only people who go out are the people who spend the rest of the week taking food and drink orders from weekend warriors and dilettantes. Industry nights, or Service Industry Nights, abbreviated to SIN about as many times as actual sins are committed during this 72-hour span.

Musically, the SIN trifecta - Sunday, Monday and Tuesday - is not nearly as barren as it looks on the surface. The jukeboxes or iPods are always going full-tilt across town, be it Under the Volcano, Cecil's, Big Star Bar or the Next Door. We all know what goes on at Dirt Bar Tuesdays, even though we're not supposed to talk about it.

Early in the week is also an excellent time to catch up on local music. The most reliable places are Boondocks, with its revolving-door Mondays of two or three bands everyone is talking about, and the Continental, where everyone should stop talking and catch the tango/rockabilly pairing of Glover Gill and the Octanes at least once. If it's blues you're after, the Big Easy's no-cover "Tequila Mondays" have been going on as long as anyone around here can remember.

Willie Nelson, "(The) Most Unoriginal Sin"

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