Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2025 i Texas Highways Magazine

For “Sound Founders” (Page 62), Cat Cardenas interviewed and photographed five rising Texas musical acts. “Even legends like Selena, Beyoncé, and George Strait were up-and-comers once,” the Austin-based journalist says. With her camera, she aimed to capture each musician’s personality “so just by looking at the picture, you could get an idea of what the artist sounds like.” While she set Americana duo Briscoe at Commons Ford Ranch to reflect their love for the Hill Country, the rock band Being Dead’s off-kilter energy called for a different approach. “At one point, I was crouching below them as they yelled into my lens,” she says. Of her time with the emerging artists, Cardenas concludes: “The future of Texas music looks—and sounds—pretty great.” FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS KATE DEHLER The Austin-based illustrator drew influence…

THIRTY MILES SOUTH of the Live Music Capital of the World sits San Marcos, a college town with a notable music history of its own. Home to Texas State University and its student-run radio station KTSW 89.9, the city of 74,000 vibrates with songwriters’ circles, karaoke nights, music festivals, and career-launching venues. Perhaps the most famous venue is Cheatham Street Warehouse, which opened in 1974 and incubated Texas’ progressive country movement. It hosted early performances by Lone Star luminaries including George Strait and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Jazz has also been celebrated since 1989, when trumpet professor Keith Winking founded the Hill Country Jazz Festival—renamed the Butch Miles Jazz Festival last year to honor the former faculty member and Count Basie Orchestra drummer. Beyond campus, Summer in the Park has hosted…

TEXAS MUSIC RECORDING history changed forever on the fourth floor of a hotel on San Antonio’s River Walk. For three November days in 1936, Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel, now owned by Marriott, was a studio for future Delta blues legend Robert Johnson. On a mobile recording unit operated by music executive Don Law, Johnson performed 16 songs that became the most enduring documentation of the early history of popular music. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards are just two musicians among thousands who count these songs, like “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Cross Roads Blues,” as direct influences on their life’s work. Heartland rocker John Mellencamp and English folk singer Billy Bragg even followed in Johnson’s footsteps, recording in Room 414 in an effort to inject their music with some…

TO HILL COUNTRY DANCE HALLS AND HONKY-TONKS WHILE GRUENE HALL is the archetype for live music venues in Central Texas, it’s far from alone. Whether they’re stately halls, glorified barns, or ramshackle roadhouses, these remote locales share an ability to distill life to its most essential components. Time vanishes when you’re sharing drinks with old friends or swaying in the arms of your sweetheart. Immortalized by lore and sustained by word-of-mouth, these venues seem to spring up out of the Texas dirt like oases waiting to be discovered.…

WEST OF THE Pecos River, where many people find only endless desert landscapes, decades of music makers have found inspiration. The sound of far West Texas, intense and isolated, is also deeply international: It’s where Texas’ largest border municipality, El Paso, meets its sister city of Ciudad Juárez. Running down the Rio Grande, from Terlingua’s porch pickers to Marfa’s worldwide artists-in-residence, the region represents an essential juncture of music and culture. This crossover rings true for Tara López, author of Chuco Punk: Sonic Insurgency in El Paso. Raised in neighboring New Mexico, she was drawn to the West Texas town partly by 1990s punk rock. “All the bands from El Paso, I felt that their music was more reflective of the sound of the Southwest,” says López, a professor at Winona…

WHEN PHOTOGRAPHER JEFF WILSON was shooting two local musicians on the famed porch of Terlingua’s Starlight Theatre, a few people happened to ride up on horseback. Singer and guitarist Ted Arbogast told Wilson, “You should photograph this guy,” and handed his guitar to one of the riders, Andy Armendariz Sr. The Burnet County-based cowboy country singer visits his second home in Terlingua every other week and likes to “pick on the porch with the locals some-times.” While he hadn’t planned to perform that day, he quickly accepted the guitar and launched into Marty Robbins’ ballad “El Paso.” “He had a voice right out of a classic Western theme song,” Wilson recalls. “The crowd waiting for their seats all applauded when he finished.” This serendipitous moment seemed a fitting choice for…

BORDER LINES WILLIAM BECKMANN William Beckmann stepped into the circle at Nashville’s famed Grand Ole Opry for the first time in the spring of 2023. The then 27-year-old up-and-coming country star had only two songs to win over the audience. He began with his original track “Bourbon Whiskey,” a smooth lovesick ballad, but it was his next choice that earned him a standing ovation. Sporting a teal Western suit in a video that’s since gone viral, he told the Opry audience, “Where I’m from, you’ve got to sing at least one song in Spanish.” Then he launched into a silvery rendition of “Volver, Volver” by iconic Mexican singer Vicente Fernández. Beckmann is a tried-and-true country crooner whose velvety baritone vocals and subtle twang land somewhere between Frank Sinatra and George…

GRAHAM WILLIAMS HAS been booking shows in Austin since middle school, back when every band in the city seemingly did their version of acid-tinged noise rock. Now 47, the CEO of entertainment company Resound has moved on from house shows to venues all over the state. “I think Austin’s sound is the most complicated,” Williams says, comparing the city to more defined spots like San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston. He’s witnessed an evolution of Austin’s sound, from the jangly New Sincerity movement shaped by the late Daniel Johnston to funk-punk group the Big Boys to an explosion of indie rock artists like Spoon and Trail of Dead. And that’s without mentioning the blues, rock, and country that have filled the air since before Williams was born. Eighty miles west of…

ON ANNUAL TRIPS to his birthplace in Mexico City with his father, Emmanuel Casasola’s first stop was always to a street vendor serving the sweet and tangy fermented pineapple drink called tepache. For years, the beverage made from pineapple rinds, piloncillo, and spices was practically unheard of in his San Antonio home. So when his wife, Jennifer, started an anti-inflammatory diet that mandated eating a daily dose of the tropical fruit, he saw not only the raw materials to make his own version at home but also an opportunity to fill a void in Texas’ culinary consciousness. Casasola teamed up with Kevin Rodriguez, a colleague at the biotechnology nonprofit where he worked, and they began selling their own concoction in aluminum cups at the Arbor Park farmers market on weekends…

BIG BEND COUNTRY ALPINE Trappings of Texas Sept. 18-20 The nation’s longest-running annual exhibit of premier Western art and custom cowboy gear celebrates its 39th year. Museum of the Big Bend, 400 N. Harrison St. 432-837-8143; museum ofthebigbend.com DEL RIO 16 de Septiembre Celebration Sept. 14-16 In honor of Mexican Independence Day, the “Queen City of the Rio Grande” hosts this event in Brown Plaza, a historical gathering place in the San Felipe neighborhood. Enjoy live music, authentic foods, and vendors. 305 E. Canal St. 830-775-3551; drchamber.com EL PASO Way Out West Fest Sept. 27 El Paso’s leading music festival showcases the diverse culture, history, and customs of the region with live music and contests including the Chili Challenge and Quest for the Best Margarita. 1 Civic Center Plaza.…

Your photographers are always among the best anywhere, but I got lost in the panoramas this issue [July/August]. I must have held them at arm’s length for five or more minutes before moving on, and I am sure to return to them again and again. NANCY SANCHEZ CHEEVERS, LIVERPOOL, NEW YORK Up and Away I absolutely loved your feature in the July/August issue “Born to the Skies,” as it reminded me of the first time I laid eyes on the sky over West Texas. It was in late 1994. I flew to Amarillo for a job interview, got off the plane, then drove toward downtown. My first reaction, as God is my witness, was to comment on the size of the sky. It prompted me to tell the gentleman who…

FROM THE 84-YEAR-OLD anthem “Deep in the Heart of Texas” to Beyonce’s recent hit “Texas Hold’Em,” the Lone Star State has long been a source of musical inspiration. There’s a seemingly endless list of songs that romanticize our wide-open plains and scorching sun. The region is a hotbed of musical genius, having produced legends like Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, and Janis Joplin. Today, newer Texas artists—from Megan Thee Stallion to Koe Wetzel to Adrian Quesada—continue to make sound waves in the music world. But what exactly is Texas music? Though often associated with country, Texas’ musical output is as diverse as the state itself. One of the biggest musical contributions the state has made is boogie woogie, a style of blues that grew out of Black communities…

WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS in Texas music culture, Andy Langer is usually in the mix. The journalist, radio host, event emcee, and booker of Austin’s free concert series Blues on the Green has covered the state’s music scene since the early 1990s. Over the years, he’s interviewed Willie Nelson 35 times and “done everything there is to do with” ZZ Top, Gary Clark Jr., and Leon Bridges. After graduating from the University of Texas in 1994, Langer chose to stay in Austin to cover music instead of moving to New York City or Los Angeles. “Texas music is special because it’s never been just one thing. From the Geto Boys to Selena, Buddy Holly to Pantera, there’s a grit and fierce spirit of independence that’s unmistakably Texas,” Langer says. “That breadth…

IF TEXAS WERE a person, it would be a virtuoso. The state can’t be defined by one genre, one instrument, one musician. Thousands of songs, spanning all styles, pay homage to the Lone Star State, and hundreds of books detail its history and influence on music across the country. Not only is Texas the birthplace of legends like Willie Nelson and Selena, but it continues to produce high-wattage stars like Kacey Musgraves, Megan Thee Stallion, and Leon Bridges. From the blues of the Piney Woods to Tejano on the South Texas border, every region offers its own sound. Here, we travel through Texas, exploring the regional music that has shaped the state’s signature voices.…

MUSICAL INNOVATION IN North Texas has long held a note of defiance—a tendency to buck tradition in favor of starting new ones. Artists urbanized and eventually electrified the blues in 1920s Deep Ellum; Bob Wills married jazz and country music in Fort Worth; Pantera helped revitalize heavy metal with an even edgier sound; and Erykah Badu turned soul music, R&B, and hip-hop into something completely new. North Texas musical history is full of artists intent on going their own ways and inspiring legions of imitators. It’s a history that often gets overlooked in a region best known for being a fairly straight-laced business hub, a reputation that can obscure just how many different music scenes have flourished in DFW. One example is the University of North Texas, which boasts a…

FREDDY FENDER FAMOUSLY said, “Once you drink water from the resaca, it’s in your blood.” The “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” singer was referring to the waterways found in his hometown of San Benito in the Rio Grande Valley. Throughout his career as a country and Tejano musician, Fender paid homage to the enduring influence of his life in South Texas. The sprawling region with a predominantly bilingual and Mexican American population has exchanged cultural ideas with our neighbor to the south for centuries. Regional Mexican music fills the airwaves, along with country and Tejano. South Texas is the birthplace of the iconic Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, traces of whom can be found throughout Corpus Christi and San Antonio and whose legacy still influences today’s artists. Country music is also a big part…

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN picked up the guitar at age 7 and never looked back. The Dallas-born musician started playing professionally in 1972, playing gigs on the Austin club circuit before doing session work for David Bowie and—in 1983—releasing a beloved debut, Texas Flood, with his band Double Trouble. This photo, taken in 1986, shows the guitarist performing solo on the set of a Don’t mess with Texas shoot at the former Austin City Limits studio on the University of Texas at Austin campus. He released three more studio albums over his lifetime, gaining recognition as one of the great living blues guitarists. That came to an abrupt and tragic end when he died in a 1990 helicopter accident. Three years later, a memorial statue of Vaughan was placed at Austin’s…