April 2007

Not to be outdone by Billy Joe Shaver or Joe Ely, our April artist of the month, Dale Watson, would release three new CDs and two DVD's in 2007 while also landing the coveted cover of the 2008 edition of Austin's Still Naked calendar. When we spoke with Dale, he explained to us why he was now calling his brand of music Ameripolitan. We also put Texas Renegade in the spotlight as our indy artist of the month with their sophmore release, After Everything.

April was a big month for new releases with new discs arriving from Beaver Nelson, Cory Morrow, Gurf Morlix, John Prine, Larry Joe Taylor, Scott Miller, Todd Snider, and many, many more.

April also finally saw the release of the full-length CD of Stoney LaRue's Live At Billy Bobs. Many Texas Music fans were disheartened after "Long Black Veil" and three other crowd favorites were left off of the Limited Edition (which is still oddly available). To make matters worse, the full length CD's release date was pushed back a number of times before finally hitting the shelves.

April saw the continued expansion of one of the flagpoles of the Texas Music festivals, the 19th annual Larry Joe Taylor Music Festival and Chili Cookoff. That means that the 20th is just around the corner so make your plans now as tickets go on sale at the end of January.

While Larry Joe was working on two decades of festival goodness another Texas artist took a shot at Year Number One. Hayes Carll kicked off the First Annual Stingaree Music Festival on April 18th on Crystal Beach. The lineup for Year Two already has us making plans.

Somewhere in the night as March 31st was becoming April Fools Day, Billy Joe Shaver shot a Waco man in the face during a dispute in the parking lot of Papa Joe's Saloon in Lorena. Shaver claimed the man was drunk and came at him with a knife and he fired in self-defense. Shaver has not yet been indicted in the incident but the case remains pending in the district attorney’s office.

May 2007

It's highly unprofessional to play favorites, but with Max Stalling we just can't help ourselves. Of course, when we featured him as our artist of the month for May it didn't hurt that he released the finest CD he's ever put out and one of the best CDs of 2007. Max spent some time with LoneStarMusic discussing what he had been doing in the long gap between studio records. May also saw us featuring Adam Hood as the indy artist. Adam is one of the hottest new artists to hit the state in some time and with Hood attracting talent like veteran producer Pete Anderson we think Adam will just keep getting better.

May saw another veteran Texas artist release a new studio record after a long layoff as Rodney Hayden took us Down The Road. There was also new music from Bruce Robison, Jimmy LaFave, Miranda Lambert and the triumphant return of the Red Dirt Rangers. Those are just a few of the new CDs that arrived in May.

The 11th Annual KNBT Jam was a big hit once again, raising over $50,000 for charities in Comal County. May also featured a brand new festival to Texas that didn't fair quite as well. Country Thunder had a stellar track record in other states before descending on Waxahachie in late May. Torrential downpours turned the festival grounds into a knee-high mudpit, and not in a good way. Eye-witness accounts had the crowd for Reba McEntire at approximately 200. Undaunted by the 2007 results, Country Thunder is slated to return to Texas for round two on May 31st and June 1st of 2008. Here's your chance now Fancy, don't let us down.

In other news, May of 2007 produced this headline from the Grand Rapids Press, which speaks for itself.

June 2007

It was another long layoff between records for our featured artist in June, Kelly Willis. The mother of four was kind enough to take some time off from her hectic schedule to talk with LoneStarMusic about the new record and why her old record Easy was so hard. Our Indy artist for June was Zack Walther, a former member of Rodger Wilko, Zack is on the kind of career track that reminds us of Randy Rogers circa 2002. Keep an eye on this one!

As far as new releases go, June was a month that was small but mighty, with a new record from Ryan Adams and a collection of REK "Best Of's" hand-picked by the man himself.

We threw our hat into the festival ring along with RadioFreeTexas and Southern Thread to bring the Rowdy Float Trip to the Guadalupe River shores in early June. And though there was more than enough "Rowdy", there wasn't much "Float" going on as heavy downpours in the weeks leading up to the event left the river too swift to float.

In other June happenings, Palo Duro Records and Jerry Jeff Walker finally reached an agreement which allowed the release of Luckenbach Compadres!, a live tribute CD to the original recording of Viva Terlingua. The disc features a knockout version of Walt Wilkins performing "Little Bird".