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The legendary Smokey Robinson will be honored at the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music’s third annual American Music Honors in April, the organization announced on Tuesday.

The Motown icon and “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” singer will be celebrated alongside John Fogerty, Emmylou Harris, Tom Morello, and Joe Ely.

“This year’s honorees represent a cross-section of American music,” Robert Santelli, founding executive director of the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music, said in a statement. “Rock, Americana, soul, and country are all...

Robert Earl Keen knew the question was coming, so he answered it without a prompt.

“My primary purpose in life is not only writing some songs and playing guitar,” Keen says, “but the magical part is actually putting that music out there in the world, and getting to perform.”

Keen publicly retired from touring in 2022, crossing the country on his “I’m Comin’ Home” tour — which involved more than 40 shows, a fire on his tour bus, and a back injury so severe he spent more time seated onstage than standing.

Joe Ely’s new album Driven to Drive is arriving Aug. 2, and leadoff single “Odds of the Blues” features vocals from his longtime buddy, Bruce Springsteen.

The song was inspired by Ely’s time at the late-night bar TV’s in Lubbock, Texas. “There was always a dice game in the back room, the pool table had a bad lean, and the jukebox mainly played old blues songs,” he said in a statement. “I wrote the song later when I put my studio together in Austin. I asked Bruce recently...

Austin City Limits, the longest-running American music series, continues its 48th season on PBS this weekend with a special performance from Austin’s own Spoon. In anticipation, Consequence has an exclusive premiere of their performance of the Lucifer on the Sofa cut “Feels Alright,” which you can watch below.

The guitar-heavy performance features frontman Britt Daniel commanding the song with rugged vocals and a poised demeanor as the group gives off a sense of authority gained from over two decades of experience. Slick riffs, tight harmonies, and piano embellishments show off the band’s musical chemistry and ability to play off each other’s sound.

Spoon made their Austin City Limits debut in 2003. Now returning for their fifth performance, the group joins the likes of Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Lyle Lovett with the most appearances on the Acl stage. The band’s latest set highlights their latest record, Lucifer on the Sofa,...

Sheryl Crow performs and gets her flowers in the upcoming second half of the 48th season of Austin City Limits, which returns Jan. 7, 2023. The special episode of the long-running live-music program will feature Crow’s induction into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame and is highlighted by a duet on “Every Day Is a Winding Road” with recent Saturday Night Live musical guest Brandi Carlile.

Backed by the Acl All-Stars band including Lloyd Maines and David Grissom, plus Crow’s guitar player Peter Stroud, the performance begins with Carlile...

Back in 2009, the Flatlanders released Hills and Valleys, their last album of original recordings. A dozen years later, the Texas trio of Butch Hancock, Joe Ely, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore reunite for a new record: Treasure of Love will be released July 9th.

The LP is technically the follow-up to 2012’s The Odessa Tapes, but that project consisted of unreleased recordings from the early Seventies. The 15 tracks on Treasure of Love are the product of a fresh recording session, primarily classic songs that have peppered the Flatlanders’ live set for the past five decades.

Larry McMurtry, who won an Oscar for penning Brokeback Mountain, earned a nomination for The Last Picture Show and authored books that spawned Emmy winner Lonesome Dove and Best Picture Oscar winner Terms of Endearment, died Thursday of heart failure. He was 84. The news was confirmed to media outlets by family spokeswoman and 42West CEO Amanda Lundberg.

McMurtry — whose son is the singer-songwriter James McMurtry — won the Pulitzer Prize for writing Lonesome Done, which became a popular 1989 CBS miniseries and spawned a sequel and a syndicated series, and was awarded the 2014 National Humanities Medal by President Obama.

McMurtry’s 1975 book Terms of Endearment became the 1983 film from writer-director-producer James L. Brooks. Starring MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Jeff Daniels and John Lithgow, the pic was a commercial smash and led all films with 11 Oscar noms. Along with Best Pictrure, it earned Academy Awards for Shirley MacLaine, Nicholson and...

Beto O’Rourke and Arcade Fire’s Win Butler spoke about the growing possibility of a political transformation in Texas during last week’s Rolling Stone’s Fridays for Unity event.

As O’Rourke noted, it’s not only feasible that Joe Biden could win the long-red state in the presidential election, but Democrats also have a fighting chance at securing a majority in the Texas legislature for the first time in 20 years. Much of that has to do with shifting demographics and growing diversity throughout Texas, which Butler said...

Joe Ely has seen some shit. As a solo artist, member of the Flatlanders, and even as an employee of the circus, the country-rock raconteur has spent a lifetime on the road. He was conscripted by Ringling Bros. in the early Seventies, showed the Clash around his native Texas in 1979, and jammed with Bruce Springsteen in a Dublin stadium in 1993 during the height of Northern Ireland violence. But Ely can hardly believe the tumult he’s witnessing now in the U.S., as the tectonic plates of social change and...

“The panhandle of Texas is a really forgotten part of the world. It’s not a pretty place; it’s dusty and it smells like cow shit, but it has its beauty. And the people are just the best,” says William Clark Green, who with three fellow Texas singer-songwriters is hoping to shine a light on an overlooked region of the state with their new group and album.

The Panhandlers — Green, Josh Abbott, John Baumann, and Cleto Cordero — released their self-titled debut in March, just prior to the world going to hell.

Don’t remember the supergroup the Buzzin’ Cousins? You’re not alone. Despite featuring five architects of Americana music, the collaboration remains a blind spot for most music fans, even those who may be hardcore devotees of the artists involved.

And what a group of names they were: John Mellencamp, Dwight Yoakam, Joe Ely, James McMurtry, and John Prine made up the Buzzin’ Cousins, Mellencamp’s lark of an answer to the Travelin’ Wilburys. The band’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-them status was by design, Mellencamp said.

”I wouldn’t expect an album or anything,...

The road goes on forever, and the podcasts never end.

On this week’s episode of Walking the Floor, Chris Shiflett kicks off a new year of biweekly podcasts by sitting down with Robert Earl Keen, whose 18 albums have cemented his status as a modern-day godfather of Texas country. The pair’s conversation was taped during AmericanaFest 2019, with a live audience shouting its approval in the background. Filled with anecdotes about Steve Earle, the Texas dancehall circuit, and the backyard songwriting session that spawned Earl’s signature song, “The Road Goes on Forever,...

Renowned Texas singer-songwriter/visual artist Terry Allen has announced Just Like Moby Dick, his first album since 2013’s Bottom of the World. Featuring his longtime Panhandle Mystery band, Just Like Moby Dick was co-produced by Charlie Sexton and includes songs co-written by Joe Ely and Dave Alvin.

Allen has released two previews of the album, including the plainspoken sing-along ballad “Death of the Last Stripper,” which recalls the songwriter’s evocative narratives on cult-classic albums like 1979’s Lubbock (On Everything). Additionally, Allen has put out the song “City of the Vampires.

The latest episode of the long-running live-music series Austin City Limits includes a loving tribute to the songs of the late, great Guy Clark, who died in 2016. Hosted by Steve Earle, and featuring his band the Dukes, the hour-long episode includes Clark and Earle’s fellow Texans, Rodney Crowell, Joe Ely, and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen.

Kicking off the episode is Earle’s stirring performance of Clark’s wistful “Dublin Blues” — the title cut off the songwriter’s 1995 album — which opens with the sweetly prophetic line, “I wish I was in Austin.

Gary Clark Jr., Vampire Weekend and H.E.R. are among the artists who are slated for the first half of Austin City Limits‘ forthcoming Season 45. The longstanding music television series, which airs on PBS, unveiled the musicians featured in the season’s first seven episodes. The lineup for an additional seven episodes will be revealed in the near future.

The new season features Acl veterans and newcomers alike. Clark Jr. opens the season on October 5th. The Austin native performs “Pearl Cadillac” during his third Acl appearance, which he dedicates to his mother,...

Beto O’Rourke’s final Get Out the Vote concert before the midterm elections will have a distinctly country flavor, with a handful of renowned Texas singer-songwriters joining the El Paso congressman’s October 30th event in Irving, outside Dallas.

Among those performers are Ryan Bingham and Hayes Carll, both of whom are beloved in Americana circles. Houston native Carll has addressed politics in his music on occasion, imagining a hilarious, drunken Democrat-and-Republican hookup in “Another Like You” and spinning a wild tale about one soldier in “Kmag Yoyo.

Joe Ely and his wife, Sharon, have lived on the same ranch outside Austin, Texas, for 38 years, and in that time they’ve accumulated enough memorabilia to fill an entire building on the property. So it’s ironic that Ely’s latest “lost album,” Full Circle: The Lubbock Tapes, came not from his own personal effects but from those of his longtime pedal steel player, Lloyd Maines.

“He found this record just about a year and a half ago in a cardboard box,” says Ely, sipping a cup of coffee...

Alejandro Escovedo is the picture of cool as he walks into Grimey’s record shop in Nashville one bright and sunny weekday afternoon in September. Dressed in a black suit and black cowboy boots with a cravat tucked into his shirt collar, he casts a wary glance around the room where he and his band are about to play an in-store performance. In one hand is his guitar case, and at his other arm is his wife Nancy, who sports a matching pair of dark sunglasses.

“My father, he was very strong,...

Willie Nelson may have been the marquee name at the “Rally With Willie & Beto” in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, but the rock star of the night was the candidate himself, Beto O’Rourke. The onetime punk musician and Democratic Texas Senate candidate had just given a stirring speech to the nearly 60,000 people gathered at Auditorium Shores, and it was all but inevitable that Nelson would call him back out during his headlining set.

“Beto, come help me do this one,” the 85-year-old country legend said from the small, uncovered stage along the Colorado River,...

“We’ve never had so much attention,” says Willie Nelson. He’s sitting on his bus, the Honeysuckle Rose, parked outside the Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Nelson, animated and full of laughs, is killing time hitting a weed pen and sipping coffee before performing “Summer Wind” from My Way, his moving new Sinatra tribute album. But the attention Nelson is referring to is his endorsement of Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, who stands a real chance to unseat Ted Cruz in November. Nelson, 85, will play a rally for...

At his annual 4th of July Picnic near Austin earlier this summer, Willie Nelson welcomed Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke onstage to join him on guitar for set-closing renditions of “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” There’s a good chance that the country icon and galvanizing Democratic politician will re-create the moment later this month when Nelson headlines a concert and rally for O’Rourke in Austin.

While Nelson has performed for politicians in the past — most famously for...

Alejandro Escovedo’s expansive new song suite, The Crossing, is coming to life one track at a time ahead of its September 14th release, with a chugging, streetwise new chapter out in the form of gritty rocker “Outlaw for You.”

As far as love songs go, “Outlaw for You” has style to burn, riffing on Beat writers, Mexican revolutionaries, and even the Stooges’ “street-walking cheetah.” Rather than being directed towards another person, this breathless ode is delivered to a lifestyle and a way of thinking wrought from Escovedo’s own youth spent in south Texas,...

Back in May, some of the key players of the Outlaw Country movement took the stage at the Cma Theater in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to pay musical tribute to the Hall’s superb new exhibit Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s. Among them: Billy Joe Shaver, who performed a rowdy “Honky Tonk Heroes.”

Organized by the Country Music Hall of Fame and co-produced by Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings, who can be seen playing piano in the video, the opening gala included performances by Bobby Bare,...

As far as rock & roll goes, Alejandro Escovedo’s new song “Sonica USA” is a true melting pot – which is apt, given that the performer’s career has been about as varied they get. The first song to be released from the Escovedo’s next LP, The Crossing, “Sonica USA” also includes an appearance by one of his musical heroes, Wayne Kramer.

“Sonica USA” serves as a guide of sorts to the trajectory that Escovedo’s music has followed over the past four decades, name-checking everyone from proto-punks the Zeros...

The year 2016 continues to take some of our best and brightest stars. We have lost Bowie, Prince, Merle, and a slew of others. I don’t have to go through all of the names. I generally put up a quick, "Well, we lost another great one" post on Facebook. This will not be one of those, because the latest loss -- Guy Clark, who passed away on May 17 at the age of 74 -- hits me hard.

I first saw Guy Clark at the Bottom Line in New York in the early 1990s as part of a round-robin singer/songwriter show that also featured John Hiatt, Joe Ely, and Lyle Lovett -- a line-up I would see three or four more times over the years. I had been a great admirer of Hiatt, Ely, and Lovett. I had no idea who Guy Clark was. While three of my favorite musical artists...

I've seen so much music over the years it's often difficult for me to find much that is authentic. I have to get off the beaten track and lurk around the fringes of the music scene. Find those pockets of music where the authentic bubbles and boils. Where artists are making authentic art, for themselves, for their small stake in the world; hoping to get some response back from an audience or a scene, hoping to be noticed, hoping to share their art.

I was talking to painter Ron English at lunch in Austin during SXSW and he reminded me how cities use to stake their claim in creating a music scene with an identifiable sound -- San Francisco in the '60s with the psychedelic bands like the Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, et al.; London's punk/new wave scene in the mid/late '70s with the Sex Pistols,...

 

Over the next week, your only real duty as a film lover is to see Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Yes, it's almost three hours long. Yes, the reviews are mindblowingly great. Yes, it's the real deal. I attended last weekend's Austin Film Society Q&A screening with Linklater, Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane in attendance and I'm definitely ready to see it again. It's that good. 

Speaking of special screenings, Afs is bringing the SXSW hit Road To Austin (Mike's review) to the Marchesa tonight. The documentary examines how Austin became the "Live Music Capital Of The World" and features live performance footage from Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, Delbert McClinton, Joe Ely and over 40 other artists. If that sounds up your alley, so will the Sunday afternoon screening of Tommy Hancock: West Texas Muse. Following the leader of West Texas's premiere western swing band, the film features many Texas musicians including Jimmie Dale Gilmore,...

Austin is called the "Live Music Capital of the World," and a very large influence on it was singer/songwriter Stephen Bruton. In 2007, only a week after completing his treatment for throat cancer and in his final appearance on stage, Bruton led his band through a four-hour, 38-song "Road to Austin" performance in front of 20,000 fans. Director Gary Fortin covers the concert and history of the Austin music scene from 1835 to today in Road to Austin, which premiered at SXSW 2014.

Beginning with Kris Kristofferson and John Paul DeJoria relating their experiences, Fortin weaves photos and film footage from the earliest days of Austin into a vivid tapestry. Artists recount tales of legendary venues, some now gone, including Threadgill's, Antone's, the Armadillo World Headquarters, Broken Spoke, Continental Club and Saxon Pub.

Road to Austin explores how the city became, like a microcosm of the United States, a musical melting pot where country,...

London, March 16: Country star Joe Ely reunited with his one-of-a-kind custom-made guitar, 27 years after it was stolen.

The "All My Love" hitmaker was presented the long-lost instrument during a gig at Slim's venue in San Francisco earlier this week by Matt Wright, who had bought it from a pawn shop, but decided to return it to its rightful owner, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

Ely was amazed by Wright's generosity and was shocked to see the instrument as it looked exactly the same when he had seen it last.

"We were all exhilarated. We were dancing around and passing the guitar back and forth. It was amazing. The guy came and.

The key to any voyage into the twangy depths of this weekend's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival is planning.

San Francisco's annual free celebration of bluegrass (and also not bluegrass) in Golden Gate Park, now in its 12th consecutive year, has gotten so popular that shuttling between stages to see all of your favorite bands can prove virtually impossible. Instead, the best idea is often just to get there early, pick a spot near the stage you're most interested in and stay there for the long haul.

(Scroll Down For Playlist And Lineup)

While the lineup was announced months ago, the actual full schedule, complete with set times, was only released recently. Essential planning's gotta all be done Right This Very Second.

Our top recommendations are Ben Kweller, Buddy Miller, Robert Earl Keen, The Dirty Three, the Heartless Bastards, Son Volt and Les Claypool's Duo De Twang. If you're curious as to why this is exciting,...

For those of us who survived, another South By Southwest Music Conference has come and gone, with a new slate of happenings for next year's programmers to topple. Check out 2012's biggest happenings below, from the Boss to Weezy. + Bruce Springsteen had some fine guests on the second big date of his "Wrecking Ball" tour. After an afternoon of delivering the keynote address, he was able to finally rock out and see some friends -- like Arcade Fire, Alejandro Escovedo, Joe Ely, Tom Morello, Jimmy Cliff, the Low Anthem and the lead singer of the Animals. + Rick Ross --...

Bruce Springsteen’s SXSW keynote speech has already been hailed as one of the best of the fest, but last night’s two-and-a-half hour performance at Austin’s Moody Theater might have been even more ridiculous. With 3,000 people packed into venue, The Boss and company tore through dozens of hits with a number of very famous musical guests. The set culminated in a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” featuring Régine Chassagne and Win and Will Butler from Arcade Fire, Tom Morello, Eric Burdon of The Animals, Alejandro Escovedo, Garland Jeffreys, Joe Ely, and members of The Low Anthem....

Austin -- For a man with so many famous friends, it's a wonder that Bruce Springsteen hasn't taken advantage of the talent saturation at the South By Southwest Music Conference before. The Boss not only delivered the festival's keynote address Thursday day, but performed for just shy of two-and-a-half hours with his E Street Band at night, along with a few pals from his collection. Arcade Fire, Alejandro Escovedo, Jimmy Cliff, Tom Morello, Joe Ely, Eric Burdon and more all took the stage at Acl Live, most notably and abundantly on the Boss' frequent cover and closer "This Land Is Your...

Bruce Springsteen made a surprise appearance at the Austin Music Awards on Wednesday (March 14). Singer-songwriter Joe Ely was in the middle of his set with Alejandro Escovedo at the Austin Music Hall, when he called his good friend Springsteen onto the stage. "We need one more guitar player," Ely told those in attendance, reports Rolling Stone. Springsteen provided back-up for the remainder of Ely and Escovedo's set and chimed in on vocals for 'Always a Friend' and the Rolling Stones' hit 'Beast (more)...

In the late 1980s, I was heavily involved in the Houston music scene due to my stint at a college radio station and later at a pub that featured nightly live music. However, the music scene there became stagnant and our establishment dropped to two nights a week with a meager budget to pay the bands. Local band Fab Motion captured the plight of many musicians with a lyrical response to the standard "Hey hippie, get a job!" with "What? I have Three jobs." All ears turned to Austin, where bands such as the True Believers, The Reivers, Ian Moore, Joe Ely and Stevie Ray Vaughn had audiophiles wondering if our capital city would be the next Athens, Georgia. When I moved to Austin in 1993, I enjoyed the freedom to see live music any night of the week in the "Live Music Capital of the World" and play from a...

Austin Music Hall in Austin, Texas, will play host to the “Help Austin Help Haiti” benefit concert for the victims of last week’s tragic earthquake. The show happens this Sunday, Jan. 24, with a lineup boasting myriad country and Americana artists such as Bob Schneider, Kinky Friedman, Reckless Kelly, Patricia Vonne, Band of Heathens, Charlie Sexton, The Joe Ely Band, The Flatlanders (with Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock), Robert Earl Keen, The Gourds, Bruce Robison, Kelly Willis, Shawn Colvin, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Asleep At The Wheel and Guy Forsyth....

Americana role models create strongest post-reunion album to date

The Flatlanders The Flatlanders are now more a band than a legend, to inversely paraphrase the title of their first CD. By the time More a Legend Than a Band came out in 1990, it was primarily a historic document, drawn from the 1972 sessions of one of Texas’ earliest and short-lived alternative-country bands. But as the band members-Joe Ely, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore-began to have successful solo careers as singer-songwriters, interest grew in their long-forgotten Flatlanders roots.