The Derailers
Hometown: Austin
Style: Beatles-meets-Bakersfield
Website: www.derailers.com

It was their mutual love for the music of legendary country artist Buck Owens that originally brought The Derailers together back in the ’90s, and with the release of their eighth album, Under the Influence of Buck, the honky-tonkin’ boys from Austin bring their music all the way back to the source with a rollicking and heartfelt tribute to the timeless music of Buck Owens.

As the band has evolved over the years, perfecting its patented “Beatles-meets-Bakersfield” sound, The Derailers have always looked to Owens and his band, the Buckaroos, for inspiration. Their love and respect for the music Owens made is as unabashed and real as the performances that are captured on this special album. Well-loved standards like “I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail,” “Cryin’ Time” and “Together Again” are delivered fresh, and the band dusts off lesser-known Owens songs like “Down On the Corner of Love” and “Who’s’ Gonna Mow Your Grass” with passion-fueled versions that do the Buckaroos proud.

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The Gougers
Austin, Texas
Acoustic Folk & Bluegrass
www.thegougers.com

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For The Gougers, it is more important that audiences hear the lyrics of the songs created by the singing/writing team of Shane Walker and Jamie Wilson — poems of vivid imagery, human struggle, subtle social comment, truth — than be concerned with what sort of genre the band’s music fits into.

That’s because The Gougers’ sound takes in most genres, constantly moving in and out of country, rock, folk, roots, or mixing them up, as Walker and Wilson experiment and evolve as songwriters. They’re playing with rhythm and instrumental effects, too, along the lines of influences and music mavericks Ryan Adams, Emmylou Harris and Bright Eyes and premier musical partners David Rawlings and Gillian Welch.

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Darryl Lee Rush
Dallas, Texas
Texas Country
www.darrylleerush.com

Texas Country singer-songwriter Darryl Lee Rush was chatting with a Nashville record producer type recently. The record producer was gushing about “The Austin Sound.” Darryl shot back, “That’s nothing. You should hear The Lakewood Sound!”

Rush had made up “The Lakewood Sound” on the spot, but after thinking it over, he muses that it might have legs. “Where else in Dallas would you find such a concentration of musicians?” he asks.

Where else indeed. But Rush adopted this neighborhood. He was born near the Gulf coast near the cotton and milo fields of south central Texas.

Lessons for fruitcake

There wasn’t much to do in Markham, Texas, where Rush grew up, so music became an important part of his life early on In the sixth grade he started learning the guitar from the uncle of a friend, a narcoleptic bluegrass guitarist. Known to Darryl and the other citizens of Markham only as “Uncle Neg,” the guitarist had quite an impact on young Rush. And the price was right. In return for weekly lessons, Rush’s mother made Uncle Neg a fruitcake once a year in payment.

“Uncle Neg’s narcolepsy was a little disconcerting,” says Rush. “We’d head down to the store with Uncle Neg at the wheel and he’d forbid me to talk to him. He was afraid I’d make him laugh, his blood pressure would go up, and pretty soon he’d be asleep at the wheel.” But the man could play, and he taught Rush well.

Tommy Alverson
Fort Worth, Texas
Traditional Country
www.tommyalverson.com

4-day Tickets / Thursday Night Feature!

The charms of Texas may be more apparent from the inside than from the outside, where the rest of us live without entertaining much desire — as we might with some more obviously appealing place — to move there and check it out. Nobody with working ears and functioning taste, however, can rationally dispute that the Lone Star State has produced a wealth of classic American music in a range of genres, perhaps none more so than country.

Listening to veteran Texas country singer Tommy Alverson will not convince you that we need another Texas-bred president — ever — but it’ll make you feel good about the more down-to-earth Texas culture he represents, spawned in honkytonks and dance halls where blue-collar folk go to ease their sorrows by memorializing them in songs.

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Jason Eady & The Wayward Apostles
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Genre: Texas Country, Bluegrass & Blues
Website: www.jasoneady.com

Jason Eady is a singer-songwriter whose music is a distillation of country, bluegrass, blues, gospel, folk and Southern rock, but in essence is roots all the way, with organic arrangements, genuine lyrics, and strong lead and harmony vocals, no matter what style of song he is writing.

Originally from Jackson, Miss., Eady started playing guitar at age 13, played in various cover bands around the state, and reveled in exposure to Mississippi’s varied musical genres. It all worked to infuse his music – through his days in Nashville, the re-ignition of his dream to touch listeners’ hearts and minds with his original songs after a stint as a U.S. Air Force translator, and his August 2005 debut album, FROM UNDERNEATH THE OLD, which was produced by Texas songwriter Walt Wilkins and instrumentalist Tim Lorsch and which peaked at #9 on XM Channel 12 (X Country).

The same month Eady would meet musicians that would become his next touring and studio band. Scott Davis of The Woodlands moved to Fort Worth to attend TCU and graduated with a degree in radio-TV-film-video, playing in several Dallas-Fort Worth area bands including Woodeye, Chatterton and Quaker City. He plays guitar, mandolin, accordion, Dobro, lap steel and banjo and sings harmony vocals.

Kenny Smith, from Dallas-Fort Worth, has been playing drums professionally for more than 10 years, playing in Woodeye and Chatterton with Davis. Six months after meeting Smith at a private party, where the two played some impromptu songs together, Eady began putting together a band, and Smith was the first person he called.

Bass player Jordan Kiener was a perfect fit, too; he had moved to Denton to start a musical career after earning a degree at Oklahoma in instrumental music education, focusing on jazz and playing clarinet and bass. He answered Eady’s ad and was the only person auditioned, after band members heard his playing and high harmonies.

Together the quartet is Jason Eady & The Wayward Apostles, so named to spread the word about the band’s roots-music origins while putting its own spin on tradition. From different musical backgrounds and incorporating them all, theirs is a unique sound.

Touring regionally and nationally for the past year with cuts from its upcoming album, WILD EYED SERENADE, has earned the band airplay on Americana stations. It was tracked live in one open room to give it a live and authentic roots sound.

Eady continues to stay true to his roots music and touching audiences with its honesty and inspiration – the thing he’s always wanted to do.

Whitey Johnson

Residence: Nashville
Hometown: Somewhere, Texas
Genres: Blues
Website: www.whiteyjohnson.com

Whitey Johnson is a recently discovered blues singer/songwriter/guitarist from Texas, now living in Tennessee and performing worldwide. There are various stories about Whitey’s past, he has made his living making music for well over thirty years, yet has remained relatively unknown, having only recently recorded his debut album. But one known fact is that under the psuedonym Gary Nicholson his songs have been recorded by such blues greats as BB King, Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, Keb Mo, Delbert McClinton, Gatemouth Brown, James Cotton, Junior Wells, Shemeka Copeland, John Mayall and many others. He also won a Grammy as producer of the Best Contemporary Blues Record 2001, Delbert McClinton”s “Nothing Personal”. Visit garynicholson.com for more information.
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The Band of Heathens
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Genre: Rock & Blues Roots
Website: www.bandofheathens.com

The formation of The Band of Heathens is as natural and organic as the music they create. In early spring 2006, the three principle songwriters, Colin Brooks, Ed Jurdi and Gordy Quist, were sharing the bill every Wednesday night at the venerable Austin club Momo’s. Originally, it started as each songwriter performing his own set. But in a short time they started sharing the stage equally and collaborating on each other’s songs, with bassist Seth Whitney as the anchor of the rhythm section. The Wednesday night series was billed as “The Good Time Supper Club.” Largely improvised and unrehearsed, the shows quickly gained in popularity and word spread throughout Austin that if you wanted live music on Wednesday night, Momo’s was the place to be.

A misprint in a local paper billed the act as “The Heathens.” The moniker stuck and soon The Band of Heathens began to cultivate a loyal and growing legion of fans that immediately took to the expert musicianship, the finely-crafted songs and the band’s distinct quality of having three front men, each one of whom sings, writes and plays lead guitar. In March 2007, drummer John Chipman joined the band and helped fortify their country-soul-rock-and-roll sound.

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Dallas Wayne
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Genres: Americana, Country
Website: www.dallaswayne.com

4-day Tickets / Thursday Night Feature!

Sirius program host Dallas Wayne will be your festival tour guide on Friday - Outlaw Country night! www.siriusradio.com/outlawcountry Listen to Dallas live on Sirius 63 weekdays noon-4pm ET.

Dallas Wayne considers himself lucky to be able to make a living doing something he loves. Some people might say it has more to do with talent than luck. But throughout a career that has taken Dallas around the world as a songwriter, singer, actor and radio deejay, he claims he’s never had a real job.

A native of Springfield, Missouri, Dallas began performing professionally in 1975, and by the age of 18 he had toured throughout the entire U.S. and Canada. After moving to Nashville, he further developed his vocal style singing demos for many of the top publishing houses in the music industry.

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Walt Wilkins & The Mystiqueros

Hometown: Austin, Texas
Genres: Americana, Rock, Country
Website: www.waltwilkins.com

4-day Ticket / Thursday Night Feature!

CMT.com’s Top 10 Artist for 2007!

“If there is a better songwriter on the planet, I’m not aware of it.” - Pat Green

“Walt Wilkins is the salt of the earth. He writes like it. He sings like it. He acts like it.” - Jack Ingram

San Antonio-born Walt Wilkins has been called a genius, more than once, and a writer the caliber of John Steinbeck and his voice as comfortable as a pair of old blue jeans, and he is, and has, all of that. His crafting of story-songs, hard-edged vocals to sing them and a plaintive guitar have made him a fixture of the Texas music scene (and Nashville before that). He’s put his magical touch on recordings by new and veteran artists, too many to count.

Is he near done? Hasn’t he done it all? Double hell no.

With The Mystiqueros, Wilkins has created something of a “Texas Hill Country super-group” that features five great singers and four great songwriters from the heart of the Lone Star State, all of whom have made their own records and are flush with recording credits.

Onstage and in the studio, Wilkins is joined by Bill Small (bass, percussion, acoustic guitar), John M. Greenberg (electric guitars), Ramon Rodriguez (drums, percussion) and Marcus Eldridge (electric guitars). Live performances around Texas are being likened to both outlaw country and classic rock bands, and they’re captured on Diamonds in the Sun on Palo Duro Records.

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Miles from Nowhere

Hometown: Paris, Texas
Genres: Americana, Rock, Country
Website: www.milesfromnowhereband.com

Miles From Nowhere was formed in the summer of 2004 when Merrol Ray decided he was through with being a guitar for hire and knew it was time to do his own thing. With a few phone calls, the genesis of what would become Miles From Nowhere was conceived. Ray found himself a drummer then called his younger cousin Adam. He knew Adam would be interested because he would occasionally bring his guitar over and sing parts of songs that he had learned. Practicing in Ray’s Dad’s welding shop, they began auditioning bass players with none quite working out. Finally a phone call that Ray had placed weeks before, paid off. Joey showed up, played one song, Ray said, “You’re in for life; quit, and I’ll kill you.” After only five months the original drummer left the band so Ray called Wesley Joe to play drums. Disappointment turned into joy, Miles From Nowhere was born.

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Two Tons of Steel
Hometown: San Antonio, Texas
Genres: Americana, Rockabilly, Rock
Website: www.twotons.com

Texas band Two Tons of Steel might be described as equal parts Elvis Presley and Elvis Costello, with a liberal dose of Buddy Holly and a dollop of The Ramones. It’s a one-of-a-kind sound that bandleader and frontman Kevin Geil likes to call countrybilly. (more…)