Road trip music

Music for a Hispanic heritage road trip to the southwest: while there is a great deal of fine Mexican and Mexican American music to be heard. my one choice for you is Tish Hinojosa. Take a listen:

The border lands between the southwestern United States and northern Mexico are places where cultures of several sorts intersect, and where’s there long history of political, social, and cultural change on both side of the border. Those things find their expression in music as well.

History and culture play into the celebration of Hispnaic Heritage, be that at Hispanic Heritage Month or at other times of year, for a specific time or for any time that strikes you. C Culture Swing is perhaps Hinojosa’s most well known album, but there are more than a dozen others to enjoy, music which illuminates her experiences as is as a first generation Mexican American in the southwest and in other parts of the world.

Aquella Noche, which is an all Spanish album, is a fine choice, as Homeland, with songs which speak of cowboys, border crossings, and growing up on the west side of town in San Antonio. Dreaming from the Labyrith offers a mystical take on the voyages of explorers, on thoughts during a rainstorm, and on journey on God’s own open road. Our Little Planet finds her continuing to draw these threads of life and culture together with an artist's gift for idea, word, and melody, as does at this writing her most recent recording: With a Guitar and a Pen.

You may also wish to see
Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet
Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone
road trip music: New Mexico
rTish Hinojosa's web site

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stephen bruton

Stephen Bruton, guitarist who worked with Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, Betty Buckley, Marcia Ball, and many others, died yesterday of cancer. A good and gracious man, as well as a good and gracious musician.

story from Stephen Bruton's home town paper, the Fort Worth Star Telegram

playing with the angels tonight, Stephen. go in peace.


my favorite of Stephen's solo albums
Spirit World

he recently produced Marcia Ball's Peace, Love & BBQ

A Tejano Country Christmas

The cover of A Tejano Country Christmas is a shot of the riverwalk in San Antonio all in lights for the holiday season. Within in album, Freddy Fender, Flaco Jimenez, La Differenzia, Joel Nava, Rick Orozco each contribute Tejano flavored takes on familiar songs of the season. Tejano is a sort of rough mix of country, norteno, and a few other things -- and there are plenty who’d think that a far too simple definition. In any case, there are fine voices, great rhythm, a sense of fun and a sense of reverence, so all the elements of a good holiday record are in order, especially if you grew up along the southern border of the United States or other areas where Spanish is widely spoken. Here you’ll find danceable versions Frosty el Snowman and Blanca Navidad, along with Jingle Bell Rock and Jingle Bells. The sacred side of the holiday is there too, with Amigos del Mundo, Adeste Fidelis, and Noche de Paz. Whether you know Spanish or not, these singers will have you joining in on familiar melodies before they’re done.

you may also want to hear

Tish Hinojosa: From Texas for a Christmas Night

Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis: Happy Holidays

Music Road: Robin & Linda Williams: The First Christmas Gift

now playing: Jeff Talmadge : At Least That Much Was True

At Least That Much Was True

Jeff Talmadge’s songs fit that classic definition of a good country song: they are three minute movies.

They aren't’ exactly country songs, although it’s easy enough to imagine Suzy Bogguss, for example, covering the jazz tinged Chet Baker Street, or Keith Urban in a reflective moment taking on Austin When It Rains. These are straightforward poetry, songs of introspection, sometime, songs which see things while standing in another's shoes sometimes, and all with an economy of language and a depth of perception that also do another thing required of that three minute movie of a good song: they alter the way you see the world around you just a little bit. There’s the deep blue loss in Let Her Go, two different views of home and how we get there, and how we know we are there, in Wrong Train and Austin When it Rains, and then there’s White Cross, vividly rooted in imagery that’s familiar and yet unafraid to raise unanswered questions too.

Talmadge knows just how to offer his songs in a way that leaves space enough for your to consider those questions, too. If you enjoy Eliza Gilkyson’s work, or Chris Smither’s, ot Gretchen Peters’, then you’ll be right at home with Jeff Talmadge.


you may also want to see this post
now playing:Gretchen Peters

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now playing: Eleven Hundred Springs: Country Jam

Country Jam


Even if you’ve never been to Texas, you can just about see the couples two stepping around the floor at Gruene Hall or The Broken Spoke, and taste the the barbecue at Stubbs. and the migas at El Sol y La Luna. And of course, if you know Texas, the music on this latest release from Eleven Hundred Springs is going to sound a lot like home. Laid back and rowdy, gentle and strong, funny and sad, country and western and folk, all the things that go to make up the lonestar state and the heart of the American southwest. Eight of the twelve tracks are originals, too, written by Matt Hillyer, who plays electric guitar and sings with the band. Steven F. Berg plays a just right bass, Danny Crelin adds that country and southwestern touch on pedal steel, Jordan W. Hendrix knows his way around fiddling, and Mark Reznicek keeps the back beat going on percussion. Lloyd Mi Maines produced the project and throws in some guitar and banjo lines; heather Mules and Nick Curran are also among the guests.

Now playing: Christine Albert: Paris, Texafrance

“Europe is in my blood and Texas is in my soul,” says Christine Albert in the liner notes of Paris, Texafrance. Texafrance is the term Albert came up with to name that deep connection more than a dozen years go when she first started putting that aspect of her heritage and her music on record. In a solo career and as part of a duo with husband and musical partner Chris Gage, Albert writes and sings country, Americana, and folk styles; as a longtime resident of the southwest and specifically of Austin, Texas, the freewheeling openness of those lands comes into her music. So do her ties with Europe. Albert grew up in household where French was spoken as much s English, with a mother from the French speaking part of Switzerland and a grandmother from Paris.

You don’t have to know any of that to appreciate her work on this album, but it may explain her adventurous song choices -- Jesse Winchester and Michael Austin stand alongside Charles Trenet and Edith Piaf. Albert has a unique perspective on this music, a first generation child’s understanding of the parents and grandparents looking back and looking forward, loving home and leaving it for a new place and of the power of music to make and hold that connection. The songs here range from a jazzy opener by Trenet to a close with Piaf’s Hymne a l’amour. In many cases Albert mixes both French and English lyrics on the songs, in a way that completely honors the song and honors her background as well. Imagine a well understood and well loved song moving between two languages and sung under the lone star sky, and you’ve got it. Go take a listen,


more about Christine Albert and Chris Gage


Christine Albert’s web site

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now playing: Albert & Gage: One More Christmas

The first song on this recording, the title cut, came about when Christine Albert learned that her parents were planning to sell their home in New York State and move somewhere to the south. That’s a not so uncommon situation, but the emotions of it are not often spoken of in song. Here, Albert and Chris Gage have made a graceful original Christmas tale out of reflecting on that transition. These two, who are married, each had a thriving independent career before they got together a bit over a decade ago. Together, they make one of the most interesting musical collaborations to come out Texas -- or anywhere, for that matter. The dozen tracks on One more Christmas find them reverent with Must Be Tonight and Un Flambeau Jeanette Isabella, playing with the kids on Little Toy Trains, swingin’ with Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus, thoughtful with River, and sharing a joyous celebration on Go Tell It on the Mountain. Together they make One More Christmas an evergreen presentation of familiar and less well known holiday music. It’s on the couple’s Moonhouse Records label.

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now playing: texas honky tonks and donegal fiddles

not on the same record, actually -- though I can hear how that might work:

Jason Arnold and the Stepsiders offer very tasty Texas dance hall country on their twelve track debut CD, With Friends Like These. The lyrics are mostly of a man trying to come to terms with a woman who leaves, but in the spirit and in the moment enough to make you believe and dance along. Not quite the barn burning intensity of Jack Ingram or the laid back poetry of Bruce Robison -- at least not yet -- but worth the listen. Think Chris Wall with maybe a touch of George Strait.


From the western part of Ireland comes Traditional Fiddle Music of Donegal, an extensive collection of the work of master fiddle player Con Cassidy. The liner notes will help you set Cassidy in historical context; the music needs only that you listen. Not some stuffy bit of history, this, but vibrant fiddling which would, under certain circumstances, be right at home in Gruene Hall or Scholtz Bier Garten in the Texas hill country.

Keep your eye out for more on Con Cassidy’s disc, along with lots of other great musical stuff, in a forthcoming issue of the folk music magazine Dirty Linen..