KUTX Live at The Paramount Theatre

Robert Ellis has named his new album after himself and the reason is clear. The album is both his most personal statement yet and a summation of his career thus far. Robert Ellis opens with “Perfect Strangers,” a meditation on what brings people together (and how tenuous that connection can be), and ends with “It’s Not OK,” a raw look at emotional compromise. Between those two powerful bookends are nine other songs that set Ellis’s soaring vocals and knowing melodies against his sharp, dark observations, and that show him in full command of a vibrant set of songwriting skills-irony, distance, character, narrative, a thoughtful relationship between sound and sense.

In the end, Robert Ellis (the album) is the most accurate reflection yet of Robert Ellis (the man). It’s analytical and emotional, calculated in spots and improvisational in others, restless, peaceful, never indifferent, never dispassionate.

In the rock’n’roll era, the vast spaces of west Texas have been filled with great music. Joe Ely stands in a tradition born out on these gritty plains. It includes Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, Guy Clark, Delbert McClinton, Don Walser, Terry Allen, Lloyd Maines, his daughter Natalie Maines, and Joe’s enduring musical partners, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.

It is a land where you can see for miles and miles and miles. Only those who don’t know it find it barren. For it’s full of stories if you know where to seek them. And it has customs and amusements all its own. Even the forever dipping oil wells have their role. “In high school, we used to get somebody to buy us a six pack and go out there to the fields and ride the front part of those oil pumps all night long,” Joe remembers.

Now, Ely lives in Austin and spends much of his life on the road. But when he’s accumulated enough song ideas, Lubbock is where Joe heads. “Somehow, just driving for hours down those country roads is still the best place for me finish my songs.”

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love Delbert McClinton and those who haven’t heard him yet. Delbert is always working on that second group.

Lyle Lovett has said, “If we could all sing like we wanted to, we’d all sing like Delbert.”

The multi-Grammy Award winning artist is at the top of his game with his 19th studio album, Prick Of The Litter (Hot Shot Records/Thirty Tigers). The new offering captures the balance of soulful energy and restraint that the legendary performer has been delivering in his live performances for decades all over the world. On Prick of the Litter, Delbert incorporates a variety of styles, and as always, just enough to keep him comfortably outside the traditional marketing categories.

Valerie June has announced a North American headline tour in support of her forthcoming new album, ‘The Order of Time,’ slated for release on January 27th, 2017 (Concord Records). The announcement comes as June wraps up a series of performances this fall with Norah Jones and Sturgill Simpson. Tour dates below with more to be announced in the following weeks.

‘The Order of Time’ follows June’s 2013 breakout LP, ‘Pushin’ Against a Stone,’ which established her as one of America’s “most intriguing, fully formed new talents” according to the New York Times. For this album, the Tennessee-bred, Brooklyn-based songwriter weaves electric blues, African rhythms, cosmic atmospherics and delicate soul into an inventive and wholly original rumination on love, family, struggle and the passing of time. More on the album here.

NPR posted the first track ‘Astral Plane,’ on Thursday, calling the track “wondrous.” NPR’s Ann Powers compares June’s writing to Alice Walker or bell hooks. Read NPR’s coverage here.

June has made memorable appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, CBS Saturday Morning, Rachael Ray, and Austin City Limits. She has toured with Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Norah Jones and Sturgill Simpson, and performed at Newport Folk Festival, Carnegie Hall, and much more.

Renowned songwriter, singer, true believer, Alejandro Escovedo just released Burn Something Beautiful on October 28th, 2016 via Fantasy Records. The new album, Escovedo’s first solo endeavor since 2012’s highly acclaimed Big Station, is in actuality, a highly collaborative affair. Teaming with Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5) to co-write the album’s songs, Escovedo also enlisted the pair to act as the project’s producers.

Escovedo and company take some mighty big swings here. At once a celebration of the rock and roll life, a contemplation on mortality, and the healing power of love, Burn Something Beautiful connects repeatedly with Escovedo’s soulful heart and voice at its core. Recorded in April at Portland’s Type Foundry studio, the project coalesced with the help of an esteemed group of musicians who give the album a genuine band feel. They include guitarist Kurt Bloch (The Fastbacks), drummer John Moen (The Decemberists), vocalists Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney) and Kelly Hogan (Neko Case) as well as saxophonist Steve Berlin (Los Lobos).

In a trailblazing career that began with The Nuns, San Francisco’s famed punk innovators, to the Austin-based-based alt-country rock pioneers, Rank & File, to Texas bred darlings, True Believers, through countless all-star collaborations and tribute album appearances and finally a series of beloved solo albums beginning with 1992’s acclaimed Gravity, Escovedo has earned a surplus of distinctions: No Depression magazine’s Artist of the Decade Award in 1998 and the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Performing in 2006, just to name two.