Jimmy Silva

The three alluring albums cut by San Francisco bay area native Jimmy Silva 20 years ago, full of irresistible folk-rockers and haunting melodies, have never been forgotten by Silva's fellow musicians and his adoring core of fans. Critic’s darlings the Young Fresh Fellows and the Smithereens recorded some of Silva’s best work.

In turn, YFF’s Scott McCaughey contributed songs to Silva’s solo recordings before Silva’s untimely death at 42 in 1994. McCaughey went on to work with REM and to form the Minus 5, but he never forgot his friend’s songs. Neither did SteadyBoy Records owner and Texas power popper, Freddie Steady Krc, and music journalist Jud Cost who gathered Silva’s fans and friends for Through a Faraway Window: A Tribute to Jimmy Silva. The collection includes Freddie Steady, Scott McCaughey, the Beau Brummels' Sal Valentino, the Posies’ Jon Auer, and other Silva admirers. Look through this faraway window, and you’ll hear the inspirational songs Jimmy left behind.

1-Sheet (pdf)

Phil Lee

With thirty years of road work and songwriting, Nashville singer songwriter Phil Lee is the real deal. You can hear it in his rough-edged voice, and in the vivid imagery that his lyrics present, with stories of worker-bee illegals, truck-driving killers, rats, weasels, and humans with rodent-like qualities. Lee’s is a world of people on the literal and figurative outskirts, straight out of Springsteen’s Nebraska, just a little further south and with a sense of humor. And there’s always that burning desire to rock to a country beat. They are songs without judgment: Phil isn’t throwing stones, but he is a master knife-thrower (seriously), so don’t cross him. His songs hit their target on first listen. The new album is named after a Woody Guthrie classic updated on the record with the Phil Lee touch, So Long It’s Been Good to Know You. Get to know him before he gets away.

PhilLee1.com | Myspace | 1-Sheet (pdf)

Jenny Wolfe

Jenny Wolfe was just thirteen when her first album, Jenny Wolfe and the Pack, was recorded, and her voice was mature and stunning then. Now she’s older, wiser, and ready to rock, with her solo album, After School. Jenny’s amazing voice already packed a punch, now it knocks you out. With a rock and roll heart and an uncanny ability to make classic songs her own, Jenny shines on “Dancing in the Streets,” “Baby It’s You,” and “I Want You Back.” But she’s also nailing producer Freddie Steady Krc’s undiscovered power pop gems, along with two tracks that she wrote with Krc (the title track and “Twisted Smile”).

Myspace | Pack 1-sheet (pdf) | After School 1-sheet (pdf)

Rick Broussard

Slapping the rockabilly tag on Rick Broussard is kind of like pigeon-holing The Clash into punk rock. At the end of the day for either one, they make music that rocks. Period. Even Broussard’s sad songs and weepers carry a rhythmic groove that would make Joe Strummer proud. Broussard can’t help it, after a lifetime of listening to British rock and Texas country and a few decades of banging out a righteous country rocking beat in honky tonks. Every night on stage, then and now, Rick usually finds himself airborne with his trademark onstage leaps--because he can’t help that either. The San Antonio native calls Austin home now, though he and his Two Hoots and a Holler still cover the map with their rockabilly punk, Cajun country, and surfin’ hula honky tonk music. In fact, there’s even a song called “Surfin’ Hula Honky Tonk” on Let It Go, Broussard’s first release on the Austin-based SteadyBoy label, the brainchild of fellow Texas category-defying Freddie Steady Krc.

TwoHootsandaHoller.com | Myspace | 1-sheet (pdf)

Mitch Jacobs

From somewhere between Elvis’s flashy Vegas and Johnny Cash’s earthy Arkansas comes a country boy in a little old Texas town called Houston. That’s where rural folk music, showbiz pop, and American rock and roll reached Mitch Jacobs. Like any other kid growing up in the sixties and seventies, he listened to all kinds of music, and he played all kinds too, because Mitch spent some years in eighties cover bands. But he had a spiritual kinship with one particular artist, and he didn’t even realize that time, experience, and personal history would result in a respectfully similar singing style.

MitchJacobsBand.com | Myspace | 1-sheet (pdf)

Freddie Steady Krc

Texas Music Hall-of-Famer Freddie Steady Krc comes by his name honestly. This renaissance Texan has pounded out a steady beat on the drums around the world and across miles and miles of Texas for the past several decades. Krc (rhymes with search) landed in Austin at the precise moment that a musical revolution was getting started at a styles-don’t-matter joint called the Armadillo World Headquarters.

Myspace | 1-sheet bio (pdf)

Pamela Richardson

Singer songwriter Pamela Richardson presents love songs in a resonant voice, expressing a fluid range. Of her CD Spaghetti Midwestern, Americana-UK.com wrote: “A genuine air of originality, thanks to Richardson’s beautiful alto vocals, ear for harmony and innovative arrangements".

Myspace | 1-sheet (pdf)

Roky Erickson & The Explosives

"Nobody had ever heard anything like Roky Erickson when he and his 13th Floor Elevators burst out of Austin, Texas onto the psychedelic scene in 1966 with their scary nugget, " You're Gonna Miss Me." A decade later, the power-popping Explosives re-ignited the Austin flame, infusing tight Beatlesque rhythms with the passionate fury of their Elevator hero.

Myspace | 1-sheet (pdf)

The Explosives

The Explosives lived up to their name in the late seventies and early eighties, packing more power than their so-called punk rock peers. That’s because they were not actually punk rockers themselves. Like Elvis Costello (saddled with the same inappropriate tag at the time), they played something that had been out of fashion for a while, music of rhythm with a jangly melody, something called “rock and roll.”

Myspace | 1-sheet (pdf)

Vince Bell

"Legendary Texas Songwriter VINCE BELL: His songs have been performed and recorded by such diverse talents as Little Feat, Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith, and he has had a ballet set to his work. He has released five critically acclaimed CDs, and is the author of an autobiography, One Man's Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell, chronicling his amazing comeback after a devastating car accident in 1982. Referring to Bell's fellow Texas songwriters (Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett and herself) Nanci Griffith said, 'From all of us who were beating the paths around Texas in the 70s, I always felt Vince was the best of us.' 'Vince is a poet,' said the late Townes Van Zandt. He is one of those rare artists who transcend category: its a little rock 'n' roll, a little folk, a little country, some blues and jazz, some singer-songwriter. What kind of music? Vince Bell music."

VinceBell.com | Myspace | 1-sheet (pdf)