Geto Gala, Two Step Inn, and a 420 Smokeout Headline Our Crucial Concerts
From country to hip-hop to sludge metal, get some ideas for your week in live music
Jay Trachtenberg
1-30 of 319 entries
Music, April 18, 2024
Indigo de Souza, Estrella Acosta, and More Crucial Concerts
A little hair of the dog for your post-SXSW listening pleasure
Music, March 21, 2024
Book Review: Edendale by Michael Ventura
Former “Letters at 3am” columnist celebrates the early days of Hollywood in new novel
Arts, Feb. 29, 2024
Review: Denny Freeman, The Amazing Denny Freeman
CD set compiles two long-out-of-print albums by the late guitarist
Music, Dec. 28, 2023
Future Gladiators and Fantastical Stories Mark the Literary Year in Review
Pulled from the shelves
Arts, Dec. 28, 2023
Mr. Texas
Lawrence Wright’s newest novel isn’t just Mr. Smith Goes to Austin
Arts, Nov. 9, 2023
The Year That Broke Politics
How the 1968 election became a preview of our modern political mayhem
Arts, Oct. 26, 2023
Book Review: A Nontraditional Look at Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters
Lynnée Denise eschews her groundbreaking subject’s “Big Mama” moniker
Music, Oct. 19, 2023
Review: Zach Theatre's Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone
A masterful tribute to the father of the Great American Songbook
Arts, Sept. 21, 2023
Turning the Page on the Year in Books
New works by Cormac McCarthy and Sarah Bird make for a memorable year in literature
Arts, Dec. 15, 2022
What We’re Listening to This Week
Angela Strehli, Quentin Arispe, and an improvisation supergroup
Music, Nov. 10, 2022
The Gathering Storm: Robert Draper on the Post-Reality GOP
NYT writer and former Austinite sees a dark future in his new book, Weapons of Mass Delusion
Arts, Nov. 3, 2022
Ronnie Earle, Gangbuster
Jesse Sublett revisits Austin’s criminal past in Last Gangster in Austin
Arts, June 9, 2022
Inside the Seventies Weed Business in Wild Times in Old Austin
Dazed, confused, and profitable
Arts, June 9, 2022
Review: Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist Who Changed the Sound of American Music by Philip Watson
A deep read into one of America’s most versatile guitarists
Music, June 9, 2022
Jay Trachtenberg’s Top Books of 2021
In a lost year, retrospectives and reprints with new context were comfort reads
Arts, Dec. 16, 2021
New Austin Music Worth Your Bandwidth This Week
What we’re listening to
Music, April 15, 2021
Top Books of 2020 That Struck a Literary or Musical Chord
A writer's fictional joyride, a rock & roll memoir, and jazz fairy tales are books that sang this year
Arts, Dec. 17, 2020
New Austin Music Worth Your Bandwidth This Week
What we’re listening to
Music, Dec. 17, 2020
New Austin Music Worth Your Bandwidth This Week
What we’re listening to
Music, Dec. 10, 2020
The Teacher
This prize-winning novel's tale of a student piecing together the hidden life of her teacher, a Holocaust survivor who killed herself, is haunting
Arts, Feb. 13, 2020
Jay Trachtenberg's Top Books of 2019
From the social upheaval of the Sixties to the double life of an intelligence agent to the secular past of an Orthodox rabbi, splits resolved into memorable books
Arts, Dec. 19, 2019
Rabbit's Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges
Music, Dec. 5, 2019
The Texas Horns
Get Here Quick (Record Review)
Music, Sept. 19, 2019
An Accidental Cuban
Joan Moran's up-to-the-minute page-turner exposes the dark and gritty side of Cuba with schemes full of treachery, double-dealing, and murder
Arts, July 11, 2019
Book Review: Black Leopard, Red Wolf
Marlon James’ epic new novel is a literary phantasmagoria
Arts, April 2, 2019
Rosie Flores
Simple Case of the Blues (Record Review)
Music, March 21, 2019
Top Books of 2018 for American Road Tripping
Two novels set on the open road and two accounts of life in Trump's White House all made for journeys deep into America today
Arts, Dec. 27, 2018
Our Music Critics Pick Their Top 10 Austin Albums of 2018
80 local picks from Molly Burch to Brownout
Music, Dec. 27, 2018
Best Live Music Performances of 2018
The bands and venues that kept our critics on their feet
