Some 11 years ago, the South Austin Jug Band first appeared on the local scene. That's when the head scratching began. First off, there wasn’t even a jug.

How many times can a band come back? Since forming in 1969, Little Feat faced lead singer Lowell George passing a decade later, and then original drummer Richie Hayward succumbing to liver disease in 2010 at the age of 64. The group's reaction, Rooster Rag, is one of its strongest releases in years.

My living in New York in the Eighties and Nineties meant the Ramones were a local band. I wasn’t hip enough to have seen them at CBGBs, but I did catch them a few times after punk broke. I recall them playing in front of what I'm guessing was 10,000 people – though I could be wildly mistaken – on a pier on the Hudson River in the Eighties, with the Divinyls opening.

Here’s a mix of favorite songs from albums released thus far in 2012. Per usual it’s been a good year for roots music from both old and new names. Newcomers JD McPherson, Crooks, Guns of Navarone, and John Fullbright lead the way, but geezers Loudon Wainwright, Beaver Nelson, Marty Stuart, and Chuck Prophet show there’s lots of life in them old bones yet.

Earlier this year, Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis took over the Continental Club Gallery on Thursdays. Along with a crack band, the husband and wife team put on what I thought was the best local act I’ve seen so far this year. Great songs from both their catalogs, some new tunes, and a couple of wisely chosen covers combined for a knock-out set.

Americana music is so dominated by men that last night’s Austin City Limits taping featuring Bonnie Raitt and Mavis Staples was as refreshing as it was celebratory. The range of styles and deep-seated emotions made it memorable, but also demonstrated why both women have been revered for so long.

He’s 65 years old now, but when he first started making albums he was called a “new Bob Dylan.” Loudon Wainwright III returns to the Cactus Cafe this weekend for shows on Saturday and Sunday nights.

People have been complaining about the state of country music almost as long as there’s been country music. Still, it comes as a shock when someone like Vince Gill calls today’s country “mind numbing” as he did in a recent interview. Gill, once a revered host of the Country Music Awards, will be appearing at the Moody Theater on August 11.

If it seems like San Antonio's Hacienda fell off the grid, that’s only because the Tex-Mex rockers were busy working over a new batch of tunes. That comes to an end locally when the band, in advance of its third Dan Auerbach-produced disc, June 19, Shakedown, performs unplugged at Shady Grove tomorrow evening, Thursday.