If Bill Hicks was still alive, he would have turned 49 today. Sadly, he passed away in 1994, but the Twitterverse is coming to his rescue by making this birthday a trending topic.

“That story about Willie smoking on the roof of the White House with Jimmy Carter,” pauses Ray Benson, “that’s all true.” In light of Nelson's recent bust and inspired by Andy Langer's Esquire article, OTR polled some notable locals about their most memorable high times with the Red Headed Stranger.

The Grammy nominations were announced earlier this evening. There’s no shortage of hometown heroes headed to the red carpet for the 53rd annual award ceremony in February, most surprisingly Will Sheff, who earned a Best Album Notes nod for Roky Erickson with Okkervil River’s True Love Cast Out All Evil.

Judging from resume credentials, 7 Walkers clearly qualify for the title of a “supergroup”: Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, the Killer Bees’ Malcolm “Papa Mali” Welbourne, George Porter, Jr. of the Meters, local sideman extraordinaire Matt Hubbard, and honorary fifth member and lyricist Robert Hunter. There’s plenty more to the story, though.

Not even AC/DC’s Black Ice steam engine or U2’s 360 Tour can compare to the scale of Roger Waters’ The Wall, a brick-for-brick re-enactment of Pink Floyd’s 1979 landmark album, erected at the sold-out Toyota Center in Houston on Saturday. It’s the world’s largest one-man show, a tyrannical two-act descent into madness and ultimate stadium-rock triumph.

Like most patrons of the beloved PBS program, Lyle Lovett first visited Austin City Limits as a fan before making his proper debut with Nanci Griffith in 1984. With that in mind, and in honor of the final taping on the UT campus this past Monday, OTR asked past and present staff to recall their first experiences in Studio 6A.

Backwoods crooner Ray LaMontagne is scheduled to tape an episode of Artists Den somewhere in Boerne, TX on Saturday, Nov. 12. Like all of the performances for the public television series, the exact details of the event will only be made available to those who win tickets. Throw your name in the hat here.

“I just did something with Rolling Stone on Solomon Burke,” opens Bobby Womack, without prompting. “That went well under the circumstances. You have think about things that take you up, not bring you down, but losing anyone is depressing. I never get used to it.”

Jody Denberg might’ve signed off the airwaves, but he’s had no trouble finding work. The local deejay interviewed Sir Paul McCartney in July for the electronic press kit accompanying the Band on the Run deluxe reissue, followed the subsequent month by Yoko Ono for the massive studio campaign that accompanied John Lennon’s 70th birthday last Saturday.