Cover Story
Blackout
Sarah Hepola explains how she came to write a memoir on being a blackout drinker
Pressley to be Sanctioned by Judge
Mills calls some claims “unreasonable” or baseless
The Inevitability of Dawes
“There was never a point I said, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’”
Riders Against the Storm Year
ATX hip-hop duo gets its science down
Dirty Diamonds: An All-Girl Comic Anthology
Upcoming release explores the complex theme of “beauty”
Tom White Is Never Gonna Give it Up
The ATX artist and his illusory process wreak a beautiful painted havoc
Cheer Ups Cheerless Over Development
Construction of parking garage threatens rock wall
Arts in Context: Somos Krudas
AIC brings us a look at the life and work of hip-hop duo Krudas Cubensi
The End of the Confederacy at UT?
Will UT’s Jefferson Davis statue finally be taken down?
DVDanger: Meet Me There
Southern Gothic is no laughing matter
Perry’s Top 10 Worst Hits
Perry for Prez redux calls for a sojourn down memory lane
Merger for EMS and AFD?
Public Safety Committee revisits the idea
Nortey Announces for Precinct 1
Launches commissioner campaign at Carver Museum
The Side Effects of Megafauna’s “Time to Go”
ATX prog-grunge trio drinks in euphoria
So Nice They’re Doing It Thrice
Council to carry over postponed items to Tuesday, Thursday
Abbott Sides With Homeschoolers
Gov appoints Bahorich as chair of SBOE
News Roundup: All Sorts of Disasters
Pressley vs. Casar, Linklater vs. fire, and more
One in a Crowd: Trolls
Patent troll comedy seeks crowdfunding
Chronicle Recommends: Bad Father Films
These movies have some serious daddy issues
Wiley Aims for Workman
Travis County GOP rep faces primary challenge
Travis Co. Medical Director Resigns
Hinchey says he’ll be moving to the private sector
Austin City Limits Hall of Fame Flashback
PBS concert staple inducts its second class of legends
Last Minute Father’s Day
Food gifts and events for the procrastinator
The Luv Doc: A “Love Connection”
Dear Luv Doc, I know a man five years younger than me who lives in a different city, but we grew up together and recently had a “love connection.” Should I pursue this even though it’s long-distance? I don’t plan on leaving Austin. – Connected Sounds to me like your “love connection” was a physical…
Inside Out
Audacity is matched by artistry in the latest Pixar crowd-pleaser
Dope
Peppy caper film features unusual characters: black high school geeks
The Wolfpack
This doc makes us privy to a family that’s like none we’ve ever seen before
Balls Out
College intramural football comedy features several SNL players
Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll
A doc not just for music aficionados, but a transcendent reminder that art matters
ABCD 2 (Any Body Can Dance)
Bollywood dance-competition sequel.
Head Cook and Bottle Washer
Father’s Day cookbooks for the man who gets things done
APD Officer Unfairly Punished?
Fender-bender results in 3-month suspension
Summer Platters
Taking a cue from Austin’s Band of Heathens, the Chubby Knuckle Choir combines country, soul, and blues into Americana. The problem is, the local quartet’s compositional chops don’t match up, and their subject matter comes out cliched. Sample titles: “Gone,” “Trouble,” and “Treat Her Right.” A high-flying live track cut at the Bugle Boy in…
Public Notice: Bridges to Forever
The theme for the coming week is public input
Food-o-File
Inaugural Soul Summit Friday, June 19, is Juneteenth, a traditionally joyous commemoration of the day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached slaves in Texas. In African-American communities, it’s a time for parades and family picnics, the celebration of culture, and the contemplation of history. This year, Austin’s observance of Juneteenth will…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
For now, the highest temperature ever recorded on the entire continent of Antarctica is 63.5°F at Hope Bay on March 24, 2015. According to Dr. Oliver Sacks, although it is difficult to recall memories from our early years, they are stored in a part of the brain. In one of his cases, an elderly patient…
Summer Platters
You can’t come at a compilation like this from the traditional angle of spinning an album for pleasure. The sound erupting from Austin’s apparently thriving noise underground – 60-plus acts’ worth sprawled across three CDs – challenges notions about both music and listening itself. Forget about melodies, hooks, and even the use of instruments as…
Quote of the Week
“I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created, I tell you that.” – Donald Trump, real estate mogul, announcing his candidacy for president, Tuesday, June 16, from Trump Tower in New York City
APD Officer Terminated
After having the cops called on him several times, APD officer is canned
Summer Platters
By October 1968, Sly & the Family Stone had already sent a tsunami over popular music, quickly obliterating faded ideas of how a popular band could be conceptualized. That year’s Dance to the Music, featured here throughout with the subsequent Life, represented a quantum leap forward, steering soul into a new, heavily co-opted psychedelic path,…
El Nogalar
Teatro Vivo’s El Nogalar provides a context for examining social class in contemporary Mexico
Summer Platters
In the same vein as Phish and Trey Anastasio or Spoon with Britt Daniel, White Denim’s sound derives so directly from the voice of its chief songwriter and frontman that band side projects and solo endeavors necessarily sound like an offshoot of the original. So it is with James Petralli’s new Bop English, whose debut…
Summer Platters
New discs from Dale Watson, Danny Schmidt, Sly Stone, and many more for your solstice jams
Remembering Julio Santos
UNT student disappeared on a Friday; was found in Lady Bird Lake the next Sunday
Summer Platters
Don’t let the Spartan line drawing on the cover fool you. Piano-bashing Michigan transplant Charlie Pierce’s second album with Choctaw Wildfire burns with richly layered sonic drama. Alternating between stiff-lipped desolation and inconsolable longing, Nowhere transforms solitary soul crises into Gothic Americana epics writ large across darkening skies. Pierce’s calloused barrel-house bluster provides the fulcrum,…
More Than One Complication
KDHDC and line upon line percussion provide a moving-people people-watching performance
Summer Platters
A decade-plus has passed since Nolan “Bob” Green put out a Grassy Knoll recording, but there’s no conspiracy at work. Civilian life simply got in the way. That long absence gives Electric Verdeland Vol. 1 the kind of fizz that comes from long-suppressed creativity uncorked. Multi-instrumentalist Green still composes uniquely contradictory instrumental noir – mysterious…
“Colby Bird: Hope Goes with Man to the Foot of the Gallows”
The fruits of the artist’s labors are evident in this new solo show
Summer Platters
If you long for the glory days of Antone’s, look no further than this horn-driven, blues-drenched celebration. Texas Horns teams Austin saxmen Mark “Kaz” Kazanoff and John Mills with San Antonio trumpeter Al Gomez. The locals are known as integral members of the Antone’s house band and UT, respectively, while their neighbor to the south…
Lege Races Take Shape
Empty seats up at the Capitol
Playback: Austin Record Label Rendezvous
The Austin Record Label Flea Market bands together local imprints, while County Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt tries to scatter mass gatherings such as Levitation
The Medium Is the Message
The co-director of Inside Out talks shop
Day Trips: Chamizal National Memorial, El Paso
Chamizal National Memorial is a quiet place with a contentious past. For more than 100 years it was disputed territory between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Now it is a peace park near the international bridge. The Rio Grande represented the international border after the Mexican-American War in 1848. As rivers tend to do, the…
Summer Platters
The debut LP from this local quintet reflects the seasoned know-how of its makers. Three of the group’s members, including frontman Tim Regan, cut their teeth in now defunct Oh No! Oh My!, while bassist Daniel Wilcox moonlights in the Ugly Beats. The gents’ experience casts a poised, mature POV over their Texas-spun indie rock.…
Gay Place: ¡Hola Papi!
Prides loom across Texas as Austin crowns the hottest Daddy
Watching the Detectives
Austin native Gabriel Luna spills (a little) on season 2 of HBO’s True Detective
Video Visitation’s End?
Bill requiring in-person visits for inmates may not benefit those at Travis County
Summer Platters
The musical pursuit of feel remains a study in balance. Capture the energy, absorb its essence, release before suffocation. The slapdash psych-folk skywriting of Lake Jackson-bred guitarist McMillen (Rubble, Starving Weirdos) exemplifies the principle. Bassist Mitch Fraizer (Church Shoes) and drummer JJ Ruiz (Teeners) round out an erstwhile anti-power trio that moves conventional rock instrumentation…
Combat Rock
New doc unearths Cambodia’s rock & roll spirit
The Hightower Report
Stop postal execs from destroying our Postal Service
Summer Platters
There’s a twinge of “the fuck?” when listening to two adult white males speaking on the nuances of trap. Dues paid, S.Dot and Tuk Da Gat of Austin’s pre-eminent set, League of Extraordinary Gz, are stamped and verified. Heavy on witty slab and dab flows, Green Room begins with an interesting juxtaposition: the East Coast,…
Isla
Tropical bar is more than just cocktails
Council Preview
Zimmerman off to East Texas to “investigate” city biomass contract
Summer Platters
Due to the number of labels he’s released albums on, pinning down a definitive number remains a challenge, but it’s safe to estimate Call Me Insane as Dale Watson’s 16th studio album since his emergence in 1995. That’s two decades of songs deeply steeped in traditional country on the subjects of love, honky-tonks, heartaches, beer,…
Summer Platters
Launched with tongue-in-cheek autobiography “Next Big Thing,” a reality check on the praise heaped atop 2013’s third LP Rose Queen, follow-up Ringling Road demonstrates a clear sense of where it’s headed. William Clark Green aims squarely for mainstream Texas country with big guitars and tight melodies, from small town ode “Sticks and Stones” to the…
An Excerpt From Blackout
Sarah Hepola’s memoir on “remembering the things I drank to forget” – an excerpt
Oops!
In the May 22 story, “Season of Risk,” The Austin Chronicle failed to note that when an Austin Regional Clinic doctor is unable to provide a service to a patient and refers them to another ARC doctor, a patient may quickly access that referral through the ARC’s online patient portal. Such a referral is not…
Soccer Watch
Aztex Come Home The Austin Aztex begin the second half of their 2015 home schedule this Saturday evening at Kelly Reeves Athletics Complex (10211 W. Parmer, just north of Lakeline Blvd.), hosting the Tulsa Roughnecks at 7:30pm. It’s their first home game since May 24 – the morning before House Park got flooded out –…
Summer Platters
Things have changed for Danny Schmidt. The highly touted native folker got married to Carrie Elkin since his last release, and now Owls flies without a label. The superior quality of the results remains the same. Schmidt also continues to offer wonderful song-by-song descriptions on his website, thoughts on new titles including “Girl With Lantern…
Review: Loving Day
Mat Johnson’s novel Loving Day is all there in black and white
Affordable Housing in Trouble?
Report: two affordable housing agencies going broke
Summer Platters
Many bands claim Gram Parsons and Big Star as influences, but few compare to such time-tested landmarks. The reconfigured Lonesome Heroes fill the bill by drawing as much from Seventies pop (“Sunshine Come”) as they do from a potpourri of country rock (“Throwing Dirt Into the Wind”). The ear-pleasing results make for one of Austin’s…
Summer Platters
The grammatical faux pas in Will Patterson’s recording moniker marks the extent of his creative blunder. After scoring a pair of soundtracks for famed film director Terrence Malick, the former Sound Team member channeled that experience into his sophomore LP, piecing its 11 tracks together to resemble a movie score. Ten cut instrumental, so Dream…
Mat Johnson on Writing
With his new novel, Loving Day, Mat Johnson finally owned up to the fact that he writes funny books
Breaking the Chains
Slavery may be illegal, but it’s not eradicated
Summer Platters
Are you ready for the Beaumonts? The first lyrics on this reissue of their 2010 debut might help you decide. “You can say what you want about me, but I never gave my husband chlamydia,” sings Troy Wayne Delco. If that tickles your funny bone, you might enjoy some of the quintet’s other tunes –…
Point Austin: A Word About “Wards”
The homestead exemption is not just a feeble “tool,” it’s an inequitable one
Knowing One’s Station
What does it mean to be the hostess with the mostest?
Local Resources for Human Trafficking Victims
Allies Against Slavery Leads advocacy, education, and activism initiatives in the community. www.alliesagainstslavery.org Refugee Services of Texas The RST Austin Survivors of Trafficking program works closely with law enforcement agencies to provide 24-hour support to identified survivors. 500 E. St. Johns #1.280; 512/472-9472; www.rstx.org SafePlace A nonprofit providing services such as counseling, legal advocacy, and…
Summer Platters
Like many alt.country acts to emerge in the past decade, TLB gets sideways carrying a tune. There’s a youthful spirit carrying the locals’ brand of roots rock to firm entrenchment. Unfortunately, bandleader Sam Whips Allison barely makes it through the lament “Halfway There” or speedy “Make ‘Em Dance” without causing a wince or three.
Headlines
Will midnight approach at today’s City Council meeting (June 18)? The 110-Item agenda is chock-full of tasty bits, including more money for WTP4 and the Waller Creek Tunnel, concrete pouring, granny flats, living wages, and the drainage fee. See “Council Preview,” June 19. A Travis County grand jury declined to issue indictments against APD Officers…
Ott Strikes Back
City Manager responds to blogger accusations
