MUSIC NEWS:

Tom Russell has a new record out; the single is called "Tonight We Ride". This guy is awesome. His songs actually mean something and they sound cool too. His last album, which has "Racehorse Haynes" and several other terrific songs, was called "Modern Art" and I highly recommend it. I'm still not sure what the new record is called but this guy deserves to have a lot more fans than he does.

Buy anything you see that's by Asleep at the Wheel. These guys put on the best live show I've ever seen, spark and style and commitment and balls-all-the-way-out-but-under-control. This is Western swing the way it ought to be.

BR-549 has some new stuff coming out, too, and if you love real rock and roll with some twang this is your band. I saw these guys at the same show I saw Asleep at the Wheel and they rock. I actually vaguely know the lead singer, Charlie Mead, because he comes from Lawrence, Kansas, too. I remember seeing him and his band the Homestead Grays all the way back in 1986. They used to kick off their shows with "The Wreck of the Old 97". Then they'd play "Jesse James" and Bob Dylan's "Love Minus Zero", and they had this hilarious song called "Workin' on the Dude Ranch". They had plenty of originals, too, one of which, "Chains of This Town", made it onto a BR-549 record.

Junior Brown. Slade Cleves. Ray Wylie Hubbard. Robert Earl Keen. The Derailers. Check out these guys from St. Louis called the Rockhouse Ramblers. Jack Ingram. Dale Watson. There's this guy who's really good named James McMurtry; he's the author Larry McMurtry's son.

For great country music out of Dallas, go to khyi.com. KHYI is the best country station in the world. Other stations on Internet that you ought to check out--just google the call letters--are WWOZ, jazz and blues from New Orleans; KBON, Cajun-country-whatevertheywannaplay from Lafayette, LA; KJHK, the best modern music from Lawrence; and KUT, the University of Texas station out of Austin.