By Paul T. Mueller Singer-songwriter and Texas native Hayes Carll launched his Grateful for Christmas Tour with a couple of sold-out shows at Houston’s Heights Theater. The second, on Dec. 2, was a great time for all concerned. Carll, in fine voice and fine humor, performed only a couple of actual holiday songs (his own “Grateful for Christmas” and Buck…
Thirty years on, Ellis Paul’s songs and stories delight audiences
By Ken Paulson – Singer-songwriters are plentiful these days. Have a guitar, smartphone and social media account? Suddenly you’re giving concerts. There was a time, though, when anyone stepping on stage at a coffeehouse had to truly engage an audience with songs, stories and a sense of humor. If you wanted to work, you had to entertain. Ellis Paul is…
Perfect pairing: James McMurtry and BettySoo in concert
It might sound like an unlikely pairing for a singer-songwriter show – a famously curmudgeonly Anglo man in his early 60s and a Korean-American woman in her mid-40s.
A brilliant showcase from Lori McKenna and Brandy Clark
By Paul T. Mueller – There’s a belief in some quarters that everything coming out of Nashville these days is formulaic dross, but Lori McKenna and Brandy Clark put that idea to rest in their Sept. 28 co-headlining appearance at Houston’s Heights Theater. The 90-minute show, the first on an 11-date tour, amounted to a two-person guitar pull that drew…