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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

willie nelson last leaf on the tree illustrationALBUMLast Leaf on the Tree, Willie NelsonLegacy Recordings, November 1Opening his 153rd album with a cover of Tom Waits’s “Last Leaf,” Willie sings wistfully, “I’m the last leaf on the tree / The autumn took the rest / But it won’t take me.” It’s not the first time the 91-year-old country legend has pondered mortality, but the autumnal allusions and themes of transition and transformation in his covers of the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” and Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart” are particularly poignant. Credit for much of the album’s success goes to Willie’s son Micah Nelson, who produced the record, created its cover art, wrote one of its songs, and cowrote another with his dad. At the time of year when leaves…

The post Willie’s 153rd Album, Selena Gomez’s Oscar Buzz, and More Reasons It’s a Great Month in Texas Culture appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

circuit of the americas tree planting illoSweat dribbles down the necks of Formula 1’s twenty drivers as they skid across inky asphalt. North of 100 degrees, the track surface temperature is scalding enough to melt thin ribbons loose from the Pirelli tires spinning on track.As far as Central Texas temperatures go, an 80-degree October afternoon at the Circuit of the Americas, the speedway just outside of Austin, is a mild start to the track’s weekend festivities planned around the Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix. But sitting next to a black tarmac without shade can feel sweltering, and fans are the unfortunate bunch left red-faced.Austin, like most U.S. cities, falls prey to the urban heat island effect. In cities with more pavement and fewer green spaces, sunlight is absorbed rather than deflected,…

The post A Pact Between Texas’s Formula 1 Speedway and a Tree-Hugging Nonprofit Is Turning Austin Green appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Working Life is a monthly column in which Texans talk about their jobs. JR Howard, who is 43, owns Texas Solar Sheep, a company whose grazing herds control vegetation on solar farms. It is based in Mount Vernon, in East Texas.I grew up in Sterling City, in West Texas, working on ranches in the summers. Then I spent most of my career in trucking logistics. My family had always run a couple hundred sheep, and about four years ago, a friend said, “Y’all better look into solar grazing.” I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about, but I started researching. Now we’ve got a little more than six thousand sheep at eleven sites, with nine more locations contracted to start soon. We’ll probably double…

The post Wake Up, Sheeple! Nothing Controls Grass on Solar Farms as Well as Sheep appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Dom Rock in far West Texas.The Detours series celebrates lesser-known locales worth visiting across the state. One of the state’s most dramatic drives, the winding ribbon of two-lane blacktop in far West Texas known as FM 170 (or the River Road, as locals call it), follows the course of the Rio Grande as it meanders along the Texas-Mexico border. The mountains and canyons that form this rugged terrain provide miles of stunning vistas. But just below a dusty turnout on the river side of the route between Lajitas and Presidio (about 13 miles northwest of the former and 36 miles southeast of the latter) sits an unassuming roadside attraction: a boulder with “DOM” chiseled into it. Fans of Fandango, the 1985 cult-classic film about a group of five University of…

The post Kevin Costner Was Here: Why This West Texas Rock Is Worth a Stop appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Texas-themed Halloween CostumesHalloween is always a toss-up in Texas: Either it’s too cold for the sexy rodeo-clown getup you were planning, or you find yourself sweating through a cow-print onesie—again.What isn’t a toss-up is that the best costumes—the ones that get the greatest giggles and the most knowing nods—are those that reference whatever inane or insane pop culture phenomena happened over the previous year. (Just ask the Texas Monthly intern who once showed up as Ted Cruz en route to Cancún back in 2021.) While there are sure to be plenty of Pink Pony Club hangers-on and Moo Deng mash-ups, over here in Texas, we’re brainstorming all of the local headlines that lend themselves to cute, spooky, gory, and silly Halloween ’fits.Should you go through with these…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Since joining Texas Monthly in 2019 as the country’s first taco editor, José R. Ralat has visited thousands of taquerias, restaurants, and taco trucks across Texas. He’s highlighted the delicious food he’s come across, shared the stories of the people behind the dishes, and taken readers on a journey through the state’s wide variety of Mexican food, capturing the cultural complexity and fascinating history behind one of the most influential culinary traditions in the world. Now Ralat, the state’s preeminent taco expert, has released his first definitive list of the best tacos and taquerias in the Lone Star State. To compile the rankings, Ralat traveled roughly 14,000 miles, visiting more than four hundred taquerias in about six months. He looked for tacos that met a certain…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Janis JackFederal district Judge Janis Jack has pushed the State of Texas for many years to fix the Dickensian meat grinder that is the state’s foster care system. Her Corpus Christi courtroom had become that rare venue in Texas, one where powerful officials charged with taking care of some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens were subject to relentless, clear-eyed accountability. For some the spotlight has been intolerable. Last week, a three-judge panel of the right-wing Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Governor Greg Abbott and two of his appointees, removing Jack from the case and tossing out contempt charges she had levied against state officials for not bringing the system up to constitutional muster. The judges, Edith Brown Clement, Edith Jones, and Cory…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

ut and a&m rivalry illustrationQ: Without the acrimony of the annual UT-A&M football game, Thanksgiving family dinner has been relatively peaceful the past twelve years. Now that the rivalry is back, any suggestions for keeping the peace at our divided dinner table?Mark S. Browning, College StationA: The Texanist can think of few things that make him feel more exhilarated than a good old-fashioned, rancor-fueled college rivalry. And the matchup between Texas A&M and the University of Texas, which kicked off in 1894, may be the granddaddy of them all. The conflict has been quiet since the teams last clashed, in 2011, but many folks can recall a time when scant few Texans identified as anything other than an Aggie or a Longhorn. (Even those who didn’t attend either school!) Come…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

One day in 1976, a group of women gathered in Houston’s Memorial Park. This was long before a multimillion-dollar redesign transformed the outdoor space with land bridges and serene boardwalks. These women weren’t coming together for a yoga class or a nature stroll. They were there to try out for the Herricanes, a new women’s full-tackle football team. Nope, not flag. Not powderpuff. These women were there to hit.“There were fifty or sixty women at that first tryout, and it was mass chaos,” says Billie Cooper, a Houston native who proudly wore her number 86 jersey as a linebacker during the four years the team survived. Cooper says several women who came back to practice after that first day quickly dropped off. “They were like,…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Texas taquerias can take any form—a drive-through shack in an unincorporated community; a trailer next to a gas station in a quiet suburb; an upscale restaurant on a downtown block. Visiting as many of them as possible for this list—which happened to be more than four hundred in about six months—was intimidating, but not exactly novel. In my five years as Texas Monthly’s taco editor, I have traveled constantly, searching the state for tacos that meet a certain level of craft, quality, creativity, and, especially, flavor.In preparation for this story, my first ranking of the best tacos in Texas, I traveled around 14,000 miles, from Amarillo to Brownsville and El Paso to Texarkana, and asked myself the following questions (and more) as I visited the…

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