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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.

What Happens When a Country Hit Namechecks a Boot Brand?The old joke goes that if you listen to a country song backward, you get your girl back, then your truck back, and, finally, your dog back. The joke works, in part, because country music often expresses abstract ideas—take grief, for instance—by focusing on concrete objects. It’s a genre that likes to show first and tell second.Thanks also to a persistent pressure to perform authenticity, country lyrics tend to be populated with the lifestyle’s—occasionally repetitive—objects and brands. Stetson hats, Ford trucks, and JBL speakers have been name-checked by the likes of Lyle Lovett, Tim McGraw, and John Morgan. Lil Nas X and Miranda Lambert are lyrically united in their love of Wrangler jeans. Recently, Texas boot companies have appeared in popular country songs by artists…

The post Why Country Artists Can’t Stop Singing About Their Luccheses and Tecovas appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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laredo livis mexicue taco photoDavid Ovalle—also known by his DJ handle, D-Rock—has been spinning records for most of his life. He’s played at baseball games, clubs, house parties, and South by Southwest. He even owned his own radio station at one point. On the night before my visit to his Laredo restaurant, Livi’s Mexicue, Ovalle played a gig at a nightclub that was broadcasting a Canelo boxing match. But the 35-year-old, with a trim, light brown beard and a rigid part near the top of his closely cut hair, has recently spent more time remixing other things: barbecue and tacos.DJing came more naturally to Ovalle at first. “It just called to me,” he says. “I love seeing the way that one person can control a whole audience, their emotions.”…

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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.

archival austin photo 1948Spend enough time in our state capital—say, an afternoon—and you’re almost certain to hear a version of “the Austin jeremiad.” It’s a parable of declension, with the narrator wailing that the Austin of today isn’t nearly as appealing as the city of yesteryear. Early iterations of this tale stretch back at least to the dawn of the eighties, prompted by the closure and then the razing of the Armadillo World Headquarters, the legendary music hall that played host to the likes of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Given the city’s billing as the Live Music Capital of the World, it’s no surprise that subsequent generations have pegged Austin’s fall to the disappearance of other venues, like the Electric Lounge and Liberty Lunch,…

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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.

Nutria HatsIn The New York Times in 1917, a year in which it was forecast that “the civilized world of women will wear more fur than ever before,” a reporter asked a pelt importer what his furs were made of. “Rats and snails and puppy dogs’ tails,” he joked. “It is called by dignified and pleasing names, but as for its ingredients—I think the nursery couplet explains them.” The favored pelt of the moment, the reporter wrote, was “nutria.”Nutria are often mistaken for beavers—both have prehistoric-looking orange teeth—but nutria are typically one-third the size of beavers and one-third as adorable. Beavers have chubby cheeks and paddle tails, and there is a startled quality to the way they hold their little hands in front of them, like…

The post Your Next Cowboy Hat Might Be Made of Swamp Rat appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Rosa Jimenez updateFour years ago, Rosa Jimenez, 38, sat in a Texas prison, convicted of murdering an Austin toddler back in 2003 by stuffing paper towels down his throat. The truth is, she hadn’t killed him; the boy had likely done it to himself, something numerous experts and lawyers recognized. In fact, over the next 17 years, five different judges had advocated for Jimenez’s innocence and release, but she remained behind bars. Worse, Rosa—five foot two, with long, black hair and a girlish face—was dying from stage-four kidney disease, and a pandemic was raging through Texas prisons, killing inmates like her with weakened immune systems. Even with everything stacked against her, Jimenez—a warm, humble person—remained hopeful. “I’m not going to give up,” she wrote me in September…

The post “I Don’t Have Words”: A Texas Exoneree Receives a Lifesaving Kidney Donation appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Jasmine Crockett Q&AIn May, a House Oversight Committee hearing took a turn into reality TV territory when Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene made a personal jab at Dallas Democrat Jasmine Crockett. “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” Greene said. It looked as though the committee was about to devolve into fisticuffs. Then, moments later, Crockett, under the guise of asking a question, fought back at Greene. “If someone in this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde, bad built, butch body,” she asked, “that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”Overnight, quite literally, a political star was born. A clip of their exchange—which also featured Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, reprimanding Greene with a “baby girl, don’t even play”—quickly made…

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Rabid Wolf SpiderTexas is home to some of the creepiest, crawliest, and otherwise oddest animals on the planet. We introduce you to them in What in Tarnation?!, an occasional series. I have a confession to make. From June 2021 until the spring of 2023, I murdered dozens of innocent victims. I didn’t even bother to learn their names. As soon as one appeared, the closest shoe or magazine became a fatal weapon. All I knew was that these enemies were terrifying, mud-colored creatures, and they were everywhere: the garage, the porch, the grass, the shed. My MO was to eradicate them by any means necessary, because unless you are an arachnophile, spiders look scary, and therefore they must be squished. Cut to 2024, and I would not harm a wolf…

The post Texas Is Crawling With Wolf Spiders. Please Don’t Squish Them! 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.

Rabid Wolf SpiderTexas is home to some of the creepiest, crawliest, and otherwise oddest animals on the planet. We introduce you to them in What in Tarnation?!, an occasional series. I have a confession to make. From June 2021 until the spring of 2023, I murdered dozens of innocent victims. I didn’t even bother to learn their names. As soon as one appeared, the closest shoe or magazine became a fatal weapon. All I knew was that these enemies were terrifying, mud-colored creatures, and they were everywhere: the garage, the porch, the grass, the shed. My MO was to eradicate them by any means necessary, because unless you are an arachnophile, spiders look scary, and therefore they must be squished. Cut to 2024, and I would not harm a wolf…

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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.

Jake Worthington and Miranda Lambert's new songWhen Miranda Lambert penned “Hello Shitty Day” with Jesse Frasure, Jessie Jo Dillon, and George Strait hit machine Dean Dillon, she knew just who she wanted to record the song: Jake Worthington, a rising honky-tonker who shares her reverence for traditional Texas music and barroom weepers.“Jake was the first person I thought of to sing it,” Lambert says of the new tune, released September 27. “We’re both Texans who grew up on the same traditional country music, and I love watching his star rise. I was really proud to hear that he wanted to cut this song for his project, and I was thrilled to sing on it with him.”The La Porte–raised Worthington, however, never expected to receive a call from the Grammy winner about a song she wrote…

The post Miranda Lambert and Jake Worthington Turned a Bad Day Into a Perfect Honky-Tonk Tune appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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How College-town Boutiques Get Ready for Football SeasonStep inside the co-op at University of Texas at Austin these days, and you can feel the buzz of a winning season. The jerseys of quarterbacks Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning hang from wall racks, too in demand to dangle there for long. The members of the bald mannequin family by the front door show off their excitement about joining the Southeastern Conference. They sport SEC T-shirts and other burnt orange gear—even their plastic dog wears a Longhorns-branded harness. Beside them, a sign advertises a new “Celebrate the Win” T-shirt, a tribute to UT’s recent triumph over the University of Michigan—a souvenir to ensure the sweetness of victory lasts a little longer.As the world of Texas college football spins this fall, the collegiate shops across…

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