Sara Cress

Houston has been a hotbed of singer-songwriters, of country ramblers, of hip-hop trailblazers. But traditional rock ’n’ roll — the kind that borrows from the blues and sets your hair on end — isn’t one of this scene’s stronger points. The kids in garages aren’t aping the Rolling Stones; they’re still playing warmed-over alt-rock, (or, unfortunately, emo). “A lot of it has to do with our generation,” Ragged Hearts drummer and scene veteran Davey Jonez explains, “which was directly linked to the ’…

“The Literary Greats” sounds like a band name conceived by obnoxious book twits. You know the type: people who boast about reading Proust while everyone else in the room is talking Stephen King. But it wasn’t. It was a phrase written into a song by a perfectly nice guy who doesn’t read all that much. “We are not avid readers, by any means,” singer Brandon Elam says with an easy laugh. “The other two guys in the band don’t read at all,” guitarist Taylor Lee says. Elam and Lee do admit to having a…

Thursday night at River Oaks Theater, filmmaker Jarred King premieres Sing Baby Sing, his...

An audience might not know it to see her perform now, but Canadian-born jazz pianist Pamela York found her inspiration to perform at age 10, when a country-rock family band moved into her neighborhood. Impressed by all of the musical equipment in their basement, and the sound of her own voice amplified, she sat in on piano during the band’s country jam sessions at a local inn. “It really got me playing by ear,” York says. “When you have to get up onstage and back some singer on a country tune yo…

Katie Stuckey has a plan for success in music, and it doesn’t involve getting “dolled up...

Dalton Dunn is 17 years old. He’s in a band. He wants the band to be successful by the time he’s 25 because after that, you know, he “might not look good enough,” he says. Fortunately for Dunn, singer-guitarist for the Blue Threads, talent doesn’t require perspective. That will come in time. For now the senior at Foster High School in Richmond is a prodigious guitar player, a pretty strong singer, already has one album under his belt and has been sharing stages with adults for seven years. It wa…

Visit any country or blues festival around the country and you’ll likely find at least one guitar, harmonica or accordion wunderkind ripping through impossible licks. It’s always amazing, sometimes cute, but you have to wonder where those kids end up, if they still like music after being introduced to performing it at such a young age.Galveston-born Hamilton Loomis [/search/?action=search&channel=entertainment%2Fmusic&inlineLink=1&searchindex=property&query=%22Hamilton+Loomis%22] grew up in a mu…

Lower Life Form’s Phillip Vaughn grew up just blocks away from Gilley’s night club in Pasadena. His mom listened to Willie Nelson, Crystal Gayle and adored Kenny Rogers. So how did this kid from the land of oil refineries and urban cowboys get to a place in life where his hip-hop group is opening for Devin the Dude at South by Southwest? “Salt ‘n’ Pepa was on the radio, you know. Vanilla was on the radio,” Vaughn, aka PhD, joked, launching into Push It. In fact, the other members of Lower Life F…

Despite dire warnings about the death of the music industry, Cypress-area experimental rock band Advent Scars still believes in the power of being plucked out of obscurity by a record label.“Getting signed will always be the ultimate goal; that’s how you get your CDs distributed and get paid. We definitely need that,” says singer Guion Branche [/search/?action=search&channel=entertainment%2Fmusic&inlineLink=1&searchindex=property&query=%22Guion+Branche%22].The band members — all 17 and 18 years…

Abra Moore found her voice as a solo artist on 1997’s Strangest Places, a joyful, eccentric folk-pop album that won the former Poi Dog Pondering member radio play and a Grammy nomination for its single Four Leaf Clover. Ah, but times change. Moore’s hippie playfulness soon became an anachronism in the face of the hundreds of pop starlets waiting in line to grab their 15 minutes. The Austin-based singer recorded an album for Clive Davis’ J Records that was never released, and another in 2004, Eve…

A rush of good things is hitting Houston native Gordy Quist in his 27th year. He recently married. He’s building a house in Austin. He has steady work in a really hot Austin-based band, the Heathens. He also has a new album, Here Comes the Flood, which he almost didn’t release because he’s just been too busy with that really hot band. “I recorded this album at the end of last year not knowing that the Heathens would be taking up all my time,” Quist says. “We formed the band really loosely, doing…

The Western Civilization is a melting pot of players and sound. When the band’s writers — Rachel Hansbro, Reggie O’Farrell and Gretchen Schmaltz — want to hear 20 tambourines or a distorted organ, they procure the instrument or find the people to make it happen. “When I’m writing, I play the guitar and hear other sounds in my head,” Hansbro says. “I describe the noise to Reggie, he grumbles and says, ‘We’ll have to figure that out.’ “Then the search for new and interesting instruments begins,” O…

If you weren’t excited by this year’s crop of local music offerings, you simply weren’t listening.Gorgeous sounds came in surprising packages in 2006. Some were adorned with honky-tonk wails. Others were awash in intricate pop songwriting. And still more were accessorized with mix-and-match palettes that somehow fit together perfectly.Here, then, are a few of the best efforts released by Houston-based musicians this year:Last Transmission From the Blue Room, the Black Math Experiment: BME’s oddl…

In the liner notes for the Midnight Pilots’ debut full-length CD, Adventures of the Midnight Pilots, writer/guitarist/singer Dave Rask writes, “Politics are dead. People are living.” Those words go a long way toward explaining an important part of this band: The members are spiritual and guided by conservative upbringings, but the term “Christian band” is a phrase they don’t want to hear. To them, “Christian” is political. “Art is art,” Rask says. “I don’t feel there is a place for ’Christian mu…

Charles Peters’ growl is so feral it’s hard to believe it’s coming from the slight, young man with the curly locks. “When I was a teenager, I just screamed,” says Peters, of Three Fantastic. “When I listen to our old record, there’s way too much of the screaming. People said I sounded like Louis Armstrong, and that’s not what I was going for!” Inspired by soul singers like Otis Redding and James Brown, Peters learned to temper the screaming with singing. But the two styles remain distinct in the…

Lazy Are the Skeletons, the Scattered Pages’ new disc, is one of those rare works that offers grand theater for the ears with colorful characters and brilliant morality plays. It’s an ambitious effort in the Pages’ five-year career, and one that may launch them to a wider audience. The Pages’ ringmaster is Brandon Hancock, who handles most of the lyrics. Hancock’s delivery stands out immediately; here’s a guy from Baytown who sings like a Brit. He attributes that to listening to a lot of Morriss…