Preface to the 'Overserved' sequel
Both Austin music history books are in the hands of publishers, and should be worth the wait
Overserved refers as much to the sheer magnitude of music the citizens of Austin have enjoyed/endured since the ‘70s, as it does the author’s nightly situation for much of that time. Sobriety added about 10 hours a day from 2013-2016, when I started this project by ranking Austin’s greatest clubs, best bands, and most significant nights on the Arts & Labor blog.
During the pandemic, I stayed relatively sane and busy after discovering an online newsbank, offered free by the Austin Public Library, which gave me all the access I needed to write a history of the Austin music scene without once touching a spool of microfilm. Insomnia made a friend! The Statesman archives, which go back to the late 1800s German singing societies, was primary source material. I could also call up the reporting I had done when I covered Austin music for the paper from 1995- 2013. It was ripe for the rewrite.
I started this Substack newsletter to show my work, and after I posted about 400 Austin music articles in two and a half years, “overserved” could also describe my subscribers.
The first draft of my Austin music history book was over 250,000 words, which would make it count as carry-on luggage if you brought it to read on a plane. Did I really need chapters on the Austin Music Network and Southpark Meadows and Bob Schneider? (Yes, yes, and I want to sell books). Instead of bringing out the shears, I split this history into two volumes. The first would be more of a straightforward history of the first 100 years- 1880s through 1980s- with great archival photos. Book II is subtled A Personal History of the Austin Music Scene, picking up with my 1984 arrival, and subsequent reporting from the ‘90s through the 2010s. In the sequel, there’s more about brown bathtub speed and less about Dolores and the Blue Bonnet Boys.
The ‘90s was a pivotal decade for an Austin that was no longer a sleepy col/lege town of the overeducated and underemployed. SXSW made ATX a destination to the world, and in the new millennium came the Austin City Limits Music Festival, backdropped by a growing Austin skyline as a symbol of youth culture gone lucrative. If Slacker (1990) had been made today, it would be called Influencer.
For me, the ‘90s were a time to evolve from gadfly critic to journalist, while still keeping an edge- and health insurance. My J-school was three years at the Dallas Morning News, which I left in ’95 to come back to “the little town with the big guest list.” If a city can be a soul mate, I found mine in Austin, where music was a lifestyle, so there was more to write about. Plus, I was going through a pretty nasty divorce that turned Big D into a diaper that had to be changed, which was also literal. We had a baby.
The first part of Overserved is about me me me. One of the reasons I’m such a bad interviewer is that I think my story’s more interesting. We’ll see if that’s true. Then memoir melds with history, as I get back into the rock critic beat, including some of my favorite profiles- Junior Brown, Poi Dog Pondering, Kathy Valentine, W.C. Clark, Timbuk3, James Hand- and I can’t seem to write a book without Alejandro Escovedo turning up in a scarf. Weaving through the later chapters are an apology to Lyle Lovett, and a flashback to the time I was arrested at a concert I was reviewing, but most of Overserved follows the research-heavy procedure of Austin Music Is a Scene Not a Sound, coming out this year on TCU Press.
April 1, 2024 marked my 40th year covering Austin music. That’s the day this book was turned into the Wittliff Collections, which is sponsoring it for publication by Texas A&M Press. I love the Wittliff, where I’ve donated my papers and do much of my research, so I went with them on the followup.
If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll get a signed copy of Overserved when it comes out, but since these academic presses move slow, the best case in late ‘25. It’ll be a cool, curated artifact, a collector’s item giving some permanence to this research and writing. But I’ve said from the beginning that having this information online, in a timely manner, is what’s most important to me.
Here’s a Table of Contents if you’re interested.
"If Slacker (1990) had been made today, it would be called Influencer." Your wickedly smart wit gave me a laugh of delight this morning.
Thank you so much for your Substack. Your memories have filled in so many blank spots for me. Having been in Austin since 1971 there is no way I can remember alk the music I heard. You amaze me. Look forward to having it in book form too. 💙📚🎶