Enjoying their second year on the Austin music scene, the band has established an incredible fan base and performed before packed venues throughout town.
The band writes and performs their own material and occasionally indulges fans with songs that "cover bands won't cover" by great artists like The Killers, Kings of Leon, JET, The White Stripes, Big Head Todd, Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and The Cult (just to name a few).
Matt Skinner, the housewife's companion and the working girl's favorite, was born in Dallas, Texas in 1978 and grew up near the Mexican border in Alpine. Not much more than an outpost in the high desert mountains of West Texas, Alpine served as the perfect foundry to produce this magnificent singer/songwriter/storyteller/artist. Winner of the 1999 Tom T. Hall Music Scholarship in Commercial Music from South Plains College and a 2002 graduate of Texas State University, Matt now dedicates himself to the pursuit of the arts. Matt has long followed the traditional path of the 'poet and a one-man band' mentality where he holds fast to artistic integrity and truth with each earned note. Graced with a keen eye for detail and imagery, coupled with a cultivated tenor voice, Skinner commands any stage with a tender ferocity and presence that is spellbinding in its organic honesty.
Though he quit his job as an electrician almost three years ago, Matt Sever is faithful to his beginnings. The Austin-based artist even renewed his license last year, "in the interest of honest representation," he says.
Stalling composes songs that seem about the here and now yet seem to also have one foot planted in the past. Sporting a vintage LBJ style “open road” hat, which is dangerously close to becoming his trademark, Stalling’s shows are at once intimate and up-close with him chatting up the crowd between songs, and a ‘tour de force’ of sound on the shoulders of his top-shelf band.
With Jeff Howe on drums and percussion, Bryce Clarke on gut string, electric guitar and mandolin and Jason Steinsultz swapping between stand-up and electric bass, Stalling brings together a show that blends an old-style country sensibility of danceable ballads with the slightly edgy elements so commonly seen in the “Texas Music” genre. Stalling and troupe seem equally at home on a huge honky-tonk stage in front of 1000 or playing an acoustic set in a tiny 50 seat coffee house.
Now established as one of the best-drawing bands on the lucrative Texas Music circuit, Micky and the Motorcars had plenty of time to make NAIVE (Smith Entertainment; July 29, 2008), accumulating a large stockpile of songs before members even entered Austin's Cedar Creek Studios. Even home from the road and an average 215 shows a year, members of Micky and the Motorcars tend to stick together, practicing, brainstorming, writing, hanging out. Braun says, "We'll wind up calling each other and saying, ‘What are you doing? Let's hit the town." There's plenty of time for that.
Austin, Texas local Pauline Reese is one of the hardest working women out there on the Texas/Red Dirt scene. Time and time again she's proven that she can put on a super energetic live show and hold her own with the likes of Pat Green, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Randy Rogers, Jack Ingram, Roger Creager, Kevin Fowler, Cory Morrow, and the long list of bands out on the live music circuit.
Pauline has been a very busy girl off the stage, as well; she's currently staring in a movie as the lead female role. “Far Enough” will be shot late this Fall. She is in the studio cutting her 5th album titled "Rolling Stone", working Texas & Oklahoma radio as well as touring not excluding her upcoming European tour and as if that's not enough she's modeling in her spare time. Her vocal skills are in enormous demand to kick off rodeos and sporting events across Texas with her crowd-pleasing rendition of The Star Spangled Banner sometimes on her Blue Roan horse Blue Diamond.
"You can’t take country out of country boys," drummer John Starek says. "It’s hard to even call it 'Texas country' by now. None of us like being labeled — I know that’s part of being an artist... but this is music from Texas. This is Texas music."
Catch Rich O'Toole on stage- dancing, sweating, and intensely connecting with the crowd through those moody blue eyes- and witness a supercharged live wire, a brash newcomer to the Texas scene with the confidence of a wizened veteran, pushing to please and striving for more, night after night, to the point where his personal motto, "Never, never, never quit," becomes more than a phrase, it becomes a mantra and a dedicated way of life.
The Ryan Bales Band has set out on the road to do what Ryan had intended from the start, make real music from the experiences and the heart. The band is "a work in progress" getting better at every stop and trying to really set itself apart in a very populated Texas music scene.
Ryan James takes on traditional country strains but filters them through the heart of a guy who realizes he isn't solving the world's problems because it's hard enough to just talk about his own.
