George Strait To Kick Off 2008 Tour In Austin Tonight

‘TMZ wants to film me working my cutting horses.’

Go read the others and see if you can come up with any good ones of your own.

It’s more than just shine that keeps Manuel’s fans coming back. His tailoring is superb, thanks to a sharp eye that allows him to fit a suit without even taking measurements. It doesn’t hurt that Manuel, sometimes called the Rhinestone Rembrandt, is majorly charming and full of great stories populated by boldfaced names. It was decades before the Mexico native would become one himself.

“It sounds a bit self-defeating, but I’m not so sure this glorification of the singer-songwriter we have today is all that good a thing,” he says. “For me, the golden age of music was the 1930s and ’40s, when the line was clearly drawn between the song and the singer. The best singers recorded the best songs, and as artists they were always sifting, sifting, looking for songs that worked for them, looking for the right vehicles for their voices.

The article is a pretty interesting read about a guy that I assume not many people, myself included, have heard of before. Article author William Michael Smith dubs him as an esteemed member of the Nashville underground. Olney even has some pretty high praise for the Texas music scene, describing it as “one of the few states where musicians are almost on a par with professional athletes.”

“We lived in so many different towns and even when we stayed in one town, we’d move to different houses,” recalls Bingham. “Something would happen, the bills wouldn’t get paid and we’d get evicted. After a while, I’d get to where I wouldn’t even unpack my stuff. My parents were great people, but they lost control, lost their grip on the world and went spiraling down and crashed. Me and my sister either had to go down with ‘em or we had to get up on our own feet and make our own way.”