Rusty Wier Passed Away; Garth Brooks Headed to Vegas; Teenage Stars

Hearing was Rusty Wier’s last sense to go, so although he was almost unresponsive when surrounded by relatives and friends, including Jerry Jeff Walker, at his son Coby’s house in Driftwood on Thursday night, Wier tried to raise up his head when the group sang “Amazing Grace.”

By the next morning, the Austin musician, who had a hit when Bonnie Raitt covered his “Don’t It Make You Wanna Dance” on the soundtrack to “Urban Cowboy,” was dead after a two-year battle with cancer. He was 65.

More: Austin Chronicle | Music Fog | Listen on MySpace

Music Fog videos:

• Chuck Mead – “Let Jesus Make You Breakfast”
• DADDY – “Early to Bed, Early to Rise”
• Jonell Mosser – “Bottom Rail”
• The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – “Speed of Life”
• Will Hoge – “The Highway’s Home”

[...] with loud laughter following frontman Jeff Hanna’s profession of his love for vinyl: “Downloading sounds like a bodily function to me.” Only a few songs from the excellent new release “Speed of Life” were played, but the “Going Up the Country” cover was received enthusiastically while an acoustic take on the album’s carpe-diem-themed title track was a highlight of the set.

Be sure to check out that title track among the Music Fog videos linked above.

Earl beat up his wife?
Mitigating circumstance
Sentence is reduced

Standout tracks include “Ghost Town Train,” which echoes the work of Glen Campbell, and “Good Girls,” a dark tale of cheating with an unexpected twist. On “I’m Only Jesus,” McGraw offers an interesting take on personal responsibility while singing from the perspective of Jesus Christ. “Southern Voices” is done well overall, but listeners may want to keep close a copy of McGraw’s upbeat hit “I Like It, I Love It” to lighten the mood.

The first song I fell in love with is my dad’s “Hey Porter”… it felt like a train moving through everything. It felt so urgent and powerful, and the images were so crystal clear. I have the identical relationship today with that song, and the same love for it, as when I was a child.

The title of the album comes from a song that I wrote with an incredibly talented songwriter named Jeff Black. We’ve been co-writers for years now and got to thinking about well, “How did we get here?” type questions. We’ve had fallen buddies and comrades, lost people we’ve loved – parents are gone- so how did we, specifically, get here, this far in life? We were going through a time that felt very fortunate to be here and that is what the song and title Circles Around Me is all about.