Popular Music and Culture in Austin, Texas: Talking with the Blues

This book explores the blues tradition through a collective dialogue with significant musicians and producers of the Austin blues scene. Based on an ethnography in the singular capital of Texas, the self-proclaimed live music capital of the world, it explores the local blues scene through in-depth interviews that reveal intimate bonds between popular music, culture, identity, race, politics, the city and the music industry. Through the voices and experiences of 15 protagonists, readers are introduced to multiple aspects of blues lives, including music-making, style, identity, and the changing landscape of the Austin scene. While this oral history informs about particular biographies, it also delves into larger processes around popular music, culture and race, such as Jim Crow segregation, the Civil Rights era, international touring and gentrification.

The book's subtitle assumes an important metaphor in regards to blues artists and the blues: that talking with blues artists is like talking with the blues; that meeting them is a way of meeting the blues. The implication is that blues artists not only form part of the tradition but they also embody the blues tradition with their lives and works, with their music, style, bodies, language, stories, and fashion. Thus, in this scene and book, the interviewees are the blues. Representatives of a contemporary music scene, these musicians and producers generally reveal an eclectic understanding of blues music, with connections to gospel, jazz, rhythm & blues, rock, soul-funk, and hip-hop. The conversations took place between 2010 and 2023, mostly face-to-face in Austin but also online and face-to-face in Madrid (Spain), where some of the musicians have performed. All of the protagonists were followed and observed closely within the everyday reality of the Austin music scene, yet the book also shows how the scene connects with many other places, including Mississippi, Houston, Memphis, New York or Madrid, through the biographies, tours and migrations of the protagonists.