Watching the world watch Texas.

Issue No. 7, 2024

In this issue of Branding Texas: George Strait receives 2024 CMA lifetime achievement award with a very straight face; the work of Texas Monthly contributor Christian Wallace inspires the latest Taylor Sheridan series, “Landman,” about the oil industry in the Permian Basin; France’s prestigious Michelin Guide sprinkles restaurant stars all across Texas for the very first time; a new album from singer Leon Bridges expresses love for the rhythms and roots of Fort Worth; the UT System sets national trend to underwrite tuition and fees for students coming from families earning less than $100K a year.


Thomas Graham

George Strait gets CMA salute for lifetime achievement

The Country Music Awards has saluted Geoge Strait for a lifetime of achievement in music.

The actual award, named after legend Willie Nelson, included performances of Strait’s classics from Chris Stapleton, Miranda Lambert, Jamey Johnson, Park McCollum and Lainey Wilson. As a teenage wannabe cowboy, I could catch Strait’s Ace In The Hole Band playing at any number of South Texas’s dance halls.

Today, he holds the record for the largest ticketed show ever in the U.S. with a concert before 110,905 fans at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas.

The very straight-faced Strait, born in 1952 in tiny Poteet, TX south of San Antonio, didn’t seem too happy with much of the evening’s other, more modern country performances. Said USA Today culture and music reporter Ana Kaufman: “Some took his unflinching face during the tribute to be a distaste for country music’s modern tilt. But really, who knows?”

 

Landing “Landman” with Billy Bob Thornton

Producer Taylor Sheridan is simply never out of the news these days. His Yellowstone epic on the Paramount network continues to dominate streaming television despite the abrupt departure of actor Kevin Costner who played patriarch John Dutton.

Now Sheridan’s newest series, “Landman,” has launched on Paramount+ with Billy Bob Thornton starring as a crisis executive at a West Texas oil company.

The cast isn’t all from the Lone Star but there is a welcome focus on the Hispanic crews that increasingly make up the actual current-day rig personnel; look for familiar favorites Andy García, Michael Peña, and J.R. Villareal in those roles. (Andy’s from Havana, Michael is from Chicago but at least J.R. is from Texas – Mission TX right on the Rio Grande border.

Jon Hamm has a big role as Monty Miller, a titan of the Texas oil industry, and Demi Moore plays Cami Miller, Monty’s wife.  (Hamm was a frat boy at UT Austin but got into a notorious Sigma Nu fraternity hazing incident back in the day and never finished there. Moore was born in Roswell, NM.)

Billy Bob plays a convincing Texan in the new series, but that twang, of course, is all Arkansas; he was born Hot Springs, AK and spent time in his home state laying asphalt for the state highways department before slipping down that Interstate 40 highway heading westward to Hollywood.

If Billy Bob’s new show comes off at all as genuinely Texas, first thank co-creator Christian Wallace, staff writer at Texas Monthly and host of the magazine’s successful Boomtown podcast about the Permian Basin which actually inspired the new TV “Landman” series.  Chris reported, wrote, and hosted that podcast that topped the Apple Podcasts chart in the documentary category and has had more than five million downloads.

Christian grew up in rural West Texas but began as a fact-checker at Texas Monthly as an intern in 2014. His family are genuine cotton farmers, oil field hands, and working cowboys – and he did a stint himself as a roughneck on oil rigs near his hometown of Andrews TX.

Chris has several other Lone Star stories under power option in the Hollywood pipeline: at HBO (the high-adrenaline world of oil field medics), at Tom Hanks’s Playtone (the Jackie Robinson of Rodeo, Myrtis Dightman), and at Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way (the legendary lawman, Bass Reeves).

My favorite from Chris? His personal tale in Texas Monthly called Me and My Truck: A Love Story –  that’s him and his hound dog on the April 2022 cover with the story inside, featuring his 2005 GMC Sierra: “Several of the black buttons on the dash have worn to pure white, the lights behind them dimmed or gone completely.  The front axle creaks during low-speed turns.  At 70 miles per hour, the truck vibrates so hard that everything in the rearview goes blurry.”

To anyone who has ever owned and nurtured a beat-up pick-up in rural Texas, it reads better than a romance novel!

Michelin Stars Shine on Lone Star dining for the very first time

Rona Berg, writing for Forbes, reports the Michelin Guide’s call-outs for the top restaurants in Texas – the first-ever time the guide has awarded stars for venues inside the Lone Star State. The guide, on this first outing in Texas, is careful to recognize the state as more than a BBQ and TexMex stronghold.

“We monitor the evolution of the culinary landscape closely, and Texas has been on our radar for a few years,” said Gwendal Poullennec, International Director, Michelin Guide.

Poullennec added: “A Michelin Star is a worldwide benchmark awarded to restaurants offering the highest quality food. From a culinary perspective, Texas deserves to be put on the international travel map. The food culture and authenticity makes it worth traveling here because it’s really unique and deserves worldwide recognition.”

Michelin cited 14 restaurants in four Texas cities: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin.  Here in my hometown Austin, seven earned a Michelin star and – no surprise – three of the seven actually are BBQ joints:

Author Rona Berg who covered the story for Forbes, is now based in San Antonio and maintains an organic garden there.  Rona has had her bylines on food and wellness appear in many top-tier publications including the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Glamour.

 

Fort Worth Love Letter in New Album

Antony Mason, reporting on CBS Mornings, featured Fort Worth’s own Leon Bridges in a recent consideration of “Leon” – the musician’s own full-album-tribute to the Texas city and music roots that shaped him.

This latest recording celebrates the simplicity of Leon Bridges’ childhood on the Southside to summer nights cruising around “Cowtown.”  Each track is steeped in references to iconic local spots, such as a familiar Sinclair gas station and the city’s distinctive rhythm and soul.

Leon was raised in Fort Worth and played countless open-mics nights at the local Del Frisco’s Grille until he was signed by Columbia Records in December 2014.  His debut album released nine years ago was referred to as a 2015 “album to look forward to from Texans” by Austin DJ Andy Langer, writing in the New York Times.

TV anchor Mason, now senior cultural correspondent for CBS News, spent much of his nearly three decades at CBS covering international affairs, but began his career in the Southwest, reporting for WJRH-TV in Tulsa, and never lost his taste for Western roots music. His producer Analisa Novak operates out of another onetime fabled cow town, Chicago, and is an Army veteran. The cattle drives are gone now, but Analisa spends a good deal of time these days here in the West trailing and reporting on television and movie producer Taylor Sheridan (see above).

 

UT System awards tuition-free admission to qualifying undergrads

National Public Radio and NBC News featured the decision of The University of Texas System to cover fees and tuition for undergraduates coming from families earning $100,000 or less.  UT joined nearly half a dozen institutions of higher learning who have made the decision to waive costs for undergraduates who meet certain income requirements. Kevin Eltife, chairman of the Board of Regents, was quoted saying: “To be in a position to make sure our students can attend a UT institution without accruing more debt is very important to all of us, and as long as we are here, we will continue our work to provide an affordable, accessible education to all who choose to attend a UT institution.” The UT System board voted to fund the program by sending $35 million from endowment distributions and other sources directly to all nine of its member campuses.

 

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