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In "Big Sweet Life", the gratitude-infused romp that galvanizes his 1999 album Summerland, Jon Dee Graham erases the line that separates dreams from real life. Instead of waiting for things to happen that never do (something he admits he's done before), the Austin roots-rocker, ex-punk and

The Drive-By Truckers established themselves as the fiercest contemporary incarnation of southern rock in 2001 with Southern Rock Opera, a sprawling, 20-song, two-CD opus that weighed in on what they referred to as "the duality of the southern thing." Last year they followed up with Decoration Day, a

Before he got sick in 2003, Alejandro Escovedo often lamented in interviews that he couldn't understand why no one else recorded his songs. The reason was obvious: His sound -- a peculiar melange of punk rock, chamber music and corrida that sounded like a Norteno version of the

"Now, why can't their records sound as good as that show?" The question is instantly familiar to fans of every sort of down-home music, from old-timey to acoustic blues to thudding roots-rock -- 134 years after the birth of Tennessee's David Harrison Macon, the