Jay Trachtenberg

Mar 21, 2024 | austinchronicle.com | Derek Udensi |Rachel Rascoe |Carys Anderson |Jay Trachtenberg

A little hair of the dog for your post-SXSW listening pleasure Thursday 21, SagebrushIn a 2023 Chron interview with Laiken Neumann, local queergrass artist Creekbed Carter Hogan said of lyrical endeavors, “To me, [music is] so forgiving and generous and expansive.” This Thursday, long-awaited fruit falls from Hogan’s talented tree as they celebrate a new self-titled album with Arkansas-originating Gar Hole Records.

Feb 29, 2024 | austinchronicle.com | Michael Ventura |Jay Trachtenberg

Novelist, screenwriter, and essayist Michael Ventura is no stranger to the ways of Hollywood. His nonfiction books include Cassavetes Directs: John Cassavetes and the Making of Love Streams and Marilyn Monroe: From Beginning to End, and he worked as a film critic for the LA Weekly, a publication he co-founded in 1978. Closer to home, many of us here in Austin know him for his biweekly column, “Letters at 3am,” which ran in this publication for over two decades, through 2014.

Dec 28, 2023 | austinchronicle.com | Jay Trachtenberg

CD set compiles two long-out-of-print albums by the late guitarist When the two long-out-of-print albums comprising this two-CD set, Blues Cruise in 1986 and Out of the Blue in 1987, were originally released, both on local Amazing Records, guitarist Denny Freeman was at the epicenter of Austin's blues mecca centered around Antone's.

Dec 28, 2023 | austinchronicle.com | Jay Trachtenberg

With dystopian novels being so in vogue of late, here's one that really hits the mark. Chain-Gang All-Stars (Vintage, 432 pp., $18), the debut novel from American writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, was a finalist for the most recent National Book Award.

Nov 9, 2023 | austinchronicle.com | Lawrence Wright |Jay Trachtenberg

At times while reading Pulitzer Prize-winning, Austin-based writer Lawrence Wright's new novel, Mr. Texas, I couldn't help thinking of Frank Capra's 1939 film classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring Jimmy Stewart as a naive, idealistic, greenhorn politician who tries to navigate the endemic corruption in the nation's capital. While this smart, quite funny, satirical novel may not pretend to be Mr. Smith Goes to Austin, the broad strokes are certainly evident.