Joe Nick Patoski

Wimberley

Writer at Freelance

writer, filmmaker, observer, pundit, disc jockey, bullshitter

Articles

Forgotten Crossings at the Edge of Texas

2 weeks ago | texasobserver.org | Joe Nick Patoski

Editor’s Note: Author Richard Parker died early last month, days after publication of his book The Crossing. “My dad was a person that loved learning about the world around him, and we saw that in his writing,” his daughter Olivia told the Albuquerque Journal. He was 61.
A New Book Looks at 100 Years of Austin Music

1 month ago | texashighways.com | Joe Nick Patoski |Danielle Lopez

Austin Music is A Scene Not a Sound is one of the clunkiest book titles I’ve come across in quite a while. But after reading Michael Corcoran’s 150-year history of Austin music, the title makes perfect sense. Music has always been a participatory exchange between performer and audience when you think about it, even if the communication goes no further than the sound of hands clapping.
Wemby's An All-Star in These San Antonio Murals

2 months ago | texashighways.com | Joe Nick Patoski |Danielle Lopez

Since retiring to San Antonio after 47 years as a radio news broadcaster in Central Texas, Ed Mayberry has been the Old Man With the Camera, exploring his new hometown and posting images of his adventures on Facebook. “I love the culture, I love the architecture, I love the missions, I love the artistic scene,” he says. He’s become especially taken with the mural scene—various expressions of art painted on cement, brick, asphalt and other available surfaces.
World Boogie is Coming

Nov 15, 2024 | oxfordamerican.org | Joe Nick Patoski

You can argue endlessly about whether it’s Elvis, W. C. Handy, Al Green, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rufus Thomas, Sam Phillips, Dewey Phillips, or Justin Timberlake who best defines Memphis music. I’m going with Jim Dickinson. Compared to the aforementioned artists, James Luther Dickinson may appear to be a minor musical figure, but when you look under the rug—which one is required to do in order to fully appreciate anything about Memphis and its music—Jim becomes tremendously significant.
Houston's Full Moon Band Returns

Nov 8, 2024 | texashighways.com | Joe Nick Patoski |Danielle Lopez

In the late 1970s and early ’80s, rising singer-songwriters Shake Russell and Michael Marcoulier were following in the footsteps of Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker, and KT Oslin. The two played their original music around Houston’s then-fertile club scene.
An Age-Old Fight in the New West

Oct 30, 2024 | landreport.com | Joe Nick Patoski |Eric O'Keefe

It’s a familiar story: Big city needs water and is willing to pay for it. Property owners with extensive landholdings and abundant groundwater want to sell their water. Billionaires swoop in and buy surrounding acreage. Then, the local groundwater district redraws key boundaries restricting landowners’ ability to sell their water. Lawyers descend. Court battles ensue.
Meet the Friendliest Tour Guides in Texas

Oct 22, 2024 | texashighways.com | Joe Nick Patoski |Tyson Bird

Owner, Daphne’s Tour & Travel 806-576-8191Adkins has deep knowledge of historic Route 66 and Palo Duro Canyon—Texas’ Grand Canyon. “My family moved here in the ’40s, so I have wonderful firsthand stories of the oil boom, tornados, and Amarillo’s growth,” she says. “The Panhandle is not easy. The settlers survived some of the toughest conditions in Texas. They helped their neighbor; if they survived, you survived.
'American Folk Music' Honors the Lomax Family Legacy

Oct 14, 2024 | texashighways.com | Joe Nick Patoski |Danielle Lopez

Two years ago, I wrote a profile on John Lomax III, the scion of Texas’ (and America’s) first family of music folklore and father of the late journalist John Nova Lomax. At 78, John had made his stage debut, singing songs unearthed by his grandfather, the original John Lomax, his uncle Alan Lomax, his aunt Bess Lomax Hawes, and his father John Avery Lomax, Jr. He told stories about the songs various Lomaxes had found. I dubbed the presentation, Lomax on Lomax.
Gliding Through the Skies Over Marfa

Oct 11, 2024 | texashighways.com | Joe Nick Patoski |Danielle Lopez

Long before Marfa was an art town, a wedding events destination, the embodiment of small town cool—and even before the Marfa Lights—there was the Marfa Dry Line. It’s the invisible division where dry Pacific air meets warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico that made Far West Texas weather special. Burt Compton saw it as a teenager. “Dad and I came here in ’67 to fly,” he says. His father, a glider pilot who owned a glider port in south Florida, regarded Marfa highly.
In Search of Bozo Texino

Sep 11, 2024 | texashighways.com | Joe Nick Patoski |Danielle Lopez

Who is Bozo Texino? That’s a good question in need of some explaining. But better to ask first: What is Bozo Texino? Bozo Texino is graffiti. The marking is a simple image of a human head with a pipe or a hand-rolled cigarette—also known as a “quirly”—extending out of the side of the mouth, topped by a cowboy hat whose wide brim resembles the infinity symbol. Sometimes smoke-like dots rise above the cig.