Back in the second Clinton administration, when No Depression proudly billed itself as "The Alternative Country (whatever that is) bi-monthly magazine," no band seemed to carry more potential to bring this music into the mainstream with its integrity intact than Old 97's. Solidifying its four-man lineup in Dallas in 1993, the band -- an amalgamation of the Meat Puppets, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, The Replacements, Merle Haggard, and yeah, okay, The Beatles --......

The Old 97s made their triumphant return to the 9:30 Club last night. Photo by Lisa Johnson. Our Nation’s Capitol has seen a lot more of the emancipated Rhett Miller in recent years than it has of his band, Old 97s. Miller may write most of the songs for the hard-charging country-pop-punkabilly quartet, but somehow he’s only about one–eleventh as interesting when he doesn’t have Murry Hammond singing harmony and Ken Bethea blasting out those......

It's tempting to call Austin, Texas country-rocker Alejandro Escovedo the Forrest Gump of indie rock, but he deserves to be associated with a much better movie. In 1978, his first band, San Francisco punkers The Nuns, opened the last-ever Sex Pistols show prior to the Pistols' brief mid-90s reunion. He was living in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City when the Pistol's' Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen checked in; Spungen would......

The Smithsonian's annual Folk Life Festival begins today on the National Mall. It runs from June 25 to June 29, as well as July 2 to 6. Daytime events are open from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; special evening events begin at 6 p.m. when scheduled. Below are some of the highlights we've picked out, and we encourage you to check their full online schedule and map. This year's festival celebrates three themes: Bhutan: Land......

From Hieronymus Bosch to Asher B. Durand to John James Audubon, the influences inherent in John Alexander’s work are clear. His paintings and drawings run the gamut from landscapes to abstractions, making for a diverse and extraordinary exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. John Alexander: A Retrospective, with 40 paintings and 27 works on paper, opens today and runs through March 16. Alexander explores politics and religion in many of his works, infusing them......

It looks like Virginia's gunnin' for a fight -- pun intended. According to WTOP, Virginia has filed a brief in the Supreme Court challenging the District's gun ban, joining a number of states that are picking sides in what may be a historic decision on the reach of the Second Amendment. The case, which will be heard in March, could have a wide-reaching effect on gun laws and regulations nationwide. According to Virginia Attorney......

Last week, the Fenty administration announced an aggressive plan calling for the closure of 24 schools within the District of Columbia Public Schools system. Parents and concerned members of the community are now being invited to attend a series of public meetings where they can raise concerns directly with Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso. We've posted the full schedule below. Wards 1, 2 & 6: *Monday, Dec. 10 from......

Seeing A Tuna Christmas is like going home for the holidays. Not because my family clan is anything like the wacky clan of characters who make up Tuna, the third smallest town in Texas. But because the sense of humor, silly and pun-tastic, is exactly like my Dad's. And while I can't say it isn't amusing, it's kind of nice that I only really have to deal with it for extended periods of time when......

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2007 Recap from Super!Alright! on Vimeo. Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of Texas's only feminist bookstore. Throughout the week, they interviewed a bunch of indie fashion designers and D-I-Y websites—Etsy, Ornamental Things, 31 Corn Lane, and Aorta Designs—for the upcoming Stitch Fashion Show. They also did......

I was beginning to wonder if the Coen Brothers had lost it. About halfway through their ill-advised remake of the Ealing classic The Ladykillers, I was gripped by the same sort of sadness that comes with the childhood realization that your parents aren't infallible, nor do they have all the answers. For the first time in their filmmaking career, they seemed not just human, but deeply flawed. Redemption is a world away from directing Tom......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Repertory: Halloween Screams at the AFI Perhaps my favorite part of this time of year is the fact that on any given night, you can turn on the television, and somewhere on the dial you can find a movie about things that go bump in the night, creatures from the depths of Hell, or your garden......

We'd like to waste about $800 sitting in traffic this year, please. That, at least, is the average annual cost for Marylanders who choose to drive during peak periods, (yet another) new Texas Transportation Institute tells us via Capitol News Service and WTOP. The total congestion cost, the study says, is $3.1 billion annually. We can think of some pretty good things to do with an extra $800. And they have nothing to do with......

>> Looking to practice your Spanish comprehension? The Permanent Mission of Guatemala to the OAS is hosting an interesting free movie screening tonight at the Art Museum of the Americas -- but be warned, the film does not have English subtitles. Donde Acaban Los Caminos is based on the autobiographical novel by Mario Monteforte Toledo, about a young man who arrives in San Pedro La Laguna during the military dictatorship in the first decades of......

The most recent issue of Radar finds their staff assaying the state of all things “overrated,” and in their run up to their otherwise cogently stated listing on the subject, they basically intimate that Austin’s Okkervil River falls into that category. Know what? Not fair, not fair. Certainly, the band is currently aloft on their own mini-tidelet of bloggy acclaim — the sort that breeds backlashy cynicism in those prone to it. But try......

TUESDAY: Tomorrow is a treasure trove for science and sci-fi junkies. Our reviewer raved about The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula. Hear author Eric Nuzum muse on the undead at Wonderland Ballroom, 1101 Kenyon St. NW, which will offer drink specials, while Olsson's will have books for sale at the bar. Fangs and capes encouraged. 7 p.m. Over at Politics and Prose, author Ira Flatow will discuss his lengthily titled......

Good morning, Washington. It's only the end of September, but if drug store candy aisles are any indication, many of you are probably already thinking ahead just a little bit to the holiday season. What will you be for Halloween? Will you stay in town for Thanksgiving? What kind of Christmas bonus will you be getting this year? For some D.C. government employees, the answer to that last question is now up in the air.......

It's hardly the nicest stadium, but RFK Stadium holds a venerable place in Washington sports history. Open since 1962, when it was called District of Columbia Stadium, the venue has hosted two MLB franchises, the Washington Redskins during their glory years, the most successful MLS club ever, international soccer tournaments, concerts, and on and on. It even hosted Team America! Sunday's final Nats home game, a 5-3 win over the Phillies, isn't the last......

>> Payday lending reform legislation passes in the D.C. Council, Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry's bizarre change of heart on the matter notwithstanding. [City Desk] >> It's likely that the Texas State Bar is probing the professional conduct of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. [Huffington Post] >> A water main break at Third Street and Constitution Avenue NW this morning caused U.S. District and D.C. Superior courts to be shut down all day, but......

2001 was a good year for Radiohead clones. Muse released their second album, Origin of Symmetry, to the fanfare of British rock critics. Coldplay finally attained mainstream success in the United States. And Travis cemented their international popularity with the Nigel Godrich-produced The Invisible Band. Meanwhile, in Denton, Texas (about as far away from Oxford as you can get), five jazz students at the University of North Texas released an EP under the name Midlake.......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

When this photo popped in the DCist Flickr Group, I assumed that epmd had gone on a trip out west somewhere — Texas, Utah, something like that. But no, this is our very own Anacostia River! As furcafe notes in the comments, it looks like one of those natural history museum dioramas. We almost expect to see pronghorns having a drink. And adding to the wackiness, the shot was taken by a camera from......

Good morning, Washington. After such a long, hot week, that was some beautiful weekend, wasn't it? And apparently, the beauty of the weekend is spilling out on to Monday morning: Karl Rove, President Bush's controversial deputy chief of staff and senior political adviser, will resign at the end of August. After he packs up his Palisades home and heads back to the Texas Hill Country, Rove will reportedly leave politics and plans to write......

Jeff Antoniuk grew up listening to 1970s and 80s R&B, and funk like Michael Jackson, Earth Wind and Fire, and Average White Band, in addition to the required Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. He then discovered jazz fusion, which then led to classic acoustic jazz. In between all of this, he was studying classical piano classical theory and his master’s studies also included world music and ethnomusicology. The result is a wide range of......

As you'll of course recall from back in late March, during the House floor debate on the voting rights issue, Rep. Louie Gohmert volunteered to represent the interests of the District's voters in the House of Representatives. Considering we still don't have a full voting member of our own, we kindly thanked the congressman by asking all of you to get in touch with Rep. Gohmert so that he could address your concerns personally.......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......

“Before there was Harlem, there was U Street,” and before there was national Prohibition, there was the Sheppard Act. Passed by a Congress intent on making the District of Columbia a beacon of temperance for the saloon-soaked nation, the Sheppard Act closed Washington’s four breweries and nearly three hundred licensed liquor establishments on November 1, 1917—two years before it outlawed the sale of alcohol in the rest of the country. Congressman Morris Sheppard successfully had......

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing! Gothamist headed into the Memorial Day weekend with a number of tasks accomplished. They worried about Long Islanders giving New Yorkers a bad name. They tried......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

>> Didn't get a chance to attend one of the Eastern Market benefit happy hours last week? The E Street Austin Grill will donate 33 percent of its food sales after 5 p.m. tonight to the Capitol Hill Community Foundation's "Eastern Market—Keep It Going" fund. 750 E Street, NW in The Lansburgh. >> !!! (chk, chk, chk) stop by the 9:30 Club in support of their new album Myth Takes. With Canada's Holy Fuck. $18.......