Alexander is a young country singer/songwriter who has a new album coming out. She has a beautiful, soulful voice, and engaging demeanor and sounds little like Lucinda Williams or Mary Gaulthier. At one point, she brought Australian singer/songwriter Jedd Hughes (RIYL: Ryan Adams or Tim Carroll) up on stage to cover a duet of Buddy and Julie Miller’s “Keep Your Distance,” which is a beautiful song. At another point, she began to sing “This World is Crazy,” a song written after the Columbine shootings, but became overwhelmed with emotion. Visibly choked up, she stopped, restarted, then perservered. It’s not you see music this genuine.

We dashed off to the Austin Music Hall to catch Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez next, but managed to see the end of “Class of 78,” a punk supergroup made up of people even I am too old to remember. One of them was in the Big Boys, so they did “Red Green,” but I like the Throw Rag version better. We were then subjected to the Austin Music Awards, with most of the awards being given out by folks from 101X, a radio station I will NEVER listen too based solely on the shitty radio personalities they seem to employ. I believe the Austin Music Awards are the equivalent of the Orange County Music Awards, i.e., they mean almost nothing except to the people involved. Bands who were cleaning up in awards included the Greencards, Los Lonely Boys, and Wide Awake. I would have liked to hear these bands, but they weren’t playing, and I couldn’t take one more minute of the damn awards!

Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez played, but their set was painfully short. Highlights included Red Volkaert on guitar, Earl Poole Ball on piano, and Kevin Smith on bass. They performed hits from their recent release, “The Trouble with Humans,” as well as a countrified version of Taylor’s classic hit, “Wild Thing.”

Even though Jen beseeched us to stay for Los Lonely Boys, I couldn’t take one more minute of the bad awards show, so we toddled off to barhop on 6th Street and wound up at Buffalo Billiard’s for Lucero. This Memphis-based band has been compared to The Replacements, Whiskeytown, and Uncle Tupelo, but they remind me more of a cross of Son Volt and the Drive By Truckers (who of course all borrow from the previous bands). The problem is that most of their songs sound the same to me – wistful and witty guitar-heavy alt. country – the good thing is that it’s a really good song, so I guess it’s okay if there’s only one. To close the night, lead singer Ben Nichols performed a solo song with only guitar accompaniment. What a great way to end the night.