Coming in Rocktober: The Texas Book Festival

The author lineup is out for the 2015 Texas Book Festival (a great time on the festival circuit, the literary world’s equivalent of South By Southwest), and I’m very pleased to report that yours truly made the cut. I’ll be appearing with my “Comin’ Right at Ya” subject/co-writer, the legendary Ray Benson, and we’ll be doing…well, something.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure just what Ray and I are going to do yet, or even where or when; maybe some sort of Q&A session involving an Asleep at the Wheel performance. But I can tell you that it will happen sometime on Oct. 18 in Austin — and I believe it will be a free event. This will be my second time at TBF, following a very fun and enlightening 2012 appearance when I was promoting “Losering.”

The one and only Ray Benson.

Me aside, it’s a great-looking lineup of authors featuring Kristin Hersh (about whom I’ve raved at some length in this space) among the other festival participants. Other music-related participants include my fellow rock scribes Jessica Hopper and “Dean of American Rock Critics” Robert Christgau; and from the non-music end, a long-ago News & Observer co-worker of mine, Joby Warrick (nowadays a certifiably big deal Washington Post reporter, promoting a mighty important-looking book called “Black Flags: The Rise of Isis”).

Golly, the Austin Chronicle is referring to the author list as “The Mighty 300.” And here’s some more love for the lineup from the Dallas Morning News.