Sitting down in a restaurant and having the waiter/waitress ask you, “Is this your first time to dine with us,” is not an unusual experience. What is unusual though is if you ever hear from the restaurant again when your answer is “yes”. Most often they tell you how the salad bar works, or that the peanuts are free and you can throw then on the ground, or some other operational aspect of the restaurant, but it could be so much more. Such a missed opportunity.

The pretty version of my interview with Cody Canada and Jeremy Plato is online now. Check it out here.

We celebrated our company’s Christmas party last night at a local restaurant. My wife and I went early so we could grab something quick to eat before everyone else arrived. As we waited for our meals to be served I thought about the next chapter of my life.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, mostly due to the fact that I have been interviewing many different people for the feature I’m writing for the next issue of the magazine. I have come to the realization that, with no journalism …

It’s that time of the decade where people are compiling all kinds of lists. Richard Skanse of Texas Music Magazine asked me to give him my top ten of the decade for a big list they are compiling. I balked at first, unable to come up with more than two or three, but when Richard reminded me that it was my favorite albums of the decade and not The Best Albums of the decade, it was no trouble at all.
I’ve spent this decade working in the Texas Music industry. Though …

The following is an interview I did with Cody Canada and Jeremy Plato for the cover story of LoneStarMusic Magazine during the fall of 2009.

Happiness and All the Other Things. Sounds good, doesn’t it? It’s an apt title for the tenth album from Cross Canadian Ragweed in this, their fifteenth year as a band.

While two members of the band – Grady Cross (rhythm guitar) and Randy Ragsdale (drums) – are back in their home base of Oklahoma, happiness is certainly the theme at an early lunch of sushi as …

While I was doing the story on Ryan Bingham for LoneStarMusic Magazine, the band was kind enough to let me take some pictures. Elijah Ford was busy preparing for his driving test during the sessions (and was good at hiding from the camera), so there are very few pics of him among my hundred or so total.
Here are 20 of the shots, including some of the pics that ran with the story in the magazine.
All images are copyright Michael Devers. Use by permission only.
Hope you enjoy!

I spent a couple of days in the studio with Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses for LoneStarMusic Magazine as they recorded Roadhouse Sun. It was one of my favorite stories to write. I had to fly blind with it some as the record would come out almost a year after we went to press. Here’s my story:
Captain Guitar, the Confused Protestor, and a Hobo
the new world of Ryan Bingham
Monday night at Saengerhalle was open mic night. This was back in late 2002 and I booked the venue so I …

Randy Rogers Q&A
by Michael Devers
September 2008

Yes, the Randy Rogers Band is on Mercury Nashville. Yes, their label mates include Sugarland, Billy Currington, and Bon Jovi. And yes, they will be making an appearance during the annual Nashville orgy know as Fan Fest. But if there’s anyone out there yelling “sellout!” they’re either not paying attention or they’re just willfully ignorant.
To start with, the lead track on the band’s new CD, Randy Rogers Band, wasn’t written by some Nashville “song doctor”, or for that matter, even by Randy Rogers. …

From his new book, What the Dog Saw, a collection of essays that originally appeared in New Yorker magazine.
The Pitchman
Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen
8,737 words
The Ketchup Conundrum
Mustard now comes in dozens of varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same?
5,332 words.
Blowing Up
How Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy
7,787 words
True Colors
Hair dye and the hidden history of postwar America
7,167 words
John Rock’s Error
What the co-inventor of the Pill didn’t know about women’s health
7,373
What the Dog Saw
Cesar Millan and the movements of mastery
unavaialable
Open Secrets
Enron, intelligence, and …

Music Edition
I find that people who don’t know much about music tend to ask the same few questions when given the task of interviewing an artist. I’m guessing there’s an equivalent in every line of work, but I’ll leave it to someone else to inform us of the complete list of banal questions in politics (“What’s it feel like to be a senator/congressman/president?”), movies (“What’s it like to be famous?”) or plumbing (“Why did you choose urine and feces as your work medium?”).
For music though, here are the questions that …