Grupo Fantasma at Antone's in 2008 | photo © Daniel Perlaky

Indie music. It's the churnin', burnin', bleedin', cheatin' heart of the live music industry. Artists who revel in their craft live here: players who earned their stripes by giving it up on small stages 200 days a year; singers who know exactly where you keep your tear ducts; writers who somehow manage to tell your story better than you do....

It's guys like, well, Guy Forsyth, who founded a sound big enough to incorporate the tuba, the singing saw and the ukulele — and make it all seem quite natural. Or Gary Nicholson, just showing up - either as himself or as his alter-ego, blues dude Whitey Johnson - sometimes with Delbert McClinton in tow. It's Ruthie Foster, who turned a childhood filled with hymnals and Beatles and country music variety shows into a sound that honors all of those influences, but not so's you could pick one out. It wasn't about a genre to Foster: "I just took it all in as great music - music that moved me."

At Publik Music we think we owe these guys. We think they deserve a wider audience, a bigger stage, a bunch more gigs at the really great places where Texas goes to listen to music that moves them. That's why we pioneered indie music on demand in conjunction with Time-Warner Cable. And along the way showed legions of new fans what Malford Milligan and Eliza Gilkyson and the late Stephen Bruton were like behind the Klieg lights. That's why we helped launch the Public Music Texas Showcase, promoting indie opening acts for national headliners at minor-league ballparks. It's a boost up for Stacy Barnhill and Uncle Lucius and the Paula Nelson Band and Ariel Abshire - opening at Dell Diamond July 4, 2009, for Jerry Jeff Walker and Kellie Pickler.

The Nielsen people say 30 million people watched the American Idol finale last May. It was great television; great theater. But we say that when that pulsing, driving rhythm starts rising in the middle of your next daydream, it won't be that Kris Allen moment. It'll be the memory of what it was like rockin' your version of cumbia to Grupo Fantasma at ACL Fest. It's music that moves you.


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