Houston Calling

Winners in the Houston Press Music Awards

August 6th, 2005 · No Comments

If you’ve read this week’s Houston Press this is probably old news, but I wanted to congratulate all of this year’s Houston Press Music Award winners. I will keep my opinions to myself on this one — you cast your votes (or didn’t, as the case may be).

As expected, Michael Haaga and company were the big winners, walking away with Album of the Year (The Plus and Minus Show), Songwriter of the Year, Song of the Year (for “If and When”), Local Artist of the Year, and Kelly Doyle for Best Guitarist (Doyle plays with Haaga, Clouseaux, and Three Fantastic).

Another shocker (uh huh) was in the Best Jazz category — of course, Drop Trio won it. But they also won for Best Funk/R&B/Reggae and keyboardist Ian Varley was awarded the Best Keyboardist tag.

The surprises keep coming: DJ Sun won Best DJ, Bring Back The Guns won for Best Indie Rock, and John Evans won for Best Male Vocalist and Best Roots Rock/Rockabilly. Lisa Novak won for Best Female Vocalist. And despite some figuring Arthur Yoria for it, Los Skarnales won Best Rock en Espa?ol and their bassist, Nick Gaitan beat out long-time frontrunner Rozz Zamorano (Fondue Monks) for the Best Bassist nod.

Since Houston’s increasingly becoming the new Atlanta when it comes to rap and hip-hop (watch me jump on the bandwagon with an upcoming interview with one of the best relatively unknown hip-hop acts in the city), there was a Best Major-Label Hip-hop category (Mike Jones was the winner there). And although I have a rule about using words like this on the site, Chingo Bling won for Best Indie Hip-hop.

Best Punk finally went to the Fatal Flying Guilloteens — deservedly so. Sevrin won for Best Metal. LoneStar PornStar beat out several great bands for the Best Alt-Rock award. Paul (“the Falcon”) Valdez‘s laid-back yet incredible drumming for Tody Castillo garnered him the Best Drummer award. Best Blues goes to Texas Johnny Brown, while the award for Best Pop-Punk goes to O’Doyle Rules.

Of course, Moses Guest won for Best Jam/Improvisational Rock Band.

Other winners include:

Zydeco Dots, Best Zydeco
The Handsomes, Best Rock/Pop
The Gypsies, Best World Music
Hayes Carll, Best Folk/Acoustic
Molly & The Ringwolds, Best Cover Band
Mango Punch, Best Salsa/Reggaet?n/Latin Pop
Sean Reefer and the Resin Valley Boys, Best C&W
The Last Place You Look, Best Screamo/Hardcore

Congrats to all winners. More information can be found on the Houston Press website.

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Tags: Music