ABOUT

I’m an author, musician and artist. I live in Austin, Texas with my wife, Lois Richwine, and a bunch of cats. We have a teenage son, Dashiell, who is smarter and more adept as a musician than I will ever be.

My crime novels include Rock Critic Murders, Tough Baby and Boiled in Concrete. Protagonist Martin Fender is a blues bass player who moonlights as a skip tracer and problem solver in Austin, Texas. My memoir, Never the Same Again: A Rock n’ Roll Gothic, was published in 2004. That book is actually a darker, more violent book than my crime novels. More info on MY BOOKS page.

Typically I write about music, crime, film noir and noir fiction, nature and historical topics. My work has been published in the New York Times, Texas Observer, Texas Monthly, the Austin Chronicle and various other places. For years I wrote extensively for the History Channel.

I’ve also written for reality TV and other fiction and nonfiction television and film projects, including a film, “Deep in the Heart (of Texas),” which I adapted from a play. I also do ghost writing of books.

If you’ve heard me referred to as a Texas Music Legend , you may want to read about my band, THE SKUNKS, which I founded the band with Eddie Munoz and Billy Blackmon in 1977. The Skunks are listed in Wikipedia, too. Caution, there are numerous other bands in the US (and at least one in Germany and another in the UK) called The Skunks, so if you Google us, include “Austin” in the search terms.

A recent interview here on Rag Radio by a true Austin legend, Thorne Dreyer, plus 3 songs recorded live in the studio during the interview.

A little noir music? I’d like you to hear some of my demos of my favorite songs I’ve written in the last couple of years here More tunes are posted here REVERBNATION and most can be downloaded for free.

CURRENT PROJECTS: a nonfiction crime book about Austin in the fifties and sixties (read about the Overton Gang here).

.. plus a book I worked extensively on about the Waco State Home with Sherry Matthews, published by UT Press in 2011. The title is: We Were Not Orphans: Stories from Waco State Home. With a forward by Robert Draper.

AND … a book on Homer Maxey, a wealthy, powerful developer, civic leader and philanthropist from Lubbock who lost all his money in the 1960s in a controversial bank foreclosure, also the father of internationally renowned sculptor Glenna Goodacre. My co-author is Broadus Spivey, an Austin attorney and former president of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers.

ART? Check out my ART BLOG or just go straight to the GALLERY STORE.

BIG IN FRANCE??? in May 2011 13e Note Editions of France published an anthology of my fiction, nonfiction, lyrics and excerpts from all my books, plus art from my Little Black Books. The title is Une Vie En Noir (A life of noir/black).

The Skunks are still alive, featuring me on bass and vocals and Jon Dee Graham on guitar. The band was indicted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2008 and are credited with being the band that helped put Austin on the international map of rock n’ roll. A pretty good story about us in the Chronicle here.

Some of the famous people who jammed with the Skunks include Blondie, Elvis Costello, The Clash, Cheap Trick… We opened for The Police in ’79, also for The Cramps, Ramones, Dictators, and too many to mention.

NOW PLAYING: I also play clubs with various ensembles, performing my original compositions, blues and murder ballads. Sometimes it’s called Jesse Sublett & the Big Three Trio, other times I play with my great pal, Jon Dee Graham.

You can also check my art blog. As you will see, I am a fan of Picasso, Joan Miro and the female form.