Texas Review
Luck Reunion at Willie Nelson's Luck, Texas Ranch in Spicewood, Texas on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Luck Reunion is a music festival in Willie Nelson’s backyard of "Luck, Texas". Nearly 10 years ago, a group of friends came together with a vision for a new kind of live music experience. They wanted to honor the cross-section culture that has long motivated creative tradition, to preserve traditions in music, food, and craft, and to create a stage for modern-day outliers who are influenced by the legacies like Nelson and others.

Luckily, they had the keys to the private Luck, Texas property, and the singular opportunity to open its gates to people who value artistic tradition and want to do the legwork to discover talent that reflects Luck's cultural heritage. What started as a one-day event each March, the Luck Reunion, has grown into a community, a platform for us to share the ethos of Luck and bring together musicians, chefs, and artisans who are contributing to American roots culture in an authentic way.

Luck, Texas was built in 1985 as the backdrop for the film "Red Headed Stranger" and is an old west town located in Willie Nelson’s backyard on the outskirts of Austin. The journey to Luck started in 1979 when Willie and dear friend Bill Wittliff set out to make a film version of Willie’s concept album of the same name. While the original screenplay ended with the town burning down, Nelson had grown attached to the set and called for a change in order to preserve the property. The star built his own home on the sprawling land, just a short drive up the road from the set, and Luck, Texas was born.

Beyond its fading facades, Luck became a longtime gathering place for Willie and his contemporaries to come together and inspire one another through song, a sort of scaled-down extension of anti-scene Austin landmarks like Armadillo World Headquarters and Austin Opry House.

Over the years as the boot prints from the past began to fade, Luck primarily served as Willie’s private hang, for games of poker in the "World Headquarters" building and Easter celebrations in the chapel. In 2012 a group of barstool dreamers with ties to the location set out to revive the town’s spirit with experiences inspired by its unique history. With Nelson’s blessing, the seeds for Luck Reunion were planted. Luck Reunion, a misfit group of young believers, Nelson family members, and Willie’s personal team, hopes to honor the creative origins of the magical space, and contribute to the all-inclusive and fascinating culture of the illustrious town.

The event marks more than a decade of Luck Presents throwing music celebrations on the property. The beloved Reunion boasts more than 40 acts, culinary experiences with chefs from around the country, and unique experiences throughout the town, giving music lovers the rare opportunity to hang out in Nelson’s backyard, nestled in the rolling hill country just outside of Austin. 
A unique and very enjoyable experience. Relatively small sold out crowd. All we behaved. Most acts near on time. Many quality food trucks. All beverages free of charge. Willie’s village is a great place to sample new bands. Willie capped the evening. Fine day.

We had a wonderful time and saw many acts. The music was awesome and the weather was perfect. The sitting areas, cold water and Tito's were great ideas. I had such fun at Luck Reunion. It was a well planned venue for music lovers with professional and friendly people . We were thrilled to visit Willie's ranch. We want to return next year. Thank you!

This is the best venue I've ever been to. Singers and bands playing different music and it's all so good, different genres and somehow it all comes out so beautifully! It is wonderful under the stars of Texas. Willie and the Luck Team do a fantastic job of making everyone feel at home.

Great music and performances supporting great musicians!

Beautiful place and wonderful people! Super atmosphere! Fantastic music that was all day long, I had the best time ever!

Great music and vibe at the Luck Reunion. Cool people, great food, and did I mention the drinks?

The most magical place in the world! You may need a little luck to get in, but once you do, you’ll never forget it. Thank you, Willie & family!

The great music and awesome vibe, and Willie on stage!

This is an amazing event. All walks of people to meet, plenty of stuff to look at and entertain you. The bands are always amazing. The staff are very helpful and amazing. I love how clean this place stays through out the whole event and the food trucks did a great job as well love the variety of choices. Thank you for all that you do keep up the great work.

Best music festival experience ever. Tons of talent, cool vibes and great food. Thank you for sharing your beautiful ranch with us. Willie is as amazing as ever!
Luck Reunion lineup
  • A Tribute to Doug Sahm & The Texas Tornados featuring Shawn Sahm and Friends
  • A Song for Leon: A Tribute to Leon Russell featuring Beau Bedford, Robert Ellis, and Special Guests
  • Angel White
  • Arcy Drive
  • Black Opry Revue featuring Sug Daniels, Aaron Vance, Nikki Morgan & Nicky Diamonds
  • BMI Songwriters Circle featuring John Baumann, Bella White and Poet Hawkins
  • Bob Schneider
  • Dallas Burrow
  • Devon Gilfillian
  • Drayton Farley
  • Elvie Shane
  • Eric D. Johnson
  • Ethel Cain
  • Guster
  • Hermanos Gutiérrez
  • J. Creek Cloggers
  • Jaime Wyatt
  • Jason Scott & The High Heat
  • Jimmie Dale Gilmore & The West Texas Exiles
  • Katie Pruitt
  • Matthew Logan Vasquez
  • Night Cap
  • Particle Kid
  • Pearla
  • Peter One
  • Rattlesnake Milk
  • Sadurn
  • Shane Smith & The Saints
  • Sierra Ferrell
  • Sir Woman
  • Spoon
  • Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band
  • The Band of Heathens
  • The Heavy Heavy
  • The War and Treaty
  • Thee Sacred Souls
  • Wild Child
  • Willie Nelson & Family
  • Willis Alan Ramsey

Spoon

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Spoon performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Spoon was formed in Austin in 1993 by lead singer and guitarist Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno. Following a 1994 EP release the band signed to Matador Records, debuting their first full-length album Telephono to mixed reviews in 1996.

By the time the band released the Soft Effects EP in 1997 they had begun to hone in on the more polished, minimal sound they would become known for, but it wasn't until they released the album Girls Can Tell in 2001 that they finally achieved breakthrough success.

A string of critically and commercially successful albums followed throughout the decade, including two No. 1 records on the Top Independent Albums chart, 2005's Gimme Fiction and 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. With their highly anticipated eighth album They Want My Soul hitting shelves in 2014, Spoon has fans eagerly awaiting their next live shows.


Night Cap

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Night Cap performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Night Cap is an Austin, TX based indie/alternative rock band comprised of Jake Bomgaars, Ryan King, Alex Alfonso, and Adrian Ayala. Since their formation in 2017, they've released 9 singles, an EP entitled 'Petals' and an Audiotree live studio session. Numerous songs have been played on radio stations, and wide streaming playlists.

With over 3 Million aggregate Spotify streams, and tens of sold out shows between Austin, Houston and Dallas, Night Cap has captured a large audience with their energetic, and emotional build. They performed at Austin City Limits Music Festival in 2019, Audiotree Live in 2020, and partnering shows with artists such as Dayglow, Briston Maroney, Moon Taxi, and most recently, Mt. Joy. Currently they are working on their first full length album with the help of credited musician/producer, Benjamin Barsocchini of Slenderbodies.


Leon Russell Tribute

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Leon Russell Tribute at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Leon Russell is a music legend and perhaps the most accomplished and versatile musician in the history of rock 'n roll. In his distinguished and unique 50 year career, he has played on, arranged, written and/or produced some of the best records in popular music.


Sir Woman

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Sir Woman performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Sir Woman is the new musical project from Wild Child / Glorietta singer Kelsey Wilson. Started in 2019 as a way for Wilson to write and record the styles of music that inspire her - Soul, Funk, RnB, Gospel - the project quickly garnered massive attention around their home base of Austin, TX. In 2020, after just a handful of shows and single releases, Sir Woman was dubbed "Best New Act" at the Austin Music Awards.

During the pandemic, Sir Woman released a five song EP (appropriately) titled Bitch. With the massive lead single "Highroad," the collection has already passed 14.5 million streams on Spotify, and led to radio airplay across the U.S. Now that concerts have resumed, Sir Woman has also cemented their status as one of the funniest shows anywhere with sold out club dates and festival appearances around Austin as well as tour dates opening for Black Pumas and Shakey Graves.

Now the band is ready to introduce the rest of the country to the party. The Sir Woman self-titled full-length was released in April 2022, and tour dates throughout the U.S. are planned for the next several months.


Margo Price

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Margo Price performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Margo Price has something to say but nothing to prove. In just three remarkable solo albums, the singer and songwriter has cemented herself as a force in American music and a generational talent. A deserving critical darling, she has never shied away from the sounds that move her, the pain that's shaped her, or the topics that tick her off, like music industry double standards, the gender wage gap, or the plight of the American farmer. (In 2021, she even joined the board of Farm Aid.)

Now, on her fourth full-length Strays, a clear-eyed mission statement delivered in blistering rock and roll, she's taking on substance abuse, self-image, abortion rights, and orgasms. Musically extravagant but lyrically laser focused, the 10-song record tears into a broken world desperate for remedy. And who better to tell it? Price has done plenty of her own rebuilding--or as she shout sings in explanation on "Been to the Mountain," the set's throat-ripping opener, "I have to the mountain and back alright"--and finds herself, at long last, free. Feral. Stray.

Moving from the sparse folk of her 2016 debut, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, into the rollicking roots of its follow up, All American Made, the following year, and, in 2020, into classic rock with Rumors, Price has established herself as a sonic explorer of the finest ilk. Still, she says, "This could be too out-there for people. But I just have this morality where I feel like, m."

And this does sound different. Louder, lusher. More layered. Price and her band recorded the set across a blissful week in Topanga Canyon, California, at producer Jonathan Wilson's Fivestar Studio in the summer of 2021. (A smaller second batch would get tracked in Music City, months later.) Wilson, who has helmed sets from Angel Olsen, Father John Misty, and Dawes in recent years, created a space for Price and her band--a longtime troupe that's been honing their kinetic, even raucous, live show since before Midwest Farmer's Daughter--to traverse new sounds and influences confidently.

Album opener "Been To The Mountain" showcases her "hard-living swagger" (The New York Times), while the Mike Campbell-assisted "Light Me Up" lays down a searing, explicit epic. "Radio," a buoyant guitar track featuring Sharon Van Etten, embraces sunny pop melodies. While the dobro- and pedal steel-laden "Hell in the Heartland," which Price penned in the immediate, uneasy aftermath of quitting drinking, builds towards a cacophony of distorted vocals and synthesizers.

Rock and roll, psychedelic country, rhythm & blues, and even bright shiny pop, they're all there on Strays, but as each refract through her artistry, that delicate vocal and unhurried delivery, they come out sounding singularly her. While the last few years have seen remarkable moments of acclaim--a Best New Artist Grammy nomination, Americana Music Honors, a Saturday Night Live performance, and just about every outlet and critics' year-end Best Of list--Price is still hungry. "I still have a lot of drive inside of me," she says. "I have a chip on my shoulder. It feels like I still haven't been able to fully realize all my dreams yet, and that eats me up." Just wait.


Tami Neilson

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Tami Neilson performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

From being cradled as a baby in the arms of Roy Orbison, to performing a duet with Willie Nelson, you would think that Tami Neilson lived a country music fantasy life. However, in between these monumental occurrences, The Neilson Family Band, with Tami’s parents, and two brothers, were having to busk in the streets of small-town Ontario in order to put food on the table, performing gospel concerts to prisoners, and roaring down the Trans-Canada Highway in an exploding RV on her way to open for Johnny Cash, which she managed to do, at 18 years old, in her pajamas.

And then Tami left to start her own family on the other side of the world in New Zealand, where she now resides. Her busking chops served her well, as she took to the streets of Auckland looking for her big break. From open mic nights to clubs, to then headlining theatres and major festivals across New Zealand, Tami has now won almost every music award possible.

2022 now brings Tami’s 5th album, Kingmaker. Recorded at Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studios, Kingmaker was born of the pandemic. A moment when women were struggling. Frontline workers fighting for human lives. Essential services providers. Disproportionately affected by furlough: a “she-cession,” analysts termed it. Women put their dreams and careers on hold to care for their families and homeschool children. They mobilized online to bring awareness to domestic abuse and systemic inequalities. They marched in the streets for the lives of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and the remains of more than 1,700 indigenous children found in mass graves of former residential schools in Canada.

The songs of Kingmaker exposes industry systems, exploding patriarchal structures of the industry, society, and family. These are not new themes for Tami - both her 2018 album Sassafrass! and 2020 Chickaboom! called attention to misogyny and patriarchal structures. But Kingmaker draws out this theme further. In the opening, title track, Tami calls out the men that control the industry and create “kings” of its male artists. But the song flips the script: with the cinematic flair of a Bond film, Tami puts women in the seat of power. Speaking for a collective of kingmakers, speaking sharply, speaking with irritation, she challenges what bell hooks (Talking Back) terms the politics of domination that render women nameless and voiceless in the industry. This is not a breakdown or a collapse. This is a revolt

Tami questions gender roles and expectations of women in society. She shines a light on misogyny and sexual misconduct that pervades the music industry. Before they’re too grown to see… She sings of the underestimation of women, of their strength, power, fierceness, and resilience in the face of structural, and cultural barriers to their full participation in society.  Grief is central to this narrative. There’s the grief of loss. After finding a work tape of her father Ron Neilson of music for an unfinished song, Tami wrote the lyrics that completed “I Can Forget” – a song about being caught unexpectedly by grief. This theme continues in Tami’s duet with Willie Nelson on “Beyond the Stars.” There’s also the grief that comes with realizing that the music that runs in your blood is tainted and poisonous for women and people of colour.

Tami’s story is at the centre of this feminist tapestry. “King of Country Music” reveals her country music lineage: singing with Queen of Country music Kitty Wells at the age of 10, touring with her family, slipping demo tapes in laundry bags of stars. Unlike the male stars who inherited their position by virtue of being white men in a system built by and for white men, this song addresses the challenges that women face earning their place in the industry. The story of Tami Neilson is just taking shape, from her humble beginnings and tireless work ethic, and success, on her own terms. Tami Neilson is now using her voice to be a game changer, a cage shaker, a Kingmaker.


Poet Hawkins

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Poet Hawkins performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

The sound of a heart breaking, and slowing put itself back together. It takes bravery to write with the kind of threadbare honesty Poet Hawkins achieves in his songs. His voice is reminiscent of Alexi Murdoch, Nick Drake, he approaches music as a man untouched by the current relentlessness of our increasingly fast paced world; he bids the listener to slow his or her mind to a pace where it becomes possible to hear, to feel, and love.


Sierra Ferrell

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Sierra Ferrell performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

With her spellbinding voice and time-bending sound, Sierra Ferrell makes music that’s as fantastically vagabond as the artist herself. Growing up in West Virginia, the singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist got her start belting out Shania Twain songs in a local bar at the age of seven, and left home in her early 20s to journey across the country with a troupe of wandering musicians. “I met all these homeless kids who were traveling all over the place and playing amazing old songs, and I wanted to be a part of that,” says Ferrell, who played everywhere from truck stops to alleyways to freight-train boxcars speeding down the railroad tracks. “The music they were making was so honest, so pure. It seemed important to bring that kind of music back, and it’s been with me ever since.”

After years of living in her van and busking on the streets of New Orleans and Seattle, Ferrell moved to Nashville and started landing gigs around town. Soon enough, her magnetic live show drew the attention of Rounder Records, who signed Ferrell in 2019. To date, she’s enchanted audiences at major festivals like The Avett Brothers at the Beach, AmericanaFest, and Out on The Weekend, and also shared the stage with the likes of Trampled by Turtles, Parker Millsap, Charley Crockett, and The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band.


Michael Martin Murphey

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Michael Martin Murphey performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Michael Martin Murphey’s musical journey has taken many unpredictable paths over the past 50 years. Topping the Pop, Country, Western and Bluegrass charts, Murphey has never been one to rest on his laurels. A loyal American son from Texas, Murphey is best known for his chart-topping hits “Wildfire,” Carolina In The Pines,” “What’s Forever For,” “Long Line of Love,” “Geronimo’s Cadillac”, “Cowboy Logic,” and many more across his 35 albums released to date.


Black Opry

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Black Opry performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Black Opry is home for Black artists, fans and industry professionals working in country, Americana, blues, and folk music. Country and roots music have been made and loved by Black people since their conception. For just as long, we have been overlooked and disregarded in the genre. Black Opry is changing that.


Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Terry Allen is an independent artist working since 1966 in a wide variety of media including musical and theatrical performances, sculpture, painting, drawing and video, and installations which incorporate any and all of these media.


Matthew Logan Vasquez

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Matthew Logan Vasquez performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Best-known as the co-founder and frontman for shape-shifting heartland indie rockers Delta Spirit, Matthew Logan Vasquez's fiery delivery and thought-provoking lyrics draw from a huge and versatile well of influences, including Gram Parsons, Kurt Cobain, Neil Young, and Iggy Pop.


Shawn Sahm & The Texas Tornados

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Shawn Sahm & The Texas Tornados performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Texas Tornados was a Tejano band and its music was a fusion of rock, country and various Mexican styles. The initial combination of these musicians happened almost by chance at a concert performance of a mutual acquaintance. After Freddy Fender, Flaco Jimenez, Augie Meyers and Doug Sahm performed in front of a San Francisco audience, they all knew the genuine bond they felt in their music could probably be taken to another level. After they initially performed as the Tex-Mex Revue, they took the title Texas Tornados, after Sahm's song and album of that name.


Devon Gilfillian

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Devon Gilfillian performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Growing up in Philadelphia on a steady diet of R&B, hip-hop, rock, blues, and soul music, Gilfillian gravitated to records that ignited his mind while making his body move. For him, listening to the towering icons of his musician father's era- - Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, The Temptations -was just as formative and exciting as discovering the new sounds of his own generation, and the beats and rhymes made by rising rap stars like Wu-Tang Clan, Kanye West, The Notorious B.I.G., and JAY-Z inspired him in new ways.

He began to recognize a connective thread in the sounds he loved best: from the golden throwbacks sampled by the hip-hop beat makers to the raw, emotional vocal deliveries of the Motown greats, for Gilfillian the key ingredient seemed to be the "soul"-not simply the genre, but the feeling and vibe. Following his electrifying 2016 debut EP with upbeat singles like "High" and "Troublemaker" in 2018, Gilfillian signed to Capitol Records and hit the road-performing with the likes of Anderson East, Keith Urban, Gladys Knight, KALEO, The Fray, Mavis Staples, and more. In early 2019, Gilfillian traveled to Africa to find healing and inspiration before headlining a tour in Scandinavia and opening for Brothers Osborne on their spring tour.


Bob Schneider

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Bob Schneider performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Bob Schneider is the son to an operatic singer, Schneider learned to play the piano and guitar at a young age and began to perform at his parents’ parties. Prior to his solo career, the singer played in a number of bands including the funk-rock outfit Joe Rockhead, which he dropped out of the University of Texas at El Paso to contribute fully to. After three independent releases the band split and Schneider joined funk-fused jam-band the Ugly Americans, which signed to Capricorn Records.

After co-founding the band The Scabs, the musician left the band life to pursue a solo career, which would take a more acoustic approach than he had previously. His debut album released through Universal was called “Lonelyland” and was also the moniker Schneider used when he first went solo. The song “Big Blue Sea” from the album received a steady stream of radio airplay, with follow up “Metal & Steel” the musician's most played song.

2004’s sophomore full-length “I’m Good Now” was released by Vanguard Records to positive acclaim. Due to a stipulation in contract with his labels Universal and Vanguard “Lonelyland” and “I’m Good Now” were also released as a side-project on his own Shockorama Records label. Schneider’s has had a number of other side-project albums including 2002’s “Galaxy Kings” and 2003’s “I've Seen The End of the World and It Looks Like This”, which have been rereleased through Vanguard in 2006.

Vanguard also released Schneider’s third studio album “The Californian” in 2006 and since a number of live albums including “Greatest Hits Live” “Songs Sung & Played at the Same Time with People in the Room” and “Live At The Paramount Theatre”. Schneider signed with Kirtland Records in 2009 and subsequently released the studio albums “Lovely Creatures”, “A Perfect Day” and “Burden of Proof”.


Jason Scott & The High Heat

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Jason Scott & The High Heat performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Too loud for folk music and too textured for Red Dirt, this is the sound of a genuine band rooted in groove, grit, and its own singular spirit, led by a songwriter whose unique past - a Pentecostal upbringing, years logged as a preacher-in-training, and an eventual crisis of faith - has instilled both a storyteller's delivery and an unique perspective about life, love, and listlessness in the modern world.

Their first full length album Castle Rock, independently released in Feb 2022, spent two months in the top 50 reaching all the way to #36 with the help of Angela Backstrom and Rek Room Media. JS+THH is Jason Scott (guitar, vocals), Gabriel Mor (guitar), Taylor Johnson (guitar, keys), Alberto Roubert (drums), Ryan Magnani (bass), and Garrison Brown (keys).


Angel White

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Angel White performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Angel White is a singer/songwriter from Dallas, Texas whose music blends R&B, Pop, and Western influences in a new and unprecedented way. Angel spent his formative years busking on the streets of Deep Ellum, learning the power of his voice and how it could touch the people around him.

It was this approach to songwriting that spawned Angel’s new solo identity and thus his forthcoming album, GHOST OF THE WEST. Unlike most contemporary music, Angel’s music is not “wallpaper” or transparent: instead, his songs will take listeners to a specific place. For Angel; a western landscape is equally beautiful and dark in its vastness.


Bella White

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Bella White performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

A truly original new voice in songwriting, Bella White creates an undeniable magic by mining the rare duality at the heart of her artistry. Although she hails from the Canadian city of Calgary, the 22-year-old singer/multi-instrumentalist grew up on the classic country and old-time music she first discovered thanks to her father, a Virginia native who played in bluegrass bands all throughout her childhood. On her debut album Just Like Leaving, White balances her old-soul musicality with a lyrical perspective that’s entirely of-the-moment, embracing an intense self-awareness as she documents her coming-of-age in real-time. “I’m still quite young, but I was very young when I wrote this album,” says the Victoria, BC-based artist. “All of these songs came from processing my feelings right as I was experiencing certain things for the first time in my life.”


Good Looks

Luck Reunion | Texas Review | Ralph Arvesen
Good Looks performing at the Luck Reunion on March 17, 2023. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)

Born and raised in small Texas towns, the members of Good Looks met and began playing together in Austin. Songwriter Tyler Jordan grew up in a South Texas coastal town dominated by the petrochemical industry, his childhood steeped in the tension between nature and industry, exploitation abundantly present and the wealth gap on full display. His father’s church, described by Tyler as “cult-like in its intensity,” was homebase and where he learned to sing.

Tyler eventually met lead guitarist Jake Ames in the late-night song-swap circles of the Kerrville Folk Festival campground (where they would also meet Buck Meek and Adrienne Lenker pre-Big Thief). They shared their mutual love of the Texas hill country canon (Blaze Foley, Townes Van Zandt, and Willie Nelson), a love of cheap diner food, thrift store baseball caps, and a healthy dose of harmless shit-talking. They began playing in bands together, backing up other songwriters and taking turns in the spotlight. They sought out producer Dan Duszynski (Loma, Cross Record, Jess Williamson) to engineer their debut album. What would form was Good Looks, a blue-collar political indie-rock band with healthy doses of Replacements swagger and shimmering, desert rock riffs not unlike The War On Drugs.


About Luck Presents
Luck Presents is a cultural collective headquartered in Willie Nelson’s “Luck, Texas” property. Anchored by its flagship event, the annual Luck Reunion, Luck Presents creates experiences that embrace our past while cultivating new traditions in American roots culture. In addition to the Reunion, the brand activates events and content that showcase musicians, chefs, and creatives. 

Luck Reunion
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Photos by Ralph Arvesen
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