Little Luckenbach
“Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas,” sang Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson in the 1977 country song “Luckenbach, Texas,” making this tiny Texas town famous. But Luckenbach has been a destination for music lovers since long before that song reached the airwaves.
Just outside of Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country, Luckenbach was established as a trading post in 1849. That trading post became a general store and then expanded to include a dance hall. For decades, the dance hall has featured live country music every weekend, drawing visitors to the small community where “everybody is somebody.”
Groups can enjoy these festive weekend dances or catch performances from regional and national artists who make Luckenbach a stop on their tours. There are also daytime shows on Sundays and Picker’s Circles jam sessions on some weeknights. The Luckenbach General Store offers live music daily alongside lunch; it features a variety of Luckenbach merchandise.
Selena and More
Many travelers think of Corpus Christi as a Gulf-front beach destination, and it is certainly popular with the sand-and-surf crowd. But the city is also famous in the world of Tejano music, Spanish-language music popular in the southwestern United States, as the home of one of its biggest stars.
In the 1980s and 1990s, a Corpus Christi artist named Selena shot to the top of the Tejano music industry, shattering records and winning the hearts of millions of fans. She died tragically at 23 years old in 1995, but her memory lives on at Corpus Christi’s Selena Museum, where visitors can learn about her life, her music and the impact her hometown had in shaping her art.
Music lovers can get a taste of the Tejano music that Selena influenced at the Fiesta de la Flor, a two-day music festival celebrating Selena’s memory that takes place each year in mid-April. The Texas Jazz festival, which takes place over three days in October, showcases other forms of music.
