Michael O'Connor

In 2010, after well over 20 years of plying his trade in dive bars, listening rooms, theaters and festival stages across America and Europe, journeyman Texas songwriter and guitar player Michael O'Connor finally got his due. Or at the very least, a very fine next best thing: his very own star on the South Texas Music Walk of Fame -- located right in O'Connor's hometown of Corpus Christi. O'Connor's name is now part of the same Lone Star constellation as such Texas legends as Guy Clark, Kris Kristofferson, and the late Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender. Across the somber, gritty noir-ish sweep of Devil Stole the Moon (O'Connor's latest critically acclaimed release), his characters wrestle with addictions, broken dreams and mortality, while O'Connor himself confronts his own hardscrabble Corpus Christi roots. O'Connor honed his chops playing blues, jazz and rock 'n' roll in the rough-and-tumble shrimper and biker bars of the Gulf Coast before finding his way into the singer-songwriter and folk circles via studio and sideman gigs with friends like Slaid Cleaves, Terri Hendrix, Susan Gibson, Adam Carroll, and Ray Wylie Hubbard. Hubbard, who produced O'Connor's 2000 debut, Green and Blue, approvingly notes that O'Connor "has the big four: tone, taste, groove and grit. He's cool."