SAN MIGUEL CITY LIMITS

On Sunday, March 25th, Los Tejanos de San Miguel will bring the following musicians to La Carpa : Darin Murphy, Patricia Vonne and Gary P. Nunn, along with their respective bands. We caught up with the event organizers to find out what it was all about!

"The idea of having Gary P. Nunn here was something that I thought of before I even moved to San Miguel, almost 20 years ago," explains Steve Kelso . "I came down here originally to put on an all day show in the bullring. And then Keith (Thompson), who also knows Gary , mentioned that Gary was one of his good friends. Gary sings some songs in Spanish and he plays a type of music that you wouldn't call mainstream country. It's something that I think appeals to all ages and all cultures, its good dance music, and for a two-dollar ticket he puts on a ten-dollar show."

"We've always wanted to have more music in San Miguel," comments Billy Parker . "I'm a musician, and I play in San Miguel, and we've always thought that something like this would be of interest to our friends and everybody around. These musicians are some of our friends that we have known over the years, from way back, I went to school with a lot of these guys. And one of them, Darin Murphy, was just a six-year-old boy the first time I met him, and he's a magnificent musician, he's been on Broadway and he's really fantastic. And I met Patricia Vonne through Darin and she's just one of the most magical tejano musicians that you'll ever find. And she's somebody that I want everybody to see. This is going to be something that we think San Miguel is going to want to do more of and we're very excited about it."

"I met Gary P. Nunn at Blanco's in Houston two or three years ago before I came to San Miguel and told him I was moving here," mentions Keith Thompson . "He expressed his interest in coming down here then. I had already planned on having Patricia Vonne come down to Finnegan's last Valentine's Day. It fell through but I stayed in constant contact with her agent and we pursued it. She's an excellent performer, they call her the "Texas Spitfire", and she plays the castanets as well as the guitar and she sings in both languages. She's got some great albums out and I think this type of performance is going to electrify San Miguel. I think the younger people are really going to like her and the people that know of her or saw her perform with Los Lobos in Mexico City will really enjoy it."

The Players:

Gary P. Nunn began his musical career as a 7th grader in a garage band in Brownfield , Texas , where he was an honor student and all-around athlete. He attended Texas Tech University and South Plains College while pursuing music on weekends playing with "The Fabulous Sparkles". In 1968 he transferred to the University of Texas at Austin immersing himself in the lively local music scene while studying pharmacy at UT.

In 1972, Michael Martin Murphey, Jerry Jeff Walker and Willie Nelson moved to Austin and ushered in a new era of music that came to be known as " Texas progressive" or "outlaw music", and Gary lead The Lost Gonzo Band who backed Murphy and Walker on stage and in the studio, helping propel them to national notoriety. Gary P. Nunn and The Lost Gonzo Band parted company with Jerry Jeff Walker in 1977, an association that lasted for four years and produced six popular LP's for MCA Records. Since that time, Gary P. Nunn has grown into one of the best-known and most popular artists on the Texas music scene - a testament to his talent and determination.

Since releasing her self-titled debut in 2003, Texas-based singer and songwriter Patricia Vonne has rapidly risen within the Texas music scene thanks to an infectious bilingual mix of the musical styles that inspired the Austin American-Statesman to dub her "a Tex-Mex spitfire with a rock'n'roll heart."

Vonne attributes her genre-fusing style to growing up in San Antonio on "my mother's music and my brothers' record collections." Releasing her debut album of recordings made in New York on her own Bandolera Records, Vonne was hailed by the Austin Chronicle for her "bilingual tour de force [that] melds eclectic with electric and exudes an elegance seldom associated with rock." Vonne has become one of the busiest artists on the Texas live music circuit and her new album, Guitars & Castanets , Vonne celebrates her return to the state that is her home and all that music means in her life.

Raised within the music and theater communities of Houston, gifted musician, songwriter, producer, and performer Darin Murphy grew up surrounded by musicians, actors and DJ's, developing versatile music skills and an encyclopedic knowledge of pop records. Eventually he would climb to the top of Houston 's music scene with his sister, Trish Murphy, producing two independent CD's and performing for capacity college crowds.

In the mid-nineties they both migrated to Austin . While his sister quickly aligned with members of Austin 's alt-country elite, Darin carved his niche in the town's British-influenced indie rock scene. Mixing his Euro influences (Beatles, Cardigans, Costello) with some of his American favorites (Beck, Wilco, Dave Grohl), Murphy re-emerged at the end of 1998 with Solitarium , his first self-produced, self-performed solo album that drew critical acclaim. His 2001 follow-up, Haunted Gardenias , garnered songwriting awards, year-end top ten lists and regular airplay on commercial radio. In 2005, he made his professional acting debut on Broadway in the original cast of Don Scardino's "Lennon". He's currently drumming and singing in Austin 's retro cover phenomenon known as Skyrocket.