This year's annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival featured a track dedicated to Lone Star heritage. "Texas: A Celebration of Music, Food, and Wine" proved invigorating for Roger Wood, the Houston-based professor and co-author of Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues.

Wood recaps a string of wonderul cross-cultural concerts in yesterday's Houston Chronicle, adding that even after the finale he wasn't ready for the magic to end:

Backstage afterward, for the first time in decades, I consumed a couple of longneck bottles of Lone Star beer, just like we used to do back in Waco in the cosmic cowboy days of the '70s. Along with the musicians and staff, I also devoured some finely catered barbecue ribs and brisket, a diet that I rarely partake of these days. With my ears, taste buds, stomach, tapping foot, words, and yes, I do believe, with my soul, I had rediscovered my Texan-ness, so to speak. And it felt good.
 
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Artists performing during the two-week festival included Guy Clark, the Quebe Sisters Band, Jody Nix and the Texas Cowboys, Augie Meyers, Los Texmaniacs, Little Joe y La Familia, Terri Hendrix, James Hand, Joe Ely with Joel Guzman, Marcia Ball, and many more.

The 20-page program guide (PDF) provides a glimpse into the event's thematic blending:

Food and music have a special relationship to each other in the Lone Star State. Most Texans consider them the two most important ingredients in successful community celebrations and traditional family events. In fact, it would be unthinkable to have a crawfish boil without a band playing in the background or a watermelon festival without live music.

To me, nothing expresses Texas music and food better than Guy Clark's "Texas Cookin'":

The festival's site features an interview with and performance by Guy Clark from the National Mall.