Darrell “D-Rail” Ray has spent more than three decades performing around Central Texas, becoming one of the most familiar names on local music calendars. Catch one of his appearances, and you’ll hear an eclectic setlist that jumps from Johnny Cash to Radiohead to Otis Redding, along with periodic breaks for a swig from a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

A recent conversation with D-Rail traces the evolution of Waco’s music scene from a handful of venues in the 1990s to today’s larger network of bars, breweries, restaurants, and neighborhood stages. Along the way, he explains how audience requests shaped his repertoire, why supporting other musicians has become central to his approach, and how he once played a four-hour show for an audience of exactly one cat.

-----

Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.stubstack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

On May 11, 1953, an F5 tornado destroyed much of downtown Waco, killing 114 people. This episode looks back at the disaster through oral histories in a 1980s documentary recorded by survivors decades later—stories about collapsing buildings, cars buried under rubble—as they still try to make sense of it all.

It’s a reminder that good history isn’t just names and dates but ordinary people describing a day when the worst happened to them through no fault of their own.

-----

Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.stubstack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Waco artist Ellen Mote has spent years moving between creative disciplines without settling permanently into any one identity. In this episode, she talks about jewelry design, cyanotypes, painting, and basket weaving. Along the way, the conversation turns into something larger about attention and creative reinvention.

This episode also explores a side of Waco’s creative culture that rarely fits into tourism slogans or polished branding campaigns. From the Austin Avenue Art Walk to ad hoc galleries in coffee shops and vintage stores, it’s a look at the kinds of environments where unfinished ideas still have room to evolve. Sometimes the most important thing a city can offer artists is enough breathing room to keep exploring.

-----

Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.stubstack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

At 72 years old, Sherman Ayres stepped onto the Texas Music Cafe stage last July to record a live album built from songs he’d been carrying around for decades. From sitting behind a drum kit in Ohio when he was five to recording sessions in Memphis in the ‘80s and a corporate career at M&M Mars, he discovered an unexpected second act in Waco.

But this episode isn’t really a late-life comeback story. It’s about what happens when creative work survives long enough to finally find the right room, the right people, and the right moment to be heard.

-----

Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.stubstack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

One version of Waco appears on a smartphone screen while another is seen through time spent there in person, and the gap is wider than it seems. This episode begins with a visit to Mila Café, a recently opened Mexican coffee shop in Waco’s Uptown, and examines how places are introduced versus what stands out once novelty becomes routine.

What emerges points beyond any single location to the broader patterns shaping how a city is seen.

-----

Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.stubstack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

This episode heads into Waco’s Cameron Park, where scenic overlooks and weekend disc golfers usually define the place people think they know. But public spaces also collect what others leave behind, and sometimes a routine morning turns into something harder to resolve.

A chance encounter with a stray cat on the edge of a creek forces a choice that is less sentimental than practical: keep walking or take responsibility. What starts as an interruption becomes a fourteen-year reminder that obligation often arrives looking like inconvenience.

-----

Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.stubstack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Baylor’s homecoming parade knows how to sell the polished history of Waco: plenty of green and gold, marching bands, old stories told like family recipes. But somewhere between the parade route and the parking lot at George’s Restaurant, that cleaner version of the city runs into the one with blood on its shirt.

This week’s episode starts with a parade float promoting a local history book called Lust, Violence, Religion, and ends with a stranger in a dark parking lot demanding to know why anyone would bother remembering the ugly parts.

-----

Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.stubstack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

At the opening night of this year’s Levitt AMP Waco Music Series, Bridge Street Plaza becomes something more than a venue. What begins as a free outdoor concert turns into a meditation on what public space can be when it shifts from civic infrastructure to lived experience.

Along the way, KANSO the Poet, Ryan the Son, and an East Waco crowd that seems fully present push against the usual instinct to measure everything by scale. Sometimes the question is not how many people showed up, but whether the event came alive because they did.

-----

Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.stubstack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for our weekly newsletter.