Books

What Type of Music does Merit listen to?

By Manning Wolfe
On March 30, 2017

While writing the next legal thriller, and with SXSW 2017 concluding last week, I’ve been sampling a lot of music lately.

Music Notes, the next in the Texas Lady Lawyer Series centers around an aging singer-songwriter who hires Merit to sort out his affairs. When he’s murdered, his heirs move in like vultures and Texas probate law rules the outcome. There is a lot about music and the music business mixed in with the search for who killed him.

I’ve been asking myself, if Merit were sitting at her desk or driving her car in Austin, what music would she listen to and if she were out on the town, what live music would she want to hear?

I think she’d listen to some old-style Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker and Townes Van Zandt while she’s working for the singer-songwriter as he’s of the world of vintage Austin music.

When she researches the current music business, especially gaming music, and what’s popular in L.A. and Japan, she might listen to News, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars.

Driving her car around Austin, she might tune in replays of KUT’s Twine Time or roll out a mix from her iphone of Robert Earl Keen, Alejandro Escovedo, Lyle Lovett, Asleep At the Wheel, and Bob Schneider.

If she and Ag or one of her Boy Toys went out on the town, she would probably hit the Continental Club for Toni Price, Young Guns or The Blues Specialists. If Shinyribs were in town or Hayes Carll had a show at the Saxon Pub, she’d probably hang there.

It’s hard to know what mood Merit might be in on a given day, but since Austin is known as “The Live Music Capital of the World”, she could just walk around town and hear street musicians playing covers of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Van Morrison, and Janis Joplin.

Regardless of what she’s listening to, you can bet she’s plotting and strategizing to solve the latest dilemma for her clients and her sidekicks.