Ross Pinson Texas proud: John Muzyka stages a monthly singer-songwriter showcase at Arlington's Texana Grill. Behind him, Brian Houser takes the mic.

While Nashville struggles to find a way out of its music business blues, Texas artists have taken the bull by the horns, popped onto the charts, and rekindled the grass-roots spirit that long has characterized the Lone Star State. Much like the rise of the so-called "redneck rock" in the late '60s and early '70s, the independent country scene in Texas is helping re-direct the sound of music in the new millennium.

Although it lacks the mass and muscle of the Nashville music machine, the Texas scene has a strength of its own, generating the bulk of artists composing the Americana genre and quietly building a fan base far beyond state lines. The Texas country music sound now has its own radio chart (www.texasmusicchart.com), developed by Shane Media in Houston, and the movement has become so strong that many consider this the Second Coming of outlaw country.

"Texas artists have perfected the grassroots way of doing things," said Vickie Lucero, a publicist with the San Marcos-based Propaganda Media, which promotes Texas singer/songwriters such as Slaid Cleaves and Adam Carroll. "From their music to their business, they use a personal touch; music fans like it, and the media admires it. Fans can buy the c.d.'s from the stage, internet, and stores. The artists can make more money than they could on a record label."

They also have more control over the way their music is produced and marketed, bypassing the traditional beaten paths of a record company p.r. department and taking it directly to radio, magazines, and newspapers themselves.

"Texas artists are very, very lucky to have such supportive media," Lucero noted. "[Media] outlets are not biased by major labels vs. self-releases like they are practically everywhere else. They champion the music they like."

Stations such as KNON-FM (89.3) in Dallas and a string of other public and alt-country outlets statewide have been giving airplay to unknown artists for years, but now some of the more mainstream stations are turning their attention to unsigned acts. Internet radio has created yet another aural opportunity, allowing Texas artists to cross state lines more easily than ever before.

"Clearly, the fact that my sister in North Carolina can log on and listen to my music being played [on an internet station] makes a huge difference," said Max Stalling, a Dallas musician who enjoyed time on Gavin's Americana chart last year with the release of his album Wide Afternoon.

"The sound has been around and has been growing, rhythmically, for the last several years. I think now it just has a lot more ways to grow, and there is a lot more household penetration. We're knocking down a lot more doors now."

Technology and the internet have played a huge role in the exponentially expanding movement, allowing acts to sell product and promote their music as never before. But even more important, Stalling said, is the artists' ability to record and manufacture their own albums without a label. Then, when talent and the work ethic collide, artists can bypass the industry suits and still get their music on the streets.

"Nashville still has a ton of great talent and musicianship, but it's more about what is being selected for the market, not what the market is selecting," Stalling said. "What is fashionable is being decided by consultants and executives, not by the public. There's not much heart and soul there."

The Texas sound, on the other hand, is heavy on both heart and soul, and its artists wouldn't be caught dead singing the sugar-pop lyrics of the acts being mass-produced by the Music Row factories in Nashville.

"People are tired of the cheesy country music," said Chad Raney, who owns Lone-StarMusic.com, a site that promotes Texas country artists. "Roots music is selling. Look at the soundtrack to [the movie] O Brother, Where Art Thou? -- that has sold with virtually no airplay. People are trying to get away from what's coming out of Nashville."

That leads to the inevitable question: Where does the heart of country music belong? Austin bills itself as the Live Music Capital of the World, but traditionally, Nashville is where the music turns into money.

Old-timers argue that Dallas was well on the way to becoming a country-music stronghold, pointing to Jim Beck's Recording Studio, located in that city during the 1950s. Beck's studio discovered and first recorded such acts as George Jones, Lefty Frizzell, Marty Robbins, and Ray Price, and had attracted the attention of Decca Records executives, who realized it would be cheaper to record artists in Texas than in Tennessee. But the promotion of a Nashville bandleader into the A&R spot at Decca, coupled with Beck's untimely death in 1958, completely changed the future of Dallas, Nashville, and country music. Reclaiming the sound of country music for Texas is something that many believe is already under way, but that doesn't mean Texas is gunning to become the next Nashville.

"The Nashville machine exerts a lot of energy stripping away personality and soul from the music -- Texas artists exert a lot of energy infusing the music with personality and soul," contended Paula Bosse, who hosts a weekly show about current and classic Texas music on the internet radio station TheWest.com. "Energy is the key word -- listen to any hit out of Nashville and compare it to any track on, say, a Wayne Hancock album. There's a big, big difference."

She said that Texas music is "like a great big family or club," where artists are viewed more as soul mates than as sales products, and the large number of live country/Americana music venues -- more than 250 at last count -- gives these families plenty of places for musical reunions. Bosse says artists such as Pat Green, who landed on the Billboard music charts and even was profiled in The Wall Street Journal last year, are showing that the independent approach can work -- and work well.

"He outsold the major Nashville stars by a huge margin," she pointed out. "What a testament to Green's loyal fan base. And he didn't have to sell his soul in exchange for success. Personally, I would hope that would encourage artists to avoid Nashville."

She added that by doing all the production, manufacturing, and promotion of their own c.d.'s, artists are able to reach audiences and markets that might be overlooked by a major label.

"I think Texas musicians do this a lot of times out of necessity, but by remaining independent, they're able to maintain the control that all musicians want to have," she said. "I fear that genuinely talented performers like Charlie Robison -- who has a major-label contract -- will somehow be co-opted by Nashville. The day I see him in a Tim McGraw see-through shirt is the day I'll know he's stepped over to the dark side. I don't think that would happen ... but Nashville pressure to conform must be awfully hard to resist."

Robison doesn't believe his affiliation with the big-time Columbia Nashville/Lucky Dog record label will change his approach to music. "Have you heard the new album?" he asked with a laugh during a March phone interview. The new album, Step Right Up, boasts as many un-PC references to illicit sex, murder, mayhem, and booze as any previous Robison effort.

Refusal to conform may be the one element beyond the music that most unites today's Texas country artists. If this is the Second Coming of outlaw country, then many see the musical messiah as Robert Earl Keen, who has been non-conforming and performing for more than 20 years. After a brief and disappointing flirtation with Music City in 1980, Keen headed back to Texas and started beating the bushes, gradually building a grassroots groundswell that makes him the Willie Nelson of this era's renegade music renaissance.

"He's built something phenomenal on his own," said John Muzyka, an Arlington-based music promoter, producer, and consultant. "He has shown that you can do it without a label. Robert Earl Keen built his career up from nothing, just by working very hard, and he has done very well for himself.

"To see something like that, to see Pat Green in The Wall Street Journal -- that is very encouraging. It shows that this music really has a chance, and that artists today can accomplish things without a label that they just couldn't do before."

Keen's annual Texas Uprising concerts on Memorial Day weekend give relatively unknown artists the chance to play in front of crowds who are there to hear their heroes. Muzyka, who stages the monthly singer-songwriter series at Texana Grill in Arlington, explains that is another common practice of Texas artists.

"It's not like the rest of the music business," he said. "It's competitive, but it's not cutthroat. There is a camaraderie that you won't find anywhere else. Successful artists are willing to share the wealth. It's part of that Texas culture, of doing what you can to help out your neighbor."

For that very reason, the spotlight may keep shining on Nashville, but the spirit will remain in Texas. Muzyka is among those who believe this wave of independent country artists will crest even higher and have a longer hang time than the movement of the '70s.

"Everything goes in cycles, and there's no doubt that Texas music is what's hot right now. Unfortunately, there will be some sort of downturn eventually. You just hope that each [crest] will last longer than the one before it," he said.

Inevitably, the eyes of Nashville are looking at why that sound is working, and many expect they'll try to replicate it. However, just the nature of the music itself may have industry-proofed it. LoneStarMusic.com's Raney said the insightful singer-songwriter approach is difficult, if not impossible, to mass-produce, because it is based on personal experience rather than pop hooks.

"I don't think there is any way to do this kind of music other than to do it yourself," agreed Stalling. "[Taking it to a major label] would be like taking a bunch of wild horses and thinking you're going to train them to work your cows. You might eventually get them to do that, but in doing so, you've broken their spirit."