Texas Is The Reason: The Mavericks of Lone Star Punk

Arriving in 1978, hitched to a Sex Pistols tour bus, punk rock became as mythic in Texas as the state's devotion to football, cattle, and prayer. Renegades like the Huns, the Big Boys, and the Dicks led a defiant era of blood, sweat, and cross-dressing cowboys. Austin son Pat Blashill grabbed a camera and began shooting their stories of desperation and creative deliverance.

More than two hundred of Blashill's photos here portray the Big Boys, the Dicks, Butthole Surfers. Poison 13, the Hickoids, the Offenders, Scratch Acid, Daniel Johnston, Doctors' Mob, Glass Eye, and touring bands including Sonic Youth, Devo, Samhain, Soul Asylum, the Replacements, and the Dead Kennedys.

These images are joined by essays from director Richard Linklater (Slacker/School of Rock); singer David Yow (Scratch Acid/Jesus Lizard); drummer Teresa Taylor (Butthole Surfers); and local luminaries Adriane "Ash" Shown and Donna Rich. True mavericks banded together to make a stand, and Texas Is the Reason.

Pat Blashill was born in Austin in 1961. He grew up listening to KNOW-AM radio as he fell asleep at night. The first record he bought with his own money was ZZ Top's Tres Hombres. He learned how to operate a 35mm camera in high school. After he saw photographs by Robert Frank, it was on.

Pat studied photojournalism at the University of Texas with Dennis Darling, J. B. Colson, and Ellen Wallenstein.

Inspired by punk bands at Raul's and local photographer Bill Daniel, he began shooting shows in 1980, and was pretty good by 1983. Pat took most of the photographs in this book with two cameras-a Canon TX and a Canon F-1-using a Vivitar 283 flash. He shot Kodak Tri-X black and white film, which he developed and printed himself.

In 1987, Pat left Texas for New York City, where he continued to photograph postpunk and indie bands. He began writing about music for Details, Spin, and Rolling Stone. Pat moved to Vienna, Austria, in 2005, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.