Your Waco Weekend

We typically experience public art at the end of the creative process: walking past a completed mural or stepping into an installation without thinking much about the months—or years—of planning, collaboration, and problem-solving that made it possible. But while the backstory shouldn’t dictate how we interpret a work of art, it can change how we appreciate everything that had to happen before it...

Every local music scene has calendars. Far fewer have the stories that turn unfamiliar names into must-see shows by answering one question: Why should anyone care? This episode traces the path from a punk show at Austin’s Liberty Lunch to years spent building one of Waco’s most comprehensive event calendars. The result is a surprising realization about Waco’s music scene—and why even the best cale...

The summer after high school, a Texas drive-in projection booth seemed like the perfect job, and home video was the future. Four decades later, after years of cable television, Netflix DVDs, and streaming services, a COVID-era screening of Godzilla vs. Kong answered an unexpected question about what movie theaters still provide. Inside a nearly empty Waco theater, eight audience members, a baby in...

A Little Free Library on North 43rd Street doesn’t look like that much: a blue wooden box on a post filled with donated books, puzzles, and whatever else happens to land there. But after stumbling across its decade-long trail of guestbook entries, holiday decorations, repairs, a missing weather vane, and an outbreak of alleged book theft, it starts to seem like something more. An examination of on...

A picture on Facebook of a hot dog buried beneath guacamole, carne asada, sour cream, and pico de gallo raises a simple question: Where’s the actual hot dog? What begins as a close look at the “Cali Dog”—available for “only” $11—leads to Waco’s month-long Hot Dog Crawl , complete with a passport app, voting for the best dog, hot dog t-shirts, and even runners covering the 22 miles between particip...

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 evoluti...

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 describin...

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 in...

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...

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 broad...

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...

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 L...

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 instin...

An impromptu visit to a Half Price Books Outlet store turns into something larger than a simple vinyl music run—because sometimes the things we go looking for in the bins aren’t really albums at all. This episode follows how old records, familiar sounds, and a few unexpected finds can bring earlier versions of ourselves back into view. ----- Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your...

A Friday-night trip from Waco to Gatesville’s last remaining drive-in theater turns into something less romantic and more revealing, shaped by cold wind, failing audio, and the uneasy mechanics of moviegoing by car. The result is a short field report from Central Texas about what remains when memory lingers longer than the experience itself. ----- Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode o...

Creative work doesn’t wait for permission—and it doesn’t wait for the perfect space. Some kinds of work can adapt. Theater can’t—not easily. It takes people, coordination, and a room that lasts long enough for everything to come together. In this episode, an empty theater in a strip mall opens up a bigger question about what it takes to keep something going when there’s no stable place to put it....

A small tortilla factory a few blocks from Waco’s Magnolia Market offers a different way to understand how the city has changed over the past decade. As new development reshapes downtown, long-standing businesses continue operating as always, creating a layered landscape where tourism and everyday work intersect. This episode looks at what happens when the places that feed a city remain largely in...

A repurposed vending machine at a burger restaurant in East Waco quietly offers a different path for art to move through the city. One purchase leads to an unexpected connection that reveals how creative communities often operate through chance encounters rather than formal venues. This episode examines how the distance between artist and audience can be far smaller than it first appears. ----- Hi...

Live music doesn’t just unfold onstage; it’s also the story we tell about it afterward. Crowd size shapes our story—and that can influence what we value before we ever walk through the door. From a sparsely attended studio show to a packed Saturday night at Texas Music Cafe , this episode looks at how perception, capacity, and comparison determine how a city decides what’s worth our attention ----...

On a windy Saturday afternoon at Brotherwell Brewing, the monthly Eastside Market looks like what it is: a vendor market with local artwork, vintage clothes, food trucks, craft beer. A rack of clothing tips in the wind. A trash can lid won’t stay put. Kids who arrived separately start playing together anyway. A dog somebody calls a “good boy” wanders from table to table. This episode asks: what ma...

Cities often describe their futures in the language of renewal, momentum, and turning points. In this episode, Waco’s current downtown redevelopment plan and a forgotten 1970s pedestrian mall reveal how civic vocabulary shapes expectations long before results are clear. While words like “hope” and “inevitability” recur across decades, the city itself changes more slowly and in ways no rendering of...

A visit to a concert poster exhibition at Art Center Waco becomes a starting point for thinking about what happens when things outlive their expiration dates. From disposable event listings to monthly music calendars for sale on eBay years later, this episode examines how objects designed to disappear sometimes endure. It’s a reflection on risk and how culture once located itself in time and place...

A Saturday morning youth basketball game in a small rural town outside Waco becomes a lens for thinking about how people share space together. By paying attention to what doesn’t happen—no gatekeeping, no supervision theater, no visible anxiety—this episode explores what everyday confidence looks like when a community isn’t trying to prove itself. What emerges isn’t an argument about policy or ide...

A recent town hall meeting with McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara was billed as a chance for him to explain his department’s new agreement to work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This episode looks closely at what was said, what went undefined—and why the reassurances offered that night didn’t land for everyone in the room. What emerges isn’t a prediction for what comes next, b...

Waco’s Balcones Distilling paused production last summer, but after a recent Saturday afternoon trip to the still-open tasting room, this episode examines what happens when a place continues to operate even after the work that created it has stopped. Rather than focusing on finances or future plans, the visit becomes a way to observe how purpose quietly shifts without being announced. What emerges...