Michael Corcoran has died and Austin has lost a voice that always kept things interesting: Columnist, author, historian found dead at age 68 – Music

Now that Michael Corcoran is dead, I can admit something I would never have said when he was alive: Corky was the greatest of all of us who spent our lives writing about music in Austin.

I have believed this for a long time, but I would not have wanted to fertilize his mischievous ego by giving away “flowers to the living,” as the cliché goes. The journalist, author and humorist – who writes as a columnist for early music for the timelineand subsequently wrote for Turn, Rolling Stone, The National Slander, Dallas Morning Newsand that Austin American statesman — loved reviewing things related to Austin’s music scene: the best bands of all time, the greatest venues, the most important shows. Corcoran himself stands — in my opinion — at the top of the scrap heap of sleepy, overserved Austin music writers, with his decades of features and profiles that were indulgently funny, centered around highly original insights, and often backed up with actual primary research. The interview was rarely the part of a Michael Corcoran story that stood out — and it didn’t matter, because he knew how to make the subject interesting. So his daring techniques as a writer helped make Austin’s music interesting.

Corcoran, 68, was found dead in his home in Buda this week. How he died is not yet known.

Michael Corcoran (Photo by Todd V. Wolfson)

By his own account, Corcoran wrote to get a reaction – as is evident from his seminal clippings: articles from school newspapers in Idaho in which his only aim was to make his classmates laugh, Hawaii’s Sun-seekers Rag, in which he squeezed personal escapades into his concert reviews as a teenager, and his slanderous punk magazine Honolulu Babylon which apparently only existed to fool its readers.

After stints in LA and New York, Michael Corcoran landed in Austin in April 1984 at the age of 28, together with his zine colleague from Hawaii, the tattoo artist Rollo Banks. He soon wrote for the timelinewhere he was a music columnist with his site Don’t You Start Me Talking from 1985 to 1988. In a 2013 post on his website, Corcoran contextualized the impact of his column in contemporary terms:

“With the proliferation of blogs, the food trucks of journalism, people are getting their information from all sorts of sources on handheld devices, so I don’t think it’s possible for a writer to have Austin by the balls like I do. I was involved in social media in Austin from 1984 to 1988, a snarky know-it-all before it was damn everywhere. But rereading this stuff, I have to admit that some of it makes me cringe. I’ve finally realized that I’m not as good as I thought I was. But no one can deny that I came to town with guns drawn.”

His early columns were lively and hilarious, peppered with a flair for the dramatic—like the criticism he hurled at teenager Charlie Sexton, who had moved to LA and had a hit. In 1986, Corcoran penned an infamous column called “Austin Music Sucks,” in which he mercilessly dissected an entire city’s music culture, name-calling 27 bands and artists, including Daniel Johnston (“This is just a cruel joke we’ve played on you. We really don’t think you’re brilliant, we think you’re a squirrel.”) and Stevie Ray Vaughan (“I think you should change barbers. The place you go to now isn’t that great. You should have realized it when you saw that all the barbers wear black hoods with holes for eyes.”)

This column was accompanied by an editor’s note: “Because of the unusual nature of Corcoran’s column in this issue, there was considerable doubt in the office about whether it should be published at all. One staffer even suggested that publication could put Corky in imminent danger of serious bodily harm. At that point we decided to publish it.”

After decades of more sensible music writing for mainstream newspapers and national rock magazines, Corcoran stepped back into the villain’s shoes in 2012, taking aim at the city in a clever diatribe in which he rechristened Austin: Mediocre, Texas. As usual, he roasted sacred cows: “Austin is touted as a movie town, but unless we count UT graduate Wes Anderson, we haven’t exactly produced great movies. ‘Tree of Life,’ what was that? Director Terrence Malick doesn’t like having his picture taken, but he lets us watch him masturbate for three hours.”

Corcoran, a self-proclaimed “anti-critic,” often exploited his reputation by reviewing concerts he had never seen – such as a 1990 show with Neil Young and Sonic Youth that Rolling Stone to lose his number. But as a feature writer, he wrote book-like profiles of musicians that gave their art a deep context – see these late-career gems he wrote for the timeline about Gary Clark Jr., Ramsay Midwood and the Jones Family Singers – who will surely play at Corky’s funeral.

In the final chapter of his career, Corcoran became a music historian, using extensive primary research to shed light on the lives and impact of Texas musicians whose stories had not yet been properly connected. This began with important discoveries about the zither-playing gospel blues artist Washington Phillips and led to a book about the blind pianist Arizona Dranes, whose Holiness movement shaped the subsequent gospel genre that influenced rock & roll. Eventually, Corcoran wrote two more books, All over the map: True heroes of Texas music And (Ghost Notes): Pioneering spirits of Texas musicHis last book, Austin Music is a scene, not a sound arrives posthumously on September 10th.

Corcoran also maintained a popular Substack for his articles and sometimes tormented working journalists by posting breaking news stories on his personal Facebook page. But he also encouraged younger journalists by loudly celebrating their “scoundrels” and praising high-quality articles.

When I heard the news of his death last night, I clicked through email to find our first correspondence – over twelve years ago. I had been a music columnist for a few months and was still viewed by the city’s music cognoscenti as a bong shop employee the paper had foolishly hired to write an influential column. He emailed me: “I love your column and your attitude as a fan with journalistic responsibility. An absolute must read!”

My stupid reply was, “I can’t tell you how many gray faces have lectured me about the importance of the column and how I have to live up to Michael Corcoran. So naturally I shudder when I hear your name.”

And so we became friends.

Over the past 13 years, Michael Corcoran has called me frequently to give me the warmest compliments on my work and encourage me to keep going. This writer, who had a reputation for being ruthless and beating you up for a good line, always did his very best to give me a boost. Four years ago, when I started having children, our conversations changed as he dispensed wisdom about fatherhood and told proud stories about his son Jack, now a songwriter and musician.

But as much as I lost a most unlikely mentor with Michael Corcoran’s death, I am saddened to feel that Austin has lost a voice that always kept things interesting.