SXSW is thrilled to announce Yoko Ono as a very special featured speaker for the 25th Music Conference and Festival. Ms. Ono will sit down with Jody Denberg for a SXSW Interview on Friday March 18th. From her pioneering work in the Fluxus movement of the 1960s to the recent Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, Ono's art has challenged and informed, melding the personal to the universal in simple and unique ways. Her marriage and creative collaboration with John Lennon was a love story played out on the global stage. Ono's music laid the groundwork for the sounds of punk rock and new wave. Recently, Ono has had five consecutive dance singles charting at #1 on the top of the Billboard Dance Chart. 

In 2009, she received Mojo Magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award, and she assembled a new PLASTIC ONO BAND for her latest album, Between My Head And The Sky, co-produced with son Sean Lennon, on his Chimera Music label.  From gallery to stage to social media platforms, Yoko Ono brings a message of peace to the world. Ms. Ono's ongoing projects are detailed at imaginepeace.com.  Ms. Ono will also be a special guest performer at a Chimera Music night, Saturday, March 19 at The Elysium, 705 Red River St

Veteran singer-songwriter-producer-master guitarist Billy Crockett will release on November 3 his new record, the artful and melodic WISHING SKY (Blue Rock Artists), with its smart and insightful lyrics and virtuoso instrumentation.

Crockett’s one-of-a-kind sound — fresh, thought-through lyrics included — is exemplified by WISHING SKY and its authentic songs of love and life and the handling of both from what the writer describes as a new point of view that crystallized during a respite from touring and the planning and building of Blue Rock Artist Ranch and Studio in Wimberley, Texas.

With cameo appearances by Jon Dee Graham, Ray Bonneville, Paul English and Lloyd Maines, Crockett’s WISHING SKY features “Feel It,” about how thinking too much can get in the way of good stuff (the tango, for instance, he says); “Meant That,” about longing for authenticity and finding it in a word, guitar solo, a dog howling at the moon or in the way she walks; and “Long Live This Love,” an audacious appeal for lasting love.

“After nine years, I wrote and recorded the album, songs of independent observation, free of institutional ties. In a way, I’m starting over,” he says. “I have tried to strip down my own language and ideas to something essential, tell my story, and maybe ours, to anyone. No proclamations, no codes and credos. Now it seems more about the simple story.”

Another cut from the album, “Ticking of Her Heart,” about how fear, alienation and depression consume a self, is a co-write with the great Pierce Pettis. The recording also includes a timely pep talk to Americans, “Back on the Horse”: “… the only chance we have, of course, is to get our asses back on the horse. …”

And there is a horse named WISHING SKY: a 2-year-old thoroughbred, black with a white comet streak across his forehead, that is named for the album and title track (about two people listening to ancient voices under the night sky) that lives and trains in Louisiana and will start racing next month.

In 1999, Crockett dedicated the album SIMPLE PLANS and a yearlong 40-stop tour to efforts by Habitat for Humanity and the communities it serves. He’s also written and recorded PASSAGES, an album of classical guitar pieces. In 2006, he and his wife, Dodee, founded Blue Rock Artist Ranch and Studio, where he is creative director and has produced albums for Cliff Eberhardt, Grace Pettis and others in its state-of-art recording facility there.

Crockett will play a special album release show at Austin’s famed Cactus Cafe on November 18.

For more information, visit www.billycrocket.com and www.bluerocktexas.com.