MUSIC

It's McGonigel's Mucky Duck Songwriters NIGHT! Songwriters Night featuring Lisa Morales - David Grissom - Casper Rawls.

Lisa Morales - As one half of 1990s Tex-Mex favorites Sisters Morales, Lisa Morales trekked from her native Tucson, Ariz., to Texas, shunning Nashville, Tenn., for an indie path. Beautiful Mistake reveals her unerring ear and compelling voice amid patchwork originals of wistful country, tender balladry and all-out rock.

Sahara Smith - Located 28 miles southwest of Austin, Wimberley, TX, boasts natural springs and gravesites of early pioneers. It’s also been the hometown to Sahara Smith – a stunning, young singer-songwriter who started performing at age 12, and first garnered national attention at age 15 when she placed second in a contest for young songwriters on A Prairie Home Companion.

Now 21, Sahara is poised for a breakout with Myth of the Heart, the just-completed album of original songs shepherded by T Bone Burnett and producer Emile Kelman due August 31. The album features many of Burnett’s first-call session players, including drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarist Marc Ribot, and bassist Dennis Crouch.

Miles Zuniga - Miles Zuniga is best known for his work in Fastball, which spawned a 1998 mega-hit with "The Way," but he's also recognized as a solo singer and songwriter of some stature. Until These Ghosts Have Bones, however, he'd never recorded an entire album of his own work.

But Zuniga's need for an emotional release after a painful divorce led him to craft a deceptively upbeat "record/therapy session." Influenced heavily by likeminded pop geniuses — The Beatles, The Hollies, Ray Davies — Zuniga's gift for turning anguish into hummable pop is on full display in "Working on a Love Song."

Driven by mandolin, acoustic guitar and Zuniga's unmistakably Lennon-esque vocals, the tune, co-written by Oreste Gargaro, describes an experience not uncommon for touring musicians: writing a love song while far away from its subject. "I got a line at JFK," Zuniga sings in his high tenor, "and I wrote the middle eight in the taxi home."

But as expectations build for a happy reunion, Zuniga wallops listeners with the line, "Finished this love song / just to find that you were gone." He's got a remarkable gift for turning that painful sting into sweet sounds — a feat he repeats impressively throughout These Ghosts Have Bones.