The Flyer's music writers tell you where you can go. Kim Richey This is a sort of quiet week on the local club scene, but the pick hit has to be Thursday's rather unlikely double bill at the Hi-Tone Cafe: Nashville singer-songwriter Kim Richey and Texas hard-country proselytizers the Derailers. T for Texas, T for Tennessee, indeed. Richey offers proof positive that "pop-country" isn't necessarily a bad thing, coming off at her best as a guitar-wielding update of Rosanne Cash. Admittedly, Richey's most recent long-player, 1999's Glimmer, was too bland of a pop move, but her more rough-and-tumble sophomore effort, 1997's Bitter Sweet, might be one of the better records to come out of Nashville in the last decade. We'll hope her live show hearkens back to the harder-edged style of the latter and assume accompaniment by highly regarded Nashville guitar-slinger Will Kimbrough is a good sign. As for the Derailers: I've always been suspicious of the recent breed of costume country bands -- BR5-49, High Noon, Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys -- because there is a fine line between honky-tonk hero and Hee-Haw highlight, righteous revivalist and roots-rock weirdo. But I'd swear on a stack of Nudie suits that Austin's Derailers are the best of the bunch. The Derailers are a slick-dressed, but tough-sounding three-piece outfit that plays Bakersfield-style country that even Buck Owens would enjoy. -- Chris Herrington It's seldom pretty when Western recording artists wear their Eastern mysticism on their sleeves. Regardless of how earnest they might be, it always seems like they are wearing a suit that doesn't quite fit. Artists like Jimmie Dale Gilmore have mixed Eastern ideas with distinctly Western sounds, and mixed them well, but Gilmore's success is hinged entirely on the strength of the hybrid. When less lyrically gifted artists like former Squirrel Nut Zipper Tom Maxwell (who plays the Hi-Tone Friday) attempt to ape an Asian sound, the results sound more like a reject from Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. Grumblings aside, Maxwell is far more interesting as a solo performer than he was with the Zippers, and while his pro-artist, anti-recording industry rants don't really enhance his street cred so much as make him king of the "bobos," his nostalgic material is entertaining enough. The Zippers' big swing sound has been replaced by a smaller swing-like sound: Lively "jumps," American vaudeville, some sketchy blues, and even some saxy Coasters-era rock-and-roll are all present and accounted for. A simple and effective, if highly unlikely country song, "Flame in My Heart," has somehow worked its way into Maxwell's increasingly eclectic canon, which does beg the question -- now that swing is dead, is he fishing for the next big thing? -- Chris Davis