LESS HONKIN’, MORE TONKIN’

Watching couples glide around the honkytonk may be daunting for the faint of heart, the inexperienced, or those of you who haven’t two-stepped since fourth grade. But if a drunk cowboy can do it, how hard can it be? Just ask Josh T. Pearson, who’s been teaching the Texas Two-Step from L.A. to Austin for more than five years. “There’s only two steps in the Two-Step. I promise you can do it.”

Actually, there are four. But don’t let specifics throw you.

You may recognize Pearson as the spiritual force and voice behind Texas’ second most famous psych rock band, Lift to Experience, whose 2001 post-rock classic The Texas-Jerusalem Connection was a sprawling double album of sound, fury, and godliness that spewed apocalyptic visions and damnation, prophesizing the end of the world over 12 unnerving but sonically magnificent songs—and released six months before 9/11. He followed that 10 years later with the sad lament of Last of the Country Gentlemen, an album recorded over two nights in Berlin that contained all the pain and psychic agony of the dissolution of his marriage. The songs are so raw and full of anguish, Pearson no longer will play them live.