1. How the set was made
Free Press Houston's publisher wrote comparatively little for his own paper — the bibliography lists every recovered piece under his byline — and only part of that was interviewing. A record enters the interview set on one of three conditions, each read from the record itself: its title states an interview or a Q&A; its recovered text runs as a question-and-answer transcript with at least three prompts marked as the paper's; or an editor's note introduces it as an interview. Music writing does not qualify because of its subject, and the byline must resolve to the canonical contributor record, onto which the archive folds the three byline strings the former website used for the same person. The rule yields 10 records: 6 dated, 4 undated, 2 carrying a held photography credit. 6 were recovered from the wordpress-era site; 4 were recovered from the blogger-era site.
The rule also excludes. Several of the corpus's best-known interviews are sometimes assumed to be the publisher's and are not: the archive attributes Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson - The Full Interview to Will Guess, The Peter Hook Interview to Russel Gardin, The Steve Albini Interview to Russel Gardin, The Brian Jonestown Massacre: An Interview with Anton Newcombe to Russel Gardin and Changing the System: An Interview with Kim Ogg to Elizabeth Rhodes. They are indexed under those writers and do not appear in the bibliography below.
2. Musicians
Eight of the ten are with musicians, and they are grouped here because each record's own first paragraph presents its subject that way. The earliest dated pieces come from 2009 and were recovered from the paper's older site, which carried no section labels. In Interview: Robert Ellis (2009-05-04) the questions go to origins and method — earliest musical memories, a daily practice routine, the effect of writing songs in Clute, Texas, outside any scene — and the introduction names the album Rearranger as new. Seven years later the same subject returns in Everything But Music: Robert Ellis (2016-05-02), which the recovered editor's note introduces as the first instalment of a series of interviews with Houston musicians in which none of the questions are about music; the transcript opens on voting and family. The archive holds no second instalment under his byline, and the essay does not assume one existed.
The other 2009 pieces are with working players from the city's clubs. Interview: Warren Hatfield (2009-10-09) introduces its subject as founder of Golden Axe and guitarist in Valient Thorr and asks how the songs are written, what first made him want to play, and which other Houston guitarists he rates. Interview: Geoffrey Mueller (2009-07-02) survives only as its introduction — a multi-instrumentalist placed in Sideshow Tramps, I Am Mesmer and Grandfather Child, with a photograph credited to Cecilia Johnson — followed by a “read on” link whose target was not recovered; the record is listed as an interview because its title says so, and as incomplete because it is. Interview: Channy Moon Casselle of Polica (2012-09-28) is the one dated piece with a touring act from outside Houston, and its questions are about arrangement: two drummers, bass, processed vocals and no guitar.
Three musician interviews are undated. The archive leaves them so because no corroborating date was found; the former website printed a retrieval year on them, which the archive does not accept as a publication date. Interview: Female Demand is with a two-piece drum and bass-guitar band about how its writing has changed and what adding vocals did to the live show. Interview: Bianca Montalvo of La Catrin introduces a singer previously known for fronting Heist at Hand, with a new album named in the introduction and a photograph credited to Malinda Goldwater. Interview: John Zambrano, with the guitarist and vocalist of Muhammadali, opens with the interviewer's remark that the paper had somehow never interviewed him — a line that reads as an editor's, not a critic's.
3. Visual art and the neighbourhood
The two remaining interviews are the set's most substantial and sit apart from the music pieces. Interview: Rick Lowe of Project Row Houses (2009-05-04) introduces its subject as the creator of Project Row Houses, at work in Houston's Third Ward since 1991, and asks about obstacles, about whether the project is preserving the ward or making a new identity for it, and about the Young Mothers Residential Program the record dates to 1996. The answers on speculation and investment are the most direct statement about neighbourhood change anywhere in the publisher's byline corpus, and they were printed the same day as the first Robert Ellis interview.
Interview: Jermaine Rogers is undated and is the longest record in the set. Its introduction places Houston in the history of rock poster art — a late-1980s and early-1990s moment the record associates with the city's psych and garage scenes — before turning to the artist's own beginnings in flyers and gig posters in the mid-1990s and to the criticism he recalls receiving for autobiographical imagery. The archive holds a contributor record for Rogers in his own right, as an artist whose work the paper printed, so the interview is one of the few in the set where subject and contributor are the same person.