Bob Phillips and his great crew of Ryan Britt and Dan Stricklin came out to the house last night to interview me about the blackout poems for Texas Country Reporter. If you’re not familiar with the show, here’s a bit of background from the NYTimes article, “If It’s in Texas, the Texas Country Reporter Has Seen It“:

Bob Phillips, the Texas Country Reporter…barreling…with his television crew in his Ford Explorer daubed in the billowing red, white and blue of the Texas flag….Not much escapes Mr. Phillips, 56, a Lone Star Charles Kuralt, who has logged more than 35 years on the state’s back roads and may be the most-traveled man in Texas….Mr. Phillips’s half-hour programs already total more than 2,000 — about four times as many as his idol, Mr. Kuralt, produced for his CBS News segment “On the Road” from 1967 to 1980. They are broadcast weekly on 25 stations in Texas and afterward are beamed eight times a week on the rural satellite and cable network RFD-TV. The network…reaches some 30 million households nationally….

He has long been an institution in Texas, where he spent a dozen years as the spokesman for Dairy Queen and now shuttles between his television studio in Dallas and Beaumont, where he lives with his second wife, a television anchor.

Meanwhile, Texas Country Reporter has become a popular brand, with guidebooks, cookbooks, T-shirts and an annual October festival in Waxahachie, near Dallas, where more than 50,000 fans come to meet subjects from the shows…

Check out their Youtube channel to see some of the shows.

Here’s Dan, Bob, and me making a horrible face as I BS about something.

Here’s Ryan shooting a trick shot of the marker bleeding through the paper.

Here’s Ryan and Dan shooting some stills for the feature.

They were real nice guys, and even though the shoot was a little grueling (5 1/2 hours!) it was a good time. Bob asked terrific questions, and we had a good interview.

The segment won’t air in Texas for a couple months (nationwide will be even longer), but I’ll let y’all know when it does.

(Thanks to my wife Meg for taking the great photos!)