Book release, concert at San Antonio's Flagship Records celebrates Roots Punk

Longtime rock journalist and author David A. Ensminger will celebrate the release of his new book Roots Punk: A Visual and Oral History with appropriately raucous musical accompaniment this Sunday at San Antonio's Flagship Records. In the book, Ensminger — an instructor at Lee College in Baytown — explains how punk merged with roots music styles ranging from country and blues to reggae and jazz to form a diverse, multicultural movement that forced a "reimagination of the American songbook." Issued by University Press of Mississippi, the book is presented as a people's history and includes interviews with members of groups as wide ranging as the Minutemen, X, the Blasters, MDC and the Plimsouls. Keeping true to Roots Punk's subject matter, the free, all-ages event will include performances from a lineup of San Antonio and Austin acts that embody the genre's sound — Hickoids, Texacala Jones of Tex and the Horseheads and Walter Witosky and the Dirty Dog Dick Eaters.