March 15, 2008 - Bones and Blues Records is pleased to announce the release of "Vegas Hotel" by Austin musician Jimmy Pettit.

Jimmy Pettit knows a thing or two about Texas music and local Tex-Mex legends. Growing up in Austin, the stories, legends and culture of south Texas have become infused in his life and his art.

As a musician, he has been a part of the Austin Music Scene since the mid-seventies and has been involved with such diverse projects as the jazz/fusion band "The Shoes"(with Rick Cobb of "Bloodrock" fame), seminal Raul's punk bands "The Body Snatchers,""The Rockin' Devils," and "The Boozeweasels." Pettit is best known for his long time collaboration as a bass player with "The Joe Ely Band," first in the mid-eighties and re-joining again several years ago.

On Stories from "Vegas Hotel" his impressive debut release, he paints an epic portrait of the Austin musical landscape that literally draws you into the stucco and mortar of Austin's soul. Each of the CD's seven songs are something distinct and strange and tap into something deeper; a mystical stream of consciousness that is powerful, strange, and exhilarating.

Vegas Hotel is dedicated to "Mambo John Treanor, and my fallen brother in arms, John Campbell" and on Vegas Hotel, Campbell's influence is keenly felt. Like Campbell, Pettit's low raspy voice sweeps across your speakers like a cool Texas Breeze. Sometimes it is soft and mournful and at others it is hard as razors. For Vegas Hotel, Pettit soars on a cover of Campbell's "Voodoo Edge" and "Last of the Primitives," a song that Pettit co-wrote with former Campbell guitarist Zonder Kennedy about Campbell.

The highlight may be Pettit's eerie and soulful "La Llorona," a song he wrote about a south Texas myth he learned as a child. According to folklore, La Llorona, which is Spanish for "the crying woman", is the ghost of a woman crying for her dead children that she drowned. According to the myth, her appearances are sometimes held to presage death and frequently are claimed to occur near bodies of water, particularly streams and rivers.

Stories from "Vegas Hotel" is Pettit's first solo recording. As a studio musician and sideman, he has recorded for Warner/Elektra and MCA/Sony, Hightone Records and Antone's Records and recorded with the late John Campbell, Joe Ely, David Grissom, Lloyd Maines, Mason Ruffner, Joel Guzman, Cruel 13, Kelly Willis, Toni Price, Django Walker and legendary Austin ensemble Shoulders, among others.