Roky Erickson has been a lot of things in his lengthy career: howling psych-rocker, LSD advocate, spiritual quester, mental hospital patient, drug-war casualty, junk-mail collector, sci-fi aficionado, self-proclaimed alien, cult icon. Before he was any of that, though, he was a Texan. Sources vary on where he was born-- some say Dallas, others Austin-- but he has spent virtually all his life in the Lone Star State. That's crucial, not simply because Texas breeds a particularly prickly form of artist-- from Lightnin' Hopkins to Townes Van Zandt to Eagle Pennell-- but primarily because its artists tend to fiddle around with form and style, throwing together sounds and genres almost haphazardly. So, as a Texas musician, Erickson is by nature a synthesist, and even his earliest recordings with the 13th Floor Elevators exhibit an intuitive mix of blues, rock, psych, country, soul, and prayer. As his career has progressed, he has settled into that station comfortably, so that he now has more in common with Doug Sahm, ZZ Top, and even the Butthole Surfers (who have all worked with him over the decades) than with any of his 1960s psych-rock peers.