SXSW WATCH (COWBOYS, TE JANOS AND RAPPERS): Several weeks are still left before South by Southwest organizers release the official lineup for this year's music conference, March 18-21, but there's plenty of news circling around town about the event. One rumor that has many Austinites amused is that the Broken Spoke will take part in the festival for the first time in the conference's 12-year history. SXSW managing director BRENT GRULKE said that is actually true.

''They've never been averse to the conference; they just needed some persuasion,'' Grulke said of the Spoke's owners, James and Annetta White. Persuaded they were, and Grulke said they certainly don't have to worry about what type of music will be in store for them. ''Country seems to go over pretty well there,'' he joked.

Another venue south of the river that will be used this year is City Coliseum, which last year hosted two remarkably successful shows open to the public. One of those, the Tejano showcase, will return this year, Grulke said. In addition, organizers are trying to pull off a large hip-hop show there -- another first for the conference, which has only hosted smaller gigs by little-known rappers before. Among the names being thrown around are METHOD MAN, REDMAN and ONYX, though nothing is close to confirmd yet.

''We're really hoping to pull off something bigger and better,'' Grulke said. ''Hip-hop is the one area we've always tried to improve in.''

Gourds 'Blitzed by Watermelon

A week before it was supposed to be in stores, the GOURDS' sophomore LP, ''Stadium Blitzer,'' has ended up in a holding pattern, where it will stay for a month or two until the band's label, Munich Records, lands a deal with another Austin company, Watermelon Records. The agreement would make the Gourds a ''Watermelon recording artist'' in the U.S., but Munich apparently would maintain its hold on the band in Europe.

That's no doubt good news for the band, which will enjoy the major-label distribution all Watermelon acts receive now that Watermelon is a partner with Sire Records, a Warner Bros. company. In fact, it appears that Sire President SEYMOUR STEIN especially wanted the band, and a deal reportedly was put on the table last week at the annual MIDEM Conference in France (Europe's version of SXSW).

The question is, why did all this happen at a conference thousands of miles away, only two weeks before ''Stadium Blitzer'' was to come out, when the Gourds have been in Watermelon's back yard all along? Some think it's because the Watermelon crew was never too hot on the Gourds, but Stein convinced them otherwise. Watermelon's Eric Zappa, however, said the label never really considered the Gourds an available act.

''We loved the band like everybody else in Austin, but they had a record deal,'' Zappa said.

MORE FROM STEIN

As if he didn't already...