Art by Zeke Barbaro For a lot of people, last year's Austin Music Awards is time-stamped as the final public outing they enjoyed before the pandemic hit. Back in the fall, when we first started talking about this year's AMAs, we sure liked the idea of the 2021 ceremony marking a kind of welcome back to being together again, a post-vaccine party to celebrate getting through a grueling 12 months. What sweet symmetry that might have been. It wasn't meant to be. Austin Chronicle Music Poll? Same thing everybody else has been doing this past year: We got crazy creative. Music Editor Raoul Hernandez and staff writer Kevin Curtin cooked up a marvelous idea – why not bombard winners at their own homes, Publishers Clearing House-style? The idea grew from there (oversized prop checks were a must, naturally). Our marketing and art departments got busy building it out. Our friends at Arts + Labor came on as creative collaborators. The participation of the Society for the Preservation of Texas Music, title sponsor Capital Metro, and a host of other sponsors enabled us to cut $500 checks for every winner.