Another vote for Bruce and his RV-8. He's good at explaining and demonstrating, and he's quite a character. His home grass strip is maybe a 30 minute drive from Houston Hobby, but he does most of the take-off and landing practice at a nearby airport with a nice, long paved runway. Plenty of places to stay and eat on the SW side of Houston while you're there.
If you schedule soon, you will have absolutely no worry about getting rained out of any training sessions and you'll get to practice higher density altitude take-offs while at sea level. It has been soooo stinkin' hot and dry here for months.
Check with your insurance company, but most will accept transition training in any RV tailwheel aircraft if you're looking to get an RV-8. I believe mine wanted ten hours transition training since I had minimal tailwheel time.