Here’s a Nice Story for you, RadioRNR Fans: We pulled into my friend’s driveway without a care or a plan. It was a mild October evening, and my college girlfriend and I had just arrived from Maine, where we’d moved six months earlier from L.A. We didn’t love Maine, and it didn’t take much more than a phone call to get us out of there.-*Man, said our friend Mark, who had just moved to Austin. You gotta get down here. This place is amazing.
No sooner had we pulled into his driveway than Mark and his wife came out of the house, heading toward their van. Got here just in time, he said. We soon found ourselves at a racetrack outside of town. There, under a blue Texas sky gradually turning starry black, we jobless nomads danced to The Grateful Dead.
The year was 1977. It didn’t get much more Austin than that.
Well, maybe a little.
The following night, Mark took me to a shabby dive on then-dicey Sixth Street. It had a small stage with a sagging velvet curtain and a long, scuffed bar. Behind a glass case inside the front door stood, improbably, a short elderly woman selling homemade stuffed grape leaves. She was the mother of the owner, a rotund man in his late 20s named Clifford Antone.
I don’t remember who I saw that night. Could have been Paul Ray and the Cobras with Stevie (not yet Ray) Vaughan. Or maybe the Fabulous Thunderbirds, with Stevie’s older brother, Jimmie Vaughan. Both Vaughans played there a lot, sometimes to no more than 20 or 30 patrons. Whoever I saw, I know only that they were smokin’ hot and that the whiskey went down way too easy and so did the grape leaves.
That night slid into another somewhere else, then another, and another after that. When I noticed one day that I hadn’t yet left town, it occurred to me that Austin was like fly-paper. I had intended to zip right past. But those nightclubs, that music, even those stuffed grape leaves wouldn’t let me.
Though my girlfriend eventually went on her way, I remained in Austin for the next 24 years, practically living in the clubs, observing over the rim of a longneck the city as it burgeoned from a laid-back college town with a freewheeling music scene to the Live Music Capital of the World, home of SXSW, the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference.
About five years before I showed up, Willie Nelson had moved to town from Nashville, propelling a movement that had already begun. Somehow, in that most conservative of states, where you could get 20 years in prison for possessing a single joint, country music fans and hippies were coming together peacefully to dance to a genre known variously as redneck rock, cosmic cowboy, and progressive country.
They went to the glorious, ramshackle Split Rail, where Mondays belonged to Freda and the Firedogs, Marcia Ball’s Cajun rock-and-roll band. They hit Spellman’s in Clarksville, a tiny decrepit house-cum-bar where poet-folksinger Townes Van Zandt sometimes played.
They drove up the rutted dirt road to Soap Creek Saloon, located south of town, where they danced to the unclassifiable conjunto-jazz-country-rock of Augie Meyers and Doug Sahm, and the costumed Zappa-influenced satire band the Uranium Savages. Soap Creek Saloon moved twice, first to a low-slung joint way outside the north end of town that went back to the 1940s and had played host to Elvis Presley and Hank Williams, then to South Congress Avenue. I saw a band there one night called Nick Ferrari and the Little Kings play an incendiary set of straight-ahead rock-and-roll that included a searing version of Paint It Black. Soon thereafter I became the band’s manager. In fact, living the rock life in a house that was open 24/7 to every form of craziness conceivable, the Little Kings could not be managed.
Nothing remains of the Split Rail (a fast food outlet marks the spot), Spellman’s (an office building), or Soap Creek (first location, offices; second, a drugstore; third, apartments). Nor is there any sign of the most famous venue of all, a former National Guard armory known as the Armadillo World Headquarters. The Armadillo showcased the full range of American music, from Bette Midler to Frank Zappa, Funkadelic to Elvis Costello, Charles Mingus to AC/DC, all the while booking local acts, often to open, sometimes to headline. Its beer garden was a slacker’s paradise and its Christmas arts and crafts bazaar was the the best, most laid-back holiday shopping experience I’ve had before or since. Despite all this, the Armadillo was beset by financial problems and closed up in 1980 to make way for a high-rise office building.
That was nighttime. Day, you slept till whenever, then went swimming at Barton Springs or Deep Eddy or out at the nude beach on Lake Travis called Hippie Hollow. You might eat cheesy enchiladas at Jorge’s for dinner or catch a cheap steak at the Raw Deal or share a pitcher of beer and chicken-fried steak up at the Stallion.
And then you went out again.
To the mid-size open-air Liberty Lunch, where I saw everyone from New Sincerity bands like the Reivers and Poi Dog Pondering to the sonic tornado called Joe Ely.
To Duke’s Royal Coach Inn, where I danced to New Wave bands like Standing Waves.
To Club Foot, where I saw everybody from Mitch Devil with the Blue Dress Ryder and The Detroit Wheels to the first tour of U2.
To the aptly named campus-area Hole in the Wall, where Timbuk3, a boy, a girl, and a drum machine, created a future so bright they had to wear shades.
To the Rome Inn for a Sunday night ritual with Stevie Vaughan and the Triple Threat Revue, with Lou Ann Barton, a chanteuse so sexy that Sam Shepard wrote a poem about her. Astonishingly, the joint rarely attracted more than 50 music lovers (not that too many more could have fit).
To the stalwart Broken Spoke, down there for 45 years on South Lamar, out in the country when it was built, and still as country as it gets. I’d see Alvin Crow play a scorching fiddle there, showing hipsters how wrong they were to think that the fiddle was somehow old-fashioned.
The Continental Club, with its parade of roots rockers, such as the LeRoi Brothers, was, in some ways, my go-to club. Going back to 1957, it is small and dark, with a bar over to the side and a stage up front. I once played there with a joke band that was no joke to the patrons streaming out.
And then there was Raul’s, the place that gave the lie to the notion that Austin was all country or blues or roots. This punk club on the Drag booked bands that seemed to spring up automatically, just to play at it: The Skunks, Terminal Mind, D-Day, The Huns. I wasn’t there the night Elvis Costello wandered in and jammed with The Skunks, but I did get to see Patti Smith rock out with them.
And finally, Antone’s, forced to move three times, but still alive and kicking on Fifth Street today. Antone’s has featured every major blues artist alive, from Muddy Waters to Bobby Blue Bland, but my favorite nights were the late-night jams when house guitarists Denny Freeman and Derek O’Brien ripped long into the night, making the walls sweat.
They celebrated at Antone’s the night an underfunded slate of neighborhood activists implausibly defeated the pro-growth business candidates to command the city council. Antone himself was back in his Home of the Blues, his time served for a marijuana conviction. Jeff Nightbyrd, an activist/writer/entrepreneur, turned to me and said, Only in Austin would the city’s elected officials celebrate at a blues bar owned by a convicted felon.
A year or so later, in 1985, Antone’s was where I courted my wife. She and I met on separate dates at an Italian restaurant. Smitten, I called her the next day and asked her for a date that evening. She had plans. Meet me at Antone’s, I cajoled. I’ll be there till it closes. As she tells the story, she had never met a total stranger in a bar before. But she drove to Antone’s, arriving a little after midnight. Leaning against the bar with a couple of pals, I saw her when she walked in, excused myself, went over to her, and pretty much never left her side.
We danced to all hours. Tired and hungry, I had her wait at a table while I wandered to the back to get some barbecue from Christopher B. Stubblefield, a tree of a man from Lubbock who set up his operation at Antone’s when things didn’t work out for him at his own place. Stubb, as he was universally known, and he was universally known, ran what passed in West Texas for a Paris salon. Musicians, writers, thinkers all congregated at his Lubbock barbecue place, and many of them, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, ended up moving to Austin.
I brought to our table a plate of Stubb’s meaty, succulent, lightly charred ribs, dripping in his spicy sauce. I don’t eat ribs, Jessica said. What do you mean, you don’t eat ribs? I asked. I had never heard of such a ludicrous thing. My teeth, she said. I don’t like all the tearing and chewing. Eventually, I persuaded her to try just a single bite.
Ten months later, on April 20, 1986, Stubb catered our wedding. We have a framed photo taken at our wedding reception of our arms intertwined, as if sipping from a glass of champagne, except that we are chewing on the same rib.
But then, RadioRNR Fans, along came SXSW: Not long after that, in March 1987, South by Southwest was launched. The idea was hatched in the offices of the alternative paper The Austin Chronicle. As the paper’s politics editor at the time, I observed the almost literally insane workdays leading up to the event and undertook to reward them and others involved in putting it on, and to repay them for the free admission to all the clubs, with a barbecue in my backyard.
It felt like everything in Austin’s musical history had led up to that moment. The truly astonishing array of music that Austin produced through the years was on showcase to the music industry, which traveled from New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville to check it out.
Those who have-*been to SXSW lately can hardly imagine what it was like back then. You could get around town, get into clubs, see any band you wanted. On the final day, you could join in the softball games between media, industry, and musicians, and, on the last night, you could go see the Alejandro Escovedo Orchestra play a sublime endnote of perfectly Austin unclassifiable music.
I haven’t lived in Austin in nearlya decade, having moved to Washington, D.C., in 2001. We go back every now and then, to see family and friends, get our Tex-Mex and barbecue fix, and take in the occasional band. Mostly, though, I dash out to a small neighboring town where my in-laws live. As a consequence, I haven’t had a chance to fully experience what has become of the city and its freewheeling ways.
Not long ago, I went back to spend some time in my old home. Much of my Austin, of course, has disappeared. The Austin of roughly 300,000 residents sporting Onward Thru the Fog! bumper stickers from Oat Willie’s head shop is now the condo-congested high-tech metropolis of 750,000 whose bumper stickers plead Keep Austin Weird.
Yes, the city has grown. But the spirit that gave rise to modern Austin is still very much alive.
Fly into the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and you hear music from local musicians playing over the PA as you walk to the baggage carousels, which are adorned with huge guitar sculptures. Depending on what time you get in, you may even see a live band performing.
Click on the rental car radio and, in an echo of the adventurous local programming that made KOKE-FM one of the nation’s most pioneering stations in the early ’70s, you hear Austin bands mixed into the playlist of several stations.
Stroll along Auditorium Shores on Town Lake and you come upon a statue, like a general or a patron saint, of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Go to the trendsetting supermarket Central Market (it and Whole Foods were founded here) for the organic olive oil and you may stay for the live band. There is live music at everything from hair salons to restaurants. And, of course, bands sing and bang and strum in a whole new generation of clubs.
The last time Jessica and I visited, we decided to go to the Continental Club. It was Christmas night. The honky-tonk troubadour Dale Watson was playing in what has become a holiday tradition.
A line had formed outside the club, surprising us. Since when did so many people go to a nightclub on Christmas? Waiting to get in were young, old, T-shirted, button-downed, country enthusiasts, rockers. The tribes had dissolved.
Each time the door opened to let someone in, the music wafted out. Watson’s rugged baritone cut through his band’s unflinchingly tough-edged country. The sound suggested an ornery love, heedless of the marketplace and adhering only to its singular creative muse. Whether heard in a blues bar, a country roadhouse, or a punk joint, the twangy strains communicated the stubborn and joyous sensibility that attracted me to Austin in the first place.
When we got to the door and peered in, we decided the club was too cramped and elected not to go in after all. We weren’t young anymore and didn’t party like we used to.
As we walked away, we heard the music as the door opened and closed. I glanced back. The line kept moving.
Hope You Enjoyed This Bit of History, RadioRNR Fans!
Source: Cowboys & Indians.com-Jim Shahin
