I am sitting in a cab just outside my temporary home in Austin, Texas. I have just experienced an unbelievably great gig and I am still overwhelmed by it. The driver has stopped the car and we keep talking music as we had basically done the whole ride. He is playing some of his favorite tunes on the stereo and I do the same. This little 20 minutes experience still is still very vivid in my mind when I think back of Austin. Up to this day, the driver – Tommy was his name – and I still share music and new discoveries via a Swedish online music streaming portal.
There are two things that shape the city of Austin like no others. That is on the one hand the university and their sports teams, the Texas Longhorns, and on the other hand music. Since you are visiting a blog about music, I will put the university part aside and focus on the music. And there sure is a lot to focus on. Austin’s official nickname is “the live music capital of the world”, and it is absolutely considered being worthy this name. I have never seen such a concentration of local bands, live venues, stages and record stores before – and not just on famous Sixth Street, but all over the city – and I do not think that I will ever will again unless I go back. I have not been to places like Nashville or Memphis, but it is hard to believe that they could beat Austin. It does not matter which bar you stumbled into, you could be sure that there was a band or a musician on stage. Austin breathes music, it sweats music, it lives music. How omnipresent music is can be observed by a huge sculpture of a guitar on Congress Ave straight in downtown Austin or one hotel that is called “Van Zandt”. I liked to call Austin my personal music El Dorado.
My first confrontation with the Austin vibe was at my Air BnB in the south side of the city. It is a hot and humid summer night and we are sitting in the front yard of our host Dave. He has just taken out his guitar and harmonica and is playing a private gig for me and my friend. Dave used to play in an Arizona based country band for years but has now settled down back in Austin and is writing singer songwriter material. The scenery is almost obscure, yet fascinating to the utmost. Us Europeans still struggling with the Texan heat that is just slapping you on the face, while a friend of our host – supposedly a multi-millionaire (I suppose it can be doubted how true that is) – is sitting next to us around the table and is slowly getting drunk until he passes out in his chair and Dave varying his performance between own compositions and strumming out covers accompanied by the sound of the ventilation outside the house. When Dave performs he is in his own zone. His passion for what he is doing is tremendously obvious. His style is a combination of blues and classical singer songwriting, yet the influence of his Texas and country roots cannot be denied, neither in his own songs nor in the choice of his covers (Ol’ Waylon’s Luckenbach, TX is sticking out here). In his songs he is covering religious topics in a very ironic way and he is also singing about unfortunate sometimes even brutal love (“Well that little girl you loved is dead / it would be sad because it’s true / you wouldn’t believe what she did to me / she killed me too”). It was a very intimate evening, he let us look into his soul through his songs and it should not be last gig he’d be performing throughout our stay.
I cannot recall how many gigs I have visited in Austin. Have I mentioned before that they take place everywhere in the city? If not, then I have now. Most of them are free and you would not only see one band playing, the whole evenings are filled with different bands following each other. It was funny to observe that as soon a country song is being played, the audience immediately goes wild and starts square dancing and there was no exception. While Austin is a microcosm of all different kinds of musical genres and also the artists are extremely manifold, country and indie rock are still dominating on stage. Well-known artists are performing in one club, while in the bar next door unknown, yet brilliant local bands are giving their best.
One concert that stood out for me took place at the legendary Continental club on South Congress Ave, home of all kinds of national and local gigs. 53-year-old Austin legend and country veteran James McMurtry performs there every Wednesday night when he is town and as a matter of fact, I came across the Continental on a Wednesday night and James McMurtry was in town. I had never heard of him before, but I was blown away by him and his band. Earlier that year this fascinating Americana singer songwriter has released his first studio record after six years (“Complicated Game” – a separate review on it will follow here) and as I later found out the song that I loved the most of this whole gig “You Got To Me” was from this album. I was sipping my Lone Star beer (I admit it is abysmal, but it belongs to Texas like the old Ford pick-up….I hope no Texan will ever read this line), while listening to James McMurtry tell cynical stories about the common man and about what he is experiencing and struggling with. I ended up buying his records later on and his “Live in Aught-Three” album is spinning on my record player as I am writing exactly these lines.
This brings me to the next topic. What would a music city be without its record stores? And Austin has a lot to offer on this site. I spent almost a whole day digging. And I was not even close to covering all the stores that the city has to offer. Four stores are still worth mention. “Antone’s Record Shop” on Guadelope, “End of an Ear” on 1st , “Friends of Sound” on Congress and the famous “Waterloo Records”, which is unbelievably huge. I usually prefer those small, private record stores, that are very intimate and where you can basically inhale and suck up the owners’ love for music, but Waterloo’s simply cannot be missing in this list. First, because it is an institution in Austin, second, because everything and anything could be found there (well, almost anything – I been asking in every record store I went to for an original Townes Van Zandt 7”, but it seems like that this is impossible to discover. And if you did not find it in Texas, then you most likely won’t find it anywhere else). The only record store that I have discovered so far that I could compare to Waterloo’s would be “Amoeba” in Haight/Ashbury in San Francisco, California. I found my James McMurtry albums at Waterloo’s, for example. The other record stores that I mentioned were rather smaller shops, however with great selections of country music and local bands – a lot of them second hand, but yet in excellent quality. Out of many others they had original presses of Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker, Bobby Bare, Country Joe McDonald or Stevie Ray Vaughan, which I needed to bring back home to Vienna and which are pure treasures of music.
I believe it is hard to understand the vibe of this city, if you have never visited it and I know that written words will not change that, either. This has never been the the goal of this article. What I wanted to do is to simply reflect on my experience – even though it was only a couple of days that I spent there – and to write about a city that shares the same passion with me. That is the love for music and the miracles that music can do to a person.
In the end, I am getting out of my cab saying good-bye to Tommy. It is my last night in Austin. I will be heading out to Houston the next day. I open a beer – no, not a Lone Star this time – and sit down in the front yard at the exact same spot, where Dave has played his gig a couple days earlier. It is still hot and humid. I sip my cold beer while the bottle is sweating, I have my head phones on and I listen to music. I am a little bit sad that I have to leave that place, but also a smile is running over my face for having experienced such a great place and at the same time, I know that I will be back at some point.
There are two things that shape the city of Austin like no others. That is on the one hand the university and their sports teams, the Texas Longhorns, and on the other hand music. Since you are visiting a blog about music, I will put the university part aside and focus on the music. And there sure is a lot to focus on. Austin’s official nickname is “the live music capital of the world”, and it is absolutely considered being worthy this name. I have never seen such a concentration of local bands, live venues, stages and record stores before – and not just on famous Sixth Street, but all over the city – and I do not think that I will ever will again unless I go back. I have not been to places like Nashville or Memphis, but it is hard to believe that they could beat Austin. It does not matter which bar you stumbled into, you could be sure that there was a band or a musician on stage. Austin breathes music, it sweats music, it lives music. How omnipresent music is can be observed by a huge sculpture of a guitar on Congress Ave straight in downtown Austin or one hotel that is called “Van Zandt”. I liked to call Austin my personal music El Dorado.
My first confrontation with the Austin vibe was at my Air BnB in the south side of the city. It is a hot and humid summer night and we are sitting in the front yard of our host Dave. He has just taken out his guitar and harmonica and is playing a private gig for me and my friend. Dave used to play in an Arizona based country band for years but has now settled down back in Austin and is writing singer songwriter material. The scenery is almost obscure, yet fascinating to the utmost. Us Europeans still struggling with the Texan heat that is just slapping you on the face, while a friend of our host – supposedly a multi-millionaire (I suppose it can be doubted how true that is) – is sitting next to us around the table and is slowly getting drunk until he passes out in his chair and Dave varying his performance between own compositions and strumming out covers accompanied by the sound of the ventilation outside the house. When Dave performs he is in his own zone. His passion for what he is doing is tremendously obvious. His style is a combination of blues and classical singer songwriting, yet the influence of his Texas and country roots cannot be denied, neither in his own songs nor in the choice of his covers (Ol’ Waylon’s Luckenbach, TX is sticking out here). In his songs he is covering religious topics in a very ironic way and he is also singing about unfortunate sometimes even brutal love (“Well that little girl you loved is dead / it would be sad because it’s true / you wouldn’t believe what she did to me / she killed me too”). It was a very intimate evening, he let us look into his soul through his songs and it should not be last gig he’d be performing throughout our stay.
I cannot recall how many gigs I have visited in Austin. Have I mentioned before that they take place everywhere in the city? If not, then I have now. Most of them are free and you would not only see one band playing, the whole evenings are filled with different bands following each other. It was funny to observe that as soon a country song is being played, the audience immediately goes wild and starts square dancing and there was no exception. While Austin is a microcosm of all different kinds of musical genres and also the artists are extremely manifold, country and indie rock are still dominating on stage. Well-known artists are performing in one club, while in the bar next door unknown, yet brilliant local bands are giving their best.
One concert that stood out for me took place at the legendary Continental club on South Congress Ave, home of all kinds of national and local gigs. 53-year-old Austin legend and country veteran James McMurtry performs there every Wednesday night when he is town and as a matter of fact, I came across the Continental on a Wednesday night and James McMurtry was in town. I had never heard of him before, but I was blown away by him and his band. Earlier that year this fascinating Americana singer songwriter has released his first studio record after six years (“Complicated Game” – a separate review on it will follow here) and as I later found out the song that I loved the most of this whole gig “You Got To Me” was from this album. I was sipping my Lone Star beer (I admit it is abysmal, but it belongs to Texas like the old Ford pick-up….I hope no Texan will ever read this line), while listening to James McMurtry tell cynical stories about the common man and about what he is experiencing and struggling with. I ended up buying his records later on and his “Live in Aught-Three” album is spinning on my record player as I am writing exactly these lines.
This brings me to the next topic. What would a music city be without its record stores? And Austin has a lot to offer on this site. I spent almost a whole day digging. And I was not even close to covering all the stores that the city has to offer. Four stores are still worth mention. “Antone’s Record Shop” on Guadelope, “End of an Ear” on 1st , “Friends of Sound” on Congress and the famous “Waterloo Records”, which is unbelievably huge. I usually prefer those small, private record stores, that are very intimate and where you can basically inhale and suck up the owners’ love for music, but Waterloo’s simply cannot be missing in this list. First, because it is an institution in Austin, second, because everything and anything could be found there (well, almost anything – I been asking in every record store I went to for an original Townes Van Zandt 7”, but it seems like that this is impossible to discover. And if you did not find it in Texas, then you most likely won’t find it anywhere else). The only record store that I have discovered so far that I could compare to Waterloo’s would be “Amoeba” in Haight/Ashbury in San Francisco, California. I found my James McMurtry albums at Waterloo’s, for example. The other record stores that I mentioned were rather smaller shops, however with great selections of country music and local bands – a lot of them second hand, but yet in excellent quality. Out of many others they had original presses of Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker, Bobby Bare, Country Joe McDonald or Stevie Ray Vaughan, which I needed to bring back home to Vienna and which are pure treasures of music.
I believe it is hard to understand the vibe of this city, if you have never visited it and I know that written words will not change that, either. This has never been the the goal of this article. What I wanted to do is to simply reflect on my experience – even though it was only a couple of days that I spent there – and to write about a city that shares the same passion with me. That is the love for music and the miracles that music can do to a person.
In the end, I am getting out of my cab saying good-bye to Tommy. It is my last night in Austin. I will be heading out to Houston the next day. I open a beer – no, not a Lone Star this time – and sit down in the front yard at the exact same spot, where Dave has played his gig a couple days earlier. It is still hot and humid. I sip my cold beer while the bottle is sweating, I have my head phones on and I listen to music. I am a little bit sad that I have to leave that place, but also a smile is running over my face for having experienced such a great place and at the same time, I know that I will be back at some point.