Max Scheinin: Mike, what was one memorable early show?
Mike Tolleson: Freddie King, of course – we got Freddie to come down and play in October of ’70, and we packed the house. And after that, every time Freddie came, we packed it. We had Freddie come as often as possible, because he always sold out the show. And he would save our ass: we would get him down there just in time to pay the rent. So he was always pulling our ass out of the fire. That’s why they say the Armadillo was The House That Freddie Built.
Michael Corcoran: Freddie King loved the Armadillo so much that he never raised his price playing it. His deal was always fifty per cent of the door, that’s it, no matter how many people showed up – which is unheard of. So the club would make as much money as Freddie King would – they’d make more money when you counted all the beer;
and Leon Russell would come down most of the time and play piano. It’s that sort of thing where it’s, “Let’s go to the Armadillo and have the greatest time, and we don’t really care about how much money we make, we’re just gonna have a good time and we’re gonna help them pay rent one more month.”
John Hanson: Folks that went to the Armadillo – they came there for the music, but there was so much other stuff going on, it was like the music was background, more than the first and only thing that they were there for. They did come for the artists, but the festival style of how the club was set up lent itself to your not having to devote one hundred per cent of your attention to the artist. Unless you were absolutely, positively, one hundred percent there to see the artist, you still had enough open space to walk around and interact with the other people that were there, instead of being crowded into an area where you had to focus your one hundred percent attention on the artists.
MS: Michael, talk to me more about Willie Nelson, and Willie coming to town. I know he brought the hippies in to hear country. Can you talk about the impact that his shows had on the development of the music scene?
MC: Well, the hippies started listening to country music before Willie played the Armadillo; there was already a scene going on where they would play the “Orange Blossom Special” and all the hippies would do their crazy hippie dance – it was already a thing, for hippies to be into country music.
But Willie was a Nashville guy – he was a mainstream country artist, really, and he changed more than the people changed because of him; he changed because of the people. What he brought to Austin, though, was infrastructure. There was no music industry before Willie came here. And he brought management, he brought publishing. All of a sudden, Jerry Jeff Walker’s got a record deal with MCA. Rusty Wier signed to Columbia. Frummox – Steve Frumholz – signed to ABC. Michael Martin Murphey signed to A&M. Everybody was getting record deals.
MS: Mike, what are your memories of Willie Nelson coming on the scene?
MT: Willie’s first gig there was in August of ’72. And leading up to that – see, we started off appealing primarily to the old crowd that had gone to the Vulcan Gas Company, and then that crowd moved over to our place, to the Armadillo. And that was the local hippie crowd: people that were living in Austin but were young and into alternative lifestyles – the marijuana-smoking, LSD-taking crowd.
In those days, there was a big polarization between the hippies on one hand, and so-called rednecks on the other. But we felt there were certain acts that would appeal to our audience and to the country audience at the same time. So we were identifying those people, and we had a short list, including people like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and Tom T. Hall and various others bluegrass bands – people that were coming out of Nashville and had records out on the country labels, yet were not your standard, hardcore Nashville country acts.
People were coming into the Armadillo from all over the country. They’d pull into town in a van or a bus, and they’d park out in our parking lot and hang around for days, and come to the shows and eat in the beer garden.
And one day, there was a girl that I’d see in there, and she had her backpack. I sat down beside her and we started talking. And she started telling me about how she got a ride into town with a bunch of musicians in a Winnebago. And they had this great weed, and they all got stoned, and she spent a day or two with them and had a great time.
They told her that they all worked with a guy named Willie Nelson, and they were all living on an abandoned golf course down in Bandera, Texas.
And that really caught my attention – Willie Nelson was living in Texas now? He’s not in Nashville? And they were smoking weed? A country band that actually smoked dope? That really caught my attention, because the minute I heard that, I realized Willie is exactly who we could sell to our audience.
Soon after that, I saw that Willie had a show at John T. Floore’s Country Store, out in Helotes, Texas, which is outside of San Antonio – not too far from Bandera. So I went down there to see the show. He was playing on an outdoor pavilion, and he had out an audience of about forty people.
Afterwards, I went up and introduced myself and told him that we had a club in Austin and that we would really love for him to come and play there. And he said, “Okay, I’ll think about it, I’ll get back to you.”
So one day a couple weeks later, he walked into the beer garden. I wasn’t there, but Eddie [Wilson] and Bobby [Hedderman] were there. So he talked to them, and said he had heard about the place and he was interested in playing there.
And that led to his booking there on August 12, ’72. It got a lot of media attention in San Antonio and in Austin, and we had a full house – a big mix of our normal crowd, our hippie crowd, and a lot of cowboys there, too. It was pretty sensational.
MC: There also was a place called the Texas Opry House, and they were gonna compete with the Armadillo. What happened around ’73 is that Willie had a rift with the Armadillo, because he’s got people in his crew that carry guns, and the Armadillo said, “That’s not good here anymore – you can’t bring guns here anymore,” and Willie said, y’know, “Screw you.”
And so he found a new place to play, and that was the Texas Opry House. And that was a really great venue – the music critic for the Statesman said that it was the greatest country music venue of all time. That’s where Waylon Jennings recorded his great live record, and Willie played there a bunch. But that was only open for about a year. They bounced a couple of rent checks and went out of business.
MS: Veronica, what did the beer garden at the ’dillo look like?
Veronica Allbright: They worked a lot on it; we were all young, and they had young people and people that were going to the shows working out in the beer garden, putting some fencing up – vines were growing around it, so that it made a real nice little area to be in. And there were some plants, there were some cedar trees, I remember.
There was a stage out there, in the beer garden. There were round tables – there were a bunch of those wrought-iron stools at the tables. People drank – they put some gazebos out, so there was some covering overhead; at first of course it was new growth, but over time they all filled in.
People smoked pot back there. I didn’t really drink too much beer, but there was a Happy Hour, with pitchers. The nachos – they’d always have a blue plate special, it was always good food, vegetarian stuff; it just fit right into the culture of the time.
There were babies, there was breastfeeding. So there was just all sorts of humanity out there.
MC: And the acts would come – and this was even before they had backstage riders: bands have a rider now, where they tell you what they expect to get backstage. Even before that, at the Armadillo, people could not believe how well they were fed and how well they were treated. Van Morrison had a show once, on one day’s notice, because he wanted to try the shrimp enchiladas that Jerry Garcia told him about.
MT: Booking agents were beginning to believe that we could take care of name talent – that they could come down here and have a good experience. If they came, they realized real quickly that we had a great audience. Our kitchen people would provide them with real good food. We tried to create a reputation for giving talent the best treatment that they would get anywhere on the road.
MC: Frank Zappa was a well-known perfectionist. And hated hippies. Didn’t smoke weed, would stop the show if he smelled marijuana. He loved the Armadillo people, because they would work – they would work their asses off. He would do a six-hour rehearsal, and they’re all there – whatever he needs, the whole time, they just jump to it.
MT: Frank was impressive. He would come to town, and I remember his rehearsals very well. He was probably one of the smartest people that came through there: very intelligent, very articulate; one of the first musicians that I remember meeting who I thought not only was really good at his craft as a musician, but was really a smart guy in many different ways – as a business guy, and very articulate about social issues – very multi-faceted.
Jay Trachtenberg: By the time I got here in 1978, the cosmic cowboy thing was winding down. Willie got really popular in the latter part of the ’70s, but in the early part, when he came back to town, he was known in Texas, but he wasn’t a national thing. So Willie would play around a lot, and he would attract hippies and rednecks. That was a big deal when it first happened, and I think less so as the decade changed.
MS: So it already felt like the psychedelic scene had passed by the time you were here?
JT: No, not that it had passed.
Without getting into a whole thing about it, I was a Grateful Dead fan. In the late ’70s, early ’80s, the Dead were happening – they were for me, because I used to go see them all the time; but as a cutting-edge music, its day was ten years before. So they were established – there were tons of those ’60s bands that were still around in the ’70s and ’80s, playing and sounding good; they were still young, they were in their thirties and forties. But the cutting-edge stuff, it was the Talking Heads and the Clash, punk and New Wave.
MS: Did you see the Dead in town?
JT: Oh, yeah. They came down a bunch of times.
They played at Palmer Auditorium before I got here. But I saw them at least three times, maybe four times – they played at Manor Downs, out at the racetrack, which was really great. Those shows were wild – they played on the inside of the racetrack. The stage was at one end and then it was just an open field. It was a lot of people tripping on psychedelics, let’s just put it that way.
MS: Do you remember the sound being good?
JT: Oh yeah, the sound was great. But they always had good sound. Back in the ’70s, they had that enormous soundsystem. But I can remember one of those shows, it was night and they’re jamming, and they’re playing this wild improvisation.
We’re out in Manor. So Manor is like ten miles to the east [of Austin]. And they’re playing toward the east. I’m going, “People are hearing this twenty miles away,” it’s just open fields, the sound is just going out.
Y’know, I was young and on drugs, it was great!
MS: Acid primarily?
JT: Yeah. And mushrooms, whatever.
MS: You went to a lot of gospel shows?
JT: I don’t know how we found out about them: they weren’t advertised real well. And that scene was on the east side, and nobody was going to the east side in those days.
MS: And it wasn’t getting announced on the radio?
JT: Well, there were gospel shows, black gospel shows, and the concerts would be announced on those. So by word of mouth, the community would know about it. But mostly, people didn’t have the antennae up or they just didn’t give a shit. Probably the latter, for the most part.
But for those of us who were into it, you had your ears tuned and you may take a drive around the east side, looking for posters on poles – that’s how they used to advertise shows. And those of us who would show up knew each other – I wasn’t best friends with these people, but we were hip enough to know that this was happening and show up at it.
MS: Mr. Hanson, is there a particular show at the Armadillo that stands out in your memory?
JH: Whoo! Armadillo, a particular show that stands out – the one that really stands out is War.
I was really infatuated with War and the music that they played.
I used to go to the Armadillo on a regular basis, for the simple reason that, being on the radio, I could get in free. Almost every weekend that I wasn’t at Antone’s, I was at the Armadillo. But that particular artist, that performance, really stood out. And I think more than likely, that’s because I really paid attention, rather than walking around and just hearing the music.
And that was the other thing about the Armadillo: you could walk around and still be a part of the concert, without actually having to sit there in front and look at the artist performing.
MS: When you think back on this era, are there specific memories that stand for this period of time wrapping up in Austin?
JH: One of the things that stands out is when there was a discussion to rename 19th Street Martin Luther King Blvd. And that was a contentious period in East Austin’s – well, in Austin’s history.
And I got somewhat infuriated, because what they wanted to do was rename the street from 183 down to I-35, and didn’t want to extend it from the University to Lamar. And some of the opponents said that if they did that, they wouldn’t receive their mail. And I’m thinking, you could name a street whatever you want to name it: the mail comes to that particular numerical address; the mail doesn’t get lost because you rename the streets.
That event really brought home for me that Austin, by and large, really hadn’t changed that much to become more inclusive of all its citizens.
MS: What year was this?
JH: I started to work at KUT in ’74, and this was in ’75.
Michael Corcoran: The Armadillo opened in August of 1970 and closed on the last day of 1980 – and so for those years, it was pretty much the big dog.
MS: Mike, what was the internal decision-making when word came that the venue was going to be sold? Were there attempts to push back on the sale of the property?
Mike Tolleson: The building sat on a seven-acre tract at the corner of South First and Barton Springs Road. And that property was owned by a brother and two sisters. One of the sisters wanted to sell. And we knew far enough in advance that we had a chance at trying to buy it.
But they wanted a million dollars for it. And a million dollars in 1978 was very hard for a bunch of hippies to round up. Especially when the local powers-that-be and the people that had the money did not relate to or understand or appreciate what we were trying to do, or the vision that we saw for the future. In those days, we were something that they would probably prefer just went away.
It wasn’t until the early ’80s that the Chamber of Commerce had a turnover in their administration, and someone came in who really understood the value of the music community and the creative community in Austin. And that was the beginning of the recognition and the promotion of the music industry in Austin. What evolved into the “Live Music Capital of the World” motto – that started in the early ’80s.
But at the Armadillo, we ran out of time. And the property was put up for sale, and it was bought.
MC: So Liberty Lunch was happening. And then when the Armadillo closed, the people at Liberty Lunch bought the trusses from the Armadillo’s roof, and they put a roof on Liberty Lunch, which a lot of the old-time hippies hated, because they liked the open air – even though when they were dancing, there would be so much dust, because it was a gravel floor. But when Liberty Lunch had the roof put in and became more of a regular concert hall, everybody played there. The Neville Brothers were the big band, they played there probably once every two or three months, always packed it out; Nirvana played there, My Bloody Valentine, Oasis, Alanis Morisette. Anybody who played two-thousand-seat places anywhere else would play Liberty Lunch, which was a thousand seats. Because like with the Armadillo, it was a whole scene, it was just a great venue; the crowd was so into it.
VA: In ’78, I met somebody who was a jeweler, and he was probably about eight years older. He moved in with me – he had hair down to his waist, he had lived next door to the Grateful Dead on Ashbury Street, and he just thought the scene here was great.
And then he really got into punk rock, and so every punk rock band that came through Austin, we went to go see.
There was the Police. Talking Heads came – I think they came a couple of times, but maybe only once to the ’dillo.
And the Police – when they came, they were so new that they didn’t know any songs for an encore. So they sang “Roxanne” three times. And the crowd was just crazy wild, jumping all around towards the stage – and you could just tell that they were just standing up there shocked, literally shocked, they couldn’t believe they were getting such a good response. And we were just standing out there, “Yeah, we want to hear more!”
MS: Jay, when you were in Santa Barbara and you were wanting to move to Austin, how was word reaching you of Austin and what was going on here?
JT: I remember the first time. I was in Santa Barbara, I was in a bar, and I started talking to a woman in there, and she said she lived in Austin, she went to school in Austin.
I said, “Ugh, Texas?”
She said, “No, no, I live in Austin, Austin’s really cool and there’s lots of music going on.”
And then Kim Wilson was in – you ever hear of the Fabulous Thunderbirds? They were big here, they were a local band – but he was from Santa Barbara, and he moved off. And then when he would come back, I would see him, and he would tell me, “Austin’s a really cool town.”
So it was on my radar. And then I saw an Austin City Limits episode, one of the first ones, and it had two local bands – both of these groups, they did country, but they mixed in all this other stuff, and it was like, I’d love to see a band like this in California.
So then I was looking for grad schools and I looked at University of Texas in Austin and they had a social-work school there. So I definitely applied here.
And then, when I was leaving, people said, “You’re nuts, what are you moving to Texas for, you’re crazy!” In fact, I just went back and got with some guys I went to high school with, and we got together for – for something – and somebody came up and goes, “I can’t believe you moved to Texas!” He still couldn’t get over it.
And I said, for what I was into in music – roots music and country music and blues and what would now be Americana and jazz and gospel and reggae – during that time, the late ’70s, throughout the ’80s and afterwards, I couldn’t have been in a better place anywhere on the planet than right here, because there was so much music. I would have friends come to town on a Monday night, and we’d hit five or six places and not even go north of the river – we would just be in South Austin and could go to five clubs in a night. That’s what it was like back then. It was really something.
