I SHARE MY BIG DREAM WITH THE RICHARDS FAMILY
Ann Richards, governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995, made the following remarks when she delivered the keynote address at the South by Southwest festival in 1993
I’m delighted to welcome you to Texas in Austin, Live Music Capital of the World. You know, the natives believe that we are the center of the musical universe, and this week, that is literally the truth. We are proud to have all of you and glad that you can experience firsthand what Texans take for granted, and that is that the amount and the quantity and quality of live music that you hear in Austin, Texas, on nearly any night is the best that the country has to offer. Texas music has become much more than what you hear in a bar with the chicken wire stretched between the band and the patrons.
Over twenty years ago, a friend of mine named Eddie Wilson called me and my husband and said that he wanted us to go see a building because he was about to make a dream come true. And so we went with him out to South Austin to this great, big, old, barny place, and it had all the windows broken out of it and it looked like it was about to be demolished in the interest of the health and safety of Austin, Texas. You must understand that these were in the days, as Ray Wylie Hubbard said the other night, before Willie Nelson brought the rednecks and the cowboys together.
So my husband and I walked in with Eddie to this big, old barn, and it was dirty, and Eddie said, “We’re going to make a music center of the universe right here.” And as usual, we thought something was wrong with Eddie, that for one reason or another, his vision had become blurred, but of course that was the beginning of the Armadillo World Headquarters, which indeed was one of the most exciting, and remained one of the most exciting, places in the United States for the years that it was in operation. I saw a little of everything at the Armadillo, and it was one of the great experiences of my life.
I met Ann and Dave Richards in the 1960s when I was a college student in Denton. David, an attorney, was involved in politics, and Ann was known for, among other things, Democratic fundraisers in which she and other women performed their scathing “Political Paranoia” parodies of Texas politicians.
The Richardses divorced in 1976. Ann died in 2006. Dave is still a good friend. The following was originally published in his memoir Once Upon a Time in Texas: A Liberal in the Lone Star State:1
Eddie, who is a true genius and especially adroit at spewing and spinning ideas, came and grabbed us one day to show us his dream project. He had located an abandoned National Guard armory just across the Colorado River in South Austin. He was going to turn it into a music hall and capture the emerging Austin music scene. The place was vast, full of junk, and looked impossible to resurrect. We underestimated Eddie’s determination and energy. Shortly, the Armadillo World Headquarters burst on the scene and became the embodiment of Austin funk of the 1970s. With Jim Franklin as resident artist and sometime master of ceremonies, the ’Dillo radiated a deranged quality that defied normalcy and attracted all sorts of people.
The astonishing thing was the wide acceptance of the Armadillo message. Here was a rock-and-roll joint peopled by stoned freaks and hippies that managed to achieve mainstream acceptance. The city of Austin ended up naming its shuttle bus service “the ’Dillo.” The Lone Star beer company began a major promotion featuring Jim Franklin’s armadillo art. Armadillo was the kind of place that would have been regularly raided by the cops in an earlier era, and yet it became a chamber of commerce icon, one of the things you brag about in promotional materials.
All kinds of music came through the place. I saw such diverse performers as Bette Midler, Bill Malone, Ray Charles, and Commander Cody. The rise of redneck rock and the outlaw image was intimately associated with the Armadillo. Its opening somewhat coincided with Willie Nelson’s return to Texas and the emergence of an anti-Nashville movement led by Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Jerry Jeff Walker, among others. Although the state abhorred the lifestyles presented by the Armadillo and these musicians, the “don’t give a shit” attitude they personified hit a responsive chord in the Texas psyche. Everyone seemed to share the sentiment from “London Homesick Blues” of wanting to “come home to the Armadillo.” So a strange little snuffling nocturnal creature came to replace the longhorn as the state’s favorite beast.
The Richardses had four children, Cecile, Daniel, Clark, and Ellen. Cecile is well-known today as an articulate figure in progressive politics and the longtime president of Planned Parenthood. She remembers that visit to the “old, barny place,” too.
When we moved to Austin, I remember Eddie Wilson taking us all to this abandoned armory over there off Barton Springs. It was completely empty, and Eddie explained that he had this idea that he was going to make it into this important music venue, and it sounded completely cracked at the time, but of course then it became the Armadillo. And it became such a center of not only great music and people who probably never would have performed in Austin, but it was a cultural cornerstone. It was amazing. And I think that was a time when progressive politics really took hold in Texas.
Other people, like Esther’s Follies and the people involved in that, were part of that community, too. And then, of course, after the Armadillo kind of folded, Eddie opened the Raw Deal and then Threadgill’s. Those were important cultural places for a group of freethinkers, if you will, and political liberals, and it led to a lot of people running for office and getting elected.
The Armadillo is really where we as kids grew up, because, to my parents, the Armadillo was the place, and it was better than a babysitter. It was a huge part of our upbringing, and an entire decade, if not more, of my parents’ lives.2
