A typical AWHQ crowd, 1974. This photo shows the new bar in the background, and carpet scraps still on the the floor before the risers were installed. Photograph by Burton Wilson.
My friend Ann Richards, the future governor of Texas, once called the Armadillo a “barny old place,” and as gifted as she was with colorful, barbed expressions, we were probably lucky she left it at that. Outside, the caliche parking lot was a moonscape, with potholes big enough to swallow an entire Volkswagen, and it created clouds of dust that came inside and coated everything, except when it rained, and that meant mud-caked cowboy boots, sandals, and bare feet. Beautiful Texas!
When I originally secured the lease with M. K. Hage Jr., I promised not to sell beer. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Beer created drunks, drunks caused fights, and fights created trouble that brought the cops. Our people were already paranoid about the police. In 1970 hippies were routinely harassed, singled out, and arrested just for their appearance or for having a peace sign sticker on the back of a car or a VW bus.
On the other hand, my experience with the Brewers Association, not to mention high school and college, told me that beer also brought people together. As a come-on to get people to a show, beer had no peer. And we desperately needed to get more people coming to the great shows we were putting on.
Beer was also a response to the climate. A person doesn’t have to live in Texas for long before learning that beer makes the summer heat more tolerable. Our building had no air-conditioning. Real air-conditioning was financially impossible at the time, but getting a beer license was doable, and that was one of the most important early improvements we made to the Armadillo after our first year in business.
It was obvious, as well, that we needed some structural improvements that would make the joint more inviting to people. The only seating we had was the floor, where dirty carpet remnants were laid out, checkerboard style, in what was euphemistically called “festival-style seating.”
Our initial goal was to double the Armadillo’s income by increasing our capacity from 750 to 1,500. We built a grand stage at the opposite end of the hall, moved the entrance/exit, installed a box office, and hung curtains that would serve double duty as dividers for smaller shows. We also installed a glorified bar and hangout by the kitchen where food and beer would be served. The Cabaret, as we called it, was elevated and had room for tables and seating where people could sit and watch the show from what was now the back of the hall.
The success of the renovation project depended heavily on channeling the approach used in Mark Twain’s classic, Tom Sawyer, when Tom entices his friends to take over his job of whitewashing a fence without pay.
We had a good-sized crew of helpers. Everyone with nothing better to do wanted badly to be in our gang and hang out. And they had no choice but to work if they wanted to hang. The harder we worked, the harder they worked. They showed up every morning, sometimes bleary-eyed, always scruffy. Most were looking for companionship, not employment. Sometimes the ranks would swell with friends of friends, cousins, newcomers to town, or folks just passing through and in need of gas money.
We began the interior makeover by tearing out fourteen rooms that surrounded the large room. I did not ask the landlord for permission, I just ripped up his building. Tearing out the walls was relatively easy.
We kept the crew going with giant, greasy Schlotzsky’s sandwiches, buying them at the original storefront next door to the Continental Club on South Congress Avenue, where the now countrywide sandwich franchise started out just a few months after the Armadillo opened.
When we lacked cash for sandwiches, we served them rice and beans in a tub. Cheap refreshments, in the form of Mexican pot and ninety-nine-cent six-packs of Texas beer, also kept us going. I didn’t allow pot to slow us down, however, having recently learned the difference between volunteers who were stoned and those who were high. The ones who got high were the guys who found the experience exhilarating enough to show up the following day, ready to go; the ones who got stoned were missing in action.
A typical AWHQ crowd, 1974. This photo shows the new bar in the background, and carpet scraps still on the the floor before the risers were installed. Photograph by Burton Wilson.
Galen Barber consulting with his man on the mop, Bill Pankratz. Photograph by Burton Wilson.
View of AWHQ bar after renovation. This was the original location of the stage, which was moved to the north end of the hall. Photograph by Jim Richardson.
My coaching experience, not to mention marine corps boot camp training, served me in good stead. My locker-room pep talks at the start of the day leaned toward theatrical and military imagery. “We have to keep the theater open,” I said to whomever was around and needed motivation.
At other times, I’d say, “The show must go on. Our job is bigger than the unpleasant thought of having to spend time in a foxhole with someone you don’t particularly like.” Sometimes I threw in references to Noah’s Ark and the Alamo. With so many people working so hard for little or no money, someone had to keep the pressure on.
Through a combination of hard work, worthwhile goals, comedy, pot, and my corny motivational speeches, we developed a sense of camaraderie and community. Plus we got an impossible job done.
The temperature must have been 120 degrees in the offices when we started the tear-out. The work was hard, hot, and dirty, but the nastier it got, the harder we laughed. The scene reminded me of my stepfather’s photographs from World War II, when they were building runways in the jungles of the Pacific islands. South Austin in 1971 was a long way from there, but sometimes it felt almost like war.
The renovations took just over two weeks. During that time, we radically changed the innards of the hall by moving the stage and installing the Cabaret and new bar. Beer sales were initiated with a little two-keg beer box. Our gross potential was also enhanced by expanding the capacity from 750 to about 1,500. We also upgraded the stage lights and PA. The previous sound system had been owned by Bloodrock, the Fort Worth hard rock band whose single about a gruesome plane crash, “D.O.A.,” had somehow reached number 36 on the Billboard Top 100 earlier in the year. We bought the new PA from Showco Productions, a concert production company in Dallas run by Jack Calmes, who became my good friend.
Jack was an important figure in the music business in Texas. He and another Dallas promoter, Angus Wynne III, then a visionary nineteen-year-old, were responsible for booking Bob Dylan in Austin at the Municipal Auditorium on September 24, 1965. It was Dylan’s first Austin appearance and also his first gig with his new electric band, featuring members of the Hawks, later known as the Band. Two months earlier, at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan had performed an electric set (backed by several members of the Electric Flag) that did not sit particularly well with many in the audience, who viewed the electrification of Dylan’s rootsy material as a trashy sell-out. Austinites, however, were enthusiastic about the Dylan show. Few complaints were heard, and in fact, Dylan’s first show in Austin is remembered today as a transformative event. For decades after, many musicians talked about it in reverent tones, like teenagers going over an old comic book that tells the origin story of their favorite superhero.
Jack Calmes liked us and looked out for us, which was a good thing since his partners didn’t like us at all. We bitched about the sound system from the git-go, and their attitude was, if you don’t like it, buy another one. Jack was always sending us spare banana plugs and other parts to make it work better.
Jack was also Freddie King’s manager. Unlike Mance Lipscomb, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley, and other great blues musicians, Freddie had radio hits in the early 1970s, and he worked all the time. Jack Calmes was responsible for much of that. He also had a great story to explain how he got the job.
Previously, Freddie had been signed to a booking agent named Sam Copeland, a guy who had a reputation for being difficult and threatening. Freddie was certainly no wallflower, however, and on more than one occasion, the bluesman found it necessary to collect his money from Sam Copeland at gunpoint.
Jack wanted to work with Freddie, and he knew he could do better. Jack planned to inquire about getting Freddie released from his contract with Sam, so he asked Freddie how much time was left on the contract.
“I don’t know,” Freddie told him, “but we can just have him killed.”
“No, no, let’s don’t do that,” Jack said. “I’ve got $1,500 in the bank. I’ll offer that to Sam.”
Jack met with Sam and brought the $1,500 to purchase Freddie’s contract. To sweeten the deal, Jack gave the agent some advice. “I promise you, if you don’t take the money, Freddie’s going to spend the money to get somebody from Chicago to kill you,” he said. “I’m trying to keep him from doing that.”
Freddie King and Leon Russell discussing the set list before the grand reopening show, 1971. The beer garden was full and beginning to rumble. Photograph by Van Brooks.
Sam signed the release. Freddie and Jack became business partners.
By the fall of 1971, things seemed to be coming together. For the grand reopening, we had Freddie King, who was red-hot at the time and newly signed to Shelter Records. Even better, Freddie would be recording a live album at the Armadillo, with Leon Russell producing and doing some of the songwriting.
Shelter had been founded by Leon Russell and Denny Cordell in 1969. Leon was on fire in the early seventies, one of the biggest names in rock ’n’ roll. He had great momentum from the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, where he basically stole the show from Joe Cocker, and his self-titled solo album would continue to generate hits for other artists for years to come. He had recently worked with Bob Dylan, Delaney and Bonnie, and George Harrison, among others.
When the Shelter Records gang arrived and walked through the doors, the first thing that caught their eye, of course, was Jim Franklin’s masterpiece, his portrait of Freddie King with an armadillo exploding out of his chest.
“It’s a monster,” said Leon. In practically no time, Leon had hired Jim to paint the swimming pool at his house in Tulsa, and Jim would also end up painting Leon’s studio. For the next year, Jim commuted between Austin and Tulsa, lending his many talents to Leon, Shelter, and Freddie.
At showtime on the first night of Freddie’s two-night stand, Jack Calmes, Angus Wynne, and Leon Russell collected and led a huge entourage that proceeded to do a snake dance across the Dillo stage. They were hollering, dancing, and beating drumsticks, beer bottles, and cowbells. The joint rumbled with joy.
Two weeks later, we got all pumped up for the sellout show by Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar superstar so admired by the Beatles. At Ravi’s request, it was a no-smoking show, which was a definite first. We posted people at the door to explain the smoking ban and to hand out incense, despite the fact that when burned, incense creates you-know-what. By showtime, my hippie idealist bubble had burst several times. When I was on chauffeur detail, Alla Rakha, Ravi’s tabla player, had asked me to pull over at a liquor store for a pint of bourbon and at KFC for some fried chicken. I had hired a macrobiotic kitchen for the night, whose cooks prepared what they hoped would be a respectful and acceptable local interpretation of Indian fare. When Ravi’s band members asked if we could fetch some white bread to go with the meal, it was a sad sight to behold.
John Sebastian with wife, Catherine, backstage at AWHQ, October 29, 1971. Photograph by Burton Wilson.
Vassar Clements and Earl Scruggs backstage at AWHQ, November 5, 1971. Photograph by Burton Wilson.
After the momentum of our grand reopening, I learned all about speed bumps. One month after the grand reopening, we lost more money on John Sebastian than we had ever dreamed of losing. It had seemed like a sure thing. Before going solo in 1968 and playing Woodstock the following year, Sebastian had written and sung all the hits for the electric folk band the Lovin’ Spoonful. They were songs that just about everybody liked: “Summer in the City,” “Do You Believe in Magic?,” and “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?,” to name a few. There was even a hit song by the Mamas and the Papas, “Creeque Alley,” that mentioned their friends from the Lovin’ Spoonful. Jerry Garcia said that it was after seeing Lovin’ Spoonful that the Grateful Dead decided to go electric.
Sebastian’s fee seemed quite reasonable. Surely he would sell a thousand tickets, we reasoned. Only three hundred people showed up, and it felt like less. We lost a lot of money.
The next week, banjo picker Earl Scruggs, a folk and bluegrass favorite, put us another $2,500 in the red. We hired the Geezinslaws, a local hillbilly duo, to open the show, making out a check for $150 to the duo’s Sammy Allred, who also happened to be Austin’s favorite country music deejay. The following Monday morning, Sammy went on the air and blasted the hippies at the Armadillo who had paid his band with a hot check.
It was the only time in the Armadillo’s history that we bounced a check to a performer.
Bud Shrake pulled our asses out of the bacon grease that time. We were at the Cabaret bar when he pulled out his personal checkbook and wrote out a check for $3,500.
When winter arrived, our struggles with nature began anew. With only those three little space heaters, it was so frigid in the hall that we retreated to the Cabaret end of the building, using a curtain to cordon off the space. We had some good shows, but they were financially disastrous. In 1971 we grossed about $45,000 and lost about $13,000. We found that by enlarging the building, we had increased not only the gross potential but also our loss potential.
