Van Morrison and band onstage at AWHQ, January 10, 1974. Photograph by Burton Wilson.
We were pleased as punch that Van Morrison chose the Armadillo to kick off his Caledonia Soul Express tour in January 1974. Van was big box office at the time, and to cover the premium price we paid to get him, we raised the cover to three dollars for his show. All three nights sold out.
Van was supernaturally gifted and more than a little eccentric, but we did our best to keep him comfortable and happy. Genie and I even put him up at our house. During his entire stay in Austin, a young, attractive female companion did all of his talking for him. She was introduced as his “masseuse and interpreter.” A typical interaction went like this:
“Van would like an omelet,” said the interpreter.
“OK, I’ll be glad to make Van an omelet,” said Genie.
Whisper, whisper, whisper.
“Van would like me to make his omelet,” said the interpreter.
“Sure thing. No problem.”
It was a weird three days and nights.
Looking back on all of this, it almost seems preordained that the former lead singer of the band Them, who popularized the durable-as-a-hammer songs “Gloria” and “Here Comes the Night,” would be knighted in 2015 by Queen Elizabeth. His full title became Sir George Ivan Morrison, OBE (Order of the British Empire).1
After the last night of Van Morrison’s three-night run, we made an inquiry as to how he had enjoyed the backstage hospitality. We were informed that Van enjoyed the spread, but he didn’t get the shrimp enchiladas Jerry Garcia had told him about. Jan Beeman promised Van that if he came back, she’d have a big heaping plate ready for him.
Van already had another gig on Sunday, but he was off on Monday. We had nothing on the calendar for Monday. Van was agreeable to another show, so we booked the gig, got the word out, and Monday evening, Sir Van had shrimp enchiladas for dinner.
One year after taking Frank Zappa to see the yurts, I took Van Morrison to see them. Van listened to the spiel about the healing powers and other attributes of yurts, but unlike Zappa, he never asked a question or spoke a word. That wasn’t surprising, since he hadn’t said a thing during his stay at my house, either.
As we left Yurtsville, I was anxious to know what Van thought about it. “What does Van think about the yurts?” I said.
Whisper, whisper, whisper.
“Van says he really needs his corners.”
* * *
“This is a paradise,” Jim Franklin once said. “Look around. Food. Beer. Music. Lots of people . . . and an abundance of armadillo mythology to keep you from feeling isolated.”
The beer garden struck many people as a paradise. After a pitcher of Lone Star and a platter of nachos, many folks made up their minds to put down their roots in Austin. Several years went by before I realized how important this combination of things was to the Armadillo’s success.
One of the ingredients of the combination was the staff. The Armadillo was the home they’d never had, and they spread the feeling of welcome and belonging to others who came through our doors. Then there was the kitchen staff and the food and hospitality they served, which, unfortunately, took me a long time to fully appreciate. The kitchen put me off for several reasons, maybe because walking through it, you were assaulted with heat and greasy smoke, strange odors, and the peculiar chaos of our food-making operation.
The feedback we got from touring bands made me realize that the Armadillo’s kitchen was helping build our reputation in the music world. Our nachos alone—the simple presentation of jalapeno slices on top of a pile of melted yellow cheese on a crisp baked tortilla—were legendary. Armadillo World Headquarters was the first big venue in the country to serve nachos. Popularizing nachos for the masses certainly wasn’t our only great achievement, but it’s a worthy claim to fame.
Jan Beeman was recruited for the kitchen staff because head cook Betsy Haney was shorthanded. Jan steeled herself before she assumed the job. First of all, the kitchen had a one-stove setup. You could only cook nine nachos at a time. There was no dishwasher on the premises. Then there was the chilling sight of Big Rikke Moursund, also known as the Guacamole Queen. Tall as a lamppost and weighing two hundred pounds, she could often be encountered stirring a pot of beans while clad in only panties and flip-flops.
Big Rikke was the most famous member of the Dillo staff. As part of Jim Franklin’s stage show, she would come out onstage wearing a giant guacamole hat made of urethane foam. Loud-talking and larger-than-life, she aspired to be the biggest groupie in the music world. She tried to emulate Barbara Cope, the infamous Dallas groupie they called the Butter Queen because she was known for using Land O’Lakes butter as a sexual lubricant. Barbara Cope’s conquests were said to include the Rolling Stones (as immortalized in the song “Rip This Joint”), Joe Cocker, Elton John, and many others.2
Instead of butter, Big Rikke used guacamole. The number and fame of her lovers never eclipsed that of the Butter Queen, but she gained immortality through Jim Franklin’s artwork. A painting outside the men’s restroom depicted a gruff-looking army sergeant with a cartoon speech bubble warning, “If I catch any of you pussies beatin’ off in this bathroom, I’m gonna turn you over to the Guacamole Queen!”
Outside the women’s room, an image of Big Rikke herself, scowling, said, “If I catch any of you guys in the gals’ john, I’m gonna mash you up n’ spread you on a salad!”
Big Rikke was just another one of the challenging aspects handled by Jan Beeman, the true queen of the Armadillo kitchen. Jan also had to deal with bar versus kitchen conflicts and ongoing debates among her own staff, which was split between vegetarians and meat eaters. Considering the tough job she was given, which included serving as mediator between food factions, I regret not being nicer to Jan, but historically, my attitude toward the kitchen was always negative.
AWHQ mural and graffiti, 1972. Photograph by Burton Wilson.
Menu artwork by Ken Featherston, 1974.
Despite all this, Jan succeeded in making the kitchen the showcase of Armadillo World Headquarters hospitality. What she and her kitchen crew did for musicians on the road created buzz all over the country. Many started clamoring for a chance to come play the Dillo just so they could eat. As soon as a band arrived for load-in, our crew was standing by to do the heavy lifting, while the kitchen did their part by baking chocolate-chip cookies for the road-weary musicians and their crew. Beer flowed freely. Pot was plentiful, high quality, relatively cheap, and easily accessible. Cocaine could be had for the asking if there was a need. El Rancho and Tamale House No. 1, located just across the river, had all the inexpensive Tex-Mex a stomach could stomach. Barton Springs Pool, where the springwater remained a constant sixty-eight degrees year-round, was a mile down the road. To many road-weary travelers, playing the Armadillo was a died-and-gone-to-heaven deal.
Except for the shrimp enchiladas, there was nothing exotic or cutting-edge about the fare. But we treated the bands and crew like they were special, something that evidently occurred very seldom in their travels. The kitchen tried to pay attention to what bands liked to eat, and would ask if it was anyone’s birthday. If someone was having one, they’d bake a birthday cake.
If someone moaned, “Oh, man, I’ve been out on the road for six months, I wish I had a real apple pie,” an apple pie would soon appear. Bands who’d played our house before knew the kitchen staff well enough to call ahead and let them know what they’d been eating and what they were craving. Vegetarians knew they could show up and not have to suffer through another plate of quiche, because the kitchen prepared excellent vegetarian dishes that even a carnivore like me could devour.
The guys in the Charlie Daniels Band, who were big old Southern men with big old Southern appetites, were always sent away with boxes of roast beef sandwiches, extra chicken, fruit, and gallons of iced tea, and all that after the preshow spread, which usually featured oven-baked stuffed pork chops—a mushroom-onion-garlic-breadcrumb kind of deal that was the CDB’s favorite entree.
Jan’s kitchen always made sure to feed and water a band’s road crew. Big pitchers of lemonade with fresh strawberries and mint were always waiting, with big pitchers of beer available for the asking. If the roadies were happy, the stars were usually much happier.
Commander Cody left a fat one-hundred-dollar tip for the kitchen after a big weekend, and a personal fifty-dollar tip for Jan Beeman, which allowed the kitchen to pay off the guy who brought shrimp up from the coast with a little left over to invest in some needed utensils.
Word spread. The Grateful Dead told the Beach Boys and Van Morrison about Jan’s shrimp enchiladas. Before long, many acts who played at Municipal Auditorium because they were too big for the Armadillo still insisted on catering from our kitchen. The Beach Boys, for example, had cheese sandwiches in their contract rider, making it easy for promoters in the most remote boondocks of the country to accommodate their vegetarian diets. But after the Beach Boys tried the shrimp enchiladas from the Armadillo kitchen, they changed their rider to stipulate that Jan’s crew cater any show within one hundred miles of Austin.
