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Waylon Jennings show

Bands

Went to hear Waylon Jennings in either 1976 or 77 at Gregory Gym on a Sunday night

Had a big crowd

Peter Frampton

Bands

Heard Peter Frampton at a concert somewhere off I35 back in 1977

It was a very hot day and I remember bringing a cooler of Lone Star Beer

Went with my cousins and I remember meeting a girl there and we dated for a while

Wish I would have remember who else played their

I think concert was called Spring Break
Had a great time there and it was a long day

The One Knite Dive & Tavern

Bars | Bands

With my partners Roddy and Roger I ran this club from 1970 through 1976. Those who are interested can find a couple of Facebook pages on the place, one call The One Knite and the other called Survivors of the One Knite. The latter contains lots of my old poster art for the place and, later, for the Continental Club and La Zona Rosa, and it also contains recordings I made at the dive in the early 70s, of The Storm, Freda and the Firedogs, D.K. Little, and Moon Pie.
click here
Scroll down to Older Posts to find the recorded music.
click here

And, for the guy who remembered on your site the Last Bash on the Hill concert -- we threw that in 1973 on Crady Bond's land on the way to Lake Austin, just before the land was sold out of Crady's family.
It was Willie Nelson's second gig after moving to Austin -- his first had been at Roundup, and, though he agreed to play too late to make my poster, he did appear onstage before The 13th Floor Elevators, briefly united after Roky's release.
The media claimed it drew 10.000, after Dallas and Houston radio started reporting on it. Admission was free, and we took in enough contributions from hippie businesses to give out 70+ kegs of Lone Star.
click here

The Ledge

Hipsters

One afternoon, I was sitting on a bench outside the Garner & Smith when a violet '48 Mercury pulled up to the curb and delivered two fellows - a cowboy with a lot of sequins, a guitar, and a trumpet, and an Indian in loincloth and sandals with a sparse headdress and a tympani. Their short concert consisted of something like yodeling at the tops of their voices punctuated by occasional shouts and in no particular correlation to various guitar riffs, blasts of the trumpet, and arrhythmic drumming. It would be a stretch to call their motion dance, but there was a great deal of it as well. After about five minutes' performance, the two got back into the Merc and drove away.

I attributed the experience to having smoked something very effective until I recounted it to a friend a day or so later. I was informed that I had seen the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and should consider myself privileged. Some few days after that, I was leaving the Orange Julius and watched the violet Mercury turning in. Conditions prevented my staying to watch what ensued and by the end of the week circumstances conspired to keep me away from Austin for something like 9 months. My return was to visit Eyore's birthday where I asked a number of folks likely to know where I would likely catch up to the Ledge. The consensus was that he and the Indian had taken up peregrinations of unknown route.

I doubt Austin has seen more noteworthily hip folk - and that says a great deal, as the occasions of Austin hip have been recounted to me from quite some time back and with great authority. My folks' initials can be found inscribed in tables at the Tavern from 1947 and their recollections went back to parties with the Tom Miller and Creekmore Fath crowds among others. One would have to consult Pastoskie or Walsh for a score of the more contemporary 'hip', plenty of whom I expect are simply folks convenient to popular media at some moment.

28½ & Pearl rarely failed to register hip seismics. Nor did the strolling cocktail hours on Oakhurst. Less commonly, Nothing Strikes Back fit the bill. As did Deep Eddy Pool. Eyore's birthday, limited as it was to Plan 2 intimates, was a debut for the soon-to-be-hip and reunion for the used-to-be-hip. Today, I think about hip in terms of replacement.

Lavender Hill Express

Bands

I first heard Rusty Wier (playing drums), Layton DePenning, and Leonard Arnold, in the Lavender Hill Express, opening for Steppenwolf in '67 or '68 at the Memorial Auditorium. Although a 60's band, LHE had all the right folks in it (Wier, DePenning and Arnold) to lay down the basic track for the Austin Sound in the '70s. Later when I grew some brains, I started hanging with these music guys (Rusty Wier, Bobby Bridger, John Inman, Charles John Quarto, Steve Fromholz), even shooting photos, and carrying a guitar case or two. But they always got the girls, and I got to be a 'friend of the band'. (Oh, per usual, the local band outshown John Kay, who was loaded).

Just another Bozo on the bus...

Balcones Fault

Bands

Happy 2010. Any known where abouts of the remaining memebers of Balcones Fault (any still playing music locally)? Have some great memories of seeing them numerous times around town in the mid 70's.

Remembering Ken Featherston

Bars | People

Ken Featherston was from my neighborhood near Oso Park in Corpus Christi. I knew his sister from school and the neighborhood, but just saw him around, cause he was older. We were all proud of him though. He was off in Austin working a staff artist (here's a cover he did for the Marshall Tucker band) and as a bouncer for the Armadillo. That lead to his death. In 1975 he was working security for a Pointer Sisters show at the Armadillo. Someone had been escorted out by another fellow, and unfortunately that person thought that they should come back and shoot and kill somebody. So we lost him. I just want him to be remembered. So, here's a link to some of his posters done for the Armadillo and for sale by wolfgangs vault. If you hunt around you can find more of the cover art he did for albums. Who knows how famous he would have gotten if he'd not been killed so young, but he was famous with me.

Texas Sun

People | Places | Things

Here's a treasure trove for all of you with fuzzy memories of Austin in the 70's. A full scan of the Texas Sun newspaper from 1977. I'm sure that there's more to be found but wow... check out those club listings!

Hattie Valdez and Waldo Harper

People

I have already told you some about Hattie Valdez. She was the most well known madam in Austin. Waldo Harper had a wrecker service (it still exists) and was the perrinial champion race car driver at out little round and round track. He won the title almost every year.

He was trying to get Hattie to sponser on his car. Hattie said to him;"Hell Waldo, what would you put on the car".
Waldo said: "That's easy, Hattie's Hardware, The Best Screws in Town".

I have laughed about this story over and over. It was told to me by Curtis Martin, a wrecker driver that heard Waldo say it.

Hattie Valdez

People

She was Austin's most famous madam in the 50's to the 70's.
She had many houses around town and most the the ladies were bored married women. Hattie's residence was on the southeast corner of I-35 and Riverside. It now houses Time Insurance Agency. There are two old homes on the property. Almost every room has a bathroom. Go figure. I have worked for Time and here's a short story.

I was in the kitchen getting some coffee one morning and one of the insurance ladies was taking an application from this older gentleman. She left and went to her desk to get something and left me there with this man. He looked up at me sheepshly and said, "I've been here before, but it wasn't to buy insurance." We both had a laugh.