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There is more live music going on in Austin, Texas on any given night than there is in any other city in the world. That's why the city has put a trademark on it's slogan "Live Music Capital of the World."
There are hundreds of live music venues in the city and its immediate environs. Many are located in three main entertainment districts: Sixth Street / Red River, the Warehouse district and South Austin. Sixth Street / Red River is the famous sector in downtown Austin that is known around the world for it's live music scene and often boisterous crowds that fill Sixth Street on the weekends when it is closed to traffic. The Warehouse district runs west from Congress Ave. along Fourth and Fifth Streets. That's where Antone's is located, the venue that USA Today has named the best blues club in the country. In South Austin, there are a number of clubs on South Congress, South First St.. and South Lamar that offer up some of the best new and original music in town.
The road to its live music capital status began way back in the 1960's when a spirit of eclecticism appeared with the hippies and anti-war protester of that era. Inclusion was in and exclusion was out, no pun intended. With the 70's, this eclectic spirit wave birth to a form of music that was often called progressive country. Joe Ely, along with co-Lubbockites Jimmy Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, bought this music down to Austin and hooked up with Marcia Ball and Delbert McClinton and cosmic cowboys like Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael Martin Murphy, Rusty Weir and Ray Wiley Hubbard. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings came back from Nashville during that time to settle in Austin where they could take control of the production of their songs. A wild and powerful musical vortex formed that saw psychedelic rock and roll mix with straight out country and blues at venues such as the Armadillo World Headquarters, Threadgill's, the Soap Creek Saloon and the Broken Spoke. It was cool to dig the psychedelic sound of the 13th Floor Elevators and the uncompromising country licks of Alvin Crow at the same time.
Then, in 1975, a 30-minute University of Texas music program was accepted by a number of PBS affiliate stations and Austin City Limits was launched and has become the longest running program in the history of PBS. It has propelled Austin to the forefront of the music industry's consciousness in the US and around the world. That first program featured Willie Nelson, but has since put Texas music notables such as Marcia Ball, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Asleep at the Wheel and many, many others in the national and world spotlight.
In more recent years, the South by Southwest showcase every Spring that brings approximately 1,500 musicians and musical acts to town to be seen and heard by industry executives and AR types, along with the Austin City Limits Festival in September, have kept the city on the national music map. In addition, dozens of other smaller festivals are held each year, as well as a number of nationally significant ones in the surrounding Hill Country such as the Kerrville Folk Festival and the Old Settlers Reunion in Buda, just south of town.
The Austin music scene has always been a free-wheeling, break-the-mold, think-out-of-the-box kind of affair. That early eclecticism lives on in the current scene, although some characteristics of the town's soundscape seem to have become entrenched. Sixth Street / Red River joins a younger, party animal type of crowd with it's rock and roll, blues and punk scene. The Warehouse district caters to a bit older and more professional crowd in general. And South Austin retains the feel of Austin in the 70's with its nouveau hippie coffeehouses and crowds and its preference for good singer / songwriters. Still, there are always exceptions to those general tendencies just about anywhere you go.
Austin remains a city where musical creativity and talent thrive and defy expectations. That can be experienced close up and personal in any number of live music events on any given night.
