Come celebrate new works by three seminal Austin musicians, Jesse Sublett, Jon Dee Graham, and Larry Seaman. Jesse will also be a guest on Fox 7 Good Day Austin Tues. Rumor has it that live music will be part of the festivities. Jon Dee and I were in. Larry was with Standing Waves and the other guitar player was Randy Franklin, who happens to own Yard Dog and who is beside himself with happiness about presenting this very special show. To see them all, go to my Instagram at. You can arrange to purchase art there also. Co-founder Shannon Sedwick and superstar magician Ray Anderson are at the heart of the story, along with a case of literally thousands. They built up and survived the Ritz—including the hard-core punks vs. The book weaves my narrative history with interviews and way over 200 photos and images. I am very, very proud of this book. I think you will dig it, too. Check the schedule to plan your weekend. Check the online in advance for the location my presentations. James White, founder the Broken Spoke, will be with us, too. The panel was saddled with an incredibly awful name, which the festival stuck with despite asking my opinion, then ignoring it, but please come anyway. I am awfully proud of our work on Armadillo World Headquarters. Our moderator will be Michelle Newby, who runs the. Keep up with her on and by the way, you can me anytime, too. After each sessions, the authors will go to the book-signing tent, where you can come get your books personally signed by us. The Festival always has lots of helpful, trained volunteers to help get people where they need to go. Replete with scads of the incredible artwork by the Armadillo Art Squad and fantastic photos by Burton Wilson from backstage and beyond, this is treasure trove of memories, some of them old, some renewed — some brand new. For those of us who lived in Austin during the days of the 1970-1980the whole flavor of the volume rings true. For me, it was fun to confirm specific dates for specific shows I saw. Even more fun, though, were some of the behind-the-scenes stories. Hearing some of the backstage tales filled in some color details on a night with several memorable moments. The opening act was Blind George McClain, a nearly blind-nearly-deaf keyboard player who rocked from side to side and banged his forearm on the keys for rhythm. Never before nor since have I ever seen such ferocious fiddling. So Nancy had brought a small bouquet of roses to toss onstage for Donna. The band wrapped up the tune quickly and lights dimmed as someone ran over to assess and fix the damage. In the dimmed light, I could see Keith nervously trying to light a cigarette — but his hands were shaking so bad it took him several tries before it lit. Truthfully, though, I did not get to that many shows at the Dillo. Between schooling, being broke, and working evenings, sometimes up to 7 nights a week, I caught a few shows but nowhere as many as a lot of lucky folks. Flipping through the limited set of great show posters at the end of the book, though, I found 5 from shows I know I saw: Jerry Garcia-Merl Saunders, Jimmy Cliff, David Bromberg, Zappa, and Bob Weir. I did spend a lot of time through the years at the Armadillo Beer Garden. I recall a carpenter friend saying we could find him down there anytime in the summer in the evening — and that turned out to be true. Later, when I first worked at the Brown Schools, our Lariat dorm staff would hold one weekly team meeting a month off-campus at the Dillo beer garden. It always loosened us up and let us speak more candidly to solve tough team problems. But my favorite visit to the beer garden had to be with my old friend, Billy the Kid, who had worked awhile in the Dillo kitchen, We were sitting outside, lamenting not being able to get in to see the Kinks that night due to our being broke. Then Billy looked over at the back little black book vs blue blood where staff walked in and out taking and delivering orders. Gulping the dregs of my beer and mustering up some courage, I headed over there. As I walked through, only one person looked up from a counter surface and we exchanged smiles. The folks at the beer counter seemed a bit surprised, but I slipped around them while they were busy selling beer. I headed up around the crowd to the front where you could still boogie your way in closer to the stage. I jumped forward to get some soaking, drinking it all in. Good times, good memories — and a great book to help bring them back alive. The takeaway is that the music business is a business like any other except that more throats are cut and the egos involved are bigger. Eddie Wilson says that if he had a larger bladder the history of Texas music might be different. As Wilson tells the story, one night in July 1970 he was at a South Austin music spot called the Cactus Club listening to the Hub City Movers when he felt the call of nature. The wall was part of an enormous building that had once been a National Guard Armory, and after Wilson zipped up his pants he explored it in the dark and realized that its cavernous spaces would make a perfect music venue. He rounded up some business partners and turned it into Armadillo World Headquarters, an institution that dominated the Texas musical scene for a decade. Wilson records a couple of stabbings and one fatal shooting, which I guess is not a bad record for a Texas beer joint over a ten-year period. Wilson himself has become an Austin institution that has lasted much longer than the Armadillo, and as the proprietor ofa South Austin restaurant with occasional live music, he has been regaling friends and patrons with Armadillo stories for the past 40 years. Now he has finally got them down on paper in a beautiful, self-published book, designed byprinted on heavy paper, and illustrated with at least a hundred and fifty black-and-white photographs by the late Burton Wilson and at least as many color reproductions of the famous and eccentric Armadillo World Headquarters posters. The book, Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir,is a perfect evocation of a crucial time and place in Texas cultural history. Over those ten years it became far more than a concert hall. At its peak the Armadillo had 140 full- and part-time employees and countless volunteers and hangers-on. Over a ten-year period Nelson played there only seven times and Jennings five. We also had ballet every month. The campaign was run by a radio genius named Woody Roberts, who compiled a list of two hundred words that he thought would elicit positive reactions from potential Lone Star customers, had them market-tested by a psychographic research lab in Richardson, Texas, and then commissioned songwriters Tom Livingston and Gary P. Nunn of the Lost Gonzo Band to incorporate as many of the high-scoring words as possible into a song about Lone Star Beer. And you thought country songs got written by an inspired songwriter just plucking a guitar. The takeaway is that the music business is a business like any other except that more throats are cut and the egos involved are bigger. Wilson records a couple of stabbings and one fatal shooting, which I guess is not a little black book vs blue blood record for a Texas beer joint over a ten-year period. Hage, announced his intention to demolish the building and sell the property. Thirty-seven years later, Eddie Wilson has recaptured the essence of the place in this fine book. Reading it is not quite the same as being there, but it is close as you are going to get. Lonn Taylor is a historian and writer who lives in Fort Davis. He can be reached at taylorw fortdavis. Soon to be in Waterloo Records and on iTunes. Kim Simpson and William Mansell played with me, made it possible, along with Cris Burns, brilliant engineer studio maestro at Ameripolitan Studio, courtesy Dale Watson. Eddie Wilson is a brilliant writer. It was my privilege to help my pal bring it all together. Some advance copies trickled in from the printer this week, with the first official edition arriving at the end of March 2017. This is a landmark in the documentation of Austin music history. No one can tell the story of Austin music like Eddie Wilson. It looks like an interesting year ahead. 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