Ranch Report: Road trip to Austin, and "the life"
It was a better world in the 70s for rock stars, and fans alike
Each year my good friend Joe Blair and I make a “pilgrimage” to Austin for a gig at Antone’s Nightclub called The Jungle Show. It’s a performance by Jimmie Vaughan, Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Chris Layton (Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble), Mike Flanigin (Hammond B3 player for Jimmie Vaughan) and blues guitarist Sue Foley. They do it for three nights in a small nightclub in downtown Austin that only holds 300 people, and it sells out immediately, mainly to aging baby boomers. (I didn’t see anyone under the age of 60 in the crowd.)
It’s almost like a Texas version of The Grateful Dead and their Deadheads.
But the real reason I, and the crowds, enjoy this so much is because it is a reminder of the 70s, when rock music was a huge part of our lives, and actually BEING AT THE SHOW was important because you couldn’t watch it on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram the next day. It was “be there or be square.”
So I motored into AusTex from the ranch and met up with Joe. He had graciously gotten us a hotel room right across the street from Antone’s so we wouldn’t have to drive anywhere.
As in the past, we were guests of Jimmie and Robin Vaughan. This meant we got to sit in the “family” section roped off from rest of the club, near the corner of the stage. These seats were not for sale, at any price. You had to be “a friend of the band” to get them, which is how it used to be when I was working for Buddy magazine. Back in the day there were no VIP sections that cost $1200 a person. Concert tickets were cheap, because the artists made their money from records.
Imagine seeing Jeff Beck and the Mahavishnu Orchestra for just $6. And that’s for the most expensive seats!
Now they don’t receive diddley from streaming, and have to make their money on the road. That’s why tickets are now $80-$100 each for back row seats, and $1000 for anything up close.
Worse yet, now the VIP “meet and greets” are filled with real estate douche bags and lawyers, people who can shell out ridiculous amounts of money so they can “touch the robe.” Back in the day you had to be cool, or actually know someone in the band to hang out backstage after the show. (The exception was the groupies, who were there to service the band.)
Here I am in 1978 with Billy Gibbons backstage in Jackson, MS, along with Jerry Barrett of Warner Brothers records.
And here is Jimmie Vaughan, backstage with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, at the Dallas Palladium in 1977.
So it was pretty incredible to be watching Jimmie and Billy playing some 40 years after I first saw them, and they are still performing and putting out. They don’t mail it in.
Joe and I got our wristbands and made our way to the roped off section, which was also right by the bar. We were seated at Robin’s table.
This was a relief, because the ENTIRE club was standing room only. The rest of the crowd (outside the blue rope) had to stand up, shoulder to shoulder, for the entire show.
But what a show it was. I will say that time has left its mark on both Jimmie and Billy, but they played the hits, and it was great to just be 12 feet from them. Mostly it was a flashback whenever they ripped into a song you had already heard 40 times, but it gave you a memory of a previous concert and what you were doing that night back in 1977 or 1978. A nod to the age of everyone in the room came when Gibbons started “Sharp Dressed Man” but messed up the lyrics.
No problem. He just stopped and started over.
The crowd loved it!
There were some fellow musicians in the audience, including Van Wilks. Van is simply an incredible player who never really hit the big time, but is respected by so many Austin, and Texas players. Got a shot of him with Joe.
Great seats, good music and a like-minded crowd. Reminded me of so many shows I went to when I was at Buddy. This was where you met up, not on a Facebook page or some online “community.” And the best part was that I used to get into every show for free, because the record companies wanted you to cover their acts. Of course back then they were selling millions of albums at $5-$8 a copy, so there was a plethora of money floating around. Therefore they didn’t mind comping you a $6 concert ticket, and there was usually a party afterwards, with all of the drinks picked up by the record label.
Waylon Jennings backstage at Tarrant County Convention Center, Fort Worth, 1977.
We stayed until the end. They closed out with “Thunderbird”. (I had too many Tito’s and tonics and felt it the next morning.)
Then we simply walked across the street to our waiting hotel beds, taking a look back to see Jimmie’s ‘57 Ford Fairlane parked out front.
As to why Jimmie and Billy do this show every year, it goes back to when they were both starting out playing clubs in Texas back in the 1960s, when they were just 15 years old. They’ve kept up a friendship all of these years that we explore in my documentary, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Brothers in Blues. (Check it out if you haven’t already.)
It was a trip back to a fun time, but today it is simply not sustainable. Took me three days to overcome my hangover. (I ain’t as good as I once was.) Next morning Joe and I woke up and headed for breakfast at Cisco’s in downtown Austin for migas.
The drive back to the ranch was there. Not a bad way to end the Christmas holidays and get ready for 2024.
Hope I didn’t bore you. Thanks for reading this far.