Texas book review: Armadillo World Headquarters (bonus material)

I need to get this book off my desk and into my display case. Here are 12 quotes and things I learned from Eddie Wilson's book, including the possible connection between the last night of the AWHQ and closing time at the Dixie Chicken ...

On Billy Joe Shaver ...

"Billy Joe was a gnarly piece of work with the wrinkled face of a shar-pei dog.  ...  I hadn't known him for more than twenty-four hours when I realized he had more soul than the next fifty or so songwriters put together."

On Kinky Friedman ...

I interviewed Kinky on the fly at Willie's 1996 Picnic. He told me about his first visit to Luckenbach where he and the Texas Jewboys were afraid to face a crowd of rural German immigrants (referring to himself in the third person). But Wilson confirms it was all true and it was him who threatened Kinky onto the stage.

On Austin City Limits ...

There's a lot to get into, but Wilson points out that it was the Armadillo that pioneered the idea of putting Austin music on television with the Armadillo Country Music Review, which aired more than a year before the Austin City Limits pilot. It would be nice, Wilson argues, for AWHQ to get a little credit for inspiring the eventual juggernaut.

On Lone Star beer ...

Wilson tried to explain this to me during our interview, but I didn't really get that a subset of AWHQ folks were responsible for the Lone Star Beer advertising campaigns that are near and dear to my heart. I figured Lone Star had simply borrowed Jim Franklin to do the posters, but he was deep involved, even coining the phrase "Long Live Longnecks." (FYI, the Armadillo didn't serve longnecks because of the dangers of the glass bottle. It was pitchers and plastic cups only.)

On Ray Benson ...

The Asleep at the Wheel frontman is an Austin icon, but it was Eddie Wilson who urged him to move here, offering the Wheel a chance to be the house band at the Armadillo. "Ray Benson was a six-foot-seven-inch tall, red-haired Jewish boy from Philadelphia," Wilson writes. "He looked like a baby giraffe with a cowboy hat."

On Bruce Springsteen and Kenneth Threadgill ...

Wilson writes of Springsteen pacing back and forth before his first AWHQ gig as Alvin Crow opened the show. Apparently the venerable Kenneth Threadgill was on hand, because Wilson says the old man said Springsteen was as jittery as a "cocker spaniel trying to pass a peach pit."

On the Texas Opry House ...

The venue on Academy Drive, backed by Willie Nelson's people was, briefly, stiff competition for the Armadillo. Then it was quickly done in by troubles with rent, taxes and corruption. "The Opry House's decline was like a fat man tripping on a ski jump and rolling in the snow."

On "The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock" ...

"I'm a big admirer of Jan Reid as a person and as a writer, but at the time, his take on the scne made me think of a loud party for Johnnies-come-lately at the day-old bread counter."

On the weirdest billing in AWHQ history ...

Ray Charles (legend, icon, etc.) opened for David Allan Coe one night in the mid-1970s. They had been booked at the Opry House, which had since closed, so the AWHQ took the show, only to see Coe's fans treat the legendary Charles like shit. "Coe didn't even have that many fans, but the few who were there acted like a mob ... I should have tried to quiet them down, but I was so mad I just wanted to go out and slap them all with a shovel. And so the great R&B singer cut his set short and said good night. The assholes booed him for that, too." 

(I hope that years later, Charles was watching from above with satisfaction, as Charley Pride followed a flaccid Coe at Willie's Picnic and absolutely crushed him.)

On Clifford Antone and his now-legendary venue ...

"Here came this kid from Port Arthur with big plans to showcase blues seven nights a week. I gave him six months, tops." (Wilson's admiration for Antone is later made clear.)

More on Lone Star beer ...

Taking the stand that armadillo racing was cruel and inhumane, Wilson and the AWHQ urged Lone Star beer to call off the practice. After a huge event at the Hemisfair in San Antonio in 1976, the AWHQ pulled out all of their Lone Star taps and kegs and boycotted the beer. (Something I will keep in mind when time travel is invented.)

One the final night at the AWHQ ...

The last song performed on the last night of the Armadillo World Headquarters was "Goodnight Irene." Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel performed the Leadbelly standard as a farewell to the AWHQ and to an era. Aggies, of course, know that "Goodnight Irene" marks closing time at the Dixie Chicken and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Don Ganter (a noted fan of "progressive" country music who would have been familiar with the Austin venue) was inspired to start that tradition by the end of the Armadillo. (I contacted the Chicken and asked, but Don is long gone and they couldn't tell me.)