Austin, ACL and Me
Part 1 of 5
A little while back, I was invited to give a speech to a group visiting Austin for a conference. I was encouraged to pontificate, bloviate and otherwise commit punditry to my heart’s content. “Hah,” I thought. “Half of it’s gonna be true, half of it’s gonna be bullshit. They get to decide which is which.”
The only request the group made is that I talk about the relationship between the Austin City Limits television series and the city of Austin. As you’ll see, it’s a longstanding and symbiotic interaction which not only enabled the TV series to prosper but conferred a distinct identity on the city itself. Well, heck, I could do that.
The talk was well received, and it occurred to me that you all might enjoy letting me expound a bit in this forum, in disgestible installments. Sure hope so, anyway. Buckle up; This is part one of five.
My name is John T. Davis. I’m a journalist and author who has lived in Austin for more than 50 years. I’m also the author of Austin City Limits: 25 years of American Music, which I wrote in conjunction with the show’s 25th season. Just by way of perspective, ACL is now in the midst of taping its 52nd season.
Who I am NOT is the old coot on the next barstool, here to bend your ear about how much better Austin was in the 1970s, and how you really missed the boat, you poor bastard. I promise not to be that guy. Although, I will only note in passing that it was in fact pretty damn great.
I’m here to talk a bit about Austin City Limits and the city of Austin, and how they have evolved, influenced and reflected each other over the years. For reasons I’ll get into, it is hard to imagine 21st-century Austin and Austin City Limits, one without the other.
With your indulgence, I’ll explain a little bit about how I came to be an Austinite. My first love has always been journalism, ever since growing up in Dallas in the 1960s when it was a great two-newspaper town. The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald slugged it out on the newsstands every day, and I wanted a piece of that action. I wanted to grow up to be Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, or Walter Mattau as curmudgeonly Walter Burns in The Front Page. In my mind, all the male reporters wore hats indoors and smoked cigarettes. All the gal reporters looked like Rosalind Russell, talked fast and took no guff. It all seemed pretty great to me.
To that end, I went to the University of Missouri, in Columbia, which did and does have a great J-school. Meanwhile, my shiftless, fun-loving West Texas buddies came to Austin and the University of Texas to become shiftless, fun-loving liberal arts majors.
If that wasn’t bad enough, they started sending me postcards and letters, telling me how bad they felt about my exile and how they were whooping it up in sunny Austin, Texas. You have to realize, that, objectively, Missouri isn’t THAT cold. But it was the coldest I had ever been up to that point. And all Columbia could provide in the way of Mexican food was Taco Bell. The barbecue was weird. And people talked funny.
So, it didn’t help to get notes from Austin which can be summed up thusly: “Hey, John Terry, we hope the sled dogs get this message to you before the spring thaw. We’re having a fine time in Austin, even if school is a distraction from life its ownself. Why just today, we were buying a six-pack at the U-Tote-‘Em when the guy in front of us turned around, and, what do you know--it was Willie Nelson! He said, ‘Hi, boys, why don’t you come down tonight and see me and the band at Armadillo World Headquarters. Cover charge is two dollars, but I can get you in the back door.’ And we said, ‘Will, we’d love to do that right after we finish firing up a couple of Austin Torpedos, eating some enchiladas at El Rancho and checking out the topless hippie chicks at Barton Springs…”
The fact that I’m still speaking to these knuckleheads at all is a minor league miracle.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it. It wasn’t fair, dammit. As soon as I could, I jumped in my 1965 Chevrolet Apache pickup truck and arrived in Austin in time for my junior year in 1975. And I’ve been here ever since.
Moreover, I got my wish. I got to work for the newspaper, on the music beat, no less. I’ve been lucky enough to be present at many unique moments and been able to write about musicians who started out playing for tips at happy hours and wound up winning Grammys and gold records—I’m looking at you, Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, and Gary Clark, Jr..
Since then, I’ve gotten to write a few books and a ton of magazine features. I get to pontificate in print. Stephen Harrigan, one of Austin’s best authors, described his status as “somewhere between emeritus and irrelevant.” That’s how I feel. A sense of humor helps.
My wife and I still love to go out to listen to live music, so long as it starts before eight o’clock. There are still kids out there cutting their musical teeth in the local bars and honky-tonks who will be stars one day, and we want to catch them. Live music nourishes the soul. And I’ve gotten to write about it for a living. How lucky is that?
I don’t have any plans to stop, and why should I? Someone once asked Willie when he planned to retire and he said, “All I do is play music and golf. What am I supposed to give up?” That’s the way I feel.
NEXT: How Austin Got Here