Urination to Creation, The Story of the Armadillo World Headquarters
The Armadillo World Headquarters (AWHQ) is a cultural phenomenon that exhibited a significant impact on Texas music history and a dominant influence on the culture and image of the city of Austin, Texas. Austin is renowned for hosting a thriving music scene infrastructure and it will be demonstrated that AWHQ assisted in creating this scene as a seminal promoter of music made in Texas, music made by Texans and music that is culturally Texan.
Multiple factors made the Armadillo unique among hundreds of other bars, honkytonks and dance halls in Texas in creating an environment that unequivocally altered the musical style and cultural scene of an entire region. The ten year history of AWHQ will be examined, the unique combination of diversity of musical genres and numerous other staged productions investigated and the execution of various other business ventures that ran in parallel to the musical performances will be discussed. It will be shown that the critically of the staff, paramount to the success of AWHQ exuded innovation, camaraderie, and teamwork. Love of music and mind altering substances was the primary motivation to keep a group of resolute workers working for little or no salary, sometimes surviving on beer and food from the onsite kitchen.
All of these components interacted to create a symbiosis, forming what Gary Hartman refers to as “place,” which he defines as “a social and cultural nexus of sorts, in which a variety of factors, including history, geography, climate, demographics, economics and politics, converge to create a distinct and dynamic environment unlike that found anywhere else in the world.” [i]
One night summer evening July of 1970, after downing several beers at the Cactus Club in South Austin Texas, Eddie Wilson needed to pee. Finding a long line at the urinal, he and a couple friends ventured outside the bar and destiny found Wilson urinating on the wall of the building that would shape his future. Less than a month later, Wilson would open the Armadillo World Headquarters, planting the seed that would grow into Austin staking the claim as the live music capital of the world and was instrumental in defining the Austin lifestyle, culture and identity. He had managed to lease the 16,000 square foot former National Guard Armory for just $500 a month and along with a small group of likeminded friends and volunteers, on a shoestring budget, transformed the abandoned building into an iconic cultural crossroads of music while creating a brand that long outlasted the venue itself and participated in the creation of a movement still felt in progressive country music today.
The closure of the Vulcan Gas company in the summer of 1970 left a void of venues where local bands could perform. AWHQ aimed to fill that void. Shiva’s Headband (the Vulcan house band) was the key reason that AWHQ was able to come into being. The band had received $10,000 in funding from the record company to discover new local talent and invest in the Austin scene. Band founder Spencer Perskin contributed a few thousand dollars of this advance to Wilson and AWHQ. Without this funding insertion, the lease never could have been secured and there would have been no remodeling, payroll money or AWHQ.
The physical facility was originally built as a warehouse, the concrete and brick structure was 150 feet long and 95 feet wide, topped by an arched roof, and resembled a large Quonset hut. Former Texas Governor, Ann Richards, referred to AWHQ as a “barny old place.”[ii] The caliche parking lot was filled with potholes and created clouds of dust which covered everything, except when it rained and turned it all into a mud pit. There was no air conditioning in the hot Texas summers and no heat in the cold Texas winters. Prior to AWHQ, the facility was used as National Guard armory and later to stage sporadic random sporting events and music shows. In fact Elvis Presley performed in the building when the traveling show, ‘The Louisiana Hayride,’ was hosted there in 1955.
The name for this enigmatic venture is credited to Jim Franklin, AWHQ’s poster artist, Master of Ceremonies and one of many behind the scenes jack of all trades. He proposed naming the joint the Armadillo, a prominent symbol in underground art, because “the anachronistic armored mammal had already been established by Franklin as the icon of Texas hippies and, as such, we identified with the armadillo for spiritual as well as artistic reasons.” [iii]
Now for the financial story. Revenue increased over the years, but the music always seemed more important than the money. AWHQ officially opened its doors on August 7, 1970, with tickets at 2 dollars a head, the only seating being pieces of dirty carpet laid out on the floor. The music was provided by Whistler and The Hub City Movers who opened for the headliner Shiva’s Headband. The first year AWHQ grossed approximately $25,000, an amount they would typically make in a week a few years later. In 1971 the seating capacity was doubled from 750 to 1500 and the gross revenue was $45,000, losing $13,000 in the process. The next year they added a beer garden and although Hank Alrich invested $50,000 of his inheritance money into AWHQ, the phone was shut off due to nonpayment. In 1973 a new law which lowered the drinking age in Texas to eighteen greatly contributed to beer sales and to the number of people going out at night to hear music. Another 1973 law beneficial to AWHQ reduced the penalty for marijuana possession from a felony to a misdemeanor. The gross revenue for that year was $555,000, reducing the annual loss to $10,000. In November of 1974, AWHQ founder Eddie Wilson turned over the reins to the primary investor, Hank Alrich. AWHQ grossed $1.3 million in 1975, breaking even for second year in a row. They still lacked a long term building lease yet had no choice but to continue investing in improvements. In 1976, behind in tax payments and sued by KLBJ Rdio station for non-payment of advertising bill, they laid off forty two temporary employees as a cost savings measure. In 1977, AWHQ filed chapter 11 bankruptcy but remained open. The staff demonstrated loyalty by accepting a thirteen week moratorium on payroll and kept working as usual and none quit. AWHQ finally began clawing out of debt in the last two years of existence, the red ink turned to black, and they actually turned a profit. 1980 was AWHQ’s last year, they built a new stage in the beer garden and recorded an annual gross income of $1.3 million, generating a real profit of $80K. The property that AWHQ resided on had been for sale the entire life span of its existence with all the significant investments made without a long term lease. Following a ten year run, AWHQ received their eviction notice and closed its doors for good on January 1, 1981. When the 1980’s were just four hours old, Ray Benson, with help from Maria Muldaur, sang a fitting very last song at AWHQ, the old Lead Belly ballad, ‘Goodnight Iren’. AWHQ was finally running a profit when the land was sold for 1.4 million dollars and the building slated for demolition. The property was flipped, selling for $2 million a year later, indicative of the coming real estate boom in Austin.
A feature article in a 1973 issue of Texas Monthly stated that the “Armadillo offers some of the best live music in the country ” and that “word has spread among the performers that Armadillo’s audiences are perhaps the most spontaneous and appreciative in the country.” [iv] Key to AWHQ’s long term success was that the management never intended to cater to a specific musical genre. AWHQ realized that diverse performers attracted diverse customers. Literally thousands of musicians played the stage at AWHQ, their musical diversity bewildering.
Greezy Wheels was the most dependable draw in the early years, taking old country standards and converting them into psychedelic jams. An article in the University of Texas student newspaper, The Daily Texan, described them as “proponents of what has come to be known as ‘the Armadillo sound.’”[v] Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen grew into AWHQ’s biggest road act. ZZ Top played AWHQ in 1970 and two years later they would sell out the eighty thousand seat Memorial Stadium at the University of Texas.
Willie Nelson was central to the Armadillo story of bringing rednecks and hippies together and his fist gig at AWHQ can be looked at as a turning point for AWHQ. The press and the music industry began to take notice. Wille first played his gig at AWHQ in August of 1972, he brought out not only the usual AWHQ crowd but also hard core country and western fans, including rednecks who historically demonstrated animosity towards hippies. Interestingly “the hippies seemed to like the music even more than the old fans did.”[vi] An Austin American Statesman article described the audience as “a sizeable and sociable crowd made up of the most amazing assortment of country music fans, ever seen. Pony tails and bouffants. Pantsuits and moccasins. Gentle amazement and, best of all , mutual understanding.” [vii] Unfortunately, the event lost $12,000 and Willie couldn’t make his payroll.
A Texas Monthly article said of a 1973 Greezy Wheels and Willie Nelson show that the crowd was “a visually bizarre mix of beehive hairdos. Naked midriffs and bare hippie feet…but Nelson’s music relieved any cultural strain that developed beneath him.”[viii] Willie played AWHQ seven times between 1972 and 1974 however following a dispute between AWHQ staff and Willies entourage about carrying guns, Willie never played the Armadillo again. However, Willie himself said that “I think the success of the Armadillo had a lot to do with my becoming successful.” [ix]
Within a space of fourteen days in 1973, AWHQ welcomed Kinky Friedman, Bette Midler, Frank Zappa and Barry Manilow…quite the exotic combination. The diversity speaks for itself with rockers AC/DC, Van Halen, Frank Zappa, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger and Ted Nugent, bluegrass legend, Bill Monroe, country stars Linda Ronstadt, Charlie Daniels Band, Waylon Jennings, crooners Fats Domino, the Pointer Sisters, Ray Charles, folkies John Prine and Kenneth Threadgill, glam artist Roxy Music all gracing the AWHQ stage. The Grateful Dead never officially played a show at AWHQ but they did hold an informal Thanksgiving Day jam session with Leon Russell after eating dinner there prior to their 1972 gig at the Municipal Auditorium. Freddie King, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Frank Zappa, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Waylon Jennings, The Bugs Henderson Group, The Cobras, Carla Bley, The Phil Woods Quartet and Anthony Braxton all recorded live albums there. Time Magazine featured AWHQ in a 1974 article titled ‘Music: Groovers Paradise’, comparing it to Fillmore East and West and describing the Armadillo crowd as ”a curious amalgam of teen-agers, aging hippie women in gingham, braless coeds and booted goat ropers.” In addition to Time, AWHQ was written up in national media outlets such as Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Playboy and Sports Illustrated.
AWHQ continually tried to help and build followings for new local bands with a policy of paring road shows with local bands to help fill the room for the former and to increase awareness of the latter. However, music was not the only type of shows booked. In addition to a bimonthly performance of the Austin Ballet Theatre, AWHQ staged musicals, symphonies, plays, original theatrical performances, art openings, funding benefits, mime troupes, yoga programs, hot rod shows and hosted the National Lawyers Guild convention and even a talk by counter cultural icon Timothy Leary. Prima facie, the Armadillo was just a music venue but behind the scenes and from inception, the AWHQ’s vison was to be much more than that, the founders wanted a laboratory for a community of the arts.
This combination of various business ventures not only made the Armadillo unique; it was key to its economic success and contributed to its long lasting influence and impact on the culture of Austin. “The Armadillo developed a reputation built upon the local and touring music presented there, for its hippie staff who dug music and musicians, for its cheap beer and nachos, and for its hippie poster artists.” [x] The venue was utilized not only for music but became a cultural center providing food, an outlet for local artists, marketing for beer and various other countercultural and commercial enterprises.
AWHQ tried many creative ideas for bringing in revenue. For example, they produced a short-lived traveling music show, The Armadillo Country Music Review in partnership with KLRN, who later decided to pursue their own show, called Austin City Limits. They formed a recording studio called Onion Audio and any band that played AWHQ could have a live recording of their set for $150, tape included. The studio was also used to record radio spots. A beer garden was launched which also became a popular daytime gathering place. There was a jewelry store and a nursery for employees children. There was an art gallery and the entire place was infused with art, both inside and outside. Inspired by San Francisco poster artists of the sixties, unique and vivid imagery was created for each show with flyers posted all over town by a cadre of helpers motivated by free weed. The poster art did more than help advertise the shows, the unique eye popping flyers helped to define the image of AWHQ and ended up being its most profitable side venture. “The poster artists distinguished the Armadillo from all other venues.” [xi]
AWHQ operated an onsite kitchen and restaurant. The Armadillo’s kitchen helped to build their reputation in the music world and the feedback from touring bands was overwhelmingly positive. The nachos alone were legendary, with other big venues in the country soon attempting to imitate them. The kitchen hosted free community dinners every Sunday. Many touring acts that were too big to play the Armadillo insisted on catering to be done by the Armadillo kitchen. They had an onsite bakery which operated during the daytime. It attracted suburban housewives who would show up daily to buy the warm loaves of fresh whole-wheat bread. They opened an ice cream parlor and launched a telephone message service for music listings. One successful venture was the Armadillo Christmas Bizarre, an event which still existed until Covid outbreak, far outliving the venue itself.
Of all the ventures attempted to increase revenue, the in-house marketing agency was the most lucrative, bringing in more revenue than all the other ventures combined, due to the advertising campaigns for Lone Star Beer. The advertising agency was originally created as a loophole to get around the Texas liquor law prohibition of beer companies providing payments directly to venues that sold their product. The Lone Star Beer company launched a major marketing campaign based on the armadillo art of Jim Franklin. For example the slogan, “Long Live Longnecks” was coined by Franklin, who also created a series of iconic posters that some claim was one of the best beer and music marketing artwork ever produced. “Lone Star Beer’s largest account was at the Armadillo World Headquarters.” [xii] The Armadillo sold more draft Lone Star Beer than any other place in the world other than the Astrodome which held fifty thousand more customers. The innovative marketing staff also co-produced Wille Nelson’s first Fourth of July picnic, helping to ensure its success by spreading the rumor the Bob Dylan might show up.
The cultural changes that swept through San Francisco in the late sixties, including the prevalence of drug use, didn’t significantly impact Austin until the early seventies. A sense of camaraderie and community developed that was crucial to the success of AWHQ which included an informal “safe zone’ for drug use and counter cultural experiences. The use and overuse of alcohol as well as a smorgasbord of mind altering substances were key factors in the history of AWHQ and in the creation of the unique aura as well as the making of the music itself.
Volunteers were critical to the success of the Armadillo and without them AWHQ would not have survived more than a few months. Few people were actually paid, most worked ridiculously hard for little or no money but received “all the marijuana they could smoke for their services.” [xiii] When there was no money for sandwiches, they survived on pots of rice and beans, ninety-nine cent six packs of Texas beer and Mexican pot.
The wide use of drugs, especially marijuana, formed a cultural bond shared among the staff, musicians and their customers. The open use of drugs was flagrant and prevalent yet AWHQ was never raided by the police. “Part of the success of the Armadillo was due to the fact that the cops knew people were smoking <marijuana> inside but we were too big to bust, and we had developed a friendly, cooperative relationship with the Austin Police Department.” [xiv] Marijuana use among hippies was almost universal and was quite common among Austin’s younger population, despite its illegality, law enforcement was rare and selective. “Pot was plentiful, high quality, relatively cheap and easily accessible. Cocaine could be had for the asking if there was a need [xv] Wilson admitted to selling pounds of Mexican weed in order to pay the AWHQ rent.
Peyote, mescaline and especially LSD was also easily available. LSD was prevalent in the hippie culture, trials of LSD testing were being conducted by the CIA at college campuses, the infamous acid test parties were fresh in public mindset memories and the cross country journey of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters made a stop in Texas. Don Hyde of the Vulcan Gas Company, Austin’s first psychedelic venue and former home of Shiva’s Headband, gave Wilson a sheet of acid as an Armadillo housewarming gift. In the first few weeks, Wilson “paid each member of the crew with two hits of Clearlight acid, a bag or pot and thirty dollars.” [xvi] As for heroin, most of the Armadillo crowd kept their distance, seeing first hand its responsibility for the death of Janis Joplin, witnessing its devastating effects on Johnny Winter and the vivid warning of Gram Parsons overdose death just six months after playing AWHQ. Heroin was also relatively expensive, hence out of reach for most of the staff. Speed was generally defined to certain cliques such as truckers, all night workers and housewives (under the guise of diet pills) but was also known to be popular among country music musicians such as Roger Miller, Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash. Cocaine which had once been legal, was presumed to be non-addictive at the time and if not for the high expense would have been even more prevalent than it was. Eddie Wilson mentioned that “one of the few positives of coke for our business was that it boosted alcohol consumption like no other illegal drug before.” [xvii]
AWHQ was a melting pot that provided a safe haven for cross cultural interactions for different generations of Texas music lovers from various musical backgrounds and conflicting political views by offering a non-threatening place for hippies and rednecks to mix while enjoying the same music which encouraged dancing, partying and having a good time together. The Daily Texan, described AWHQ as offering a “new sound, style and place with no parallel elsewhere in the country.” [xviii] The Armadillo team succeeded in breaking down social barriers and bringing together crossover crowds from country, rock and folk music while putting “Austin on the musical map and went far to create the network of performers, audiences, and media that continue to nurture Austin’s current musical community.” [xix]
AWHQ spawned imitators, some more successful than others and “in four years, the number of local clubs had grown from something like fourteen to fifty.” [xx] Some examples of other venues around at the time are One Knite, Castle Creek, Soap Creek Saloon, Split Rail, Mother Earth, Saddle Club, Feed Lot, Dessau Hall, Antones, Rauls, The Ritz, Saxon Pub and Country Dinner Playhouse and Manor Downs to name just a few. The Texas Opry House opened in 1974 less than a mile away and competed head to head, with Willie Nelson as a silent partner and offered bigger guarantees to draw national touring acts away from AWHQ, later reopening at the Austin Opry House at a new location, where the author of this paper has fond memories of losing his virginity at a Judas Priest show on October 8, 1979…but I diverge.
AWHQ’s direct and indirect influence is still evident in Austin. Although AWHQ received no credit for the creation of Austin City Limits, they co-produced a music show in partnership with KLRN who later decided to pursue their own show, drawing on the AWHQ talent pool for its content and becoming the most successful PBS series and longest running music program in television history. Austin City Limits was also inspired by and modeled on AWHQ’s live concert broadcasts on KOKE radio and AWHQ’s rebroadcasts of live concert recordings on the town of Taylors local programming channel of the Taylorvision cable TV system. In fact the Armadillo is mentioned in the chorus of the show’s theme song, Gary P. Nunn’s London Homesick Blues. The ACL music festival originated as a spinoff of the television show. The music festival South by Southwest began in 1987, six years after AWHQ was demolished. The city of Austin named its shuttle bus service, “The Dillo.” The Armadillo Christmas Bazaar evolved into internationally recognized arts and crafts fair. AWHQ influenced the creation of Austin’s image of live music capital of the world and the ‘Keep Austin Weird’ marketing slogan.
AWHQ was ground zero for the progressive outlaw country movement. Whether it was looked at as rockers or folkies adding some steel and twang to their rock and roll or hilly and country singers letting their hair grow long and adding power chords to their fingerpicking, whether these new musical styles and cultural movements were known as cosmic cowboy, progressive country, redneck rock…the end result was the progressive outlaw country movement of which AWHQ was at the forefront. “Music historians have credited the Armadillo with being the place where two previously clashing groups of people, rednecks and hippies, found themselves under the same roof, enjoying a new blend of country music and rock, along with cold beer and cheap pot.”[xxi] A Daily Texan article stated, “it is a really good thing when music can bring together two social factions like flower children and cowboys and not result in any confrontations” [xxii] and author Nick Patowski observed that “what began with the Cosmic Cowboy in Austin in 1970 was still playing out well into the twenty-first century in the forms of Americana and roots music, with an eternal constant named Willie Nelson.” [xxiii] Ann Richards, former governor of Texas declared that “the rise of redneck rock and outlaw image was intimately associated with the Armadillo.” [xxiv]
AWHQ provided a safe space to embrace the duality of Austin’s music scene where audiences could “celebrate their communal difference and also to promulgate the progressive country movement’s distinctiveness to other communities.”[xxv] and “without the shared talent of the Armadillo’s employees and founders, Austin’s live music scene would have likely faded into a distant memory.”[xxvi] AWHQ helped turn Austin into what it is today and the reputation of Austin as a music city owes a debt to the Armadillo for helping to define the Austin’s identity, culture and life style. Some may say that a strange little nocturnal creature, called an armadillo, came to replace the longhorn as the states favorite wild animal. One of the most influential music critics of his generation, Dave Marsh opined, “Eddie and his crew set out to change the world, and at the very least, they turned Austin into what it is today, God help us all.”[xxvii] One mans urination led to the creation of a cultural enigma that shaped music history.
Footnotes:
[i] Gary Hartman, The History of Texas Music (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008), 6.
[ii] Eddie Wilson, Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir (Austin: TSSI Publishing, 2017), 117.
[iii] Ibid.,7.
[iv] Ibid.,243.
[v] Ben King, ”Austin Music Scene Varied,” Daily Texan, August 11, 1972.
[vi] Patowski, Joe Nick. Austin to ATX. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019),55.
[vii] Eddie Wilson, Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir (Austin: TSSI Publishing, 2017), 165.
[viii] Ibid., 244.
[ix] Ed Ward. “An Armadillo, So Survival Minded, Succumbs,” Austin American Statesman, July 22, 1972.
[x] Patowski, Joe Nick. Austin to ATX. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019),56.
[xi] Ibid., 57.
[xii] Stimeling, Travis D. Cosmic Cowboys, and New Hicks, The Countercultural sounds of Austin’s Progressive Country Music Scene.( New York: Oxford University Press, 2011),42.
[xiii] Ibid.,31.
[xiv] Eddie Wilson, Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir (Austin: TSSI Publishing, 2017), 262.
[xv] Ibid.,273.
[xvi] Ibid.,70.
[xvii] Ibid.,261.
[xviii] Ibid.,150.
[xix] Jason Dean Mallard,” Journal of Texas Music History,” Vol. 10 [2010], Iss. 1, Art. 3 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/jtmh/vol10/iss1/3)
[xx] Eddie Wilson, Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir (Austin: TSSI Publishing, 2017), 282.
[xxi] Ibid.,7.
[xxii] Ibid.,244.
[xxiii] Patowski, Joe Nick. Austin to ATX. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019),21.
[xxiv] Eddie Wilson, Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir (Austin: TSSI Publishing, 2017), XII.
[xxv] Stimeling, Travis D. Cosmic Cowboys, and New Hicks, The Countercultural sounds of Austin’s Progressive Country Music Scene.( New York: Oxford University Press, 2011),12.
[xxvi] Ibid.,32.
[xxvii] Eddie Wilson, Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir (Austin: TSSI Publishing, 2017), foreword.