It's been 25 years since Austin adopted the official title of Live Music Capital of the World, and a lot has changed. There’s the good, such as the addition of premier venues and festivals to attract more big-name touring acts and a number of our homegrown talents breaking through internationally. But there’s also the bad, including beloved clubs closing due to skyrocketing rents and multimillion-dollar developments encroaching on popular music corridors. For an industry that brings in $1.6 billion annually to the city, what does it all mean? We gathered together a group of industry leaders to talk about these and other pressing matters affecting the music scene today.

An abbreviated version of this roundtable ran in the March issue.

Sarah Thurmond: Don, I’d like to start with the music census, put together by your office. Was there anything you found surprising?

Don Pitts: Well, one of the surprising things was that so few people read it. Actually, there’s a lot of people that read stories about the census, but I guess a lot of people didn’t read it. So we would get calls to our office, they would say one thing or the other, and they obviously didn’t read the census. Another surprising thing was more of a workforce-development issue. Industry-wide we have a workforce-development issue, from musicians, to venue owners, to venue managers, to venue workers, to event producers. We have a large supply of those in Austin. The other surprising thing is it wasn’t all bad. There was an increase in the small businesses, the two- or three-person shops that are music businesses. We saw significant growth of those in the last two or three years.

Thurmond: Did anyone take the survey at this table? [There are some yeses.] Of the results, did you look through them, and did you see anything that stood out to you that maybe that maybe the media didn’t really go into? What surprised you about the results?

Elizabeth McQueen: The thing that didn’t surprise me was something that a lot of people talked about: “Oh my gosh, musicians make so little money in this town!” I was like, yeah, the kind of musician who would move to this town is often not motivated by fame or money or success on a grand scale. So, I was surprised that people were surprised. I was also surprised by how many small businesses and small nonprofits there were, many of which are working out of homes and not connected in any way. It showed us this opportunity to acknowledge that kind of creative class and the service that that class offers to this city. They don’t make a lot of money but they make this city what it is. They give the city the vibe that it has, and it’s the reason why you want to come to Austin because people live a great quality of life that’s based around creating and not monetizing necessarily. And also it gives us an opportunity to say, “Oh, look at all these people who are doing things in the music industry. Maybe we could connect them all. Maybe we could create music business hubs. They could all work side by side in a co-working space. And maybe that would just lift everybody’s ships.” That was what I got out of it.

Andy Langer: I think to some degree, while those numbers aren’t surprising, people would be surprised to know that musicians are often walking away from the bandstand with less than $30 a man. That is the same money they were making 10 years ago, the same money they were making 10 years before that, and the same money they were making at the height of the Armadillo [World Headquarters]. So I don’t know that that hasn’t changed as a problem because everything else has changed in terms of rent and whatnot, but I think the raw numbers of what it is to load your stuff into the car, take it down to a club, play for a couple hours, and unless you’re in this little tiny percentage of folks that make more than that, you’re splitting up a couple hundred bucks at the end of the night between however many people, and that’s a problem on a bunch of levels when a city gets more and more expensive to live in.

McQueen: When I moved here in 2000, I made nothing and I lived on nothing. And it was highly possible to live like a kind of a nice—you could have a really nice quality of life and play those kinds of gigs. And now it’s just not possible, and there’s nowhere for the creative class to go except out, like away.

Britt Daniel: Right, I don’t think anybody was ever supporting themselves on those $30 a night, but the fact is it was a cheap place to live and you could make your money some other way. Having a minimum-wage job was enough to keep you in Austin. Now it’s not.

Terrany Johnson: It’s not. I used to play Hip-Hop Hump Day at the Mercury, which is now the Parish, and we had a Wednesday night. We’d get a piece of the bar and the door. So a 10-piece band, everybody would walk out of there with probably $200 or $300 apiece. There’s no way that you can do that now.

Daniel: You’re going to see people moving away, so that they can get somewhere where they can do their art at a rate that they can afford.

Langer: [To Daniel] As somebody who’s out there sort of as an ambassador, because people are going to ask you questions about Austin everywhere you go and always have, are they asking different questions about Austin now, and if you’re talking to a musician, are they less interested in picking up and moving here? Has the conversation changed out there?

Daniel: I don’t think the conversation has changed too much. I just think that what Austin’s known for might be changing a bit. Obviously, there is still a music scene here, but there’s so much money being poured into here that the culture’s changing, and I think people realize that. People think of Austin as the place where Austin City Limits and South by Southwest and Fun Fun Fun Fest happen. That’s what I end up talking to a lot of people from out of town about. I like that those things happen, but it’s not the whole picture, and those things don’t help musicians. In fact, it’s maybe the opposite. They don’t help local musicians do their thing.

​Thurmond: When you were starting out back in the early ’90s, was there a cover charge at every venue you played? That was one of the study’s results: cover charges disappearing at venues.

Daniel: I guess there was a cover charge. I do remember when Emo’s started in ’92 it had no cover, and that was a big deal. Even the Cannibal Club, which was the first venue I would go to regularly, it was $3 or $5 a night, and I remember thinking that $5 a night was hefty. I would still go, but I wouldn’t go every time there was a $5 cover.

James Moody: That was an interesting thing when I got here. I was working in New York when I came here and fell in love and immediately started bouncing around these clubs. I was shocked going to high school in LA and then growing up in New Orleans and coming here and seeing so many single-digit covers when the rest of the world hadn’t left that world behind, and a lot of it was driven by the fan base. The fan base was expected, because we had so much supply, so they held that economy down in terms of what was available for the clubs and the artists a little bit. So I remember at the Mohawk, it was a big deal—if you got past $10, you better have a good story to tell who was coming.

Daniel: I’m still very conscious of how much my band charges for shows, and when I see that it’s going to cost $40, something goes off in my head. And then my manager and booking agent will say, “That’s less than what everybody else is charging going into this room in New York.” Still, it sticks with me.

McQueen: Now we have these big national rooms, like ACL Live. All of a sudden, we have a venue where big national touring acts can come through. I know that you were talking about this in 1995, but it’s even more now. Go out to the 360 Amphitheater and pay like $150 to go see Van Halen. Or you’re going to pay $100 to see someone at ACL Live. But still, if you’re a native Austinite, you’re not going to pay $15 to see a local band at a local club. The disconnect is becoming even more, like, crazy about what people will spend their time and their money on. And it used to be that you didn’t get a lot of those touring acts coming through Austin, so people would just opt to go local, but now the competition is fierce.

Moody: It was definitely the supply-and-demand thing. We had so much supply of talent and so many options. It’s really risky to push your ticket price for the band or for the venue.

Daniel: It was a lot of local options. Now the bigger Austin gets, the more there are national options coming in.

Langer: And you’re not just competing against other clubs. You’re competing against Netflix, video games, all the different ways you can spend money and your time outside of the inconvenience, in many cases, of trying to find a parking spot downtown when some hotel has bagged all the spots for six blocks around those venues.

McQueen: Uber has been a godsend in this town.

Langer: Yeah, so all of those things are distracting people from spending the money they have left after they’ve bought the tickets to go to the Austin360 or go to ACL Live or wherever. And then you look at what’s left, what’s trickling down and how many people are fighting for what’s trickling down because there are still a lot of clubs. I mean, that’s good. But there’s a lot of people looking for that same piece of the pie.

McQueen: The thing is, in Austin our idea of how artists can get revenue is based around performance. Live performance is just not a great way to make money, especially if you’re playing in town all the time.

Johnson: If you’re doing hip-hop in Austin and you’re trying to rely on being a performer, it’s going to be a rough ride. A lot of venues, they don’t have areas for DJs or for hip-hop bands, so to speak. It’s all live bands. So artists have to find other ways to create that revenue. And one thing that I’ve been doing with artists is getting their mindset off of just being onstage, as far as owning your publishing, licensing, placements—other revenue that you can generate for yourself while you still play those $30 gigs.

McQueen: I personally think that all this revenue that’s coming in from all these hotels that are getting booked from all these people who are visiting Austin all the time—we’ll talk about different ways—that money should be going back to artists. I personally think directly back into the hands of artists so that they can create whatever they want to create and it not infringe on their personal bank accounts.

Daniel: Doesn’t seem like too radical an idea, if that’s why these hotels want to come to Austin and that’s why the people want to come to Austin.

McQueen: I think that people are desperate for a taste of authentic anything, and they come to Austin and they see a bunch of people living authentic lives and they just—

RC: Gravitate toward that.

Langer: Yeah, but are they coming for that and then experiencing it? Or are they coming here because some company that came here or grew out of here brought them here, and then it’s not in their DNA? I think this is the fundamental issue, above and beyond everything, or that impacts everything we’re talking about, is that fundamentally people that have moved here—and this is not an Old Austin versus New Austin, it-was-so-much-better-however-long-ago gripe—it’s that perhaps we haven’t done a good job of educating the people that are coming here that part of the DNA of this city is traditionally been arts and culture, and that arts and culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum unless you’re feeding arts and culture. And that what’s missing it appears from a lot of people moving here, that element of “OK, I’m going to go out and see band X, Y or Z however many nights a week.” I mean the way that—

Moody: You’re going to say [former Austin mayor] Will Wynn? [Everyone laughs]

Langer: Yeah, it’s that old Will Wynn thing: This is our sports team. We don’t have a sports franchise. Music is our sports franchise in the same way somebody who lives in Atlanta has a major league baseball, basketball and football team to choose from and goes and supports those things. I don’t know that we have that now.

Reenie Collins: I actually agree with that. What I tell people is if you don’t care about music personally, but you’re here doing business and have business here, you should care about it because it makes a difference to us economically. You should care about it because it’s what makes our city our city. And I do believe that we should be encouraging and teaching people, especially our newcomers, how to go out, where to go, what to see. We ought to make it easy. We ought to make it interesting. But for people who aren’t used to doing that it can be very intimidating, or it can be, “I don’t really have time. I don’t have a place to park.” Those are all excuses. We’ve got Uber. Now, old people like me can go to an early show. [Everybody laughs] You can go to an early show and be home and be in bed. There’s all kinds of options.

Thurmond: Don, one of your office’s goals is trying to figure out ways to generate revenue sources for musicians, correct?

Pitts: Yes, there’s a lot of stuff happening now. Our office lives in two separate worlds: the permitting, regulatory world and the economic development world. This last budget cycle, [city] council gave us two new staff members to focus more on professional development and industry development. That’s our desire and what we should be doing. But, also the census said we needed a music tourism plan. I don’t think Austin does tourism very well. We do conventions and meetings and, fortunately, festivals well. So I think what we’ve been hearing a lot of conversation from the commission and a lot of the dialogue that’s on the dais from council members, that they’re wanting to see a music tourism plan. Right now, the people that do our tourism is the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau. They did a presentation not too long ago with the Economic Opportunity Committee. But according to ACVB’s testimony in front of that council, 60 percent of the people they interviewed and surveyed, the visitors coming in, 60 percent said they come to Austin for music. So my question would be: Are we reinvesting? How much of the funds are we reinvesting back into music programs that could respond to tourism? You go to cities like Nashville, Chicago, Seattle, New Orleans, they got the music tourism thing down. I think for us it’s an uphill battle. It’s almost like the tagline is a detriment for us. The Live Music Capital of the World is a double-edged sword. Our other kinfolk in the arts world are frustrated with music getting all the credit. But the music folks are all frustrated because all of the resources and revenue are going to others. So I think we have to address that.

McQueen: We’re all in the same boat now. It doesn’t matter if you’re a musician or an artist or a theater person. It’s the same kind of person who moves to Austin no matter what they’re medium is.

Moody: There’s been a very divide-and-conquer mentality, though, about establishing what the music and the creative economy is. And so when we do reports, we’ll say South by Southwest brings this much in. Or ACL Fest brings in that much. But the census is only the appetizer of actually starting to try to put the actual music economy together, and if you did, that number would be enormous. It would be everything, honestly. It would be so much of who we are and what drives our little micro economy here. But it hasn’t been ever properly put together to represent a story. We’ve always, I think—when I got here, I was frustrated that all the music stories were about a show that we missed at a venue that closed a long time ago. It was never an economic story. It was never just about jobs. And it was never just about tourism. And the things that I think policy makers really need to be able to get behind, and we don’t have good policy for that. Don’s office should be four times as big as it is, relative to that economy, and it’s not. And so should his budget. Not because he’s [sitting] here. It’s just because you would think if you were to ask people about the Live Music Capital of the World, you’d assume that office would be enormous, right? Because it’s an enormous responsibility. And then the hotels and such around the venues, they can contribute with the hot tax and the way that those things work. I’m very pro-growth. I like the hotels coming to Red River because it’ll bring new customers to non-venue hours and venue hours. But, as you guys said, if they bag up all the parking spots around the venue and then the parking revenue goes to the general fund and not back to the district, then we’re not supporting the thing that’s getting the hotel to make the decision.

Langer: To back track for a minute on the tourism thing, what does it say if you show up in Austin, Texas, go to a hotel downtown, talk to the concierge—and they send you to Dirty Sixth? They’re going to send you to a place that’s filled with shot bars and vomit. What we’ve allowed Sixth Street to turn into is probably the biggest problem reputation-wise and tourism-wise for the city. And what you used to have on Sixth Street, and again, I don’t want to sound like Old Man Austin here—

McQueen: You sound like a classic Austinite.

Johnson: Here it comes.

Langer: —what you used to have on Sixth Street was a bar bar, next to a live music venue, next to a coffee shop, next to an art gallery. I could take you from Babe’s to Black Cat to Mercado Caribe to Steamboat. You could go to Lovejoy’s for a second and avoid music for a minute. Then you had Emo’s at the other end and Flamingo Cantina. You had a mixed experience there that allowed both things to happen at the same time. Now it’s none of that essentially. So now you have to go to Red River.

Daniel: But there’s a difference between Sixth Street now and Red River now, and my concern is that all of the places that original live music is able to do business in are going to become Dirty Sixth because it’s the only thing that can survive.

Moody: The numbers are better. I spoke with Britt about this before. We went to the state and we said: If we can classify live music venues and give them some sort of tax benefit, that’s wise because of the extraordinary overhead that it takes to manage sound equipment, sound engineers, security, staff, all the extra money it takes to run a live music venue (see sidebar, page 81). The bar guys, they just get the bar money. They don’t have all that extra money it takes to provide the office space for musicians to do their job. And if your rent changes, that’s why you see people freak out. “I had it all planned out. I could barely make my margins. You move that rent number, and I’m gone.”

Pitts: To James’ point, we’ve been looking at what role the city has. In Austin, one thing I’ve learned from being here since 2003, coming from Nashville, is that everyone has a different perception of what the city should be doing—and the city should be doing everything. But with the rent hikes, say on Red River, we’ve been looking at ways to extend [venues’] hours three hours a week. In just the preliminary numbers that we’re getting back, it could add 20, 25 percent to their bottom line every year, which could then kind of compensate for some of that high rent. The other thing is, going to the entertainment license that the Music Commission had recommended last summer to the mayor and council, of getting it more of a business license instead of kind of a sound permit now—it’s in this no-man’s land if it’s treated like a land development code permit, with a lot of heavy duty notification and a lot of administration stuff. But if we went to an entertainment license, it could provide an opportunity and the framework for the city to incentivize live music for venues that really want to be an incubator and provide truly live music. That’s when the city could say, “We’re going to extend your hours.” I’d like to see some kind of energy rebates as well. But at least just extending your hours on Red River three to fours hours a week could add significant income.

Moody: It would, just because most of those businesses were based off [of] paying rent 24 hours a day and they’re monetizing that four or five hours a day. If they did happy hour business or private event business, if they were able to extend, that would totally help not only with the rent stuff, but people need to remember that the door business is usually separate from the bar business. The more freedom you get, the more you can contribute to artists and the more you can contribute to better gear, because we don’t have a lot of great-sounding rooms in this town. We never have. But we could and we should, so that kind of stuff helps.

Daniel: Well, forgive my ignorance, what kind of venue or business is not allowed to be open for more than four or five hours?

Moody: It’s not about “allowed.” For example, if you think about 710—we used to go there—that club didn’t even get moving until 10 o’clock at night and afterwards, and it had to close at 2. It was never cool to go to happy hour on Red River.

Thurmond: It’s still not cool.

Daniel: So how is the city going to help by adding hours?

Moody: Well, a lot of it has to do with the sound. If you have sound times change, you can play at different times, keep the crowd in there. I’ve noticed like with the hotels, like when they come in, and you’ll see, Cheer Up Charlies has started to grow their non-live music business, as an example of what all those clubs should do to be more sustainable down there. The Mohawk’s been investing in that, too. So it’s more about saleable hours. It’s not necessarily about live music.

Collins: What I’m thinking about more organically is what we’re all talking about: Everybody should be taking advantage of the live music that we have to offer. It is such a part of our culture. If you are living in Austin and you are not, shame on you, because you are missing out on some awesome things. There are a lot of Austinites who really do like live music, and they’re just not doing anything. Why aren’t they? What are those things? How can we break down those barriers? As a not-for-profit, I’m always looking at ways to help our musicians, not only through what I do but to get money in their pockets overall. We have this whole base of people—not just tourists, but Austinites who live here—who just aren’t taking advantage of it. An example that came to mind is [when] we had a bunch of people over [to our house], and we had a HAAM event. It was at the White Horse. And I said, “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to show up.” Not anybody in my house had been to the White Horse and they were like, “Well, we’ll go with you.” They had the best time. It was a great show. They were like, “We didn’t know this was here.” And they were all Austinites, maybe old like me. And the thing is they’ve got the money to spend, they like music. Once they were down there, they were like, “We’re coming back.” And that’s the case: We’ve got so many people that we’re gearing toward tourists and some of these other things. We’re not thinking about how do we…

Moody: The local economy.

Music Makers’ Reality

Thurmond: I’d like to switch the conversation a little bit to the struggles artists are facing. For the musicians here, what were some of the struggles you faced when you started out in Austin, and do you think that they’ve changed?

Johnson: I’m one of the few who have been here forever, born and raised here. And doing hip-hop and urban, we have always been separate from the music scene in Austin—a part of us is still separate—where we’ve always managed to book our own shows, find unconventional venues to throw our shows. When the census and other things come up, the urban part isn’t so much tied down to those results. We can still put on events and bring out 500 people. And it’ll be off the radar. The Chronicle won’t write about it, or other publications won’t write about it, which is why I’m happy I’m here with you guys today. And, so, as far as getting paid for booking, that issue only really comes into play when we go outside of the normal urban circuit, to venues on Sixth Street or Fifth Street, because then it’s a whole negotiating thing. You have to understand their overhead, and you really can’t get a piece of the bar anymore. So it’s all about thinking outside of the box now, more than just, “Let’s play downtown.” A lot of venues, they don’t have areas for DJs, they don’t really have areas for hip-hop bands, so to speak. It’s all live bands, and a lot of clubs took their stages down for a while. We went through that whole DJ phase, where a lot of clubs took their stages down and just made DJ booths. So now they went back putting in stages so the DJ booths are gone. So it’s an ever-changing thing.

McQueen: I just moved to Austin, like, “Heeey, I want to be playing music.” And that was like my whole plan when I moved here. I think I had a typical Austin musician experience. I moved here when I was 23, and I totally felt like I found my place. And all I wanted to do was play music and I’d work other jobs. I didn’t really care about getting paid. I just wanted to play as much as I could. I’d play anywhere with electricity. Luckily, Austin was set up so that I could do that. Like, I worked part-time at the university for a long time and would play at night for years and years. And all my friends did that. We had the Austin Musician Money Recycling Program, where you get money from your friends who came and saw you and then you’d give it back to them when you went and saw them. I just feel really lucky that I moved to Austin when I did because I can’t imagine being 23 now and just wanting to play music and have a part-time job and that being possible. I have a lot of friends who are musicians who are having their rental houses sold out from under them because the people who own them can’t possibly not make a profit. There’s not really great public transportation in the city, so if you have to move really far out, how do you get back in? I know there are kids still doing it, like those Raw Paw kids are still making awesome art and music and not really caring about the money.

Johnson: [laughs] That’s true.

McQueen: I mean, I’m glad that they’re doing it, you know? And I hope that that kind of musician still feels like they can move to Austin in 10 years because that’s what makes Austin beautiful. Because when I moved here, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I moved to a place where I literally just said, “I want to form a country band and play music.” And I met some people at a club and they were like, “Well, I play guitar. Let me show you.” It was so open. And when you hear stories about other industry towns, you don’t hear that a lot of times. I’m hoping that, in my heart of hearts, everyone’s going to bond together and be like, “We love our musicians and our creatives! Here’s some money and some housing. Come!” [Everyone laughs] I don’t know. I talked to a tech guy the other day, because we have a big tech culture here, and he had that weird tech mindset. “Well, if the market can’t bear it and if you can’t…”

Moody: Oh, that’s the worst.

McQueen: “If you can’t afford it, get the f*ck out.” I just think that’s a really unfortunate attitude to have.

Langer: But sometimes you got to look at it that way.

Thurmond: Why is that, Andy? Why do you need to look at it that way sometimes?

Langer: One of the problems with this town traditionally has been that we’ve been trying to run businesses like it’s still 1974. And so you’ve got a lot of badly run businesses that aren’t keeping up with modern-day business practice, because they’ve got these hippie-dippy ideas that you just shared. And what ends up happening is they have to fall by the wayside because that’s how our economy works.

McQueen: Yeah, but the economy is just a bunch of individual decisions made on the part of a community. So literally everyone in Austin could decide that they wanted this to be a thing and support it.

Daniel: How many incentives are given to companies like Dell? Incentives happen. Why can’t they happen for music venues and musicians?

Moody: That argument is a little frustrating when they say the market is going to do what the market is going to do and everybody has to deal with it. I think the city does have a vote on what it wants to be, but you have to create policy around that. As an example, there are developers telling me Red River is going to [be redeveloped], because it’s obvious. The market will eventually get it. But we have a thing called Capitol View Corridors, where legally you can’t build a building a certain height, otherwise you can’t see the Capitol. That was a policy put in place. That’s a law. So you can put policy in place that benefits the Capitol just like you can put policy in place that benefits your cultural economy, or whatever our gold is, and we haven’t done a good job of that. In fact, if you want to place a big hotel—right now, there’s no one you have to check with.

McQueen: That’s crazy.

Moody: No one. And so if you want to drop a Hyatt on top of some live music venues, the music venues have to deal with the repercussions. The Hyatt doesn’t have to check with someone that’s in charge of a cultural office that says, “Hey, maybe you should do this, that and this, because we have musician loading zones and we have things that you’re going to affect, sanitation, whatever.” None of that exists. So right now, it’s the Wild, Wild West. If you have the most money, and you have an OK drawing—don’t get me started about architecture, because, holy shit, it’s not going that well—you can get the permit.

Pitts: With a lawyer or a permit consultant.

Moody: Exactly. You can just get it. And the next thing you know, we’re finding out later, when you see the trucks, and you’re like, “What’s happening?” No one’s been notified, because they had the most money, and they moved the process quickly because they had someone. If there was someone to be able to police that stuff, not say, “Don’t do it. This is how you do it.” Because we’re actually very pro-growth but managed.

Collins: Don’t you think New Orleans probably has a lot of that—

Moody: They do a much better job.

Collins: —and we should probably go and figure that out.

Moody: New Orleans, you can physically look at it and tell that they care about that.

Collins: Yeah, I know.

Pitts: San Francisco passed legislation that will address that. And I think the mayor is putting together a team of folks that will be introducing policy the first of March to address that. I will also say, going back to affordability, I think this is a perfect example of other city policy impacts. When the council was talking about the granny flats, which was basically allowing these homeowners of a certain lot size to have an apartment house or something like that. I think there was an effort to try and engage the music community, because one of the things that they were selling—I know a lot of people that rent to musicians purposely for $500 a month because they like that, this is their thing—there was a time that the music community could have risen up and actually helped push that legislation through to allow that. We’ve learned from the census that there are state provisions that are preventing the city to spend city dollars on providing affordable housing for a specific group.

Collins: Well, you know what? Shame on our musicians a little bit, because if our music community came together, we would have a bigger coalition and have more power than teachers, than firefighters. We would have a big coalition of people. We just can’t seem to—

McQueen: We’re not the most organized group in the world.

Moody: That’s why when he says “music community,” I’m like, Who are you talking about? Who do you call? I’ve lived in Bouldin Creek for 15 years, and it’s pretty weird that the most feared organization in Austin, Texas, is the Bouldin Creek Neighborhood Association. [Everyone laughs] We can’t even get together a music community. We have these sub-communities. We have these bubbles. But we have not found a way to put the bubbles together into one bubble. And so the divide a conquer strategy works.

Collins: You’re exactly right, because, you know—and this is a little bit off—but doing all the HAAM open enrollment stuff, I can’t even get people to come in or motivated to get them moving for something that’s free and good for them. Because we can’t get the communication out there and you can’t get people moving. That, to me, is something that as leaders we should be trying to figure out how we do that. There’s a lot of power here. There’s a lot of power sitting at this table.

Langer: Look at Nashville and its music commission. Joe Galante is at the head of it. He’s the most powerful person outside of [Scott] Borchetta in country music. And then you go down that list of who’s on that committee, and it’s literally every major label and publishing head and the people who are doing the business of music in Nashville. And it’s not their No. 2 or 3. . It’s the guy at the top of the pyramid. And they go to these music committee meetings. I’m assuming that they’re going to these meetings because their name is on the thing. And, I mean—

Moody: We don’t do that.

Langer: We don’t do that. And so, you know… I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve seen Moody, [C3 Presents co-founders Charles] Attal, [Charlie] Jones, [Charlie] Walker, [SXSW Managing Director Roland] Swenson and—I don’t know who I’m missing there—in one place. It was the announcement of AMP [Austin Music People]. How many years ago was that?

Moody: Five.

Langer: That might be the only time they’ve ever all been in the same room to my knowledge. And that’s crazy. Because they all have competing agendas—I’m mean, I’m sorry, they all have—

Moody: Shared interests.

Langer: Shared interests, and they act like they have competing agendas. And I think that what you have are, in a lot of these commissions and committees and the people that are willing to step forward no matter how well intentioned and whatnot they are, they don’t have the power base to go and move people in the same direction, and everything is splintered.

Collins: It’s true.

Moody: I recognize the same thing. Being from New Orleans, it’s one of the reasons AMP exists. Because we had to create it. We didn’t have this central advocacy group, and it didn’t become what we hoped it would become, but it became something of value and so we had to take a small victory over what we hoped would be a larger one. I think we have shifted, though, in that we’re not as competitive of a music culture as we were when I got here. I’m collaborative with all the guys that you listed off now, but I wasn’t and was just learning about the environment. But we’re still just as disconnected than we should be.

PITTS: Yeah, I’d agree with that. There are a lot of people that are disenfranchised. They’re just—

Moody: Off on their own.

Langer: I’m not advocating for a smoky room where the same six people make all of the decisions. Don’t get me wrong.

Moody: Neither am I.

Collins: Not unless I’m in there. [laughs]

Moody: No, it should be a big room of 50 people that represent 5,000 people.

Johnson: Right, active participants.

Langer: Exactly.

McQueen: Well, I think, just speaking for a musician perspective, it’s not until very recently that I think any of us felt, like, loved or cared about. For me, the music census was like, oh sh*t, people are paying attention to us.

Thurmond: But, I’m wondering though, do other cities have HAAM and SIMS and these types of organizations that really are for the musicians to help with their medical needs?

McQueen: Well, maybe I should have said I felt loved but not listened to.

Thurmond: That feels very unique to Austin, but I might be wrong about that.

Pitts: It is.

Moody: Those come from the heart, but those weren’t developed by any government effort.

Collins: Those were individuals. To my knowledge, like for a HAAM or a SIMS or anything that does with health-care issues, really there aren’t very many. New Orleans has their musicians’ clinic, which is connected to the teaching medical center, so they have that. I know that Nashville actually called HAAM and Ray Benson to get advice on what they were going to do. We are working with Ian Moore in Seattle to do something that they want to call SMASH, and we’re actually trying to co-sponsor with them. But, no, Austin is really unique in that. But I don’t think HAAM would have started if you didn’t have someone like a Robin Shivers who had that kind of influence, who had that kind of power, who had that kind of wealth and all of those things together. And her legacy, we’ve been able to build on it, but that’s a hard thing to do. Now when people call me and ask me how can we do that in our city? I give them a lot of information. There are a lot of pieces there, but the city has to care about it. And Robin pushed that through.

Moody: And by the city, you mean the people of the city. I mean, one of the reasons I moved here to Austin was because, when I came here, I was like, They have a what for who? They have mental health services for musicians? Well, OK. Great.

Collins: By the city, I mean the people, but I also mean health-care partners and even the city officials themselves. Everybody’s got to care. And it goes back to, you know—I tell people all the time, again, if you don’t care about music you should because it’s your economic engine driver. And so you can get there one way or the other. I don’t care which way you get there, I just care that we get there.

Protecting our Artists & Venues

Thurmond: I want to make sure we talk about the aging musician population. When you’re a struggling artist and young, struggle is part of the deal. If you decide to be in the creative class, struggle is part of it. Reenie, older artists made this the Live Music Capital of the World, so what are some of the concerns that HAAM is facing now with aging musicians?

Collins: Well, I think we’re learning. One of the things I’m seeing is we have a lot of musicians who are aging off of HAAM and onto Medicare. And what we’re realizing is that we weren’t thinking that far. So, there’s a whole thing happening in health care in our country. On paper, it feels like people are taken care of. Oh, we’ve got the Affordable Health Care Act or we’ve got Obamacare. Oh, we’ve got Medicare. On paper, it looks like people are taken care of. But when you really get down to it, there are still a lot of gaps, and in particular in Texas, since we didn’t do certain things. So what we’re finding is where the aging musicians are, yes, they’re moving on to Medicare, but they might not know how to use it. They might not be very well educated in it. There are a lot of tricks to anything in how you sign up and what you pick and what are the other agencies that we can get resources from. And one of HAAM’s big things has really always been to be collaborative and to look at what else exists and see if we can be collaborative and make things work. And so for the aging musician piece, really this year, it’s become one of my focuses to say, “We need to look at this and see how HAAM can expand services or what we need to be doing.” And we will be. I wish I could tell you I have a lot of answers, but I don’t. But I will say I think it’s a need. I will also say that there’s a need for housing. It’s a need for a lot of areas with our aging musicians, because especially if they can’t play a lot anymore, they really don’t have any income and you know that they don’t have their 401K or their pension in place. I know Marcia Ball and Nancy Coplin and some folks have come together to create HOME [Housing Opportunities for Musicians and Entertainers], which is supposed to address some of our aging musician needs. But these are all small pieces. I kept seeing the mayor’s emails that went out about helping the homeless vets, which I think is awesome. I do, I think it’s incredible. But I’d love to see that help a musician.

Thurmond: James, you represent venues here. In the past year, we’ve had some closings due to rent getting too high. What are you facing as a venue owner?

Moody: It’s a little bit harder. There’s some optimism because the city’s growing. So you have to assume that a lot of the people are moving here because of the music. You have to hope that part of their plan is to get their condo and see a show. [Everyone laughs] I personally am not a pessimist about new developments if they mean new residents because I actually think you can be a convert. I think you can actually fall in love with some of what we do and totally change where you hang out and how you dress because the city will do that to you. It definitely did that to me. And so I have some optimism about the growth of the city. But the economics of running a live music venue relative to increasing rental rates, that is a very real threat. And I think we all know that a lot of these clubs don’t have the best accounting in the world and the best advisors and the best mathematical approach anyway. And so you move one thing to the left or right and it’s over. It’s literally clubs that are planning on being here during South By know that they have to close within 30 days. It’s hard right now. I mean, there are some good things happening. Like, I love what Will Bridges just did with Antone’s, and it’s a signal that we’re not going to give up. And I think it’s a great anchor to what’s happening on Red River and we’re doing our best, too. But our venue has been under threat two or three times [in 2015].

Thurmond: You turn 10 this year?

Moody: We turn 10 this year. Well, if we make it to August. And I give Britt credit, because Britt from a distance, while making music and traveling around the world, he was like, “What’s going on down there because I hear that things are in trouble.” And that is important that everyone asks, What does the trouble mean? How do we define it? How do we help? Which is what Don’s office is trying to help, too. Because at this point, for me, I just want to keep it open and alive. It’s not a career endeavor for me. It’s just now it’s so important to the community to make sure that my club stays open relative to those other clubs. Contiguous music streets, there’s only one or two of them in the United States left where you can go see three shows in one night off of one parking spot. But if the city takes parking spots or charges for them and puts it into the general fund… One of the reasons we used to do so well down there is because we had free parking. Red River was [free]. And so if you notice, the free parking on East Sixth Street has shifted all the show-goers down there for a while. And it’s just become more difficult. I don’t know how better to answer it, because it’s kind of a complex problem, but it is very slender margins. The stuff that Don is suggesting I think should be seriously considered just because those margins, generally if you do well, they get shared.

Langer: Let me throw one thing out there that’s probably too complex for a format like this. So the city has this culturally based aesthetic, artisans and whatnot, and inconsistent with that would be tooting your own horn, sort of marketing and presenting who you are and what you’ve accomplished. I think for a long time that was kind of frowned upon here. And probably still is aesthetically. You’ve got people moving here who live music isn’t part of their DNA, right? And then, you know, somebody sends up a trial balloon: Mohawk’s in trouble; there’s dumpsters that need to be moved next door at Cheer Up Charlies; there’s a hotel encroaching on the wall. You look at the comments on that story in the Statesman on a Facebook page and it’s, “Well, I don’t care about that. There’s traffic. Traffic is nuts. And we weren’t meant to have traffic like this in the city.” Etcetera. What I think everyone has done a bad job of, a really poor job of, is readjusting to the new world of marketing and social media and whatnot and saying, “This is who we are. This is what we accomplish.” You look at C3 [producers of ACL Music Fest] and the money—significant money—they give to the park, the park that people play in and raise their children in and whatnot the rest of the year. Yet those neighborhoods complain that they lose access to those parks for two weeks. Well, look at what C3 is leaving financially behind. But C3 doesn’t say that. They’ll mention it in passing, but they’re not taking the kind of credit they should be for the money they’re giving to the park. And South by Southwest, same story only with tourism dollars, etcetera. And I think you’ve got these three big organizations doing a relatively poor job of expressing what they’ve brought to the table. And I think that feeds on itself when one of these things happen and everyone says, “Oh, well, we’ve got all these other problems in the city and are willing to let music sort of slide by.”

Daniel: So what’s the venue for touting themselves in that way?

Langer: I don’t know. [Everyone laughs] Well, I think that what they end up doing is commissioning an economic impact study. Whoever pays for an economic impact study gets the study they’re looking for. That’s how those work. And it’s a document that gets one day’s worth of press and then nobody reads, much like this survey. The survey came out, generated more than one day of press. It generated a week’s worth of press. But it didn’t drive people to go read the survey, and I think these economic impact studies are the same. I don’t know how you politely toot your own horn.

Daniel: Maybe the city is supposed to be doing it.

Moody: I agree. Because those organizations talk about this stuff individually, and they don’t talk about that stuff collectively of what the industry does very well. We don’t talk about [merchandise], for example, being a part of the economy. You’re talking about is a huge part of our creative music culture. You roll all that stuff up and you talk about the money that moves through sound equipment, merchandise, staff, you’re talking serious economic impact. We’ve never once done that properly.

And the last thing I would say to answer your venue question is that it is an all-day process. For a big show, everything has to start being organized at 2 in the afternoon. And that’s not a bar, that’s a live music venue. And those things are completely different animals. It takes some real work to put on a Spoon show.

McQueen: Everyone’s just in their own camps regardless. There’s the venue people over here, and then you have all these individual musicians just with their heads down trying to do their next thing or play their next gig.

Johnson: Everybody’s trying to survive.

Moody: But we can’t do it without them; they can’t do it without us.

McQueen: Exactly.

Moody: So there’s not enough collaboration that I thought would naturally be here.

Pitts: No, our approach in reading the census—my sports analogy is coming back and focusing on the fundamentals: blocking, tackling, special teams. If you look at the national championship last night, it was special teams, blocking and tackling that won the game. But we’ve lost our way—the city has lost focus on the basic fundamentals. For us, it’s streamlining the process; make the permitting process more friendly, less arduous; providing more opportunities for the venue; more opportunities for the musicians and for the music business. And what does that look like? It’s different from each sector.

Moody: And the last thing I would say to answer your venue question, just so readers know, is that it is an all-day process. For a big show you start when the sun is out. And people don’t realize how much planning for one show, and how much staffing and how much investment it takes to properly have a good-sounding, well-lit, secure, well-done show with the lines managed, and the bar lines, and everything has to start being organized at 2 in the afternoon. And that’s not a bar; that’s a live music venue. And those things are completely different animals. Holy sh*t, it takes some real work to put on a Spoon show. Like, you’re starting in the morning with your text messages going.

Langer: But then during those four hours that you get to sell alcohol, the TABC takes 17 percent of that right off the top.

Moody: Absolutely. It’s 14, but that was one of the conversations we were having, if you have to make all those investments in sound equipment and staff, and you wanted to look good and sound good and deliver on the Live Music Capital of the World idea, which is a great show, if you spent all that money and did all that work, could you qualify as a live music venue and then get a tax benefit? Maybe it’s 2 percent or 3 percent, and put that back into your infrastructure, put that back into your musicians, put those savings back into the music economy. That’s what we were asking the state of Texas to do. We’ve got some language; we’re going to keep asking.

Pitts: I think we can resurrect that, from the meeting we had with the governor late last year.

Moody: I still think it’s a good idea.

THE GOOD STUFF

Thurmond: Let’s talk about the positive, like our hip-hop scene. There are lots of bands coming out of Austin’s, but I don’t know if it rivals Houston yet.

Johnson: It’s completely different from Houston. The thing with Houston, what they got figured out that we really haven’t is the support of the whole town and not just pockets. Just like in the rock scene or any other genre, you have certain hip-hop groups that just do their own thing. All are successful in their own right, but if we were to come together, as a bigger pool, then we could start really having a voice. But, you know, guys are doing a lot of music. They’re becoming businessmen, which is what I really push, as far as owning their music, becoming their own label. So we’re moving in that direction, as far as ownership of our art now. Usually we just put it out there and hope somebody books us or writes about us, “Please notice us.” But now we’re stepping up ourselves, saying we’re going to do our own thing regardless. Because hip-hop has been in Austin for many, many years, before I even got into it. It’s going to be here for a while, and it’s only going to get better. So it’s always a positive with that.

McQueen: I agree with what James was saying, the influx of people presents a real opportunity. Like if what Andy was saying, if you say to everyone that’s moving here, “Hey, you’re living in Austin. Why not, like, live in Austin?” You know what I mean? And if they did, it could be a huge boon to musicians. There’s a lot more non-industry here, so musicians who can’t make a living say just from performing, there are more jobs available, which is potentially really great. And also, I think that Austin is kind of growing up, and everyone is upset about it. They’re always upset about it because we all move here in our 20s and fall in love with it and then get really pissed off when it changes and our favorite club closes. Now we have the potential to maybe get a lot of disparate groups together. I think one thing that came out of the census was that a lot of groups stepped up and said, “Hey, you missed us.”

Johnson: Totally.

McQueen: Like you totally missed our voices, so I think that’s a real concern too now, integrating genres and not just rock and country into the conversation in Austin. And now we know we have all these businesses. Maybe they can start to connect, maybe the city’s going to start investing in the music industry more. I have high hopes because Austinites are typically pretty cool and they like the arts and, you know, maybe someone will read this article and decide to take some action.

Daniel: I would love to know from Don how uphill of a battle it is. You’re with the city, but you’re on our side. [everyone laughs] How much struggle is it to get some of these ideas that we’re talking about here? They’re all ideas, but we need to push them through in some way, right?

Pitts: Absolutely. First of all, I’m optimistic that there’s finally legislation coming. I’ve always looked at myself as the local that jumped across the castle wall and said, “Come on, come on. Let’s go.” My frustration is that I’m telling the people that are communicating with our office or the music commission, “It’s here, here, here.” I’m telling you where the passageway is and for whatever reason, everyone is just looking. So finally, after about a year and a half of touting the entertainment license, the mayor is putting together a list of numerous resolutions to bring forward the first of March. But to answer your question, if we all got on the same song sheet, it wouldn’t be an uphill battle.

Daniel: When you say “we,” you mean?

Pitts: We, the music community. The music community in general, the whole rising tide lifts all boats. It’s like we all know that, but we don’t do it. With me, every day is like herding cats. Fortunately, I think my focus—from my bosses to the executive team of the Economic Development, from the census to council members, the policymakers are saying, “What are you doing in permitting?” If 100 percent of our focus was really on industry development, I think we could accomplish a whole lot more. I spend about 70 percent of my time plugging the holes up in a permitting process or making things happen that aren’t necessarily supposed to happen happen. But if I could focus solely on industry development, I think I could do a better job of herding cats, coordinating the different aspects of our community to say, “Hey, here’s the song sheet.” I mean, I could be the chorus director.

Daniel: Do you need more staff so you don’t have to be messing with the permit side?

Pitts: It’s more staff. It’s also a commitment, a focus. When the office was created, it was kind of an agreement.

Moody: It was casual.

Pitts: It was like, “We’ve got this problem with venues and sound complaints. We’ll start this office if you can help us fix this first.” I think for the most part, it’s as thick as it’s going to be until the whole thing just needs to be imploded and start anew.

Moody: And then we have to do the community part better. There has to be one, like with representation and agreement, which we don’t quite have.

Pitts: Right. And what I’m learning now, so instead of waiting on that, we’re starting to kind of map out how my office plays that role more of engaging every aspect of the community. The frustrating thing about the census, though, is we did find out that 26 genres were represented in the census. It was disheartening to me, because we went out and hired canvassers to go to hip-hop shows, to Latin shows, to all kinds of shows just to get musicians and music people to participate for 15 minutes without getting car insurance but—[laughs]

Moody: All I’ll say to answer your question about positive things is this: Beerland is still alive and well. [everyone laughs] And that is always a signal for me if we can make it. So Beerland is still alive and well, while ACL Live is still growing and introducing a whole new market to us. We had no idea that those artists and those ticket prices could be sustained by our community. And it’s folks that weren’t going to shows as much that you [to Reenie] were talking about, and so the two ends of the spectrum are pretty interesting to me. Bringing Antone’s back, which was a very risky thing to do after its tenure, I think is an awesome signal.

Langer: Bringing it back as a tightly programmed club, very genre specific. It’s a real experiment and real smart.

Let me throw one more positive thing out: music, despite a dismal music business, appears to be of the consistent quality that the town has always produced. I can go to Bonnaroo and see Spoon, Shakey Graves, Gary Clark Jr., Wind and the Wave and Grupo Fantasma all in one place, representing us at arguably the second or third biggest festival in the country. And then, I can go see Carson McHone at White Horse or I could go see Sweet Spirit, and the consistency is what it’s always been.

Moody: It’s also not show based, where you’re not going to Antone’s necessarily for who’s playing. You’re going to Antone’s for what it feels like regardless of who’s playing. You know it’s going to be a good show. Those are the right stewards, and I like that team. Those signals I would characterize as very positive signals. Even the Red River guys, the Red 7 guys split up and opened two new clubs. So Red 7 went away, and then they opened Sidewinder and Barracuda, which, you know, they’re bringing back that vibe, which is really kind of interesting for Red River. So there are some positive things. I just don’t want anyone to read this thing and think it’s OK because it’s not OK. [laughs]

Langer: Let me throw one more positive thing out and refocus this for a moment: Music despite a dismal music business, appears to be of the consistent quality that the town has always produced. In other words, I can go to a Bonnaroo and see Spoon, Shakey Graves, Gary Clark Jr., Wind and the Wave and Grupo Fantasma last year. I mean, all in one place, representing us at arguably the second or third biggest festival in the country. And then, I can go see Carson McHone at White Horse, or I could go see Sweet Spirit and the consistency is what’s it’s always been. Despite the dismal music business picture, somehow the music seems consistently—

Moody: The shows are great.

McQueen: And also, I would be remiss in not pointing out that now we have a population that can support organizations like Black Fret, which is a music patronage organization. Just like SIMS and HAAM, it’s something that could only have been born in Austin. I personally received $10,000 from people so that I could make a record and make a giant art installation. It’s a crazy concept, but I don’t think in the past Austin had the population to maybe support it. But now you can say to people like, “Pay $1,500 a year and support musicians.” That’s huge.

Collins: But even on just the most basic, organic level, what I was going to say the positive is that there is still really good music in this town. And there’s really good people in this town. As a not-for-profit, I am constantly amazed at the number of people who come in with their generosity, small or big, to support music. HAAM couldn’t exist in another town probably. So there’s a lot of good going on.

Thurmond: Britt, do you have any good stuff to add?

Daniel: Not more than what’s just been mentioned. I mean, I still love Austin. I still think Austin is a great place. It’s a different place than when I first moved here, but it’s equally great.

Moody: So give him credit. The one thing that he does that’s really nice and that I would say for all musicians to think about is no matter how successful his band gets, he will find new clubs that are opening, and he will go play small shows in new clubs still to this day. And he knows this, but we were struggling when he came and said, “I have to play the Mohawk against advice.” And we could barely put it together because we didn’t have all the equipment and it was great. But he’s been doing that consistently over the years and if other people took example from that—

Langer: Well, they do to some degree. And that’s great, because this is what it is to be a successful Austin musician. Shakey Graves has spread that around to a bunch of different clubs that might not have been there at the beginning for him. Gary Clark Jr. does that. You’re about to see White Denim do that at four different clubs for a month-long period.

Moody: I just think it should be celebrated and noticed because not everyone knows. If he plays a show at Hotel Vegas, not everyone knows. But it’s important. We have a lot of successful musicians. And the more they can come back and do that—thank God for Willie, he can play any room he wants to in the world and he still comes back and plays.

Langer: Thirty years ago, Willie taught Austin musicians that the way they can give back, because they might not have money, is to play shows for nonprofits to raise money and that’s something that consistently Austin’s done better than anywhere else. When something happens, whether it’s a natural disaster or an accident or whatever, you don’t have to ask Austin musicians twice to do that.