There they stood in the Threadgill’s Restaurant parking lot:
Chris Strachwitz, founder of the Arhoolie record label, filmmakers Maureen
Gosling and Chris Simon, and grammy winning music writer Adam Machado. As I got out of my car and started toward
them, they turned and smiled and Chris Strachwitz said “Ah, a down home
friend.” How cool, I thought, that these
roots music movers and shakers greeted me before I could say anything to
them. A fortunate wardrobe decision had
made me a welcoming committee of one; I wore my Down Home Music (the record
store which is also Arhoolie headquarters) t-shirt. They were in Austin for the South by
Southwest Film Festival premier of “This Ain’t No Mouse Music,” a film by
Gosling and Simon celebrating the work Strachwitz and his record company
Arhoolie. Over half a century, Strachwitz and Arhoolie brought an incredible variety of
regional roots music – blues, country, conjunto, cajun, zydeco, polka, and more
– from many areas, but especially Texas and
Louisiana, to national exposure. We
talked for a few minutes about the film and the gratification of seeing it
finally reaching the public after years of work by Gosling and Simon. In a very small way, I could share in their
gratification through becoming a supporter of the Kickstarter project for the
film last year. I got out my Arhoolie “Hear
Me Howling!” book with CDs - the work
that earned Adam Machado his grammy - and got him and Chris Strachwitz to sign
it.
We talked a while about how the restaurant where we were
meeting was started by Kenneth Threadgill in 1933 as a gas station/beer joint
with the first alcohol license in Travis county after prohibition, thus
allowing Threadgill to retire from bootlegging and indulge his love of singing
Jimmy Rodgers blue yodels for the entertainment of his patrons. And we began to talk about Eddie Wilson, who
on New Year day 1980 opened the restaurant a day after closing the Armadillo
World Headquarters, Austin’s premier music venue in the 1970s for rock, blues
and progressive country. Just about
then, Eddie Wilson appeared and invited us into the restaurant.
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| Threadgills |
Chris Strachwitz had been traveling the countryside in 1960
finding musicians and recording them where he found them when he made a stop in
Navasota, Texas. He had recently found
out that a plantation owner in an old blues song “Tom Moore’s farm” was an
actual person who was living in Navasota.
The song is from downtrodden sharecroppers viewpoint and not flattering
to Tom Moore; nevertheless, Strachwitz tracked him down and talked to him. He asked Moore if he knew sharecroppers in
the area who were musical. Moore said he
didn’t, but suggested Strachwitz go find “Pegleg” down at the train depot and
“Pegleg” could lead him to such a person.
Sure enough, “Pegleg” indeed led Strachwitz to Mance Lipscomb. After recording Lipscomb, Mac McCormick, who
was traveling with Strachwitz suggested that the Mance Lipscomb recordings should
be the first album released on their new record label, and he suggested they
call the label “Arhoolie,” which is a word that means “field holler.” That
he followed this advice was fortuitous for both Strachwitz and Lipscomb.
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| Mance Lipscomb |
Mance Lipscomb was in his 60s when Strachwitz and had never
been recorded, though he had performed at local gatherings going back to when
Blind Lemon Jefferson was the reigning King of the Country Blues in the 1920s. He had lived the hard life of a
sharecropper. After the first album,
“Texas Songster,” there were several more albums and many festival bookings as
the blues revival of the 1960s caught on.
In the last years of his life (he lived till 1976), he performed before
thousands instead of dozens and traveled across the US and Europe instead of to
the next town.
Chris Strachwitz has similarly impacted the lives and
careers of many other musicians over the decades, including Lightning Hopkins,
Big Mama Thornton, Clifton Chenier, and Flaco Jimenez to name a few. Rather than recording carefully arranged,
rehearsed, and produced studio sessions, he has specialized in going to where
the musicians are performing and then “catch it as it is.” He is also a compulsive collector of rare 78s
and put back into circulation via Arhoolie many valuable recordings from
defunct labels. The Threadgill’s
announcement for the dinner with Chris Strachwitz event on this evening called
him “the Godfather of American Roots Music,” a fitting and well earned title.
Eddie Wilson has made his own contributions to bringing
musicians and various types of music to the fore, especially in the Austin
music scene since the 1970s. At the
Armadillo, he fostered the odd blended crowd of music loving hippies and
rednecks enjoying acts that would often include rock, blues, and classic
country acts on the same bill.
Threadgill’s has allowed him to continue to provide a venue for live
music, both at the original Threadgill’s location and a south location where
the Armadillo used to stand, while in addition, the restaurant has given him an
outlet for his other passion, southern cooking. Kenneth Threadgill was an inspiration and
mentor to Wilson in his youth, and Wilson has endeavored to keep Threadgill’s
legacy alive through the restaurant.
As we walked into the restaurant, Wilson played the host to
the VIP guests from Arhoolie, pointing out pictures and memorabilia on the
walls that triggered stories of Threadgill and Janis Joplin, the most prominent
figure to stop in and play at the old beer joint. Chris Strachwitz and Eddie Wilson are two
people that I have respected and admired for decades, and more than that, they
have added immeasurably to the quality of my life through the music they brought
into it. I know I am not alone. For many, many people, they have been like
matchmakers bring people together with musicians and music they love. They both seem to have a sense of mission and
single-mindedness in doing just that.
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| Eddie Wilson, Chris Strachwitz, Grandad |
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