Austin 1977-1978

The Rome Inn in Austin, Texas

After spending time in Memphis, New Orleans, and Lafayette, Louisiana, I finally ran out of money in Austin, Texas. (I think I had subconsciously planned it that way.) I scored a day job and a cheap apartment and went looking for the music. I asked some people I had met what there was in town in terms of blues, and they recommended that I check out this young guitarist who had just put together his first band--Stevie Ray Vaughan. I checked out Stevie with the Triple Threat Review (Stevie, W.C. Clark, and Lou Ann Barton) at the Rome Inn. During the break I followed Stevie, introduced myself as a harp player from Seattle, and asked about sitting in.

"A harp player, huh?" he said. "Do you know Kim Wilson from the Fabulous Thunderbirds?"

I told Stevie that I had been hearing about the T-Birds on the blues grapevine. I hadn't realized that Kim was their harp player, I said, but I'd met and heard Kim a couple of years before in Seattle. He asked me what I thought of Kim's playing. I told him that he was really good but maybe a little busy, or words to that effect. Stevie gave me a confounded look. Then, as if it was an improbable scene in a cheesey movie, Kim Wilson, just returned from the T-Birds first tour of the Northeast, walked through the door a few minutes later.

So it was Kim and not me who sat in that night. Kim pulled out a chromatic and threw out a huge harp sound on George Smith's "Juicy Harmonica" instrumental. After that ear-opening triumph, he leaned back and launched into the incredible vocal intro to 'Otis Rush' "I Can't Quit You Baby." At some point I slipped out the door.

I ended up living there for about a year and a half. There are very few photos from that stay, which is just one clue about how much fun I had during my time there. I dug everything about the musical melting pot that was Austin in those days—honky tonk country music, norteno, cajun, soul, and blues. Austin has been a great music town from day on—it was populated in the early days by Germans and Hispanics, so it's always been Dance City. There were tons of great venues in Austin when I lived there in the late '70s, including the Broken Spoke, the Soap Creek Saloon, the Opry House, the Rome Inn.

The center of my Austin universe was definitely Clifford Antone’s blues club on Sixth Street. Clifford was a blues fanatic who lived to serve that music, and his dream was to have the best blues club in the world. Jimmie Vaughan, who was a guitar god in Dallas when he was still in his teens, had migrated to Austin and was drawing other blues players and singers, including Kim Wilson, Lou Ann Barton, and his brother Stevie, to the city. Antone started flying blues legends from Chicago like Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Jimmy Rogers, and Muddy Waters down to Texas to play at this club. He paid them well, put them up in the Stephen F. Austin Hotel across the street, and generally treated them like the great artists that they were. Word got around quickly in the blues world that Austin had the best club and some great local players, and every name blues singer or player came through town. Antone installed Jimmie Vaughan’s new band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, as his house band, and Austin enjoyed a kind of Golden Age of the Blues for several years.

I saw some incredible shows at that place with the likes of Muddy Waters, Big Walter Horton, Albert King, Clifton Chenier, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bobby Blue Bland, Hubert Sumlin, James Cotton, Luther Tucker, Lou Ann Barton, Angela Strehli, and Sam and Dave. One night I got to sit in with Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s phenomenal guitarist.

When Muddy Waters played Antone’s when I was down there, Jimmie Vaughan and Kim Wilson both sat in. Hearing Kim play behind Muddy was as close as you could come to having a sense of what it must have been like to see Muddy and Little Walter play together, and I wasn’t the only one who seemed to feel that way. Muddy, whose stage demeanor was usually very dignified and poker-faced, really lit up at Kim’s harp playing. Kim would reel off a killer chorus and Muddy would look over at him, eyebrows raised, with a “who the hell is this kid?” look on his Buddha-like face.

I never got in a regular band during my time in Austin, but I got reinvigorated musically. I also brought my harp playing up a few notches, thanks to a lot of woodshedding inspired by Kim and everyone else I saw down there.

Me, Tom Svornich and Isaac Scott at the San Francisco Blues Festival (photo by Jeff Fereday)

Just as I was trying to decide whether to stay in Austin or move back to the West Coast, I got a call from Isaac to play the 1978 San Francisco Blues Festival with him. I decided to pack up and do that show with Isaac, and then move back to Seattle and put my own band together. 

The San Francisco Blues Festival was the first time I’d ever played a big showcase like that. We opened the show. It was a beautiful day and the venue was the bandshell in Golden Gate Park. The T-Birds played later that day, as did Louisiana Red, the great Lowell Fulson (one of my favorite bluesmen), Smokey Wilson, Phillip Walker, Queen Ida, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Mark Naftalin from the Butterfield band, and Ron Thompson. That day I also was thrilled to catch great sets by three harmonica giants: George Smith (the only time I saw him live), Rod Piazza, and Mark Hummel. That was a big day.

Me and Jimmie Vaughan backstage at the San Francisco Blues Festival (photo by Jeff Fereday)

Kim Wilson and me backstage at the San Francisco Blues Festival (photo by Jeff Fereday)