Indie Venue of the Month: Antone’s in Austin, Texas

When Austin native Will Bridges went to see Stevie Ray Vaughan with his father at Antone’s in 1996, he was lucky enough to get his gig poster signed. The signature, however, wasn’t from Vaughan or any of his bandmates, but the permanent name on the marquee: Clifford Antone. Just over 25 years later, Bridges and a cohort of friends, including musician Gary Clark, Jr., would take over Antone’s legacy. 

The poster commemorated the 21^st anniversary of the ever-evolving club, which was founded by Antone in 1975 as a home to showcase the best of Austin blues music. It unofficially started in the backroom of the Antone’s Import clothing retailer, which also had a sandwich shop where Clifford would hold jam sessions with Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, Doyle Bramhall, guitarist Bill Campbell and others who had a fierce love of the blues in a town dominated by country music.

Antone opened his first official nightclub in Austin’s less-than-picturesque downtown area on the now-famous Sixth Street. With a performance from Zydeco king Clifton Chenier & His Red Hot Louisiana Band, the former furniture warehouse transformed on July 15, 1975, into a new touring destination for local and touring blues musicians. Antone ran the venue alongside his sisters, Susan and Janelle, as well as his mother, Georgette.

Within a few years, Austin’s downtown became bustling again, and the club’s landlords raised the rent. Many independent clubs know this fate too well — the business moves into a “non-desirable” part of town for the space and cheap rent, and end up bringing so much business and foot-traffic to the area that they get priced out of the neighborhood they helped build. So, Antone’s moved to North Austin above Burnet Road, where it continued to welcome blues heavyweights like Ray Charles and James Brown before a former pizza parlor on Guadalupe near the University of Texas campus opened up, and they moved into the space.

The Guadalupe location — one of six the venue would inhabit over its 50-year history — is, so far, the longest-lasting space Antone’s has inhabited, running from 1982 to 1996. Acts like the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble spread the gospel of Antone’s while they traveled the country. Even U2 stopped by to check out the storied venue.  

It was also this location where Bridges met Antone, who often roamed through the venue during shows. “When you saw Clifford, it was like the chef or maître d’ of a restaurant working the floor,” Bridges tells Billboard. “People loved seeing him and getting his autograph and taking pictures with him. He was a celebrity.” 

Antone had not only a love for blues music but an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre and a deep respect for its musicians.  

The club owner “was larger than life,” says Antone’s creative and musical director Zach Ernst. “He was such a personality when it came to believing in the music and knowing everything about the music. I compare him a lot to [Atlantic Records co-founder] Ahmet Ertegun or [producer] Jerry Wexler or [Stax Records co-founder] Al Bell.” 

Antone was known for doing anything to keep his club afloat. It’s a well-known fact that he did two bids in prison for charges stemming from marijuana: once when he was in college and again in the late 1990s, when he was accused of drug trafficking and ultimately pleaded guilty to a money laundering count and a distribution count related to marijuana. In 1999, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison.  

“It was pretty commonplace in Austin in the ’70s. The classic restaurant owners and business owners talk about how everybody sold a little grass in their parking lot and stuff to help pay the rent,” says Bridges. “He maybe took it up a notch, but he used that to help fund this passion of his, which was preserving the blues as a genre.” 

As one of the few independent venues lasting 50 years, Antone and his business continue to hold a lot of sway in Austin and the blues community. Ernst was lucky enough to be mentored by Antone after signing up for the venue owner’s course at The University of Texas at Austin, titled “The History of Blues According to Clifford Antone.”

By 1997, Antone’s found its way back to downtown Austin at Fifth and Lavaca as the area was once again bourgeoning. But the blues had lost many of its greats, and the venue began to welcome a wider array of musicians, including Willie Nelson. Less than a decade later, in 2006, Antone passed away, and his sister, Susan, and others kept the business going. After weathering the economic crash of the late aughts, Antone’s once again moved in 2013, this time to its Riverside location. Later that year the venue went into hibernation, and it was announced that Antone’s was for sale.

“We were waiting to see if one of our heroes was going to jump in,” says Bridges, who was looking to the older generation of live music folks to take over the business. Bridges had previously opened Lamberts restaurant in Austin that included an upstairs bar for live music booked by Ernst. “We still considered ourselves the younger generation and didn’t know if it was our jurisdiction to be lunging at the family heirlooms like that.” 

But the elders weren’t biting. Several other venue owners cautioned Bridges about purchasing the legacy business, and eventually, deals began to form with non-local entities. After a while, those deals fell through and Bridges and his investment group (which refer to themselves as The Kid’s Table) threw their hat into the ring, securing the business and once again moving the venue to a new location in downtown Austin.  

“It was one of those, ‘If you let something go and it comes back to you, it’s meant to be’ kind of things,” says Bridges.

On New Year’s Eve 2015, the latest edition of Antone’s opened on Fifth Street in a two-story former glass depot. The new ownership group remodeled the building and created a 400-capacity concert hall, reclaiming wood from rafters to create the stunning curved bar topped off with decorative tin plates left over from previous tenants. Above the venue is a bar and event space that’s open on show nights, where fans can grab a drink and still hear the performance. 

Out front, a large marquee sits under the name “Antone’s” in neon cursive, and two entrances lead into the venue. The entrance on the left features a vintage shoeshine stand (an homage to previous Antone’s locations) and leads straight to the main concert hall. The entrance on the right takes you through a record shop called Big Henry’s, named after an employee at Antone’s Imports who used to give a young Antone blues 45s to listen to.

This year, the new owners are working overtime to continue honoring Antone’s 50^th anniversary, including with several new music releases: the Antone’s 50th Allstars — 50 Years of The Blues box set that features four LPs of rare live and studio recordings from the Antone’s archives; a brand-new double LP, The Last Real Texas Blues Album; and an exclusive new Los Lobos 45rpm single. Musicians featured on the box set include Albert Collins, Gary Clark Jr., Otis Rush, Jimmie Vaughan, Doyle Bramhall II, Ruthie Foster,  Kim Wilson & the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Barbara Lynn, Lou Ann Barton and Sunnyland Slim.

There’s also a series of 50^th anniversary merch items, and Antone’s 50th All Stars — a group composed of a rotating cast of artists featured on the 50th anniversary box set — have played pop-up shows in New York and Nashville, and will take over the iconic Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles on Monday (Sept. 22) before closing out the gigs on Oct. 1 at Antone’s. Earlier this year, the venue also opened a satellite location at the Austin airport that offers food, drinks and live music. 

“It takes a small village to fill Clifford’s shoes,” says Bridges. “Every week, someone will come into the club or a lot of times the record shop, and tell their story, their testimony, their Clifford story (as we often refer to them). I call certain people, ‘Oh, that’s a Clifford person,’ because internally we know what that means. It means they met Clifford and due to his magnetism and charisma and energy, [meeting Clifford] changed the trajectory of their life to some little degree.”