Bb King Bobby Blue Bland Antones Poster Danny Garret
Showcasing posters of classic Texas music scene
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The years covered in the art exhibit "Texas Me" didn't shake the world, but they did test the integrity of support beams and walls and windows in Austin from the late 1960s into the early 1980s.
Nationally, those years codified classic rock as we've come to know it by radio format, but in Texas, they also gave birth to a self-sufficient music scene in which talent was nurtured and then sent out into the wider world. Texas blues greats such as Freddie King played alongside progressive country hippie types such as Doug Sahm. Outsiders including Bruce Springsteen also would pass through, building Austin's reputation as a live-music hub.
Tony Davidson was among the numerous witnesses to this scene. He was a music enthusiast first but also a radio host and music writer. Davidson obsessively kept posters for hundreds of the shows happening around him back in the day. He stashed them under his bed because no walls could hold all that he'd archived.
Some of those prints comprise "Texas Me," its title pulled from a Sahm song. They will hang from the Record Ranch Gallery at Cactus Music starting this weekend.
Born in Hobbs, N.M., Davidson grew up in Houston. And in December he died in Houston at age 61. He left behind an enormous archive he'd collected, which included exhaustive documentation of the live-music scene in Austin during that span.
Venues included the Armadillo World Headquarters, Antone's, Soap Creek Saloon, the Austin Ritz Theater, the Austin Opry House and others. Poster artists included Ken Featherston, Danny Garrett, Micael Priest, Kerry Awn, Jim Franklin and others.
But the musicians were the big draw: Texans including King and Sahm and Freddy Fender, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Asleep at the Wheel, Albert King, Joe Ely and Stevie Ray Vaughan - with the Cobras and without. Touring acts included: Springsteen, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Bobby "Blue" Bland, B.B. King, Devo, Dr. John, Captain Beefheart, Mike Bloomfield and Loudon Wainwright III.
Alan Schaefer, who edited "Homegrown: Austin Music Posters 1967-1982," points out a particular Sahm poster from the Ritz in 1975 designed by Franklin.
'Texas Me'
Classic Austin music posters collected by Tony Davidson, opening reception
When: 6 p.m. Saturday
Where: Cactus Music, 2110 Portsmouth
Information: Free; cactusmusictx.com
"That one's interesting. If you'll notice, it has a magician named Harry Anderson on it," he says. "That's Harry Anderson of 'Night Court' fame. At the time, the Ritz was an early space for an emerging comedy scene in Austin. And Franklin liked to play and parody different motifs, so there's a little magic ball game in the design there. Sometimes these posters read like a single-panel comic. They're often interested in offering some kind of narrative even though they're just single-frame works of art."
Another local connection is the work of Awn, a Houston native whose creations include the cover for Sahm's "Groover's Paradise" album. Awn also crafted almost all of the calendars for the Soap Creek Saloon.
"He did their calendars for the better part of a decade, and in doing that he pretty much created the Soap Creek Saloon aesthetic," Schaefer says.
Schaefer's book was pulled together with Katie Salzmann, lead archivist for the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, from the university's collection.
Unlike that collection, a few dozen pieces exhibited in "Texas Me" - as well as hundreds of others - will also be available for purchase. Schaefer will also be on hand Saturday to sign copies of "Homegrown."
Davidson spent years working in the music business. He founded the "Texas Music Radio Show" on KUT in the late '70s and hosted "Red Hot and Blue" out of KAMU in College Station - and obsessively collected these posters, which he kept in pristine condition over the years.
Source: https://www.chron.com/entertainment/music/article/Showcasing-posters-of-classic-Texas-music-scene-8386776.php
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