10 for 30: Donn's Depot

Final entry in our series of 10 current Austin clubs that have been open at least 30 years

The Christmas lights, the free popcorn, the ladies room that time forgot, the Jeopardy answer-shouters, the active dance floor, the nooks and crannies. There’s no place like Donn’s Depot, the neighborhood piano bar that rocks, and that owes a lot to its origin story. Before it became Donn’s in 1978, it was, for six years, McNeil Depot, inspired by the Creole Room of the recently-closed New Orleans Club.

It had been a real train station in McNeil for 90 years, but when Austin engineer consultant Bob Ogden heard the creaky wooden structure was set to be demolished, he offered $200 for it, then paid $2,000 in 1970 to have it moved 15 miles to his lot at the corner of W. 5th and West Lynn. Soon after came the boxcars and the caboose. It was the ‘70s, when anything worth doing was worth overdoing.

At first Ogden, a real estate investor, didn’t know what he was going to do with his quirky edifice, so he tried to rent it out. Instead, he attracted partners for a new club, including Fred McNeese, a retired cropduster who owned the Spanish steakhouse, Villa Espana, behind the Tavern on 12th.

Dec. 1970 classified in the Statesman.

McNeil Depot opened its doors in Sept. ‘72, with an afterparty for Spanish guitarist Carlos Montoya, who’d been honored earlier that evening with a black tie dinner at Villa Espana. Municipal Auditorium was the first stop on Montoya’s 25th anniversary tour, and celebrity flameco dancer Jose Greco came down to show support. Montoya and Greco signed the McNeil Depot wall, which Odgen put a frame around.

Here’s Donn Adelman, king of the Depot

The first acts booked to play McNeil Depot were the elegant piano duo of Sylvia Arhos and Lynne Nall, then Donn Adelman, the closest Austin got to Jerry Lee Lewis, would get the joint rockin’ on weekends. Ogden and his wife Mary used to go see Adelman at the New Orleans Club where he played Sunday nights in the ‘60s while still a student at UT. On Saturdays, Austin native Adelman was a snare drummer for the Longhorn Band.

The New Orleans closed in 1971, which created a void the Depot filled. Also great timing was Texas passing the mixed drink license for clubs. Odgen got the second one in Travis County, which set his gin joint apart from all the beer/wine/setups bars.
After about five years of good times and barely breakin’ even, Ogden’s Four Kings Inc. passed McNeil Depot in Sept. ‘78 on to Billy Cowsill, the model for the David Cassidy character in The Partridge Family. Cowsill played there on weekends, but after owing two months back rent, just up and left for Canada without warning. Adelman had a talk with his wife: “What do you think about owning a bar, Arleen?”

The Adelmans bought it in Nov. ‘78 and called it Donn’s Depot. He hired such acts as Ernie Mae Miller and Michael Ballew on weeknights, but he and his band Donn and the Station Masters held on to weekends. For fans of thumpin’ piano, and a vast repertoire, the stools around Donn were like sitting courtside at a Lakers game.

Donn’s is many things, which is why you don’t always think of it first as a live music venue. 95% of the music played is cover tunes. But it’s been keeping musicians in this town fed for 51 years! Even longer than the Hole In the Wall, which just got $1.6 million from the city’s Iconic Venue Fund to stay alive another 20 years.

On my first visit to Donn’s in 1997 (for a Statesman story called “The Virgin Club Crawl”), it was on a night I had to hit six or seven bars, so I couldn’t stay long. I got there early and it was dead, so I started fantasizing. I noted all the dark corners and saw Donn’s as a perfect afternoon rendezvous spot for bored Clarksville housewives. It was “a crock-pot club,” with dinner slow-cooking at home while wifey played footsy in a dark booth with the cute cable installer. Even though I admitted that was all in my mind, it made the Donnheads stew like tonight’s pot roast. The hate mail was vicious, but this was during my “rather be wrong than boring” phase (1975-2003), so I took it like a man also going through another phase: “nobody can see you cry when you’re alone” (1955-present).

“Virgin Club Crawl” was just an excuse to drop a bunch of one-liners, like Manor Road Coffeehouse was “a jazz club for kids who were buying Paula Abdul records six years ago.” With all the young pseudo-hippies packed in on the floor I said it looked like a sit-in at a dean’s office circa 1967. Bates Motel, meanwhile, “used to be a topless comedy club, but that didn’t fly because the opposite of sex is Ronnie Velveeta’s routine.”

Not the Blimp.

I was just roastin’, but it’s not like my critic’s antennae was in the shop. I loved the “hilarious” Peenbeets at the Bates, and gave Adrian Quesada (Black Pumas) his first-ever review (“quite good,” what a wordsmith!) at Manor Road Coffeehouse. Unfortunately, I identified his avant-garde jazz quartet as the Blimp when it was actually the other act on the bill, Blue Noise Band. (I believed the door person). Both those groups from Laredo combined to form Grupo Fantasma, and set the Latin funk scene on fire a couple years later at Empanada Parlour.

Chris Gage, Christine Albert, Paul Glasse at Donn’s.

In the last decade (not counting those pandemic years when the Austin music scene became Chicago Bulls fans when M.J. left to play baseball), I’ve become a Donn’s regular. The wraparound patio is my afternoon spot when it’s not 110 degrees, but I’ve also seen a lot of great music inside. The multi-talented Chris Gage, sometimes with wife Christine Albert, has made Mondays (or Wednesdays) at Donn’s the place to be for over 25 years. And the owner’s Station Masters, with bar manager/son Matt on drums, are always a hoot and a half.

But in recent years, some bigger names, like Kevin Russell in his Bobby Boudin persona, have played the ever-expanding piano bar. Folks like Jimmie Dale Gilmore come by to sit-in on occasion. One night, years ago, George Strait played an hour-long set with his Ace In the Hole, and not many knew about it. Donn’s was Austin’s coolest bar, but also its best-kept secret.

But, hear-ye hear-ye, the word is out on Donn’s, which has been discovered by hipsters who blog about the ladies room ad nauseum. Fittingly in a converted caboose, this three-seater is decorated from the days of Petticoat Junction, with red-striped walls and red curtains and red shag carpet. There’s a big leather couch, which has provided refuge for many a maiden escaping happy-hour-hit-on breath. The bartendress will even serve drinks in the LR!

How did Donn’s become so popular? I’d like to think it started around 1997 when word got out you could meet horny housewives there for an illicit afternoon. Adelman’s probably still pissed off at me, but I did him a favor. Have you ever heard of a “crock-pot club” going out of business?

Here’s the Elephant Room and the rest of our 10 for 30 clubs.

I guess I have to do Ginny’s Little Longhorn at some point, but 10 was such a nice round number.