Chuck and Julie- Joyce and Paul- in on the ground floor

Leading Janis Joplin to Threadgill's in '62 would've been significant enough, but this couple was key on the scene for another 10 years

Split Rail owner Bob Bass gives Kenneth Threadgill a plaque commemorating his 100th consecutive Saturday night performance at the club on S. Lamar. Also shown l-r are Chuck Joyce, Julie Paul and Bert McGuire. Feb. 1967 photo from the Statesman Morgue at Austin History.

Before musicians started flocking to Austin from all over in the early ‘70s, clubs built the scene on hometown talent; copy bands, folksingers, the Western swing disciples. And especially Kenneth Threadgill, the former barkeep with the Jimmie Rodgers yodel, who encouraged inclusion through music and got all kinds of people together. When the fire marshal declared Threadgill’s Wednesday night “hootenannies” too crowded, Ken made the Split Rail Inn the new headquarters for “people’s music” in early ‘65. Opened in 1953 by C.M. “Jerk” Roye, who sold to Bob Bass in ‘64, that glorious dive at 217 S. Lamar was called “where the heads meet the necks” back when Willie was still wearing suits.

Originally backed by the great country bluesman Bill Neely and Shorty Zieger on guitars, with Powell St. John on harmonica, Threadgill fronted an ever-shifting band in his decade at the Rail, but from ‘66 until ‘72, his most regular sidekicks were married couple Chuck Joyce and Julie Paul on acoustic guitars (with Julie occasionally on drums), and Bert McGuire on electric guitar. They were known as the Hootenanny Hoots.

One of their most popular songs was one Chuck and Julie wrote about the club’s diverse clientele: “Split Rail Inn, do you think they’ll let you in?/ Are you straight, are you hippie, are you Klan?” A fine singer, Chuck handled lead vocals when Threadgill wasn’t yodeling, with Julie the resident wisecracker. The Hoots were a good-time band, led by Threadgill’s live and let live philosophy.

Virtually unknown this many years later, Joyce and Paul hold a pretty strong footnote in pop music history. They’re the ones who told Janis Joplin, in the midst of her one and only semester at UT, about the Wednesday night haps at Threadgill’s in ‘62. That’s where Janis lost her stage fright and discovered the power in her voice to put a song across. A pressman at the Statesman, Chuck was married at the time, with two kids, but after his wife Angela passed away in ‘66, he wed Julie, which surprised some folks because it was common knowledge that she’d had a fling with a 19-year-old Janis.

In Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin, author Alice Echols describes Julie Paul as a "very butch" young woman who "took care of Janis and treated her like a boy would treat her." The relationship was tumultuous, according to Bill Killeen, a former resident of “the Ghetto” beatnik flop near Dirty Martin’s, who blogged about witnessing Julie and Janis one night, “rolling down the stairs in a brawling, yelling heap.” A few days later they drove to New Orleans on a whim in Paul’s beloved red Triumph TR3 convertible.

Janis Joplin was the “surprise guest” at the Kenneth Threadgill Jubilee in Oak Hill in July 1970. Backed here by Julie Paul (l) and Chuck Joyce. Van Brooks photo.

Janis and Julie, who worked as a hairdresser, remained friends as Joplin ascended to the heights of stardom. There was Janis, beaming from the side of the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in ‘68, when Threadgill and the Hoots got a standing ovation on the main stage. Janis never forgot the encouragement she received early on from the white-haired grandaddy of the Austin music scene. Besides getting him the Newport gig, Janis was a surprise guest at the July 1970 Kenneth Threadgill Jubilee in Oak Hill, where she sang two new Kris Kristofferson songs backed by Julie and Chuck. One of those songs was “Me and Bobby McGee,” which, posthumously released, became Joplin’s first and only No. 1 single.

Joplin lobbied hard for Threadgill to get a record deal, and after she passed away in Oct. ‘70, Kristofferson took up the cause. He’d missed Threadgill’s set at the 1972 Dripping Springs Reunion, but heard him sing at Coach Darrell Royal’s afterparty, and was mightily impressed. The next month Kris flew Threadgill and the Joyces to Nashville and paid for four sessions at Jack Clement’s studio, with Waylon Jennings co-producing. But Kristofferson left on a national tour almost immediately, and Clement wasn’t really that interested in Jimmie Rodgers covers, so the tapes gathered dust for a few years before Willie Nelson decided to put the LP out on his Lone Star Records. The label folded in May ‘79, however, and Threadgill’s Nashville sessions were never released.

Threadgill with Cotton Collins on fiddle, Bert McGuire on guitar, a hidden Julie Paul on drums, Chuck Joyce on guitar and Bill Campbell on bass. March 1972.

The Joyces left Threadgill’s band, which was transitioning into the smoother Velvet Cowpasture, with featured singer Janey Hart, in August ‘70 to form Cross Country with another couple, Roy and Linda Robinson from Whistler. With Travis Holland on bass and drummer T-Bone Lee, they called their heavily Band-influenced sound “country boogie,” and got hired right away to open shows for Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, and then the Jefferson Airplane. In Austin, the played the Armadillo, Kings Village and the New Orleans Club, but this rootsy version of the Mamas and the Papas didn’t take off nationally and split up in less than a year. The Robinsons reformed Whistler and played the opening night of Soap Creek with Conqueroo in March 1973. Roy Robinson has performed for years as “Amos Staggs.”

Lake Austin Inn, across the lake from where Hula Hut’s is now, was open from 1941- 1971. It went through every phase of popular music during that time.

After Cross Country, the Joyces formed a 4-piece with another couple, Bill Campbell and his girlfriend Betsy Marshall. Mullet was instantly popular and played the Lake Austin Inn three or four times a week in 1971, with guitarist Denny Freeman and bassist Charles Sauer replacing Bill and Betsy in the final version. But the gig was cut short when the nine-acre lakefront tract it sat on was sold to developers for $300,000 in late ‘71. (No, I didn’t forget any zeros.) A boat deck club which opened in 1941 with jazz and swing bands, the L.A.I. changed with the times, and eventually became a hippie hangout. Dropping acid and taking the water taxi from the north shore of Lake Austin was always a great way to start the night.

After the Joyces split in ‘72, Chuck remarried (Peg O’Neill) and eventually settled on Long Island, where he worked the printing presses for Newsday. A born-again Christian, he passed away in 2013.

Julie went back to school, training as an x-ray technician, and got a job at Seton Hospital on 38th St. She excelled in the career change, but died in a car accident driving into work one dawn in April 1985. She was 42.

Unfortunately, there are few, if any, recordings of Chuck Joyce and Julie Paul, though they did co-write a song on the million-selling soundtrack of Honeysuckle Rose (1980), so they experienced the joy of mailbox money. Maybe someday someone will put out Threadgill’s sessions from Jack Clement’s place. It would be nice to actually hear Chuck and Julie after so many years of just hearing their names. As a couple and as mere band mates, they were crucial in the musical infrastructure that helped build Austin music’s ‘70s heyday.

Cross Country was l-r Julie Paul, Linda Robinson, Roy Robinson, Chuck Joyce. Photo by Burton Wilson at the Armadillo.