Clubland Paradise #1: Saxon Pub
Take a shot with Rusty and toast Joe Ables' joint, which has hosted more live music since 1990 than anyone else
The building at 1320 S. Lamar Blvd. had been the site of several clubs previously, but when Joe Ables and Craig Hillis opened the Saxon Pub in June 1990, they created something altogether different than the earlier barfly incarnations such as the Boss' Office, the Living Room and Madison's. They brought quality live music and lots of it. Booking as many as six acts a night, from happy hour to last call, the small club with the giant knight in armor in front has hosted an estimated 25,000 sets.
The club's sound man, Richard Vannoy, has been behind the board for almost all of those, except Monday night’s Bob Schneider residency. They butted heads in 2003, so Vannoy played softball on Mondays, his only day off before the Pandemic. The walls of rough cedar provide great acoustics for loud rock, as well as folkies.
“Joe is the owner, but this is Richard’s club,” said bassist Bruce Hughes, who’s played two residencies at the Saxon Pub- Mondays with Schneider and Sundays with the Resentments - for over two decades. “Almost all clubs are terrible places to just show up and try to get a sound. You never know what you’re gonna get. But you know with Richard it’s gonna be consistent. One of the reasons the Saxon Pub is one of my favorite places to play in the world.”
The 150-capacity club’s intimacy is a big draw for fans and musicians alike. The original home of Schneider's acoustic singer-songwriter format was Stubb's inside, and then it moved to Steamboat. But it wasn't until Bob and his band sat down at the Saxon, with the crowd packed around the stage, that Lonelyland caught on. That was over 20 years ago.
Ables found the place when Madison’s was going out of business and hired the Angleton native, who had a small accounting practice, to audit their finances. “I knew Craig Hillis from Steamboat,” Ables said in 2010, “so I called him up and told him I’d found a club with some potential. He asked me ‘what do you see it as?’ and I said it could be a really good room for singer-songwriters. And he said ‘you mean like the old Saxon Pub?’ and the name just stuck.” The original Saxon Pub, owned by Richard Filip and booked by Jess Yalyer II, was an A-frame on the Interstate 35 frontage road near 38 1/2 Street that competed with Castle Creek in early ’70s. The building is still there, a Mexican restaurant.
The original Saxon Pub "was where the songs, attitudes, and creative interplay between songwriters and pickers went down,” said Hillis. “It was certainly not the only place for such a bohemian salon, but it was significant." Old Saxon regular Steven Fromholz was the first act to play the new one, which opened in a dumpy strip of South Lamar with little live music history. Saxon Pub II was pegged early on as a dive where old guys in aloha shirts drank beer and talked about cool cars and the drugs they used to do.
The Bad Livers put the struggling club on the live music map in the early ’90s, with their Monday night bluegrass massacres, then veterans Rusty Wier and W.C. Clark came aboard with more credibility. But it was the late Stephen Bruton’s endorsement that helped establish the Saxon as a place where world-class musicians could cut loose.
“Stephen came by one day, in ’96 I think, and he said ‘I can’t get a gig in town. Can I play here?’ And I said ‘I’ll not only book you, I’ll give you a key to the place,” said Ables, who had just bought out his partners. Not only did Bruton pack the club every Sunday with the Resentments, originally a band of recovering alcoholics, but Bruton’s sets sometimes turned into superstar jam sessions. "One night, on the stage at the same time, there was Bonnie Raitt, Eric Johnson, Stephen Bruton, Michael McDonald and Mickey Raphael," said Ables. Bruton also brought up his old boss Kris Kristofferson one night. "As soon as he started singing 'Busted flat in Baton Rouge' I thought my head was going to explode," Ables recalled of the time one of his all-time favorite musicians played his little club.
There were some lean years early on, but the Saxon steadily found its niche - older live music lovers who have to work in the morning and don't want to deal with Sixth Street, Red River or the Warehouse District. "We were one of the first clubs to put the headliner on at the middle of the night and not at the end," said Ables, who looks like a grey-haired Waylon Jennings. "There was some resistance from the acts at first, but they found out that a lot more folks will come out to see them if they can be home in bed by midnight."
Because of such scheduling, the Saxon Pub is able to "turn the house" each night, like a restaurant, with a new crowd in at midnight, different from the one there at 6 p.m.
Some of the acts who've come up through the Saxon include Monte Montgomery, Hayes Carll, Guy Forsyth, Los Lonely Boys, Carolyn Wonderland, Patrice Pike, and the list goes on.
Vannoy has been a sound man since following a bunch of Abilene musicians to Austin in the early ’70s. “I was in a band with (drummer) Bill Maddox and (bassist) Noel Kelton in junior high,” Vannoy recalled. “They were so good, even as 14-year-olds, so I asked ‘how much do you guys practice?’ When they said 4-6 hours every day, I knew I could never match that so I started thinking of other ways to make it in the music business.” Maddox, a “dellionaire” murdered by a deranged neighbor in 2011, played in his father’s jazz band at age 11.
Maddox and Kelton had a band in Austin with fellow Abilenians- singer/guitarist Keith Landers and keyboardist Stephen Barber- called Cadillac, which gave Vannoy his first sound man gig. “Steve and Billy wanted to play jazz-rock fusion, so they left to form the Electromagnets with Eric Johnson and Kyle Brock (the bassist, also from Abilene). Keith and Noel wanted to keep playing rock, so they started Johnny Dee and the Rocket 88’s.”
“The Electromagnets were such incredible musicians, every night someone would come up to me and compliment me on my sound mix,” Vannoy says. “But I wasn’t really doing anything special. It was all the band.” That taught him to stay out of the way and do as little as neccessary. Johnny Dee, meanwhile, was a group that relied on great singing, so providing a clear vocal mix became Vannoy’s obsession to this day. “The number one complaint for sound engineers is ‘I can’t hear the vocals,'” said Vannoy. “If you’ve got the vocals right, the instruments will usually fall into place.”
The year 2009 was a sad one for Ables and the Saxon family, as its two beloved older brothers, Stephen Bruton and Rusty Wier, succumbed to cancer, at ages 60 and 65, respectively, just months apart. They were also connected through Bonnie Raitt. Bruton toured in the slide-playing redhead’s band for a few years, and she gave Wier some serious mailbox money when she recorded his “Don’t It Make You Wanna Dance” on the Urban Cowboy soundtrack.
Wier’s impact on the Austin music scene goes back to the ‘60s, when he played drums with the Wig, whose 1967 single “Crackin’ Up” (a Wier composition) is crate-diggers gold, chosen for the noted Pebbles compilation of ‘60s garage rock. He later played drums and sang in the Lavender Hill Express , a local country/rock/psychedelic supergroup that was a top draw at the Jade Room and the New Orleans club and recorded for Sonobeat.
But the Manchaca-raised Wier was tired of looking at asses. He wanted a drummer to look at his. "One day he just gave up the drums and started woodshedding on guitar," said John Inmon, who played with Wier in the trio of Rusty, Layton and John. "He locked himself in a room and practiced and practiced. He was a natural entertainer, so he could get his music across, but it took him awhile to get good."
Rusty established himself in the 1970s as a folk singer with rock 'n' roll eyes and an ever-present, low-crowned black hat. He rated a chapter in Jan Reid’s seminal Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, but Wier's first three albums - including the outlaw classic Black Hat Saloon in 1976 - came out on three different major labels.
"There's this myth about the hippies and the rednecks meeting at the Armadillo and passing joints and Lone Stars to each other," said Inmon. "But the rednecks and hippies were the same people. That was Rusty. He was a redneck son of Central Texas, but he was also a hippie."
Wier has a bust in his honor at the Saxon, where his 15-year-run of Thursday nights sold more booze than anyone else. "Bartenders loved Rusty," musician Bob Livingston said. "He had this thing during his show where he'd hold up a shot of tequila and everybody would go to the bar to buy their shots.”
There was one last toast in March 2009, when Wier was so sick Ables had to carry him up to his wheelchair onstage. “People had come from all over to see him,” said Ables. “He truly got to find out that he was loved."
It looked for awhile that we’d be toasting the Saxon Pub for one last night at the charmed 1320 S. Lamar location. Ables had tried to buy the building for years and was rebuffed. A huge rent increase was on the horizon, but before Ables’ lease came to an end, real estate mogul Gary Keller of Keller Williams purchased the building for an estimated $1.5 million with every intention to keep the good knight shining.
Nothing Stays the Same: The Story of the Saxon Pub by Jeff Sandmann is available to rent for $1.99 on YouTube. It’s highly recommended.
Another excellent read on Aus/Tex music scene from you Mike. Had the privilege of seeing Rusty Wier and Steve Fromholz there at that “dumpy strip mall” on S.Lamer. It was just down the street, from the late Bill Kasson’s Yamaha dealership. Love this quote in story, “The rednecks and the hippies were the same people.” Like Rusty, I too am a “redneck son of Central Texas, but also a hippie. Just saying. Ketch aka-Dennis Cox