E-clubs of the '90s: Ego's and Electric Lounge
Our survey of the 50 All-time Greatest Austin Clubs continues
Opened in 1993 by architect Jay Hughey and filmmaker Mark Shuman, and managed by poet Mike Henry, the Electric Lounge was Austin’s attempt at a boho Brooklyn nightclub in the ‘90s. The place aimed for boldness and diversity, as the two most popular residencies early on were Hamell on Trial, a one-man punk band with an acoustic guitar, and Asylum Street Spankers, the old-timey show band with stellar musicianship and a bawdy twist.
The industrial-looking building, which had a nasty fire a year after opening and had to be rebuilt inside, had a fantastic interior design. A partition of see-through plexiglass allowed you to hang at the quieter bar side, while keeping tabs on the live room action. The Damnations were bartenders and that band, plus Spoon, Fastball, the Gourds and Sixteen Deluxe made the Electric Lounge their home. “It’ll never be considered as important an incubator as the Armadillo or Antone’s,” said Kevin Russell of the Gourds. “But, for its time it was a crucial venue that gave this town a place to grow.” The Gourds’ notorious cover of “Gin and Juice” was first played as an impromptu encore at the EL.
The club’s trademark “Electric” neon sign lit up the stage, which annoyed L.A. band the Muffs. After being told the sign always stays on, the bassist speared it, and had to pay to have it fixed. Such other touring acts as Neutral Milk Hotel, String Cheese Incident, Spiritualized, Supergrass, Sleater-Kinney and Lucinda Williams, who played five nights in a row while woodshedding Car Wheels, seemed to have no problem with the neon.
A couple cool things about the club: you could always find parking, though during SXSW one year someone parked too close to the railroad track and got their car smashed. The other thing was that you could walk across the tracks and down the hill for a Mexican martini at the Cedar Door (when it was on Cesar Chavez) if there was an opening act you hated. You made sure to wear all-terrain shoes when you went to the Lounge.
The place was big enough, I’m guessing 450-capacity, to really rave. But seeing someone like John Cale or Jeff Buckley or Golden Smog in such a small space also made you tingle at the intimacy.
With a Soho vibe in an Arc Angels town, the Electric Lounge was just too cool to make it financially. The final hurdle was too high, as newly elected State Comptroller Carole Keeton Mellencamp upped sales tax deposits for most nightclubs. For the Electric Lounge it was $10,000 more. This was a club that struggled to pay the electricity bill. A month after SXSW99, it closed. But the Electric Lounge gave Austin six years of interesting new music.
EGO’S 1989- present
In nearly four decades of seeing live music in Austin there have been only a handful of times when I walked into a club with no idea who was playing, and been completely blown away. Once was a Thursday night in a windowless piano lounge tucked away in a parking garage under an office building. Congress Square, at 510 S. Congress near Riverside, also had apartments and I was visiting a friend in 1992 who’d just moved in.
“Let’s go to the Regal Beagle,” she said, a Three’s Company reference. Approaching the dark faux British pub, I was thinking “quick beer then on to Seis Salsa.” But the doors opened to a world I didn’t know existed in Austin. Bobby Doyle made Ego’s feel like the coolest jazz basement in Greenwich Village.
Before the “What happens in Vegas…” marketing campaign, Ego’s touted its discretion with the slogan, “Even God can’t see inside here.”
What He would’ve witnessed on my first night there was a blind man in a jacket too nice for the room, thumping the piano and singing “I Feel the Earth Move” like Ray Charles covering Carole King, followed by a perfectly-crooned “Fly Me to the Moon,” then “When the Saints Go Marching In,” with a long jazz piano break a la Mose Allison. I was flattened by the sheer talent of this soulful jazz/pop piano man, who created a glorious venue in his mind, and we were all welcome to join him.
It didn’t matter that there were only 12 people in Ego’s that night. As Bobby started playing “As Time Goes By,” he could hear them get out of their chairs to dance in the corners. One patron called out a request and Doyle said, “I don’t know that one, but this song has a lot of the same words.”
He gave Kenny Rogers a gig as bassist in the Bobby Doyle Three from ‘60-’65, and he briefly replaced David Clayton-Thomas in Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1972, but Doyle made perhaps his most impact locally by christening Ego's as a live music venue in the early '90s with his blues, pop, country, rock n’ roll, jazz and gospel. “He had his own style by combining all those things," said Riley Osbourn, one of several keyboardists who’d sit behind Doyle to watch his hands.
Before Ego’s it was the Pour Haus, where Tom Russell had a residency in 1975 with pianist Patricia Hardin, and before that it had illicit MILF implications as Mrs. Robinson’s. It was a “Crockpot Club,” where wives played footsie in dark booths while hubby’s chuck roast was slow-cooking at home. Doyle turned up the heat, a solo artist as intense as a five-piece band. He understood how to communicate a song. The rest is noise.
It took a couple years for the hipsters to discover Ego’s, but once that happened the club started booking bands- Bellfuries, Derailers, 3 Balls of Fire, Dale Watson- and created a cool new scene. Ego’s was where you took friends from out of town to really impress them. It had a lawless feel, and a lotta folks did bumps and bobs in the parking lot.
Ego’s is still open, but it’s a full-time karaoke bar, so the name finally fits. It sure didn’t when a world class talent like Bobby Doyle played with a brandy snifter on the piano for tips.
READ MORE about Bobby Doyle and listen to unreleased tracks.
I saw Morphine at the Electric Lounge and played there a couple of times with Hollowbody. I loved that place.