Gary Floyd was one of 'the Split Rail 16'
Before he started the Dicks, singer was part of a worker's co-op formed to run noted restaurant/club
I’ve interviewed Gary Floyd, the punk icon who passed away May 2, only one time and it had nothing to do with his musical career. The self-proclaimed “commie fag” was a member of the workers co-op which tried to take over the Split Rail Inn, the cedar chopper hangout, in the summer of 1977. That was three years before the Dicks’ first gig at the Armadillo’s “Punk Prom.”
Radical socialist lawyer Bobby Nelson bought the Split Rail Inn on S. Lamar from Jim Parish and reorganized management as a collective of employees, who would also have an ownership stake. Opening on Friday May 13, ‘77, the plan was to keep it no cover, with conjunto music on Thursday and country and folk music the rest of the time. But the young hippie staff wanted changes, like a healthier menu and male servers in addition to females. "That turned off some of the good ol' boys, who were interested in pinching the waitresses," Rick Piltz of the co-op told the Statesman. The kids also wanted to book more rock and blues bands and less country music, which they found sexist and racist.
The Split Rail had been the first beer joint in town where longhaired liberals and good ol’ boys co-existed without incident. But that changed fast when the comrades took over. “The rednecks didn’t like us and they let it be known,” said Floyd, who’d moved to Austin from Palestine, TX in 1974. “Everybody did everything, so I cooked, served beer, bused tables, whatever was needed.” He said the rift started when Nelson’s boyfriend Martin Wiginton began acting like the boss and not a member of the collective. He didn’t want to alienate the regulars, who paid the bills.
A month after reopening, the co-op voted to remove fried food from the menu, including the prized chicken fried steak and onion rings, and Wiginton barked “No fucking way!” He reportedly lost his shit when a fifty-pound bag of brown rice was delivered, and started firing people. Thwarting this “capitalist takeover,” the co-op voted to fire Wiginton instead. They also barred Nelson from the premises, but she had the lease, so she told the workers to leave. When they didn’t, she had them arrested for criminal trespass. Even after Nelson quickly dropped the charges, “the Split Rail 16” picketed the club for about a month.
The night of July 9, 1977, several Rail regulars, some jumping out of the back of a pickup, attacked the longhaired protestors and sent one to the hospital. It was big news.
“We were putting on a play that night, spoofing Martin, and you could see him and Bobby looking at us through the window,” said Floyd, who was dealing with a breakup and left before the beatdown. Picketers said Nelson and Wiginton participated in the violence.
Nelson admitted slapping Lori Hansel in the face, but it was in response to the workers’ rep calling her the c-word. The attackers claimed the jeering protesters were the instigators, and they were just defending themselves. Assault charges were filed, but the case never went to trial.
Eventually, the contentiousness died down and Nelson and Wiginton ran the Split Rail as they wanted. Some of the acts booked regularly were Alvin Crow, Jon Emery, Butch Hancock, Shorty and the Corvettes, Dixie Diesels with Shawn Colvin, and Partners in Crime with Buddy and Julie Miller.
But the club was torched in December 1978, by arsonist/s never found. The fire was set by burning balled-up newspapers in scattered locations of the venue. The Split Rail of Freda and the Firedogs and Kenneth Threadgill was a model of divergent cultures behaving together, but running a club by collective was an experiment that failed miserably.
Nelson and Wiginton had more success in 1979 taking over the Alamo Lounge, on the ground floor of the Alamo Hotel at 6th and Guadalupe, presenting such up-and-comers as Lucinda Williams, Blaze Foley, “Lisa” Gilkyson, Joe Ely, Nanci Griffith and the like in a room that held maybe 35 people. Two years later, they moved all that folk action to emmajoe’s at 3023 Guadalupe St. Butch Hancock built the bar with wood from old doors the Alamo Hotel was going to scrap. That club closed in ‘83, when Griff Luneburg started booking those acts, and many more, at the Cactus Cafe.
The friends of Gary Floyd will gather Sunday May 26 at Little Darlin’ to reminisce and celebrate a life like none other. 1-4 pm.
No chicken fried steak?!?
I used to go to Friends of Traditional Music (I think) jams at the Split Rail in the mid-70s. Basically a mix of hippies and rednecks who liked bluegrass and trad country.