Red River Revelry: Street on the Edge
Brad First's Cave Club was a blip in Red River's history, yet mighty influential
The Cave Club was open only 18 months, from Halloween 1986 to January ‘88, but it gave the Red River club scene its swagger. Just a block and a half from Sixth Street, the industrial sweat lodge was christened by Ministry on the Twitch tour. Austin had never seen or heard anything like it.
There had long been live music on Red River, which gave birth to psychedelic rock in 1966, when the 13th Floor Elevators debuted their first single “You’re Gonna Miss Me” at the New Orleans Club (1125 Red River). Just steps away at the 11th Door, Janis Joplin sang folks songs, and Jerry Jeff Walker debuted a waltz he’d just written at Allen Damron’s apartment called “Mr. Bojangles.” Music history was made at the future Symphony Square block in 1966.
But by the ‘80s, Red River was where you went to dance with straight people at gay bars. Club Iguana was a concept without an address, so it rotated between Hall’s in the Warehouse District, Backstreets Basics (later Red 7) on E. 7th and and Oz on Red River each week. The “moveable beast” was a cash cow for partners Jennifer Jaqua, Brad First and Richard Luckett from ‘84-’86, then made like a fad and fizzled.
First missed booking live music and, after three years at Club Foot, had all the connections and credibility to pick right up. Oz was closing and the building at 705 Red River (current home to Elysium) become available, so Brad jumped in feet first. (His head was going “wait a second.”)
He painted the walls black, removed the groin-high mirror at the urine trough and opened the Cave Club on Halloween Night 1986. The Cave introduced the aggressive hybrid of punk, metal, and techno to Austin with Skinny Puppy, Ministry, KMFDM and DJ Phil Owen, who would go on to form Skatenigs. Things just seemed to get crazy inside that electro-aggro gym, which didn’t have air-conditioning the first summer and only two small window units- the fruits of a “Cool-Aid” benefit- the next. You’d get a blast of cold air at the entrance, then step inside the swelter of jam-packed shows by Screaming Trees, Scratch Acid, Tackhead, Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth and a hastily relocated Woodshock 1987.
First had wanted a club where folks hung out after the bands, but the Cave, in a building that served as a mule barn for the Army during WWI, was just too uncomfortable during the five-month Austin summer.
But all that oppressive heat seemed to work for the Butthole Surfers, who did some of their most gloriously warped Austin shows at the Cave during their Locust Abortion Technician era. This was when they had the freaky topless dancer who covered her teeth in tin foil and sported a braided goatee (attached with pasty glue). Gibby and the gang could do whatever they wanted, including selling out the joint for their Jack Officers side project, then partying backstage while the programmed experimental dance music played.
The Cave’s aura of giddy danger was stroked by the whimsically demented posters of Frank Kozik, who went from nobody to somebody in record time. Local new wave dance band Tanz Waffen went from nowhere to around the country, after they backed Lena “Lucky Number” Lovich at a PETA benefit at the Cave, and she took them on tour. A lot went on at 705, but it closed between the first SXSW and the second.
Red River Street was at the eastern edge of Austin when the street plan was laid out in 1839, and became a main north-south thoroughfare because it was the only street east of Congress Ave. that wasn’t uphill. Red River was home to automobile businesses like Raven’s Garage (later Emo’s) and Crenshaw Garage (later Beerland), which opened in the 1920s and ‘30s.
The diverse neighborhood was originally nicknamed Germantown after the colony of immigrants who settled around 10th and Red River in the mid-1800s, with the German Free School and Aloes Wulz Grocery anchoring the community. Ida Pecht, who grew up on Red River between Hickory (8th St.) and Ash (9th St.), married Andrew Zilker in 1888 and bore him four children. The family had planned to build a mansion on Barton Springs, but after Ida died in 1916, a distraught Zilker donated the land to the city as a park.
For most of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, the strip was dominated by used furniture stores and junk shops with names like Williams Do-Rite Swap Shop, Fairyland Antiques, Dutch Meyer’s Trading Post, Red River Rats, Hurt’s Hunting Grounds and J.B. Branton. Most of those buildings are nightclubs today.
Red River took over from the boozy Sixth Street tourist trap as Austin’s live music district in the ‘90s, with Emo’s and Stubb’s leading the way for the Mohawk, Beerland, Club DeVille, Room 710, Red-Eyed Fly and others.
The Red River walk has always had a bit of an outlaw stagger. In the early ‘90s, the BYOB Cavity Club installed a half-pipe for skateboarders and hosted G.G. Allin. Miss Laura of the Blue Flamingo turned her drag bar into a punk club, with the action spilling out onto the street. At 900 Red River, Chances was that rare lesbian bar that booked indie rock bands, like Sixteen Deluxe, Glass Eye and Sincola. That open clientele policy continues at Cheer-Up Charlies in the same former car lot office location.
The Mohawk has anchored the Red River music scene since opening on Sept. 15, 2006 with Ghostland Observatory as part of the ACL Fest club bookings. With its 700-capacity and split-level viewing it’s the hippest big club in town, as evidenced by big lines down the block and around the clock during SXSW.
Owner James Moody came to Austin as a drug pusher- marketing pharmaceutical brands like Claritin- but he tired of the suit-and-tie and took over the lease at 912 Red River from the struggling Velvet Spade.
Owned by Joe Joseph Jr. from the prominent Lebanese clan, the building at 912 Red River Street has got quite a history. Built in the ‘20s as an architectural firm, it was popular Mexican restaurant El Charro from 1937-1966. After a couple years as a boarding house, 912 became the home of the Night Train restaurant, open until midnight from 1968-1971. It was somehow affiliated to Austin’s all-time greatest athlete Dick “Night Train” Lane, a ferocious defensive back for the Detroit Lions who was Dinah Washington’s husband when she died in 1963.
After Night Train, it became a private club for legislators and lobbyists called Quorum Club. Former UT regent Frank Erwin became a lobbyist for UT at a salary of $10 a year, plus expenses. After his expense account, including thousands of dollars a month from the Quorum, was made public he had to stop picking up checks.
The most notorious tenant at 912 was the Caucus Club, also private in the beginning (1977) because they had high stakes poker in the back room. Building owner John Joseph was a convicted gambler, and the Caucus was investigated after the 1979 suicide of Triumph Motors owner Roy Burton, Jr. who defaulted bank loans totaling $140,000 to cover gambling debts. The club came back with new owner Donald Sconci, Joseph’s nephew.
After the Caucus closed in the late ‘80s, the place became a sports bar called Legends, which built the patio, but didn’t hang around to use it much. Now we get to the third iteration of the Caucus Club in the ‘90s. This was during the martini/cigar bar craze, and new owner Daniel Foreman went after Cedar Street Courtyard, which was selling more booze than even the “gentlemen’s” clubs.
Red River had an edge, but the flow was inclusion. During the era of segregration, black-owned businesses were next door to white-owned ones on Red River from Sixth to 15th Streets. This strip was as close to the East Side, both spiritually and physically, as you could get in downtown Austin.
The 1915 Waller Creek Flood washed away a whole block of houses on E. 7th St., but that’s nothing compared to the early ‘70s wrecking balls that wiped away all of Red River from 10th St. to 19th St. (MLK today) as part of the Brackenridge Urban Renewal Project. Seeing how many of the displaced businesses were black-owned, detractors termed the project “urban removal.”
Simon Sidle, a son of freed slaves, helped establish Red River as “antique row” when he opened his first shop in 1917 at 807 Red River. That block, currently the site of Stubb’s outdoor amphitheater, had housed a shop by dressmaker Marguerite Skillings in the late 1800s, with master shoemaker Martias Lohmuller setting up a couple doors down. The distinctive rockwork of Stubb’s restaurant (formerly the notorious One Knite), was done in the ‘50’s by Chester Buratti’s Mexican crew. That 801 Red River address was a series of bars in the ‘60s, including Club Oasis, Watusi and International Club, then the Bois D’Arc bookstore in the early ‘80s. Behind the building had become a homeless encampment on Waller Creek in the early ‘90s.
When Christopher “Stubb” Stubblefield first saw the block where his namesake BBQ restaurant would go, he dubbed it “Hell’s Half Acre,” getting Red River Street right away. Unfortunately, Stubb passed away the year before the restaurant/amphitheater, which merely licensed his name, opened in 1996 with SXSW showcases that included the Fugees.
Thanks for writing this. I started going to shows on Red River in the mid 80's when I was still in high school, and knew very little about the history until now. I appreciate all you have done and continue to do for the music scene here in Austin.
Nice to know this Red River history. Stubbs was also a poetry bookstore where Tom Sutherland once hung out. I remember going to a party there.