Soap Creek: Soul Roadhouse in the Hills
The Majewstic live music venue that pulsed with the spirit of Doug Sahm
Alex Napier, the bassist who came down from Dallas with fellow Cobras Denny Freeman and Paul Ray, saw the possibility when he took over the Rolling Hills Club, a quarter mile up Bee Cave Road in 1971. It was originally the bunkhouse of a dude ranch, when Westlake was out in the country. In the ‘40s and ‘50s the barn-like building was the Elm Grove Lodge, where Western swing bands led by Cotton Collins, Steve Lightsey and the original Uncle Walt played. The Elm Grove was also the site of an infamous 1947 murder.
As a party barn for Dallas transplants, the Rolling Hills was the first club in Austin where 17-year-old Stevie Ray Vaughan played guitar, with Blackbird in October 1971. The Hills was all-ages because it didn’t have a license to sell beer, but there was a keg where you could fill your cup.
Blackbird’s downtown home was Waterloo Social Club at 7th and Red River, a block from the One Knite where brother Jimmie’s Storm raged. The great glam-blues band Krackerjack, with Jesse Taylor on guitar, played the New Orleans Club. In ‘71- ‘72, the Red River blues stroll ate Chicago alive!
Napier was one of the coolest, funniest guys on the scene, but he wasn’t a businessman. It’s almost a miracle he kept the Hills rolling more than a year. The place needed a lot of work, never mind the winding gravel road with VW-swallowing potholes and boulders like bowling balls. Alex put it out there that Rolling Hills’ business/lease was for sale.
A young married couple heavy in the scene- she worked at the Armadillo and he co-owned Oat Willie’s with Doug Brown- were looking for their own thing. In late ‘72, Carlyne and George Majewski, with a newborn baby, bought the club from Napier and spent a couple months- and several thousand dollars- fixing it up. Their application for a liquor license was approved and they opened in Feb. 1973 with Conqueroo.
Besides the Dillo, live music clubs in town when Soap Creek opened included Castle Creek, the Split Rail, the (original) Saxon Pub, the One Knite, Black Queen, Flight 505, Broken Spoke and Mother Earth. Who on earth would drive out to the vast emptiness of West Lake Hills to party?
But being isolated was one of the things that made Soap Creek special. You had to want to be there. Which made the people feel safer with each other. West Lake Hills, which incorporated in 1953, didn’t have much of a police force, and they weren’t going to mess up their shocks to make low-level marijuana busts. Besides, the joint-passers in the parking lot could see the fuzz cars crawling up the hill, so they’d take one last hit and hide their shit.
DWI wasn’t much of a concern in the ‘70s, when the legal limit to drive was 0.15 blood alcohol content, almost twice what it is today. But wrapping your car around a tree was a concern, especially on Tequila Tuesdays (40 cents a shot!) Soap Creek looked like they served breakfast on Wednesday mornings because of all the cars in the parking lot from the night before.
“When Soap Creek opened, the Armadillo was king, but they only served beer over there, whereas Soap Creek served liquor, so you had a slightly more mature crowd,” said Kerry Awn, who designed the club’s posters and performed with the Uranium Savages. “Plus, that was where all the musicians hung out. The Armadillo had a lot of tourists and frat boys.”
When Herbie Hancock played Municipal Auditorium, two blocks from the Armadillo, in 1974, he came three miles out to Soap Creek to jam with Doug and Augie Meyers.
It was a place to get lost and to be found. Delbert McClinton didn’t really know what he had until he played Soap Creek. Same with Joe Ely.
Margaret Moser said it best: if the Armadillo was the heart of Austin music, Soap Creek was its soul. It had a great sense of humor, too, billing itself “Home of the Stars,” sponsoring Spamarama and having yearly George Majewski look-a-like contests. Big Rikke Gott, an Armadillo legend as “the Guacamole Queen,” started hanging out more at Soap Creek, and took over the kitchen. She could cook!
But nobody made Soap Creek the place to be like Doug Sahm. After the 1972 breakup of the Sir Douglas Quintet and his move back to Austin, Sahm signed to the new country division of Atlantic Records. Jerry Wexler’s Austin infatuation began when he signed Willie Nelson, with Sahm, Freda and the Firedogs, and Lou Ann Barton to follow. Doug released his all-star dream project Doug Sahm and Band the month before Soap Creek opened, and expected to be touring the world for the next year. But the LP, featuring guest spots by Bob Dylan, Dr. John and others, was a disappointment in both sales and reviews.
After a token European tour, Sahm came back to Texas thinking nobody got him. But then he packed Soap Creek on successive nights with people who REALLY got him. That was just the sweaty reaffirmation he needed. He had found his “Groover’s Paradise.”
“If more people had a stable place to come back to, more brotherhood,” Sahm told the Statesman in ‘73, “it might’ve saved people like Jimi Hendrix.”
Sahm rented a house 100 yards away, and became Soap Creek’s self-appointed (unanimously-approved) musical adviser. The Majewskis let Sahm talk them into all sorts of bookings, like the time in ‘74 when they paid $200 and bus fare from Corpus for a washed-up Mexican doo-wop singer. The club sold out and the next year Freddy Fender was the hottest thing on the charts with “Til the Next Teardrop Falls.” And it all started at Soap Creek.
Freddy Fender tells the story here.
Listen to the musicians. That was a Soap Creek rule, except when they wanted to be slid a beer after midnight on weekdays or 1 a.m. on Saturday. The folks of Westlake couldn’t have been too happy having a club nicknamed “Dope Creek” in their hot real estate market. And the best way to flush ‘em out would be to catch ‘em serving underage or after hours.
One night TABC thought they had the Majewskis busted, as the club was rockin’ at 5 a.m. When the cops barged in, Johnny Winter and Doug Sahm were jamming and the packed house was delirious. “George and Carlyne were always really good about picking up all the bottles and glasses. Nobody was drinking, but we were all tripping,” said Awn. “Roadies from the Grateful Dead had been in that night and dosed everybody. The cops had to leave empty-handed.” Cancel the paddy wagon. There were no laws against melting faces.
Following Sahm’s groove standard, Soap Creek was the first club in Austin to book Gatemouth Brown, and kept a strong Louisiana pipeline thanks to Marcia Ball, who told everybody about Professor Longhair, the Meters, Rockin’ Dopsie and Clifton Chenier.
But aside from the Cobras on Tuesdays, redneck rock ruled “the Honky Tonk in the Hills,” with twice-weekly plugs from Statesman country music “critic” Townsend Miller. Alvin Crow and the Pleasant Valley Boys, Asleep at the Wheel, Lost Gonzo Band and Townsend pet Plum Nelly always brought the crowd. When Peter Fonda’s Outlaw Blues filmed a scene at Soap Creek, the band was fiddle-driven Greezy Wheels (Rolling Hills Club veterans).
New Jersey native George, and Carlyne from College Station, met in Austin in 1965, when George was finishing up at UT business school. They got married, but Carlyne used “Majer” as her music business last name. In the ‘80s, Carlyne Majer became a manager of some note, handling the careers of Lone Justice, Marcia Ball, Kelly Willis, the Wagoneers and more.
Her mothering/managing instincts were honed at Soap Creek, which fostered a family environment amidst all the loud music, dope smoke and tequila shots. The Majewskis raised their own kids there, as well as those Sexton boys, Ian Moore, and Doug Sahm’s kids. Who needs babysitters or summer camp? They all turned out pretty damn good!
A luxury housing project knocked Soap Creek #1 out of the Eanes school district in Jan. 1979, but they found a new home at the old Skyline club at North Lamar, which lasted just under two years. It was the club in Honeysuckle Rose.
The third Soap Creek location was in the former Backstage Club at South Congress and Academy Drive. After a year, which made 10 running Soap Creek, the Majewskis retired from club life in ‘83 and transferred the lease to former Split Rail co-owner Ed Bennett. But he had to move out two years later when his landlords Willie Nelson and Tim O’Connor sold that corner to a developer of high-end apartments. Most of the cast of Friday Night Lights lived there during the five years of filming (2006-2011).
All three locations had some great shows- seeing Doc Watson at #3 in 1984 was the closest I’ve ever sat to a musical genius doing his thing. But when folks talk about the original Soap Creek they get, well, misty is only halfway there. They try to make us understand that it wasn’t a building. Only the cruel say “you missed it.”
Austin Chronicle editor and SXSW-co-founder Louis Black recalled his first visit to Soap Creek on Thanksgiving 1974 to see Doug Sahm: “Glory Hallelujah! I was born at 24 because when I walked through those doors, paid my cover to the man mountain there, and came inside, the black and white movie of my life went technicolor. It was the truest Bar Mitzvah! On that day, in that moment, I became a man living in a community of adults.”
Number of Performances at Soap Creek
1. Paul Ray and the Cobras 282
2. Alvin Crow 190
3. Greezy Wheels 175
4. Marcia Ball 135
5. Uranium Savages 112
6. Doug Sahm 90
7. Augie Meyers 77
8. Delbert McClinton 74
9. Lewis and the Legends 69
10. Plum Nelly 47
11. Mark Luke Daniels
12. Steam Heat/Extreme Heat 42
13. Joe Ely 37
14. Buckdancer’s Choice 33
15. Ponty Bone 31
16. The Lotions 30
15. Stevie Ray Vaughan 30
18. The Fabulous Thunderbirds 29
19. Omar and the Howlers 23
20. Jon Emery and the Missouri Valley Boys 22
21. Junior Franklin 21
22. Roky Erickson 20
Worked the bar at Soapcreek for a cupla years. Beautiful people, great music... lots of shenanigans. Best time of my life.
Though I went to the Armadillo a lot, I also liked Soap Creek - partly because it was smaller and more intimate, but also because they had different performers there. It was more fun watching people like the Meters and Rockin Dopsie and the Twisters in a smaller place. I was told that when Springsteen came to town to play the first time, Clarence went to Soap Creek and bought trays of $1 shots for people, and tried to get them to come to see the band he was in at the Dillo.