Southpark Meadows from Rage to retail
Before it became a shopping center, it was the greatest concert venue in Austin
In August 1995, three months after I’d been hired as pop music critic for the Austin American-Statesman, I stood on the 40-foot-high observation deck in the back of Abel Theriot’s Southpark Meadows venue, and saw the possibilities. With its natural slope, thick grass, shade trees and cows grazing behind the stage, the Meadows lent an Austin air to the mega-concert experience.
There were problems — chief among them a shortage of restroom facilities — but nothing that Houston-based Pace Concerts couldn’t fix in five minutes.
It was no secret that Pace had been trying to get Theriot to sell the venue. And the 78-year-old semiretired rancher wasn’t totally against the idea. “I have a figure in my mind that I would consider selling at,” Theriot told me on the eve of the one and only Lollapalooza festival in Austin, “but there’s quite a distance between what Pace is willing to give and what I’m willing to take.”
Ten miles south of Austin, off Slaughter Lane, Southpark Meadows was in the middle of nowhere, but it felt like the middle of something cool. When the so trendy-it’s-unhip-so-it’s-cool-again Lollapalooza (Sonic Youth, Hole, Pavement, Cypress Hill, Beck year) came to town on Aug. 9, 1995- the day Jerry Garcia died- the venue’s psychedelic cowboy vibe gave Perry Farrell’s carnival vision its best canvas of the tour.
On one weekend the next month, the Southpark stage hosted Pearl Jam, with the Ramones opening, then R.E.M. with Radiohead and Natalie Merchant the next night. And folks are still talking about 1997’s Rage Against the Machine show (the Roots opening) where the earth moved from all the jumping. Having come from the Dallas Morning News where most big concerts I reviewed were at the concrete, personality-free Starplex Amphitheater, this was paradise with an unpaved parking lot.
Like Red Rocks in Colorado or Wolf Trap near Washington, D.C., Southpark Meadows had the potential of being one of those venues that’s almost as famous as the acts that play there. Its capacity of 35,000 was about twice that of the amphitheater “shed” model, and since it was only an hour’s drive from downtown San Antonio, the venue had potential to be a big moneymaker. But not under Theriot’s ownership. He knew land n’ oil, not rock n’ roll.
A Cajun who moved to Texas from Louisiana in 1927, when he was 9, Theriot seemed to relish his role as Austin’s Max Yasgur. And, like Yasgur’s sloped meadow where Woodstock was held in 1969, the 200 acres of Southpark once operated as a dairy farm. Both were in no hurry to sell.
But Theriot said he was looking to get away from the fancy footwork of the music business, like the last-minute, date-changing Pearl Jam shuffle that made his life miserable for a week. (The band postponed July 2, 1995 to address exorbitant ticket surcharges to Congress. The make-up show was two months later.)
Theriot danced around a deal with Pace for five years. “I’m not so sure that it would be a good idea to sell to a promoter,” Theriot said. “It would shut out all the other promoters, like 462 in Dallas and Stone City in San Antonio who want to do shows here.”
Theriot, who made his first fortune as a sawdust contractor, said a more fitting buyer for the Meadows would be a water park or baseball stadium. He could see the crowds come from all over Texas, like little lambs to Slaughter Lane.
Although the meadow had hosted a few random shows in the ’70s, promoter Jim Ramsey cleared the grounds as best he could afford, and presented the first concert at the “new” Southpark Meadows in 1983, an all-local bill featuring Van Wilks and D-Day. During the first six months, activity at the site was fast and furious, as U2, the B-52’s, Peter Tosh and the Go-Go’s came through. Then in November that year, Ramsey hit paydirt when the Police drew more than 31,000 shivering fans to the Meadows on a blue norther night. But that was the last show Ramsey promoted at the venue he helped create, as squabbles over concession rights causing a falling out with Theriot.
Pace Concerts took over booking the Meadows, but they too butted heads with Theriot, and the venue was closed in 1985. Willie Nelson owned the Meadows briefly, but it went back to Theriot after the IRS hit Willie with a charge of $16.7 million in back taxes in 1990.
After several years of dormancy — aside from the Tejano Jam in 1993 — Theriot and Pace resolved their issues, and the Meadows was back on track, drawing more than 20,000 to see Smashing Pumpkins and Blind Melon in April ’94 and more for Metallica four months later. The Meadows’ best year was 1995, with Hootie and the Blowfish, Live, Lollapalooza, Van Halen, Dave Matthews Band, H.O.R.D.E. and David Bowie/ Nine Inch Nails. By the end of the year I’d learned the secret route that bypassed the massive traffic jam coming off I-35.
“Abel’s a real character,” Ramsey told me in 1995. “He doesn’t need Southpark Meadows. He has enough money to travel around the world and stay at four-star hotels if he wanted to, but the Meadows is like his toy.”
Theriot countered, as he looked over his good earth, “Anybody who knows me knows that this is no hobby. Whether it’s sawdust business or the oil refineries or Southpark Meadows, when I go into something, I go into it whole hog.”
Theriot had reached a deal to sell the Meadows to House of Blues/ Universal Concerts in 2000, but during the final negotiations HOB bolted for the Retama Park Polo Grounds in Selma, halfway between Austin and San Antonio, and built the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater. Besides dealing with Austin music’s crazy Cajun, increasing noise complaints from Slaughter Lane neighbors might’ve been reason for the abrupt change of plans.
Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic in 2000 was supposed to be the first concert under new ownership. Instead it was the last one ever at Southpark Meadows. The Theriot family ended up selling the natural amphitheater to the Endeavor Real Estate Group, which developed the shopping center that’s there now. Abel Theriot passed away in 2007, days before his 89th birthday.
Jim Ramsey, whose Touring Attractions company booked new wave/punk touring acts for Club Foot and the Austin Opera House in the ‘70s and ‘80’s, was responsible for turning the Back Room on East Riverside into a hard rock haven in the ‘90’s. He retired from the concert promotion business to open an advertising agency with wife Tracey, and sadly succumbed to cancer in 2010.
I'm searching for a picture of the I-35 sign painted on the big gas cylinder. Does anyone have it? Is it lost to history?
dlane17@sustin.rr.com