2001: Gore wins at Red River rock club

Emo's and Stubb's were the anchor clubs, but for two decades Beerland ruled the garage

During the seven years I was away from Austin (’88-’95), living in Chicago and Dallas, the hotbed of music clubs changed from Sixth Street to Red River, with Emo’s, Room 710, Atomic Café, Blue Flamingo, Cavity Club and Club de Ville predating Stubb’s and the Mohawk.

The Red River strip’s first heyday was in early 1966, when the 13th Floor Elevators played their first single “You’re Gonna Miss Me” at the New Orleans Club (1125 Red River), just steps away from Janis Joplin at the 11th Door, where she sang folks songs weeks before she moved to San Francisco to become the first female rock star.

The New Orleans Club closed in November 1971, as part of the Brackenridge urban renewal project that wiped Red River clean from 11^th to 19^th Streets. The Krackerjack-led N.O. scene moved to Waterloo Social Club at the current 7th and Red River location of Elysium. That lasted only a couple years, leaving only the One Knite (1970-1976) to keep the rock rolling on Rio Rojo.

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 Brad First, Jennifer Jaqua and Richard Luckett from ‘84-’86, then made like a fad and fizzled.

Oz became Cave Club, First’s industrial sweat lodge, on Halloween ‘86, but barely made it to ‘88. Five years later, Emo’s turned the tide on Red River, as an all-ages club with no cover charge for 21 and up. Stubb’s came three years later. The ‘90s belonged to the street that became a major north-south thoroughfare before automobiles because it was the the first street east of Congress that didn’t go uphill.
When the Bates Motel punk club on Sixth Street closed in 1999, the couple that ran the joint for owner Joe Bates decided to open their own club on Red River, which was where it was all happening.

The Apeshits photo by Jeffrey Martin.

CLUBLAND PARADISE: BEERLAND 2001- 2019

If the 2000 Presidential election had been decided the night it was supposed to, garage-rock paradise Beerland might’ve never opened at 711 1/2 Red River Street. This is the story of a young couple who were so broke, so desperate to create their dream live music venue, they scooped up early-run newspapers of the Austin American Statesman in November 2000 and sold them on eBay. They were paying $1,500 a month rent on a vacant building for a year, as they went through permit hell with the city, so cashflow was vital.

When Beerland finally opened in June 2001, it could’ve very well been named “GORE WINS!”

The “gore” part fit, with such savage bands as Riverboat Gamblers, Dikes of Holland, Eastside Suicides, Hex Dispensers. Cherubs, OBN’III’s, Golden Boys, Manikin, Crack Pipes, Apeshits, Ugly Beats, Harlem, the Kodiaks and A Giant Dog practically ripping body parts from that stage during its 18-year run. Beerland was in your face. Twas booked by Max Meehan, who posted brutally hilarious signs at the entrance.

Max’s handiwork.

If there was a crowd at the bar, working musicians always got served first. They had to get onstage. One night the Dirty Sweets were playing and Randall handed the singer Penny a Tecate (they always knew what you drank) over three people. “How did she get served before me?,” one guy said. “I’ve been standing here forever!” Randall asked, “Do you know who that is?” The guy shook his head. “That’s why you didn’t get served yet.” At that point the band kicked in, and Penny was front and center, the star of the show!

That Beerland had a sense of humor was needlepointed “Please don’t do coke in the bathroom,” on a framed white doily in the graffiti-covered restroom. Beerland also occasionally had bands play behind chicken wire so fans could throw beer cans at them, which really boosted bar sales.

Every entrepreneur wishes they could be two people and that’s an advantage the Stocktons had. Middle school sweethearts from Elgin, they complement each other like oil and vinegar. “Before we got married (in ’98), we had to take a compatibility test,” said Randall, who got his degree in philosophy at UT, while Donya got hers in anthropology. The couple had tested higher than anyone ever, so much so that the family pastor who administered the test said they might have co-dependency issues. “No shit,” Randall laughed. “But there’s no way either of us could’ve done any of this without the other.” Besides Beerland, the Stocktons owned or co-owned six other bars over time.

Randall and Donya Stockton.

They started dating when she was in the seventh grade and he was in the eighth. They were the smart, arty kids at Elgin High (a small group), who listened to Daniel Johnston instead of Metallica or Tupac. On weekends, they’d come to Austin to see Glass Eye, Shoulders, Ten Hands and other norm-challenging rock bands.

Randall’s interests changed during college when he became a harmonica obsessive, in more of a “Rock the Casbah” way than Chicago blues, until a chance meeting on the Drag flipped the switch. Randall was blowing some harp, waiting for a bus, when a long-haired guy came by and listened. “Cool man,” he said. “I play some, too.” Then the guy pulled a harp out of a knapsack and blew Randall away. “Go out and buy two albums- The Best of Little Walter and Real Folk Blues by Sonny Boy Williamson,” recommended the guy, who Randall realized, years later, was Guy Forsyth. “They’ll teach you everything you need to know about playing the harmonica.” Stockton got off the bus at Sound Warehouse on Burnet Road.

The great Chicago bluesmen took over his life for the next couple years. Then a record he heard by obscure Austin band Jack O’ Fire, featuring Walter Daniels and Tim Kerr (Big Boys), gave him an example of how to infuse blues with punk, which led to the formation of the Headhunters, which became the Converters after Herbie Hancock reformed his old band.

OK, this is boring musician stuff, but it leads to the Stocktons entrée into the club world. After playing Joe’s Generic Bar on Sixth Street a couple times with the Headhunters, Randall got a job at Aaron’s Rock N’ Roll t-shirt and souvenir shop, which was also owned by Joe Bates of Joe’s Generic. Bates had opened an Aaron’s in Northcross Mall and when Randall pulled shift duty there, the eccentric, low-rent entrepreneur would call him and talk for hours. Since Randall was a musician, Bates asked his opinions on players around town. When the kid seemed to know what he was talking about, Bates hired him to book edgier bands than the usual blues fare at Bates Motel, a Sixth Street dive that cleaned up later as Blind Pig Pub. Randall’s popular weekly show, featuring garage punks like the Chumps, Lower Class Brats, Kiss-Offs, Peenbeats and Sons of Hercules, packed the joint, so Bates eventually gave him the full-time booking job. “Yeah, I got hooked,” said Randall. “On a good night, when the band’s great and the folks are totally into it, you feel like, ‘wow, I’m the nerd from high school and I did this.’”

Photo Daniel Neal.

Blue Flamingo had just closed on Red River, so Bates Motel was the new favorite downtown punk dive. But after three gloriously chaotic years, rising rent had the club close in 1999. With one clubgoer swinging an ax, the audience demolished the interior of the Bates on it’s final night. Damage in the hundreds.

The Stocktons found their own club at the former Hurt’s Hunting Ground annex in early 2000 and naively expected to open in two months. They ended up having to sleep in the building because they couldn’t afford to also rent an apartment, and took every publication delivery shift they could to supplement full-time day jobs.

The Stocktons went to the Statesman pressroom the night of November 7, 2000 to pick up one of the publications they delivered, when they heard the order to recall some of the bundles that had already gone out on the trucks. It was determined that it was too early to call the election for Gore. “We figured we’d help them get back those papers,” Randall said with a smile. The Statesman had printed three different front pages- “Gore Wins,” “Bush Wins” and “History On Hold”- and the Stocktons packaged all three in a set that sold to collectors for a couple hundred dollars each. They had bundles of them, and during the next month of recounts and court rulings the Stocktons made a bundle.

Quite a PBR party when Beerland finally opened.

Beerland opened the day they got the OK from the TABC (finally!) and the Stocktons bought a case of Lone Star and a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. The next day they used the proceeds to buy bottles of whiskey, vodka and tequila. From small things, baby…

The timing couldn’t have been better, as such bands as the Strokes, White Stripes, and the Hives were making garage rock hot again in 2001. Home to the aptly-named Sweatbox studio on East Fifth Street, where bands from all over the world would come to record, the town of Roky Erickson was an epicenter of this return to Nuggets glory. "They seek us out because of the live feel they hear on records made here," Sweatbox co-owner Mike Vasquez told me in 2002. “We’re not antiseptic. You can smoke and drink and play as loud as you want. It's really more like playing in your garage than at some state-of-the-art studio where time is money." The Sweatbox rate started at $35 an hour.

No occupation takes so much and pays so little as running a music venue in Austin. There’s a lot of stress you’re too busy to notice, but in late 2017 the Stocktons decided to slow down. They sold their bars (including Rio Rita and the Aristocrat) and moved to Mexico, where Randall gives mezcal tours and Donya is starting a mezcal brand called Sueños de Mujeres (“Dreams of Women”). They handed their first and last bar to enthusiastic regular customer Richard Lynn, owner of Super Secret Records, trusting that he would carry on the Beerland tradition. And he did, for about a year. But then checks started bouncing in 2019. Employees went on strike after SXSW and called in the Austin Chronicle.

Lynn abruptly sold Beerland to Stubb’s manager Ryan Garrett and Ned Stewart, drummer for Grand Champeen, who put a lot of money in remodeling and scrubbing the joint. The old regulars dubbed it “Wineland.”

Beerland reopened on New Year’s Eve 2019, but the backlash over Lynn selling the name he was given was instant and intense. This was the continuation of Raul’s for godsakes! After two months as “Beerland” and then the pandemic, the sign came down, replaced by one that says “The Green Jay.” The garage had been converted into an upscale cocktail/sports bar, with booking expanded to standup comedy, jazz, blues and, ever-so-occasionally, rock. Beerland was gone, never to return.

“I’d be surprised if it came off in one piece,” Randall said of the iconic wooden sign he installed with such pride. “We never intended it to come down.”

Currently, the club at 711 Red River is called the 13th Floor, after the Elevators, who put Red River on the rock map in the ‘60s. Talk about going full circle on a gritty straightaway. Loud bands nightly. Beer swilled with enthusiam. Coke in the bathroom? Please don’t.