The Stubb's Story: From small things, baby
Quarter billion dollar enterprise started in Sharon and Joe Ely's kitchen
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am a cook” – C.B. Stubblefield
The 1996 opening of Stubb’s, in the former location of the One Knite, was a key to the revitalization of Red River. Sadly, its namesake and spiritual leader did not live to see it. Christopher B. “Stubb” Stubblefield passed away from heart failure at age 64 the year before Stubb’s debuted with the Fugees at SXSW. He was not an owner, having licensed his name and likeness to the restaurant/venue and the BBQ sauce company.
Stubb was close to the partners, especially John Scott, who’d been going to the original Stubb’s (est. 1968) in Lubbock since he was a teenager. When they first brought the 6’6” pitmaster out to see where the new Stubb’s would go, C.B. saw homeless encampments up and down Waller Creek behind 801 Red River and dubbed the block “Hell’s Half Acre.” There was a ton of work ahead.
The 250-capacity indoors stage opened in 1997, with one of the first bookings an unknown from Nashville named Keith Urban. After the Aussie hit it big, he moved to the outdoor stage, with its capacity of 2,500. But not everyone was easy to accept playing there in the beginning. When Cheap Trick showed up that first year, they put in an angry called to their agent: we don’t play rib joints! But by the end of a sold-out show in front of delirious fans, the Trick realized the only thing the restaurant and the amphitheater have in common is name and address. The seeds of C3 Presents had been planted on the shores of Waller Creek.
Five partners opened Stubb’s on a shoestring- Scott, Eddie Patterson, Scott Jensen, Charles Attal, and Jeff Waughtal. Scott, Patterson and Jensen, all from Lubbock, also owned the Stubb’s sauces and spices company that they would sell for over $100 million to McCormick and Co. in 2015. That was the year after Live Nation paid an estimated $125 million for 51% of C3 Presents, which Attal co-owns with two guys named Charlie. Helluva lotta money was harvested at Hell’s Half Acre!
Stubblefield’s descendants received an undisclosed piece of a windfall that seemed impossible in 1989, when Stubb’s first BBQ joint in Austin, near Delwood Plaza, was closed by the health department. “A few rats and roaches is God’s doing,” Stubblefield told the Statesman reporter. Austin also lost a music venue that harked back to the Lubbock Stubb’s, where the legendary Sunday night jam sessions, started by Jesse Taylor and Joe Ely circa 1973, attracted the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters, George Thorogood and Tom T. Hall on occasion.
The first batches of Stubb’s BBQ sauce were created in the kitchen of Joe and Sharon Ely, as a way to get their dear friend, the godfather of their daughter, some income. Funneled into empty whiskey bottles from the Continental Club and corked with a jalapeno, the sauce was sold to friends and barbecue aficionados, with Stubb getting the proceeds.
Joe Ely, who designed the primitive-looking Stubb’s logo, gifted a bottle to David Letterman when he appeared on the show, which led to a 1991 appearance by barbecue’s gentle giant. Asked why he became a cook, Stubb told Dave it was because, “I was born hongry.”
Though Stubb’s lifestyle might’ve changed after his national rebranding as a sauce and rub maestro, his mindset most likely would not have. “It’s the people I love to cook for, the people that surround me,” Stubblefield told the Statesman when asked what made his cooking special. “There’s a deep separation between cooking for money and fame and cooking to make someone happy.”
When Stubb’s opened on Red River, there wasn’t any BBQ in Austin worth standing in line for, but the cowbell-lovin’ drummer for hard rock band Those Peabodys would change that. Aaron Franklin traded his sticks for tongs in 2009 and opened a BBQ truck on the 5500 block of the I-35 frontage road that made roadtrips to Lockhart and Taylor unnecessary. Word of mouth built the lines all the way to a storefront at 900 E. 11th, (the former Ben’s Longbranch BBQ), where Franklin’s bark was heaven for your bite.
As the BBQ at Stubb’s was knocked down a notch by the new pope of smoke, its Waller Creek Amphitheater became known as one of the country’s top mid-sized venues. For acts and management, at least. C3/Attal has hosted such superstars as Lady Gaga, Metallica, R.E.M. and Foo Fighters (during SXSW) who don’t normally play 2,000-cap g.a. clubs, but the Stubb’s experience can be brutal for fans who can’t dunk. Being blind and 5’5” are the same thing at Stubb’s, where the crowd is mullet-like in that it’s packed up front, and chatty in the back. One of the saddest things I’ve seen was when Ryan Bingham played a packed-to-the-gills show in 2012 and two female ferns in the redwood forest scrolled pictures of him on their phones as the music played.
The Stubb’s of today is a long holler from the original shack, whose clientele was all-Black until Stubblefield picked up a longhaired kid hitchiking, and brought him inside for a brisket sandwich “with your name on it.” Jesse Taylor had long been intrigued by “this smoky, dark bar with the jukebox turned up real loud, blasting out B.B. King or something like that,” he said in an oral history for Texas Tech linked below. “God, I wanted to go in there so bad. But it was kind of a scary place. It was dark in there and there was a bunch mean-looking Black dudes coming in and out. Even though it turns out they weren’t mean at all, they were just mean-looking.” Taylor became a regular.
One day he asked Stubb if he and some friends could play music in the corner over there on a Sunday afternoon. “What kind of music?” Stubb asked, suspiciously. Blues, like on the jukebox, said Jesse. The next Sunday at 4 p.m., Stubb’s was packed with white kids, friends of the musicians. The Black client didn’t know what to make of it.
“They were all just kind of like standing back with this wild look in their eyes. Kind of like, what’s going on here? Are we supposed to be doing this? It was almost like they were afraid that they were going to get in trouble for it or something,” Taylor continued.
As soon as the music started, with John X. Reed dueling with Taylor on guitars, and Joe Ely on vocals, trepidation dissolved. “Everybody had a great time,” Jesse said, with Stubb’s completely selling out of beer and barbecue. “Come the end of the night, Stubb is standing there and he’s got this wad of money, about two inches high. And this is the classic Stubb. He looked at me and he said, ‘Jesse? You think you all could do this again next week?’”
One of my fondest tangent to music memories - heading out back of Antone's through the um, 'whatever it was that spewed out of Spiccoli's van in Fast Times at Ridgemont High' to hand up a hard earned ten bucks to Stubb for a brisket poboy sammy - heaven on a bun indeed. My ongoing regret - that was a one off since I was poor and cheap in those 80's years. Moral - "When in doubt, get the sandwich. You can always find more money."
And yeah, I know the mug and name don't have anything to do w/ the man behind both, but Stubb's sauces and marinades are still my go to for homemade Q.
These are such important stories about Austin. They NEED to be told. Out of Covid I started filming and streaming live music. I have 350 performances from all over. Hole In The Wall, Antones, Saxon, Continental Gallery. I don't know what I'll do with them, but at a minimum they tell a story about a given night. I wish I had my cameras when I got here in 1982. Bravo Michael.