Singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves had been in Austin only a couple months in 1991 when he played an open mike at the Saxon Pub. After his short set, a patron came up to him, gushed about what he'd just heard and said, "You know, if you stick it out here three or four years, things might really start happening for you."
Cleaves had to laugh to himself. Three or four years? The Saxon Pub listener had no idea he was talking to a guy who had conquered the Portland, Maine, rock scene in just 12 months. In fact, the main reason Cleaves had packed up his 1976 Dodge Dart and relocated to Austin was because he'd so quickly hit the ceiling in Lobster Country.
Like so many musicians around the country, Cleaves had heard that the "music matters" burg of Austin, home to South by Southwest and Willie Nelson's gypsy cowboy movement, was where you took it to the next level, organically. Players have been flocking to this liberal outpost since the '60s, when the choice for many was staying in Lubbock or Amarillo and getting pummeled by future cable installers because you had long hair and played the guitar, or coming down to Austin, where you could get laid because you had long hair and played the guitar. The musical migration has never slowed.
The first day in town, Cleaves opened the paper to all those club ads and figured he was in the right place. But eight years later, to pay the bills, the goateed folk singer was still scrambling for gigs, still working construction jobs and renting his body out for Pharmaco testing. There were encouraging moments - getting signed to Rounder/Philo in '97, after winning the new folk competition at Kerrville. Finding a fan in producer Gurf Morlix (Lucinda Williams, Ray Wylie Hubbard). A favorable review in the daily paper. But until his make-or-break album Broke Down became a hit on KGSR and other AAA stations across the country in 2000, a typical Cleaves gig would be in front of a dozen folks at Flipnotics on a Tuesday night.
"It was a long, hard struggle to get noticed in this town," Cleaves said recently from the house in East Austin he shares with Karen, his wife of 12 years. "When it finally happened, it was such a thrill. I couldn't believe it."
"Broke Down" sold nearly 40,000 copies and established Cleaves on the national folk festival circuit. In Austin, his no-cover shows for stragglers have been replaced by two-night sell-outs at the Cactus Cafe. "It feels like all my dreams have come true," he said, knowing that if this success had come as easily as in Maine it wouldn't mean as much.
The Cleaves story is typical - sans the happy ending - of the majority of musical transplants who trek to Austin for more opportunities to play gigs, find backing musicians, build up a reputation, attract media attention and play in front of audiences who, generally, elevate music as a noble calling. Austin's where you go when you're burned out on seeing the same 100 people at your shows in your hometown
"We were drawing big crowds in the Bay Area, but it wasn't going anywhere," said Josh Zee of the Mother Truckers, a soulful country act that moved here from California at the suggestion of Ray Benson. "We just wanted to be part of a scene that understood what we were doing, that could help us grow." Fronted by Zee, a former guitarist for the hard-rock band Protein, and his ukulele-playing wife and singer Teal Collins, the Truckers are that rare act from somewhere else that has been able to build up a sizable local following almost instantly. They pack the Continental Club every Thursday, get regular airplay on KGSR and have a charming new CD Broke Not Broken, which has been selling well at Waterloo Records.
Mother Truckers have only one complaint with life in Austin: Nobody told them about how expensive it is to run the air conditioner in the summer. "The first time we got an electric bill, I hit the roof," said Zee. "It was hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I called up the city utilities office and said that I felt they should warn newcomers to the area."
The bills have been getting easier to pay in recent weeks. Mother Truckers are this year's Greencards. That Aussie-Brit bluegrass trio moved to Nashville in 2004 to record an album and to tour the East and Midwest more feasibly, but not before thrilling Austin club crowds. The Truckers similarly drilled their way into local hearts with a mix of chops and charisma.
Zee's stellar ax runs and unexpected songwriting dim the lights for Collins' exuberantly clear and buoyant vocals. The way audiences go nuts for the sound is reminiscent of the early days of the Damnations, themselves transplants from upstate New York.
Before their gifts found a place to shine, the Truckers got their foot in the door with connections forged before the move. Besides Benson, who offered up his Bismeaux studio on speculation that the record will sell enough to pay recording expenses, the group had a fan in former Antone's blues queen Angela Strehli, whose husband owns a Northern California nightclub where the Truckers played regularly. Strehli told Continental owner/booker Steve Wertheimer about this cool group heading his way.
Benson said he could see that the Truckers were just spinning their wheels in the Bay Area. "They didn't have what we have in Austin," Benson said. "And I didn't think Austin had anyone quite like the Mother Truckers."
But for every act that finds a measure of paradise here, there are dozens of hopefuls from elsewhere who give up the dream after a few fun years, getting real jobs. The consolation for not being able to make a career out of music is getting to live in Austin. Some slide into the velvet rut, the slacker musician comfort zone, doing just well enough to not quit. Other bands go for a change of climate, moving on to Seattle or Nashville, Tenn., or Brooklyn, N.Y., or whatever scene is hip at the moment. Their places in the local scene are taken instantly.
"There are only four or five cities to move to if you want your career to grow," said country singer Dave Insley, who came to Austin from Tempe, Ariz., in April. "For my kind of music there's Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, Chicago and Austin. And I always got a better feeling in Austin than those other places. The audiences are more sophisticated. If you say, 'Here's a song by Ray Price,' everyone knows who Ray Price is."
But few people knew who Dave Insley was when he started playing in town regularly. Moving to Austin is, in many cases, starting over. Big fish, meet enormous pond. And you can toss those clippings about winning "best songwriter" or "best rock band" in a reader's poll of the weekly back home. That won't get you Saturday night at the Continental - or even Tuesday at Ego's. What happened in Taos, N.M., in St. Louis, in Shreveport, La., in Little Rock, Ark. or wherever, stays there, as far as club bookers are concerned.
"It's great being a hometown hero," said Insley, who left a sizeable following in the land of cacti and canyons. "We'd play these big, crowded gigs, but afterwards it wouldn't translate into anything tangible. I just wasn't satisfied with making a few dollars on a Saturday night."
Upon his arrival, Insley quickly discovered one of the best reasons to move to Austin: great sidemen are as easy to find as Thundercloud Subs locations. "The talent pool here is amazing," he said. "There was, like, one steel player in Arizona. But here, if my regular steel player can't make a gig, he'll give me five other names to call, and they're all great. Try to find a drummer in Tempe on short notice who can play a country shuffle."
Insley said the path to contentment in Austin intersects with realistic goals. "If you've moving to Austin to get a record deal and to become a big star, you're going to be disappointed," he said. "And you can't make any money here; you've gotta go out on the road. But if you're here to grow as a musician and to meet new challenges, there's not a better place in the country."
Soul/gospel singer LZ Love relocated to Austin from Oakland, Calif., in 2003 because of "the fellowship of musicians I felt here." She came to town to sing at a bar mitzvah and ended up that night on Sixth Street jamming with blues bands. "It just reinvigorated me," she said. But the singer said her R&B sound has had a hard time finding acceptance on radio and in the higher profile clubs. "Austin's still very country- and folk-oriented, but that's changing," Love said. "I think because I'm not from Austin it's hurt me to a certain extent. People want to make sure you're going to be around a while. But I'm not going anywhere. I'm making some amazing friends here."
Talent is only part of the formula for success in Austin, said Vickie Lucero, whose Propaganda Media in Kyle handles publicity for such transplants as Guy Forsyth, Adam Carroll, Wendy Colonna, Graham Weber and more. "You have to be ambitious if you want to be taken seriously," Lucero said. "And it really helps if you can deal with people on a personal level."
Lucero offered Weber's story as an example. "Everyone wants to play the Cactus," she said, "but Griff (manager Luneberg) is a tough cookie. He's not easy to bowl over. But Graham just showed up and started playing open mikes. He and Griff hit it off right away and Graham started hosting the Monday night songwriter night." Weber also became fast friends with Cleaves, who recorded Weber's "Oh, Roberta" on Unsung, the recent Cleaves CD comprised entirely of songs by other, mostly obscure, artists. Unintentional - or at least subtle - networking is the most effective kind.
Lucero also credits "the most supportive media in the country" for making Austin such an attractive destination for musicians. Local television, radio, print and online media are open to championing rising talent, sometimes rushing to be the first to tap this band or that songwriter as a rising star. Asked to name differences between the Bay Area and Austin, Zee of the Truckers didn't hesitate: "The fact that a writer with the newspaper is sitting across from me taking notes - that's something that would never happen to a local musician in San Francisco. Everything there is geared to the national touring acts."
As hyped as the music is, the audiences are equally special, according to David Fisher of Big Blue Hearts, the roots pop band that moved to Austin from Los Angeles in May 2005. "The people come out to listen to the music here," said Fisher, whose vocals evoke West Texan Roy Orbison, "whereas in L.A. we always felt like we were being sized up. The first night we played here it felt like sitting down on an old, comfy couch."
Home for three-fourths of the group is a $600-a-month apartment in North Austin, which allows the Hearts to operate more stress-free than in L.A., where they lived in a $3,000-a-month house. "It's more laid-back here and I think it's affected our music in a positive way," Fisher said.
It's that vibe, not the music industry, that attracted a musical migration in the '70s and '80s, when Austin truly was an inexpensive place to live and the good times flowed like sangria. "Nobody was thinking about career opportunities in the '80s," said Hole in the Wall booker Paul Minor, a music-scene fixture since 1982. "You moved your band here because it was dirt cheap and there were tons of places to play. It wasn't competitive like it sometimes is now."
Minor said he'd rather book a band whose members come out to hear other acts than ones that venture from the home studio only when they've got a gig. "I love when people see this as a scene and want to become part of it."
Naked ambition has never played well in Slackertown, but South by Southwest, which has grown into the most significant music conference in the world since its 1987 inception, has made Austin feel more like a launching pad for up and coming acts than the "Groovers Paradise" that made the city's early reputation. Once a secret Shangri-La, Austin now proudly markets itself as "the Live Music Capital of the World," and those who wish to make their living playing music often see Austin as a first resort.
The influx of musicians is not always greeted with open arms. About three South by Southwests ago, local band the Wannabes printed up T-shirts with "Welcome To Austin" on the front and "Don't Move Here" on the back. Sometimes it does seem that there are just too many musicians vying for too few gigs.
But if there's a backlash against musicians who've moved to this mecca in recent years, Fisher said he and the other members of Big Blue Hearts haven't felt it. Then he corrected himself. "Well, we had to learn early on to not introduce ourselves as being from L.A.," he said. The band felt their affiliation with the City of Angels would give them a bit of hip cache. Instead, they found out that nobody cared where they were from. They're in Austin now.
"Living in Austin really helps on the road," Insley said. "It's like a seal of approval. I remember when I was in Chicago one night, looking for something to do, and I saw an ad for an act that said they were from Austin. I remember thinking about all the competition down here and I figured, 'Well, if they've got it together enough to stand out, to go out on a national tour, they must be a pretty good band.'"