Tim O'Connor ran Austin's show for 25 years

Phases of the legendary promoter's stages: "What's next?"

Photo by Dave Thomas, who’s writing a history of the Willie Picnics 2019.

No non-musician has had more impact on the Austin scene than Tim O’Connor- and he had to leave town for two prime years in the ‘70s. Besides being Willie Nelson’s promoter and business partner since the second Fourth of July Picnic in ‘74, O’Connor ran the Austin Opera House for 13 years, then founded Direct Events in the ‘90s, owning and operating such successful venues as the Backyard, Austin Music Hall and La Zona Rosa. He was king of the roadshow in town for a quarter century, from 1977 until his protege Charlie Jones and Charles Attal took over in 2002 with the Austin City Limits Music Festival and aggressive bookings all over town.

What Jones learned from O’Connor’s example is that you do what you say you will. On deadline. By all means necessary. “If you’re not prepared to put half your money in a suitcase and throw it off the tallest building, kid, you don’t have what it takes to be a concert promoter.”

It’s a job for a streetfighter mentality and that was Tim. His goal was to come out of a negotiation less battered than the other guy.

Free of drugs and alcohol since 1988, Tim was addicted to the concert game, the work, the risk/reward rush, which eventually led to a slew of lawsuits and a 2013 bankruptcy.

Rebuilt in 2007 and torn down in 2016: Austin Music Hall II

But a couple disastrous decisions- rebuilding the Austin Music Hall in 2007 and the Backyard in 2010- can’t put a lien on the memories he created in the years between the 1972 opening of Castle Creek and the 2008 closing of the original Backyard. When O’Connor passed away from Hodgkin’s lymphoma in July 2021 at age 76, the music community went into mourning. I don’t think he knew how much he was loved.

Like Lance Armstrong, O’Connor just couldn’t walk away from the action, and suffered the consequences. The promoter should’ve retired in 2001, a move he contemplated in an Austin Chronicle cover story that year. Recovering from triple-bypass surgery, O’Connor opened up to writer Andy Langer in a rare “Send In the Clowns” manner.

But his theme song that first decade of the new millennium was “We’ve Only Just Begun.” It was all there in a framed note from Willie that O’Connor had on his wall: “To Tim, What’s Next?” O’Connor had big plans to create venues for next generations of Austin music fans as his legacy. But they all turned to shit.

First there was the Two River Canyon Amphitheater in 2003, a gorgeous 800-acre setting near O’Connor’s Spicewood ranch with the potential to thrill festgoers for decades. But after a great expense to make the land concert-ready, Two River was one-and-done, opening and closing on the same Fourth of July weekend. When Willie’s Picnic traffic backed up 11 miles after the parking lot was full, there were a lot of pissed-off Deadheads.

Overestimating access and parking capabilities also marred the second Backyard in Bee Cave, about a mile west of the original. Backyard II just couldn’t accommodate sellout crowds of 7,500, like the May 11, 2011 Arcade Fire show when hundreds of ticketholders had nowhere to park and missed the show.

Even worse were the lawsuits from unpaid contractors and architects that began piling up against O’Connor and Direct Events. Maldonado Construction had the biggest claim- $334,000 for work building detention ponds and roads and supplying utilities at the new Backyard.

That venue closed after Direct Events filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Aug. 2013, with debts of $3.5 million and assets of zero.

The Austin Music Hall was repossesssed in 2012 by OmniBank, which lent O’Connor the money for the razing and rebuilding. Omni also repo-ed the original Backyard building.

But even after all that, O’Connor refused to retire, working on a venue in Driftwood until that deal fell through.

It was a messy end to an empire that raised the standard of professionalism in local concert presentations. Tim O’Connor showed Austin how to put on a show, while content to stay in the background. It started with a love of music.

James Timothy O’Connor, his adopted name, came to Austin in 1972 to open Castle Creek with his Colorado buddy Doug Moyes. It was there in the former Chequered Flag folk club on Lavaca, that O’Connor met new Austin resident Willie Nelson. “I’d sure like to play your joint,” said Willie, who was growing out his hair and looking for new audiences. He saw the acts being booked at the Creek- John Prine, Guy Clark, Steve Goodman, Steve Fromholz, Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, etc.- and knew his songs were right for the room.

But Castle Creek also hosted rock shows- Little Feat, Doug Kershaw, Doug Sahm, etc. Audiences were either pin-drop quiet or bouncing off the walls. Tim was in charge of crowd control, earning a reputation as a hard-ass with a soft heart. Willie had found his man! He didn’t have to say no anymore, just “Why don’t you run it by Tim?”

Read more about Castle Creek, Spellman’s, Alamo Lounge, emmajoe’s

In 1975, O’Connor was outside the Alliance Wagon Yard at 505 Neches St. when things got heated with another group of men. One pulled out a knife, Tim pulled out a gun. His warning shot ended up going through a mobile recording trailer on the street and hitting the leg of a Columbia Records executive inside. It wasn’t a bad wound and O’Connor wasn’t charged, but he had to tell his boss what went down. “I think I’ll let you negotiate all my deals with Columbia,” was Willie’s response. Still, it was best for Tim to leave town for a couple years.

When O’Connor returned in ‘77, he started the Southern Commotion partnership with Willie to run the Austin Opry House as a classier Armadillo. The deal Willie made with Terrace Motel owner Dude McCandless included 14 acres on South Congress at Academy for just over a million dollars. Tim sold his share in 1990, too soon, and became an independent promoter, doing shows at City Coliseum and the Palmer. “I felt lost, without a home,” he told Chris Riemenschneider of the Statesman in 1996. That wouldn’t last long.

O’Connor’s best decade was the ‘90s, when his Direct Events opened the Backyard in ‘93, the Austin Music Hall in ‘94 and revived La Zona Rosa in ‘97. All three venues were wildly successful, with Tim bringing more high-calibre talent to Austin in the ‘90s than the Armadillo did in the ‘70s and Liberty Lunch in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

The Backyard at Bee Cave, with its live oaks and star-speckled sky, was O’Connor’s crown jewel. Chef Jeff Blank found it and originally partnered with O’Connor, but it turned out to be a much better venue for 3,500-capacity outdoor concerts than fine dining inside, so Blank refocused on Hudson’s-on-the-Bend (and the chicken cone that would redefine festival eating.)

Folks told O’Connor nobody from Austin would drive all the way out to Bee Cave to see a concert, but after Tim timed the route at just 15 minutes, the Backyard came up with its brilliant “three songs away” tag. The venue was charmed from the start, with Leonard Cohen, Jimmy Cliff, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Everly Brothers, Little Feat, the Allman Brothers and a Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic that first summer. Parking was rugged and walks were long, but you felt like you were out in the country.

Then came the mall that swallowed our idyllic music setting. The Backyard had about 10 good years until the Shops of the Galleria began encroaching, eventually eating up most of the parking by its 2005 completion. O’Connor owned the Backyard’s main building, which had a restaurant and his offices, and about half the land. When the lease ran out on the other half in 2008, the Backyard closed and work soon-after started on a bigger, “better” Backyard about a mile west on TX 71, on land bought by billionaire John Paul DeJoria.

O’Connor at the Austin Opera House with Patsy Cash and “the two Nancies”

A year earlier, in Nov. 2007, a rebuilt, 4,400-capacity Austin Music Hall debuted to bad reviews over the sound, which was always the bitch about 208 Nueces. That and inadequate AC: was that shit even on? It re-opened as “Phase I,” and everyone agreed that Phase II better address the acoustics, which had been touted as state-of-the-art.

What a mistake it was to tear down the Music Hall to build a new one that was worse than the old one. Then, AMHII was torn down in 2016 to make room for a 28-story office building called Third + Shoal.

When O’Connor bought the building at 208 Nueces in Sept. 1994, the Austin Music Hall was its fourth venue that year. It started out as Acropolis dance club, then was Blind Alley for a couple months, and then saw the return of promoter Jim Ramsey with River’s Edge. That O’Connor had 13 very good years in that former chili factory was remarkable. I certainly didn’t have a problem with the acoustics when I saw incredible shows there by Bob Dylan, P!nk, John Fogerty, Oasis, Devo and many more.

Tim O’Connor taken from Hook Herrera’s Facebook.

Called an “Ice House for the Arts,” La Zona Rosa was a special place, opened by Marcia Ball and husband Gordon Fowler in late ‘89. Located on Fourth at Rio Grande, an area that looked like where the mob dumped bodies, “the Red Zone” was inspired by crazy bordertown cafe/bars, with decor (black velvet paintings, bright colors, weird rectangle cutaways) that made someone dub it “PeeWee’s Whorehouse.” I ordered the truckstop enchiladas every time, so I can’t tell you about the rest of the menu.

There was something about that room- maybe Sarah Elizabeth Campbell’s “Bummer Night” on Tuesdays set the mood- but you’d get sadness at it’s most comfortable. Has Alejandro Escovedo ever sounded better than on the Sunday nights that closed SXSW?

By 1994, Fowler’s “Two-Alarm Chili” money was almost gone, so he and his partners closed their liberal hangout where you’d see Gov. Ann Richards in shorts, reading the New York Times most every Sunday morning.

Former baseball star Kelly Gruber and realtor wife Tosca owned La Zona Rosa for awhile, but it continued to lose money until O’Connor took over in 1997. By then it was just a live music club with a dogleg, and a 1,500 capacity that gave Direct Events more flexibility for acts not ready for AMH or the Backyard, both at twice the capacity.

The last act to play La Zona Rosa under O’Connor’s ownership was Prince at SXSW 2013. It’s been renovated once again and is currently renting out for private parties.

Meanwhile, Backyard at Bee Cave is a development moving forward with plans to open a 3,500-capacity Live Oak Amphitheater in 2024. That facsimile of the original Backyard was not what Tim “What’s Next?” O’Connor had in mind for his legacy venue.

One of O’Connor’s rules was that you can’t trust someone who doesn’t love dogs. He had a whole pack of big, beautiful canines on his ranch far west of Austin. Oh, how O’Connor doted on his kids Bobbie, Freda, YoYo and the rest, who inherited his “magical energy,” as one friend put it. But he had a special connection with the pit mix Bruiser, the oldest and scrappiest of the bunch. He loved to watch him run things with the other dogs. On the day Tim died and they took him away, Bruiser chased the car for miles.