You're Gonna Miss Me: Remembering three who made a difference

Cindi Lazzari, Danny Roy Young and Robin Shivers passed away in '07, '08 and '09, but not before making Austin a better place

Attorney Cindi Lazzari was in your corner if you were a musician.

Clubs come and go, but what’s always made the Austin community special are the folks who understand how lucky they are to be in the middle of all that music, and do what they can to make it better, easier, more fulfilling.

CINDI C. LAZZARI 1955- 2007

Fueled by outrage, an advocate for musicians

Watermelon Records was the dominant Austin label of the ‘90s, with career-making releases by Alejandro Escovedo, Don Walser, Tish Hinojosa, the Derailers and more. But ambition got the best of them, releasing an album a month even as they were months behind on rent. By the end of the decade, all that was left were the rinds. At the time of its bankruptcy, filed on the last day of 1998, Watermelon’s only value was the master recordings, which are not just the original tapes, but the rights to release the music. Even though the artists were owed royalties, they didn’t own their albums.

But lawyer Cindi Lazzari, who’d been demanding accounting statements for her clients for years, was able to successfully sue to have the masters returned to Monte Warden, the Asylum Street Spankers and the Gourds. The Gourds didn’t know Lazzari- they worked with her husband Joe Priesnitz- so after she got them back Stadium Blitzer and Shinebox, they expected a bill. “She didn’t take anything,” said Kevin Russell. “She was strictly motivated by moral outrage.”

Lazzari negotiated big payouts to Austin garage bands Olive and Gomez from British major label acts that had also been using those names. But rather than take the standard 40% cut, she billed the bands by the hour. What a wonderful thing when a sharp attorney is a big music fan.

Lazzari and Eric Johnson’s manager Priesnitz, dating at the time, were hired to book Aquafest during its late ‘80s heyday, and put Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan back together in 1987. They booked a magnificent performance by Roy Orbison in 1988, just four months before he passed away. But 1989 was unbeatable, with a lineup that included George Jones, Dwight Yoakam, NRBQ, Ray Price, the Reivers, Clint Black, Guadalcanal Diary, Patty Loveless, and Chuck Berry. For eight dollars a night.

Aquafest was so hot the paid staff figured they could do it themselves and make more money charging $12 for top talent like Dolly Parton and Chaka Khan. But when the fest was no longer family-affordable, ticket sales took a dump, and Aquafest was a floater by ‘96.

Lazzari's defining achievement came in 2005, when she guided legislation to expand the state's definition of artists to include musicians, thus protecting their CDs from bankruptcy seizure. One of the reasons the Damnations broke up is because a couple thousand copies of their Where It Lands CD were confiscated when their debt-ridden distributor got raided. That wouldn’t happen under the new law.

Lazzari passed away in 2007 at age 52 after a 12-year battle with cancer. Her work is remembered each year in the Cindi Lazzari Artist Advocate Award, given out by the Texas State Bar. Joe Priesnitz succumbed to cancer in 2020.

DANNY ROY YOUNG 1941- 2008

“Now, this is Austin”

"Just be nice" were the words painted at the entrance of the Texicalli Grille, the poster-plastered East Oltorf Street hangout where folks went as much to soak in Old Austin charm as for the tasty Texas cheesesteaks. With an Olympic-sized personality, founder Danny Roy Young turned that simple front door request into an art form.

Young was known for his community activism and a gregarious nature that permeated the 78704 ZIP code. He was famed for his ability to make someone's day with a hug, a handshake, encouraging words or a big, bright-eyed laugh.

Young, who also played rubboard with Cornell Hurd and Ponty Bone, died of a heart attack Aug. 21, 2008. Austin was devastated. He was 67.

The memorial service for Young packed First United Methodist Church to the rafters, with presiding Rev. John McMullen declaring it "the most eclectic gathering of people who have ever been here."

That was a true testament to what Young, the great catalyst and love ambassador, has meant to Austin since 1975, and his hometown of Kingsville before that.

"Things revolved around Danny without him being the center of attention," said Robert Coe, the Young’s neighbor on Bluebonnet Lane in South Austin for 30 years. He made his living selling sandwiches, but he made his mark with the force of his unconditional positivity.

Musician Ray Wylie Hubbard said that whenever he hosted newcomers to town, the first place he'd take them was Texicalli Grille (named after “Mexicalli Rose” by Gene Autry”), where they’d be greeted by Danny. "He’d sit right down with us and talk about music or whatever, then go back to his business, and I'd say (to his guests), 'Now this is Austin.'"

SXSW at Texicalli

Born in Defiance, Ohio, where he idolized Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller, Young moved with his family to Kingsville at age 10. His father, Roy, was an auto mechanic and his mother Margo ran a root beer stand that evolved into a pizza parlor that's still operating in Kingsville.

After serving in the Coast Guard, a 34-year-old Young and his wife Lu moved to Austin in 1975 with their young son and daughter. They opened the first location of Texicalli Grille on South Lamar Boulevard in 1981. The move to 534 Oltorf was in 1989.

The original on South Lamar.

He became known as the unofficial mayor of South Austin in the mid-1980s, when the city planned to widen South Lamar Boulevard and put in a continuous median, to make it more of a thoroughfare. Fearing how the expansion would change the neighborhood, Young organized other business owners, who gathered petitions, took their concerns to City Hall and eventually got the expansion project dropped.

A former drummer who was as well-versed in conjunto and zydeco as he was with the honky-tonk swing he played for more than 10 years in Hurd's band, Young set the trend for non-sanctioned South by Southwest events by hosting such legends as Johnny Bush, Jimmy Day, Bill Kirchen and Doug Sahm at Texicalli on the Saturday of the fest. But unlike other adversarial "pirate" showcases, Young respected what SXSW did and would often surprise the late-working staff by delivering sandwiches to SXSW headquarters.

Young tooled around town in Big Lu-Lu, a 1954 Chevy station wagon, waving at friends as if he were a campaigning politician. But Young's friendliness was without agenda.

His presence was so tied to Texicalli, part of the deal to sell the eatery in 2006 was that Young would still greet customers. The restaurant, which transformed an abandoned Taco Bell into a bastion of Old Austin charm, closed in July 2007 because of rising rents. For something to do, Danny got a job as a driver for Enterprise Rent-A-Car near his house on Bluebonnet near South Lamar. He was found in a car in the back lot in August 2008, ashen and gasping, then died of cardiac arrest at the hospital.

A mighty whiff of that Old Austin spirit disappeared that day. When performing on stage with his metal washboard, Young kept the rhythm wearing leather gloves with Mercury dimes glued to the fingertips. But it was the pulse of Young's personality, his love of life and music and conversation, that gave 78704 its beat.

Robin and Bud Shivers. Photo Todd V. Wolfson

ROBIN SHIVERS 1956- 2009

HAAM founder was a visionary who got things done

In April 1994, Kevin Connor was let go from KGSR-FM for unspecified reasons and was moping at home, taking occasional "keep your head up" calls from friends. "My identity was so wrapped up in my job that when that was taken away from me, I was completely distraught," recalled Connor. One day he got a call out of the blue from Robin Shivers, whom he'd met casually when she was chairwoman of KLRU and booked fundraising galas starring Garth Brooks, George Jones and others.

"She said, 'You need a place to go to every day,' and said she had a spare office," Connor said. "That was the best thing anyone could've done for me. It got me out of the house and back on my feet." From his new office in a downtown high-rise, he was soon able to land a job as music marketing manager for the Austin Convention and Visitor's Bureau. And two years later, he was back on KGSR.

Robin Shivers and Troy Campbell, HAAM client #0001.

Anecdotes such as that were flying all over town in Oct. ’09 after the Austin music scene's angel died in her sleep from causes that were initially undetermined. The daughter of Fort Worth venture capitalist John Ratliff, Shivers was born into wealth, then married into Texas political royalty in 1978 when she wed the legendary former governor's son Allan 'Bud' Shivers Jr. Among the Shivers' closest friends were George W. and Laura Bush.

And yet Robin Shivers, who was just 53 when she died of bronchopneumonia, did not carry herself as a woman of privilege. "She's just the coolest, most soulful and spiritual person I've ever known," said Susan Antone of Antone's nightclub. "She was a visionary who got things done."

Bringing affordable health care to working musicians was one of Shivers' passions and she used her connections with the Seton Family of Hospitals, where she and Bud served on the board for almost three decades, to found the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians in 2004. HAAM provides low-cost health care to about 1,600 uninsured musicians per year.

Shivers' work has saved lives and provided a model for others to follow. When a group of musicians and club owners in Tucson, Ariz., decided to start a similar musicians assistance program, Shivers met with them and energized the effort. "What a woman," David Slutes of the Tucson Artists and Musicians Healthcare Alliance, posted on Austin360.com. "She set us on a course that we were able to follow and begin our successful organization."

Robin went into artist management in the early ‘90s to help her favorite band Loose Diamonds. It’s doubtful she ever took a commission.

The term “a class act” doesn’t go far enough to describe the striking and generous Shivers who never used a curse word, even referring to one of Austin’s most notorious bands as “the B.H. Surfers” when the Shivers-led Texas Music Association gave them an award in 1996. Shivers didn’t come off as a woman of means, but rather as one who had the resources to volunteer fulltime. Getting credit for her good deeds meant absolutely nothing to her.

There are people who don't play music, but they make it with the way they live their lives. Robin Shivers, Danny Young and Cindi Lazzari had a rhythm of righteousness in everything they did. They drew you in like a great song that will forever live in your heart.