On The Map is where we highlight famous, and not as well-known, musical sites that you can visit. This month we check into the epicenter of Austin, Texas blues: Antone’s. Let’s explore!
THE SITE
Fifty years ago, a man named Clifford Antone opened a small blues club in a somewhat derelict part of Austin, Texas, and named it after himself. He coaxed in old-timer blues artists and before he knew it, Antone’s became the living, breathing home of blues in Texas. Today, the famous venue is located at 305 East Fifth Street, in downtown Austin.
THE BIG CELEBRATIONS
Antone’s is having a blast celebrating their big golden anniversary. When the club opened in July of 1975, it was zydeco king Clifton Chenier & His Red Hot Louisiana Band who headlined the first show. In July of 2025, Chenier’s son CJ & his own Red Hot Louisiana Band headlined a shindig with Lou Ann Barton and Marcia Ball; just one hot lineup in a weeklong frenzy of music as only the blues can conjure up.
That same week saw Jimmie Vaughan & his Tilt-A-Whirl Band headline a benefit concert at Antone’s for the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund that raised nearly $20,000 in proceeds and saw Gary Clark Jr make a surprise appearance; while Kim Wilson & The Fabulous Thunderbirds put on a red hot set a few nights later.
But the celebrating hasn’t only been happening on the Antone’s stage. On June 29th, New York’s Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park hosted the Antone’s 50th All Stars featuring performances by Chenier, Vaughan, Kam Franklin of The Suffers, Sue Foley, Big Bill Morganfield, Muddy Waters guitar player John Primer, and others. In Los Angeles at the legendary Troubadour Club, some of the above musicians, plus Wilson & his Thunderbirds, played a celebratory show on September 22nd. And on October 1st, the All Stars will be back on the Antone’s stage for a Homecoming Show.
THE BIG BOX SET
Also part of the 50th anniversary jubilation is the dropping of a new 41 song, 5 disc box set titled Antone’s: 50 Years Of The Blues. Stacked to the brim with studio tracks and exciting live music recorded on the stage of the infamous venue over the years, you’ll hear a searing chills down the spine “Cold, Cold Feeling” by Albert Collins, an incredible “Lead Me On” by Ruthie Foster, a young Gary Clark Jr strutting through “Catfish Blues,” and a hot poker seductive “Going Down” by Jimmie Vaughan and Bobby Rush. Other artists include Doyle Bramhall II, Kam Franklin, Lou Ann Barton, Pinetop Perkins, James Cotton, Buddy Guy, Kim Wilson, Lavelle White and Sue Foley. Truth be told, there is not one song on here that won’t chill you to the bone.
The discs – among them The Last Real Texas Blues Album and Tell Me One More Time – can be purchased separately.
WHY ANTONE’S?
“Going to Antone’s was a deep dive education of the blues,” Mickey Raphael, longtime harmonica player for Willie Nelson, recently told me in an email about the legendary venue. “We were so lucky to have Clifford Antone give Austin the music that we’d only heard previously on our personal record collections. From Jimmie Vaughan to Stevie Ray, Kim Wilson, Pinetop Perkins, I mean you had to otherwise go to the south side of Chicago to hear this great music.”
Texas Headhunters singer/guitar player Jesse Dayton believes it was all because of Clifford: “In some ways Cliff was single-handedly responsible for not only discovering great new guitar players, but also rediscovering & resurrecting so many legends. Me and Samantha Fish were backstage with Buddy Guy in NYC two years ago and Buddy said, ‘Clifford helped me turn my career around.’”
Clifford Antone had a love for blues music and he wanted to turn on as many people as possible. Hailing from Port Arthur, Texas, and after dropping out of the University Of Texas in Austin in 1968, the man had a vision and he set about making it materialize. It started in a vacant building on the corner of Sixth Street and Brazos, a former Levine’s Department Store. According to the book, Texas Tornado by Doug Sahm with his son Shawn, the area was “vacant, smelling of urine and rats.” A block from the main Congress Avenue, the nightclub lured in blues greats like Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy.
Then the youngsters started coming around. Jimmie Vaughan, in the book Texas Flood by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort, recollected, “We played Antone’s the first week it opened and we were there three or four times a week.” His brother Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lou Ann Barton, Doyle Bramhall all came through the doors, absorbing up what greats like Albert King, Hubert Sumlin, BB King and Irma Thomas were putting out.
As the years went on, new generations were walking up onto the stage at Antone’s, whether on Great Northern Boulevard, Guadalupe Street, West Fifth Street, East Riverside Drive or where it currently lives, on East Fifth Street. Doyle Bramhall II, Jesse Dayton, Charlie Sexton and Ian Moore would do some teeth-cutting on those hallowed stages. “Antone’s is my foundation,” Gary Clark Jr told the Austin Chronicle in 2014. “I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if it hadn’t been for Antone’s. It allowed me to experiment, explore, and try to better myself as a musician.”
“My older brother and sister hung at the original Sixth Street location but I went to the Guadalupe location first in 1983 to see Albert Collins,” recalled Dayton in a recent email. “It was a mindblower of a show and Cliff was on the side of the stage and would walk out and wipe sweat from Albert’s forehead with a towel. It was electrifying.”
“First time I played the club, Clifford got me up with the house band on a Blue Monday jam night,” continued Dayton. “Both Denny Freeman and Derek O’Brien were onstage so it was terrifying. I played and sang one song, ‘Shake Your Hips’ by Slim Harpo. There were thirty people there but it felt like I lost my virginity.”
Antone’s also attracted bigger stars: Willie Nelson, U2, the Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga, Eric Clapton, Iggy Pop, Bruce Willis and Dennis Quaid are just a few that have played sets or sat in with others.
So, why is Antone’s still so relevant to blues music, to Austin? “People in Austin are lucky because of the live music culture that’s so deeply ingrained into us from young kids to old folks,” stated Dayton. “Antone’s is a huge part of that. You can still go see Derek O’Brien or Sue Foley, which is always amazing. It’s my favorite blues venue on the planet and a must destiny for any fan of roots music.”
CLIFFORD & SUSAN
If you’re not familiar with the history of Antone’s, you may not know the full impact that Susan Antone has had on the venue. Clifford, whom a few times found himself in hot water with the law, had to depend on his sister to keep the breath from exhaling completely out of his beloved nightclub while he was serving time. Originally handling money take-in at the door and taking photographs during shows, Susan eventually moved up in the organization after returning from a stint in California, becoming the de facto owner until her brother could get his affairs sorted out.
Today, according to Music Director Zach Ernst, Susan “is the director of our nonprofit (Clifford Antone Foundation), and also assists annually with the Help Clifford Help Kids benefit for American Youthworks. Susan is also always helping us turn up new photos and posters from her collection, and we often collaborate on show ideas.”
But Clifford was always the club’s soul. “Clifford came out and saw me play when I was fifteen years old at a place called the Boulevard Club and he’s the one who really discovered me,” Dayton revealed in an interview with me in 2016 for Glide. “He came and said, ‘Hey, come to Austin and come to the club and sit in with the band.’ And that was a big deal back then. So when I got there, he gave me all these cool records, original blues records, when I was a kid and said, ‘Hey, learn all this stuff.’ So I did and went and sat in and he said, ‘Yeah, you’re good but you’re kind of country though. You should go by Broken Spoke too.’ So he took me by there and that kind of started my life playing music really.”
Clifford was only twenty-five when he opened the club. He also would go on to start a recording label and a record shop, the latter of which is still open today, owned by Mike Buck and Sue Monsees. As he told the Austin American Statesman in 1997, “When I finally heard the Chicago blues, man, it was like I finally discovered what had been in my mind my whole life.” From there, he worked hard to build a place where that sound could be heard in Austin, Texas.
Clifford would pass on May 23, 2006, from a heart attack at his Austin home. He was fifty-six years old.
THE VAUGHAN BROTHERS
Despite being born in Dallas, Texas, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan would become synonymous with Austin and Antone’s. The elder of the brothers, Jimmie would be first out of the house and the first to end up in Austin.
Although he believed he probably “sounded like a little dumb kid, I’m sure,” as he laughingly told me in a 2019 interview for Glide, Jimmie began making a name for himself early on for his tone and style. In several bands in his early years, it was while in The Chessmen around age fifteen that he got to open for Jimi Hendrix: “I was the biggest Hendrix fan in the world at the time,” he told me. With his bandmates five plus years older than him, Jimmie was “a little weird guitar kid (laughs) but I guess I was an asset.” After moving to Austin and hooking up with Wilson, the Fabulous Thunderbirds were born and became THE band to see at Antone’s.
Jimmie’s little brother wasn’t too far behind him, moving to Austin with his band Blackbird in March of 1972. “He was a great inspiration for me,” Stevie Ray said about his brother in a 1989 press release for his album In Step. “Maybe it just seemed like this because I was so young but it was like he picked up the guitar and he already knew how to play it.”
But Stevie Ray also had a magical power with the guitar, going places so far deep into the fretboard that his soul often dripped off the strings like holy water. “Stevie reached people profoundly because of the feeling and the emotion that he communicated,” Double Trouble drummer Chris Layton wrote in the Foreword to Texas Flood. “It’s almost as if, being the little brother,” Jimmie surmised in the 1989 press release, “he had to prove he could play better than me. Well, he sure did that.”
One thing the brothers definitely had in common was their love for Antone’s and they played there any chance they got, even after both their careers skyrocketed with hit records and successful tours. When Stevie Ray was tragically killed in a helicopter accident in 1990, everyone seemed to naturally gravitate to Antone’s to share in their grief.
VISITING
Antone’s is still a thriving live music venue so just walking in off the street and wandering around is not likely to happen. “Only Big Henry’s is open during the day and on non-show days,” Music Director Zach Ernst informed me. Big Henry’s is, of course, Big Henry’s Vinyl & Gifts. “We carry classic Antone’s merch as well as a curated collection of original Blues, Funk, and Soul records,” said Ernst. However, there are plans for a museum upstairs and that will be available to fans once they open.
Until then, there are plenty of shows every month and with a ticket you can experience what Antone’s is all about. Have a drink at the bar, bite into one of their notorious “Cliffy Dog” hotdogs, stare into the eyes of Muddy Waters, whose mural was painted on plywood, check out some of the live photos on the walls and then enjoy some pretty hot blues music.
Do keep in mind that shows are ages twenty-one and over unless otherwise noted.
WHILE IN AUSTIN
“You can go out any night of the week and see an amazing band,” singer-songwriter Elijah Ford once told me in a 2016 interview for Glide about the allure of Austin. “I spent a week off here in-between tours with Ryan Bingham and met my wife and a bunch of people I still play with. So after that week was up I just packed up my shit and turned my ass around and got back to Texas.”
Indeed, Austin is a vibrant music city. There are more music clubs than you can throw a stick at, not to mention the ACL Fest every October (2025 dates are October 3-5 and 10-12 in Zilker Park). Below is a list of some other music-related sites that deserve your attention when you find yourself in the Texas capital.
Antone’s Record Shop – located at 2928 Guadalupe Street, it’s original location, which back in 1987 was across the street from Antone’s Nightclub. With an emphasis on Texas artists and blues music, the store sells records alongside other musical merchandise including t-shirts and posters, as well as hosting in-store events and CD release parties. https://antonesrecordshop.com/
Arlyn Studios – located at 200 Academy Drive, this recording studio has seen everyone from Gary Clark Jr to Willie Nelson, Robert Plant to Lucinda Williams grace their halls; within the last year alone, Clark, Miranda Lambert, Steve Earle, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have done music here. Opening in 1984, and relaunching in 2012, Arlyn is a 7,000 square foot facility with three studios and state-of-the-art equipment. Fans are allowed in for a tour. https://arlynstudios.com/
Stevie Ray Vaughan Memorial – at 94” high, this bronze statue of the guitar great is situated by Lady Bird Lake in a park, so you will need to park and walk to it’s location.
Willie Nelson Statue – appropriately located outside the Austin City Limits Live venue on Willie Nelson Boulevard. Willie was there for the unveiling of the bronze statue in the spring of 2012 and even sang a few songs for the thousand plus fans who attended.
The Moody Theater – since we’re talking about ACL, the Moody Theater has been the home for the revered live show on PBS since 2011, after its move from the campus of the University of Texas, where in 1974, Willie Nelson was the first featured performer. Located at 310 West Willie Nelson Boulevard, they do offer tours. https://www.acllive.com/
The Continental Club – Antone’s isn’t the only venue in Austin to have longevity and this club located at 1315 South Congress Avenue also has a reputation for hosting rip-roaring concerts. Opened in 1955, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Ely, Doug Sahm, James McMurtry, Buck Owens and Robert Plant have all played this now historical landmark.
University Of Texas at Austin – 2515 Speedway; both Janis Joplin and Gary Clark Jr attended classes here.
RECOMMENDED READING
Lots of musicians have called Austin their home so there are plenty of biographies and memoirs to peruse, including books by Doug Sahm, the Go Go’s Kathy Valentine, Asleep At The Wheel’s Ray Benson and Willie and Bobbie Nelson; there are numerous books about Stevie Ray Vaughan and Tejano music as well.
WEBSITE
WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR US
If you have been to Antone’s, go to Glide’s social media pages & in the comments to this article’s link, post a photo of yourself at the venue. Be sure to tag Glide and Antone’s. We want to see you!
Photographs by Dan Sellers, Arnold Wells & Shorefire Media/Antone’s
