Cactus Burning: Austin, Texas and the Battle for the Iconic Cactus Cafe

Cactus Burning

Austin, Texas and the Battle for the Iconic Cactus Cafe

~ Michael F. Scully

cactusburning.com

Burning Fingers Press

Austin, Texas

Copyright © 2014 by Michael F. Scully

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, physical or electronic, without written permission of the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages within a critical article or review.

ISBN # 978-0-9912757-1-7

Cover design by Michael McDaniel

To Griff Luneburg, who built it,

And to Doreen, Colin, and Kara, with love

About the Author

Introduction

Main Characters

1. Let the Revolution Begin

2. Powers Agonistes

3. January 29, 2010

4. Redefining, Repurposing, Revisionism

5. Austin Rising

6. What Do Students Want? (Part 1)

7. Fries With That? The Commodified Campus

8. Cactus Conversations: Engagement or Charade?

9. What Do Students Want? (Part 2)

10. Your Community Radio Station

11. The Cactus is Dead; Long Live the Cactus

Acknowledgements and Notes on Methodology

About the Author

Michael F. Scully holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and is the author of The Never-Ending Revival: Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008, 2013). He lives in Austin with his family.

To learn more about the history of the Cactus Cafe, and to enjoy news articles, photos, audio, and other artifacts of the battle for its preservation, visit the Cactus Burning website.

Introduction

Griff Luneburg, longtime manager of the Cactus Cafe:

... it certainly wasn’t for the money. It’s been a labor of love. I’m very proud of the legacy we’ve created here. The music is soaked into the walls, into my blood.¹

After more than two hours in front of an angry crowd, Bill Powers looked dog-tired. Powers, the president of the University of Texas at Austin, had been defending the decision to close the Cactus Cafe, a tiny live-music venue tucked into a corner of the Texas Union, sometimes called the campus’ living room.² Powers understood that closing the university-owned cafe was unpopular, but he didn’t know that it was about to spark a campus and community rebellion that would endure for more than seven months. Spurred by Facebook, Twitter, and a multitude of blogs, the battle for the Cactus Cafe spawned an acrimonious debate that touched upon art vs. commerce, the generation gap, the funding of public universities, campus and community relations, the duplicity of bureaucracy, and even the value of college football.

Austin, the heart of a metropolitan area then-encompassing a population of over 1.7 million, contains a creative community that cares deeply about maintaining local culture and resisting homogenization. Officially, the town’s slogan is the Live Music Capital of the World, but countless citizens embrace the more expansive catchphrase, Keep Austin Weird. Austinites have watched with dismay as beloved music venues and other landmarks have closed over the years, the victims of business trends or urban redevelopment. With each loss, a bit of the city’s charm seems to die, prompting a onetime city councilman to complain the infrastructure of funk is being forced out of town.³ The 150-seat Cactus, a crucial component of Austin funkiness, had, for three decades, presented the finest in American and international roots music. For many, its looming demise was the final straw in the steady dissolution of Austin eccentricity.

The university - known colloquially as UT - insisted at first that closure was the unavoidable response to recurring financial shortfalls. But it seemed oddly uninterested in accepting the donations that might keep the Cactus alive, prompting students and community members to see a crass willingness to forsake Austin’s artistic heritage. Confronted by an unexpectedly fierce popular uprising, campus administrators fought back. In a calculated campaign, they switched gears and claimed that closure was due to student demands for a cafe that was more relevant to contemporary needs. UT’s new message was, in effect, the kids did it, turning their own students into sacrificial lambs. The resulting battle pitted administrators against the community, the community against members of the student body, and students against one another.

The fight for the Cactus Cafe mirrors other struggles across the United States, as people strive to preserve local heritage in the face of fiscal belt-tightening, growing homogenization, and political infighting. In San Francisco, another group of music lovers has tried to prevent a private university from selling a rock radio station, staffed for decades by student and community volunteers. In Nashville, auto-racing fans struggled to save a historic speedway, threatened by redevelopment. In New York’s East Harlem, a non-profit art gallery and theater space fought eviction from a city-managed arts center, after a councilwoman challenged its commitment to community access and cultural diversity. There may be vast political and cultural differences between Austin’s roots music lovers, San Francisco’s rockers, Nashville’s racers, and New York’s barrio artists, but they all treasure heritage enough to fight for its survival.⁴

The Cactus struggle was a people-power movement in which I was a minor participant - a loudmouth and little more. As an Austin resident, a roots music fan, a sometime donor to university arts programs, and the holder of an advanced UT degree, I was grieved by the unexpected closure announcement. So, like thousands of others, I added my voice to the outcry. I gravitated immediately to a Facebook group titled Save The Cactus Cafe (Austin, Texas). This group, which ultimately boasted 25,000 members, proved invaluable as a source of information and fellowship. I attended meetings and expressed my anguish on blogs, and in letters to the press, to university officials, and to student leaders. Others engaged in more disciplined and sustained work. They shaped strategy, cultivated the media, raised funds, gathered signatures, and met with sometimes dismissive university personnel.

The battle was long and divisive. There was no leadership election in the spontaneously formed Save the Cactus nation. Throughout the effort, self-selected leaders made crucial decisions. Others disagreed with those leaders, or disliked them. Just as social media spurred the campaign, it also highlighted differences. Some turned to Facebook to challenge campaign leaders’ tactical decisions, or to attack those leaders personally. Suggested compromises became enmeshed in the question of what it meant to save the Cactus. Did the cafe need new management or a new aesthetic? Should it change in order to live? If it changed at all, was it saved or destroyed? As Cactus lovers hashed out divisions in public, the university massaged its own approach, striving to deflect criticism and control the outcome. Its efforts were often clumsy and transparent, but administrators, aided by a phalanx of public relations experts, at least enjoyed a modicum of privacy.

The Cactus controversy, like other efforts at heritage preservation, has meaning beyond the particular struggle at hand. Those who strive to save culture attempt not only to preserve, but also to define, community identity. Austin, many believed, could not be the live music capital of the world, or the home of the weird, if it allowed the Cactus to die. Advocates of San Francisco’s threatened radio station cried, We believe San Francisco should sound like San Francisco. A leader of the Nashville preservation effort characterized the endangered speedway as part of the very fiber that makes Nashville, Nashville. In New York, advocates of the threatened arts space urged the city not to destroy the ... social and cultural benefits that [the program] brings El Barrio, Spanish Harlem.⁵

Preservationists also want to affirm a desired self-definition. They are, they might believe, true aficionados and devoted citizens, who understand the essence of their communities, as opposed to the know-nothings on the other side, who don’t care, or don’t get it, or prefer uniformity to diversity. Preservationists often embrace a political stance in opposition to the monied interests that homogenize daily life by opening look-alike chain restaurants, big-box stores, and gentrified boutiques. They see themselves as persons of good taste, as opposed to the cultural philistines on the other side. Those same philistines, of course, view preservationists as elitists, as defenders of a dying past, and as stubborn opponents of absolutely anything new. The Cactus conflict encompassed such divisions and for some it became a battle of good versus evil in which defeat, and even compromise, was unthinkable.

I hope that an examination of the plight of the Cactus Cafe can serve as a primer for other communities engaged in parallel struggles - a guide to what works and what doesn’t, to what can go right and go wrong. I also want to honor those individuals whose passion for music, and for culture in general, compelled them to challenge a powerful state institution. Finally, I’d like to foster the ongoing conversation concerning the value of the arts in American society. Too often, when financial challenges require cutbacks, the arts are the first thing to go. The Cactus Cafe debacle, and that’s what it was, arose because UT was too quick to respond to tough times by cutting the arts with a hacksaw, instead of the proverbial scalpel.

While this is primarily a story of activism in the face of a hostile bureaucracy, music lay at the heart of the community effort. A love of music, and of the Cactus’ aesthetic and ambiance, motivated everyone who battled on the cafe’s behalf. UT’s apparent blindness to the room’s magic frightened most Cactus fans, who couldn’t imagine a happy conclusion. In the end, the story’s twists and turns surprised almost everyone. But to discuss that is to get ahead of ourselves. It’s best to start this tale at the beginning.

____________________

1 Austin Powell, Off the Record: Forsaking the Song, Part 15, Austin Chronicle, August 13, 2010.

2 The living room designation appears on the Texas Union webpage.

3 Addie Broyles, Artz Rib House likely closing for good, Austin American-Statesman, March 30, 2012.

4 Reyhan Harmanci, Battle Rages Over a College Radio Stations Sale, New York Times, March 20, 2011 (A29A of National ed.); Campbell Robertson, In Nashville, Debate Over Racetrack Pits Nostalgia and Change, New York Times, January 21, 2011 (A12 of NY ed.); Sarah Springer, Community debate continues over East Harlem cultural center space, NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute: News and Documentary, November 1, 2010.

5 The comments about San Francisco and Nashville appeared on Facebook pages, now deleted, that were devoted to those causes. The language about the Harlem cultural program appeared in a petition supporting the renewal of that program’s commercial lease.

Main Characters

(circa 2010)

People

Steve Bearden - former manager of UT’s Texas Union Film Program; retired after 31-years at the Texas Union

Zach Bidner - UT undergraduate; leading Save the Cactus activist

Alex Ferraro - UT undergraduate; elected-member of the Student Government Assembly; opposed to Cactus closure

Tom Garza - Associate Professor, Dept. Of Slavic Language and Literature and Center for Mexican American Studies; member of the Texas Union Board and a Cactus supporter

Hayley Gillespie - UT Ph.D. candidate; most prominent student leader in the Save the Cactus campaign

Bonnie Gilson (formerly Bonnie Mallott) - Save the Cactus community advocate

Juan Gonzalez - UT Vice President of Student Affairs; gave final approval to the decision to close the Cactus Cafe; UT’s primary negotiator with preservation activists

Don Hale - UT Vice President for Public Affairs; helped UT administrators redefine the Cactus debate

David Kobierowski - radio host; all-around community activist, and leader of the Save the Cactus petition drive

Wiley Koepp - UT employee and alumnus; a leader of the Save the Cactus campaign; created 25,000-member Save the Cactus Facebook group

Chris Lueck - Cactus Cafe bar manager

Griff Luneburg - Cactus Cafe manager and talent booker

Miriam McKinney - UT employee and alumna; Save the Cactus advocate

John Meller - UT undergraduate; Executive Vice President of the Student Events Center (SEC) and past-chair of the SEC’s Music and Entertainment Committee; co-author of the Steinberg/Meller plan for the future of the Cactus Cafe

Cliff Meltz - Save the Cactus community advocate; husband of Morgan

Morgan Meltz - Save the Cactus community advocate; wife of Cliff

Andrew Nash - UT undergraduate; student member of the Texas Union Board, who approved the Cactus closure; President of the Student Events Center (until April 2010)

Reid Nelson - primary strategist and most prominent community leader in the Save the Cactus campaign

Daniel Norton - community advocate and a leader of the Save the Cactus campaign; managed the campaign’s online presence

Liam O’Rourke - UT undergraduate; student body president (until April 2010); student member of Texas Union Board, who approved the Cactus closure

Tom Palaima - Professor, Dept. of Classics and Center for Middle Eastern Studies; Cactus Cafe supporter

Scott Parks - UT undergraduate; student body president (effective April 2010)

Matt Portillo - UT undergraduate; a leader of the Save the Cactus campaign; elected-member of the Student Government Assembly

William F. (Bill) Powers - president of UT-Austin

Soncia Reagins-Lilly (Dean Lilly) - UT Dean of Students; participated in and supported the decision to close the Cactus

Audrey Reynolds - UT employee and Save the Cactus advocate

Andy Smith - Executive Director of UT’s Texas Union; architect of the plan to close the Cactus Cafe

Cameron Smith - Assistant Director at UT’s Texas Performing Arts; Lecturer in Music Business at UT’s Butler School of Music; participant in the Cactus Conversations

Lee Smith - UT Associate Vice President for Legal Affairs

Brad Stein - Chair, Austin Music Commission; attorney; Cactus supporter and participant in the Cactus Conversations

Taylor Steinberg - UT undergraduate; President of the Student Events Center (SEC) (effective April 2010); co-author of the Steinberg/Meller plan for the future of the Cactus Cafe

Susan Svedeman - longtime Cactus Cafe bartender

Laura Thomas - UT alumna; owner of an Austin-based musicians booking agency; Save the Cactus advocate

Stewart Vanderwilt - general manager of KUT, the university-owned public radio station

Jon Woods - UT graduate student; elected member of the Graduate Student Assembly; Save the Cactus advocate

Organizations and University Divisions

Division of Student Affairs - the university’s divisional home of the Texas Union and the Cactus Cafe; headed by UT Vice President Juan Gonzalez

Friends of the Cactus Cafe (Friends) - non-profit community organization formed for the purpose of saving the Cactus Cafe

Graduate Student Assembly (GSA) - one of three student legislative bodies; devoted to graduate student interests

Music and Entertainment Committee (MEC) - student organization designed to bring student-oriented entertainment to campus; a division of the Student Events Center, described below

Save the Cactus Cafe - the Facebook fan page started by Daniel Norton, which grew to roughly 8500 members; the formal campaign used this page for announcements

Save The Cactus Cafe (Austin, Texas) - the Facebook group page started by Wiley Koepp. The group grew to roughly 25,000 members and was the primary online gathering place for Cactus advocates and interested parties. Facebook eventually archived it, which preserved the contents but eliminated the membership roll

Senate of College Councils - one of three student legislative bodies; devoted to advancing the interests of UT’s 18 individual schools and colleges

Student Events Center (SEC) - student organization which assists students in the financing and presentation of public programs on campus

Student Friends of the Cactus Cafe (Student Friends) - official student organization formed to advocate for the preservation of the Cactus Cafe. Its archived website contains only a portion of the site’s original material

Student Government Assembly (SGA) - one of three student legislative bodies, dominated by undergraduates

Texas Union Board - advisory body composed of a majority of students, plus faculty members, whose purpose is to help govern the Texas Union, the campus building that housed the Cactus; the board’s student members unanimously approved UT’s administrative decision to close the Cactus Cafe

1. Let the Revolution Begin

For a half hour after I heard the news, I kept asking myself, ’Why would the University of Texas close the Cactus?’¹ The speaker is Slaid Cleaves, an Austin-based singer-songwriter, who’d performed many times on the stage of the Cactus Cafe. He was reacting to a university press release, issued near sundown on a winter Friday, that announced the impending closure of the cafe, which had hosted some of the greatest songwriting-performers of the prior three decades. Once and future stars, an astonishing number of legends, and countless hopefuls, had graced its miniature stage or, on rare occasions, larger rooms upstairs or down the hall. Billboard magazine, the music industry’s commercial bible, had called the Cactus an institution, and an influential songwriters club, and included it in a list of fourteen solidly respected, savvy clubs; the kinds of stages from which careers can be cut, that work with proven names and new faces.²

There’s no adequate way to summarize a three-decade legacy in a few paragraphs, but some summary is needed to convey the flavor of the room. Bob Dylan is the Cactus Cafe’s spiritual godfather. He never played there, but many of his 1960s running buddies have, including Dave Van Ronk, Tom Paxton, Odetta, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Carolyn Hester, and Arlo Guthrie, son of the legendary Woody, whose Alice’s Restaurant is part of pop culture scripture. Without a doubt, songwriting-troubadours wielding acoustic guitars have been a Cactus mainstay, leading some to characterize the room as a frozen-in-time repository of a stereotypical, 1960s-style folk music. But those who view the cafe through that narrow lens have never paid close attention.

The Cactus’ focus was contemporary roots music and within that vibrant world its performers were extraordinarily diverse. It’s a very tiny venue, and many of the room’s most illustrious performers are unknown to a broad public. But Cactus performances encompass a wide stylistic range, and the artists who appear there, and their fierce devotees, fuel an ongoing American passion for original, eclectic, non-mainstream sounds. The cafe presented a young Alison Krauss, the bluegrass-inflected pop and country star, who’s gone on to win more Grammys than any other woman, including an Album of the Year award shared with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant. The pre-fame Dixie Chicks played there, as have countless others who work within the realm of so-called alternative country music, including the Cowboy Junkies, Gillian Welch, and Grammy winner Lucinda Williams.

Czech bluegrassers Druha Trava have appeared at the Cactus, and so have American bluegrass and old-time country legends Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, and Ralph Stanley, plus next-wave string bands Nickel Creek and the Old Crow Medicine Show. Celebrated British songwriters Richard Thompson and Al Stewart have performed there; plus cultish, sometime-rock artists Robyn Hitchcock, Graham Parker, and Shawn Phillips. Blues artists Taj Mahal, Corey Harris, Honeyboy Edwards, John Hammond, and Shemekia Copeland appeared at the Cactus, as did Clarence Gatemouth Brown, who resisted the blues label fiercely, in favor of declaring himself an all-around American musician.³

The Cactus has hosted the famed Hot Tuna, plus Ani Di Franco, Michelle Shocked, Louden Wainwright III, Grammy recipient Shawn Colvin, genre-bending jazzmen Mose Allison and Stanley Jordan, and 21st-century hitmaker Jason Mraz, who appeared there long before the hit. Conscious of its roots, the room’s hosted a multitude of beloved Texas-bred songwriters. These include Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Guy Clark, Tish Hinojosa, Doug Sahm, Robert Earl Keen, Billy Joe Shaver, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, plus Grammy winner Nanci Griffith, Oscar recipient Ryan Bingham and, on dozens of occasions, the great songwriter Townes Van Zandt, gone since 1997, legendary yet largely unknown, whose signed photo hangs on the wall, stage right.

Multi-instrumentalist Oliver Rajamani has brought South Asian Indian music to the Cactus. Traditional Celtic music has appeared through, among others, the long-running Battlefield Band; the Irish band Cluaan; and Julie Fowlis, whom the United Kingdom’s Daily Telegraph predicted, could be the first Scottish Gaelic crossover star.⁴ Cajun superstars BeauSoleil have played the room, as has Louisiana’s D.L. Menard, whose French honky-tonk earned him the nickname the Cajun Hank Williams. Rockers taking band-sabbaticals have stopped by, including Bob Mould, of Husker Du and Sugar; Gene Ween; Black Francis of the Pixies; J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. and Mike Doughty, the frontman for Soul Coughing, a band whose mix of improvisational jazz grooves, oddball samples, hip-hop, electronics, and noisy experimentalism earned them a widespread, enthusiastic following on college campuses.⁵

On occasion, the Cactus has served as nothing more than an offbeat local bar. In the late 1980s, a trio called Twang Twang Shock-a-Boom began drawing 200 listeners at a time to its impromptu street performances, just across the street from the cafe. Eventually, manager Griff Luneburg invited the band inside. Its raucous Cactus shows have become part of local legend and Twang Twang frontman David Garza ultimately enjoyed a brief spin as a major label artist.⁶ Just one-day after news of the cafe’s impending demise began spreading, an Austin blogger recalled his own unknown rock band’s atypical Cactus gig:

... [we] once somehow convinced Griff to book our old band Cheezus there on a Saturday night in 1991. We wore turtlenecks, drew black Sharpie goatees on our faces and made as much contrarian racket as we could. I thought it was pretty cool that Griff made room for an obnoxious, unpracticed punk band on his stage. I don’t even think he complained about all the thrown cheese products.⁷

Through 2009, in nine consecutive annual newspaper polls, fans named the room Austin’s Best Acoustic Venue, though many of the cafe’s featured troubadours appear with full electric-band accompaniment.⁸ Offering folk, blues, country, occasional rock, world music, and a bit of jazz, the focus of the Cactus was never a specific genre but a non-mainstream, rootsy eclecticism, that centered on original sounds you didn’t hear everywhere else. As Austin writer Brad Buchholz put it, the Cactus is not contrived. It’s not about the hottest trend. It’s simply a place that fosters intimate connection to song ...⁹

Nor is the Cactus merely a bar with a musical backdrop. During most performances, it looks more like a concert-hall-in-miniature than a saloon. What happens onstage, says manager Luneburg, is the most important thing that happens here. Alcohol is secondary. It’s not like that in other clubs. For musicians, it’s just a real nurturing environment. No waitstaff work the room, there’s no blender, and bartenders keep cash registers silent while a song is in progress. My regular attendance began in 1995 and I’ve never once been aware of a customer placing an order during a song. It happens quietly, when it happens. The staff is even mindful of the front door, careful to make certain that it never slams. The overall aesthetic is, to quote Buchholz again, as understated as a whisper.¹⁰

Reid Nelson, a leading figure in the struggle to save the Cactus:

The attention paid to the music, the intimacy of the setting, the — I mean, Griff has created there, over the years, just a place that is so respectful of the audience, the performer, and the music, that it is unparalleled ...

Susan Svedeman, longtime Cactus bartender:

The people who come here are intelligent, cultured and well-mannered, and the fact that they are willing to seek out something different means a lot to me. They’re not about Top 40 or watching TV ... At the Cactus, you’re right there. You sit close to the performer. You can feel the emotion in the songs. This is no chain restaurant. You didn’t choose to come to some place that’s all shiny and plastic-y. You came to feel something, and that’s what you get at the Cactus.¹¹

Laura Thomas, Austin native, UT graduate, and musicians’ booking agent, contrasting the Cactus to other local venues:

[Elsewhere] there is always chatter and you tell them to shush and people laugh at you and tell you to go sit somewhere else.

Whereas if you shush someone at the Cactus, I mean, typically you are not the only one [doing it] and people are going to respect it. So there are just completely different rooms. There is no other room in town that has that sort of reverence for