Austin Roots

"Developing Austin" with Perry Lorenz

"We all got liberal arts degrees, and a whole lot of my friends are, you know, are casualties in one way or another. Either, either drug casualties or lifestyle casualties, and never quite made it through school, although that's the reason that they came to Austin. And again, it was so inexpensive… People weren't having to work three jobs to figure out how to pay for their school. S...

"Outstanding Stories in the Criminal Legal System" with Dick DeGuerin

"Well, I accept a lot of cases. Basically, my criteria is something that needs to be challenging. So you get some tough cases that way, and if you get the reputation for trying tough cases, people come to you. Growing up, I was younger than all my classmates…and I was smaller. But what I learned was the law and the rules of evidence…great equalizer&...

"Music Journaling" with Kevin Curtin

"The Austin Chronicle, it's just like, is so fiercely loyal to the local scene and willingly ignores opportunities to interview national artists in favor of a local artist. I think that means something in terms of where we put the quality of the people in our community in comparison to people in the national picture. You know, we wanna treat them on the same level, and I think it's important, yo...

"Early Club Scenes" with John Toad Andrews 

Forming The Wigs with Boz Scaggs, The Chelsea with George Kinney, and joining Tracy Nelson & Mother Earth, to his unlikely second career restoring and selling antique ceiling fans, John "Toad" Andrews' story weaves through some of the most important threads in American rock, blues, and country history.

In this episode of Austin Roots, hosts Eddie Wilson and Dr. Jason Mellard sat ...

"Archiving The History of Austin" with Leea Mechling

"Prosperity doesn't always mean dollar signs. Sharing music and sharing art really expands your heart." (Leea Mechling)

Leea Mechling grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, where her earliest music experiences ranged from Czech dance halls to an Ike & Tina Turner backstage pass at age 11. After moving to Austin to attend UT, Leea fell in with the crowd at the Armadillo World Headq...

"A Cartoonist's View of Underground Characters" with Gilbert Shelton

"Chet Helms and Jack Jackson and some others, and then I bought a printing press. It was our idea to print rock posters. That was a big thing at the time. Nobody knew how to run our new printing press and our posters were really crappy, but then we discovered that printing on the comic books didn't have to be good printings. We shifted over to comic books at Ripof...

"Austin's Early Art Scene" with Danny Garrett

"The San Francisco posters sort of resonated with everybody and I mean everyone across the country, across the world. Of course, there was a very strong connection between Austin and San Francisco. There was direct feedback from that, from what was going on in San Francisco, especially with Gilbert (Shelton) and (Jack) Jackson out there. There was a resonance, ...

"Keeping the Heart in the Music Community" with Emma Little

"I think I learned that a lot of the guys who were successful generally had a woman backing them up at home, helping them out. That's the thing is you have to have somebody, and I think that that's where the women came in most… they could also run anything. We were the invisible matriarchy." (Emma Little)

Emma Little shares her unique perspective on Austin's cultura...

"The Underground Comix Movement" with Dave Moriaty

"The cartoons never made any money, in my opinion… we became the default printer for the revolution from the beginning. We printed family dog posters, we printed straight theater posters. I still have all the pamphlets that we did for the Berkeley Revolution, various types and, we also printed lots of pamphlets and books for people that were frankly either schizophrenic or b...

"The Real Deal in Austin Food" with Hoover Alexander

Food, Community, and Austin's Culinary Legacy, breaking bread with Hoover Alexander.

In this deeply personal conversation, Hoover Alexander shares his journey from East Austin neighborhood kid to restaurant proprietor, weaving together stories of food, culture, and community. Growing up in a "small village" within Austin, Hoover describes a tightly-knit East Austin where everythi...

"The Vulcan Gas Company" with Don Hyde

"I never had the idea of making money. That wasn't the point. I don't think there were many clubs anywhere that had that as a premise. Utopia… it was one of the first countercultural clubs run by the counterculture itself." (Don Hyde)

This episode of Austin Roots features Eddie Wilson and Dr. Jason Mellard in conversation with Don Hyde, a pivotal figure in Austin's 1960s music scen...

"Famous Texas Legislation" with Dave Richards

"What I remember is Eddie coming by one time and asking Ann (Governor Ann Richards) and I to go with him to see this old armory he'd found. He was thinking of making it into a music venue. And we went down to this dusty old place and uh, I suppose we were encouraging." (Dave Richards on the Armadillo World Headquarters)

David Read Richards (June 10, 1933 – November 13...

"Early Folk Singing" with Powell St John

Powell St. John (September 18, 1940 – August 22, 2021) Episode recorded in 2020

Wednesday night hootenannies, Peyote, and Janis Joplin, brim the surface of Powell's contributions to folk music and Texas songwriting.

This episode explores the vibrant Austin folk music scene of the 1960s through the eyes of two key figures: Powell St. J...

"We have this idea now of Austin being this liberal, communist bastion, but a hundred years ago we were one of the most conservative cities in Texas." - Richard Zelade. 

Richard Zelade, author of Austin and the Jazz Age, shares fascinating details about how UT Austin became the epicenter of early jazz culture in Texas, producing influential musicians like Jimmy's Joys and pioneering figures in ...

Bank burglaries, prostitution, and gambling, the hidden layers of Austin history. "Everybody knew who all the tough guys were... every couple of years there was a new super bad guy."

In this episode of Austin Roots, hosts Eddie Wilson and Dr. Jason Mellard sit down with Jesse Sublett to explore the hidden criminal history of 1960s Austin. Sublett, a musician-turned-author, discusses his research into the O...

In March 2020, when Threadgill's and the world shut down, we found ourselves in a reflective mood with time on our hands. Eddie Wilson compiled an eclectic list of Austin artists, authors, movers, and shakers who defined the city's cultural scene in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Novice podcasters, we did what we could to get them on Zooms and in rooms to tell their stories. In their words, we thread together what made the c...