On August 12, 1972, Willie Nelson played his first show at Armadillo World Headquarters, a music hall in an abandoned National Guard armory at the corner of Barton Springs Road and South First Street. Nelson had spent years trying to win acceptance in Nashville and had just settled in Austin, where Armadillo co-founder Eddie Wilson tracked him down because he wanted him for the Armadillo. Nelson and his band played a long set. Nelson later said the rednecks and hippies who thought they were natural enemies began mixing without too much bloodshed. The night is widely credited with starting the cosmic cowboy, or progressive country, crossover that made Austin a music town. Chet Flippo wrote it up for Rolling Stone. Nelson grew out his hair, and his next album, Shotgun Willie, moved away from the Nashville sound. After the show, writers Bud Shrake and Gary Cartwright threw a party at the Crest Hotel, where University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal silenced a chatty Cartwright during a guitar session with three words: leave or listen.
The Armadillo opened in August 1970, and closed after a New Year's Eve show on December 31, 1980, after the land beneath it was sold. The armory was torn down and replaced by a 13-story office building, One Texas Center, beside what later became Threadgill's World Headquarters, since closed. The city dedicated a plaque to the hall in 2006.
Getting there
30.2574, -97.7493
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