The dance hall at Luckenbach is where Jerry Jeff Walker and the Lost Gonzo Band recorded Viva Terlingua in August 1973, an album that helped make the hall famous. The band set up in the empty hall over several days and cut most of the record without an audience. Two songs were taped live in front of a crowd: Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother, written by Ray Wylie Hubbard, and London Homesick Blues, by Gary P. Nunn, which became the closing theme of the television series Austin City Limits. MCA released the album in November 1973, three months after the sessions.
The building is older than its reputation. The Handbook of Texas records that the hall was rebuilt by the early 1930s with a new maple dance floor, and the general store beside it, opened by William Engel, still stands in its original building. The post office, first opened in 1854 as South Grape Creek, reopened in 1886 with August Engel as postmaster, who renamed the town Luckenbach, and it lasted until 1971. The population had been twenty from the 1920s to the 1950s.
The record had a second life in the same room. A nearly track for track remake was recorded in the hall in January 2006 and, after a dispute with Walker over its original title, came out in March 2007 as Viva Terlingua! Compadres!
Getting there
30.1792, -98.7564
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
