photograph by John Carrico |
funny thing happened
to me the other night on my way to the Victory Grill. Nothing. Nothing at all.
I parked my car on a side street, got out, and walked to the entrance on East
11th. I was approached by a black man in his early 30s wearing an old army
coat, who directed me to the correct entryway (not the side door I was pulling
at), and told me to have a good evening. Passersby nodded and passed. Traffic
was thin, with the only noise coming from within the club — the sound of an
old R&B recording being rewound and restarted as a group of young dancers
rehearsed for the upcoming production of Merry Christmas, Baby.
There were no dealers on the corner shoving crystalline product at me, nor
were there prostitutes and thugs waiting to intrude on my music-seeking mood
and separate me from my wallet. There was just the Victory Grill, standing
stoic and alone on the now decimated eastern side of 11th Street. Downtown yet
not downtown, on the avenue, but the wrong side of the tracks. A musical haven
in a surprisingly calm area. So where was the threat, the danger that keeps the
visitors away? That’s what the owners of the Victory Grill are wondering as
they attempt to bring back to life one of the most integral fixtures in the
history of Austin music.
The Victory Grill stands poised as the link between the glorious past and the
all-too-mild present, ready to make a leap into the millennia as the savior of
blues and jazz in Austin. Disconnected from booking monopolies and Sixth Street
economic pressures, the Eastside club exists for the purposes of cultural
revival and community through music. It operates under a uniquely
non-commercial philosophy of music not as a means of selling drinks, but music
as cultural preservation and advancement. But there are obvious pluses and
minuses to this approach.
The venue could be exactly what the flagging market and oft-criticized scene
require to re-establish Austin as a legitimate spawning ground for blues and
jazz. First, though, people have to cross the unspoken line between what they
know as the civilized city and what they’ve heard is the dark and dangerous
unknown. That, and of course the almighty dollar, are all that stands between a
barren street and a full-blown musical explosion. It may sound drastic or
unreasonable, but it makes perfect sense. More than the perpetuation of stale
and costly summer festivals with no cohesive identity, more than a slew of
commercially reborn and heavily invested locally legendary barbecue joints and
stages-cum-restaurants, Austin needs this venue. As city planning and
development run awry and suburban sprawl and musical dilution become the
accepted, we need the Victory Grill to thrive, to become the Mecca of community
and music that it once was.
The Victory Grill was built in 1945, then consisting of a small icehouse and a patio where people would
gather for burgers, beer, music, and dancing. At the end of World War II, the
return of the soldiers brought great cause for celebration, but black soldiers
stationed at Fort Hood and other central Texas military installations had
nowhere they could go to celebrate. Johnny Holmes, who to this day owns the
building and the lot it’s on, built the Victory Grill for that purpose, and its
development as a recognized site for quality music was a natural progression.
The cafe building came soon after, sharing half the space with a dry cleaners,
and before long the crowds started growing. One soldier stationed at Fort Hood,
Bobby Bland, became a regular at the club, stepping up to house musician, and
eventually taking over the house band. Though the sale of food and drinks were
a part of the Victory Grill from the beginning, even then it was based on a
much larger idea — the need and desire to bring people together, to be a forum
for the furthering of the community’s identity.
It was after Holmes’ return from Alaska (he was always on the road promoting
someone, Bland, B.B. King, or T.D. Bell) that the stage side of the Victory
Grill was built. Named after a club he frequented while staying in Anchorage,
the word “Kovac” meant “fabulous” to Holmes, and that’s exactly what he wanted
the Victory Grill to be. And it was. Eva Lindsey, who along with R.V. Adams now
operates the club, quotes as a part of her normal rhetoric neighborhood
residents who’ve been around through the boom and the bust.
“The Thomases across the street — they’ve been in that house for 63 years (I
think they’ve had the same chickens out back for that long too!) — talk about
the day when 11th Street was just a constant bustle,” says Lindsey. “The
Victory Grill, Charlie’s Playhouse, an ice cream parlor, restaurants; back then
you’d have to step off the curb and walk in the street because the sidewalk
traffic was so thick. Everyone came out. And it was a family thing, too. The
kids who weren’t old enough to go in a club when there was a band playing would
stay out on the sidewalk and dance.”
Yes, the glory days. “I was down at Minnie’s [Beauty Salon] the other day,”
continues Lindsey, “and some folks in there were talking about when Ike &
Tina used to come to town. You know? They’d play down at Charlie’s Playhouse
one night, then Ike would drink and gamble all the money away, and they’d play
the Victory Grill the next night just to make enough money to get out of town.
You still hear talk about that kind of thing over here — the people are still
connected to it.”
These shows were an important part of the community, establishing Johnny
Holmes and his club as a keystone of the neighborhood. Both man and club were
also integral components in the perpetuation and prospering of the “chitlin
circuit,” the connected string of clubs and venues extending from the midwest
through the south and bending westward throughout Texas. Shorty’s Bar in Elgin,
Walker’s Auditorium in Waco, these places were connected to the Victory Grill
with the line extending eastward into New Orleans, up through Mississippi and
Tennessee, and on into Kansas City and Chicago, offering continuous opportunity
for black musicians to play music in this country and eke out a living doing
it.
The linking of cities along this route, the assembly of musicians who
otherwise would not have been able to play together, the gathering of the
neighborhood folks and the soldiers from nearby posts; this type of synthesis
gave the Victory Grill its lifeblood — a pulse that is now faint, but
hopefully growing ever stronger.
 Tomas Ramirez photograph by John Carrico |
Lindsey and Adams, who’ve taken on the revival of the Victory Grill as their
personal crusade. “Things move at a much different rate when you don’t have all
the money to throw into it,” says Lindsey. “But then, if there was a lot of
money, the whole process would change, the meaning would change.” In other
words, this labor of love and cultural preservation would become a commercial
venture, and that’s just not what it’s all about.
For his part, Adams became involved with the Victory Grill a long time ago. He
traveled with Holmes as a kid, cleaning up after the shows that Holmes was
promoting at the time. And he stuck with it, working at the club in this and
other capacities over the years, becoming intimately involved with the
day-to-day operations until he was in charge. In fact, he holds the deed and
technically owns the business. This intimacy through life experience is evident
in the meticulous attention he pays to the atmosphere of the room on any given
night. In preparation for the evening, he’ll patrol the floor, adjusting chairs
and moving tables a foot here, an inch there, tugging on the tablecloths,
adding the additional ashtray — all the unnoticed creature comforts that
create and hone the aesthetic.
The connection runs as deep for Lindsey, who’s been involved with the Victory
Grill from the beginning. “My father was an electrician, he did the wiring here
when they built the place, and he’d bring me along with him,” she recalls.
“This place has been in my neighborhood, in my life for as long as I can
remember. And now it’s back again stronger than ever!” Lindsey came back on
board two years ago for the club’s 50th anniversary celebration and has been
entrenched in its revitalization ever since. The road has been rough, the
opening of the doors at times tenuous, but survival is the key. The survival of
this venue is tied to the survival of East 11th Street and the surrounding
neighborhoods, which are vital factors in the survival of the cultural life of
East Austin. All of these things are considered as the Victory Grill continues
to take small steps toward full operation.
An important step in getting the Grill cooking again is obtaining designation
as a historical landmark. The designation wouldn’t be on the actual structure,
but rather on the cultural and historical significance of the physical space at
1104 E. 11th. In order to achieve this status, a clear tax record (there’s
approximately $3,000 outstanding) and four votes from the city council are all
that’s required. Were it to receive a seal in the national registry, the
building would be protected as a landmark. More than protection, though,
Lindsey feels the place needs the recognition and validation a historical
designation would provide, because that would define the club as a point of
interest, helping it gain the respect it deserves from the larger community and
providing a sense of permanence that would hopefully act as a catalyst for the
beginnings of appropriate area development.
With the past full of up–and-down times in unclear succession, a timeline of
the Victory Grill is spotty. As a fully functioning entity, the club lasted
into the late Sixties, by which time the Kovac room wasn’t being used
regularly. With the advent of electric, amplified rock & roll, attention
was displaced from the intimate performances of jazz and blues and the club was
unable to book or fill the room on a regular basis. The cleaners shut down and,
eventually, so did the cafe. Since then, the cafe has opened and closed and
opened again, as has the Kovac room. Special events like the 1987 Texas Blues
Reunion have momentarily shifted the spotlight back onto the Victory Grill, but
until 1995, momentary is all it was.
Now, with the cooperation of Lindsey and Adams, all that is set to change.
“It’s important for people to know that on any given night we will be open and
there will be something interesting going on here,” says Lindsey. So, even if
crowds are not consistent yet, programming and booking are. Tuesdays feature
mentor jam sessions, involving older, established musicians and younger,
unknown players and students working together to create an educational
collective of sorts centering around the development of a big band sound.
Wednesdays will continue to house Harold McMillan’s Voodoo Jazz Jam, featuring
different performers each week. So far, folks like Gregory Boyd, Paul
Klemperer, Rob Halverson, Matt Ridgeway, and other local players have shown
up.
Thursdays are currently home to different jazz combos or bands playing blues
or world music, and will remain flexible and rotational. Thus far, Thursday
nights have highlighted the Mexican and Venezuelan rhythms of Correo Aereo, the
wonderfully experimental meanderings of SXIP (of the Performance Art Church) in
his first entirely musical performance in years, the noodling of Tunji, and
some amazing jazz. The J.J. Johnson Trio, in what I hope is a foreshadowing of
regular appearances, played the second Thursday in December to a medium-sized
and very receptive crowd. In fact, one might say that the events leading up to
and during that show mirrored the struggle of the Victory Grill in its
re-opening.
Billed as J.J. Johnson with special guest Fred Jackson, a saxophonist from New
Orleans, the evening promised a small, solid lineup and some innovative
playing; with no chordal instrument in the band and an eager crowd at the
Victory, the potential for boundary-bending experimentation was at its peak.
But something happened: Jackson didn’t show. At first, Johnson and bassist
Edwin Livingston seemed concerned. That is until pianist Frederick Saunders
offered his services.
Despite the whole tone of the evening having changed and things getting off to
a somewhat rocky start, the music would eventually go through the roof. It was
after the break, especially, that something happened. The trio came back on
stage with a whole new dynamic, as if they’d been holding back just a bit, and
now they were ready to push onward. After a couple of Sanders’ and Livingston’s
compositions, onward turned into upward and the group caught the last rocket to
Planet Sun-Ra.
Livingston’s “Chi-town,” which should establish instant credibility for him as
a jazz composer, started off as more Rain Dogs era Tom Waits than
psychedelic jazz, but a seamless transition and surrender to the moment lit the
fuse. I swear they were possessed, Livingston’s haunted bowing of the bass and
Johnson’s unique syncopation in total harmony as Sanders floated and plinked
over them masterfully. Spaced-out, free-form jazz as I’ve never seen it in
Austin before. And the thing was, a sax in the mix would have been absolutely
beautiful, but the music and the life it took on would have been undoubtedly
and irreparably altered. As it was, the show was one of the more memorable to
pass through the jazz listings in a while, and an observer had to wonder how
much of that could be attributed to the room where it happened.
 Eva Lindsey and Johnny Holmes photograph by John Carrico |
upheaval of soon-to-be-operating. The rest of the 11th Street strip is all but
leveled. Mostly empty buildings or grown-over lots dominate the street, and the
old site of Charlie’s Playhouse is now a “revival tent” — “You know,” says
Lindsey, “Where they revive the drug addicts.”
And it’s undeniable that this element is present here. Car-chasing and
prostitution exist in the area, but the overwhelming perception of the streets
east of I-35 as some sort of post-apocalyptic battleground are so overblown
that it’s embarrassing. Really, there are fewer prostitutes here than any given
night on South Congress, and far fewer drug dealers than a visit to a few dance
clubs downtown would offer. Lindsey believes it will take a cooperative effort
to dispel the myth — both on the part of those who live nearby and must help
create a positive image of the area, and those who are merely visitors but have
been perpetuating a more dangerous image, which split the city in the first
place.
Programming the Victory Grill and bringing in quality talent on a regular
basis has also become a communal effort, headed on this end by the DiverseArts
production group. Harold McMillan’s organization has taken charge of
programming the club on weeknights, also filling in gaps on weekends when the
big shows they hope to grab don’t happen to be rolling through. “We’re trying
to challenge the notions of boundaries around here,” says McMillan. “When you
think of a compact city, the people who do the planning consider downtown
Austin as stopping at Lamar and at I-35. That’s insane.
“In New York, you would walk 10 blocks to see something, no problem. Here, you
could also have that kind of breadth, so why stop it? [East of the freeway] is
downtown, it’s central city. From 11th Street you have a clear view to the
Capitol — go up one more block and all of downtown is spread out before you.
If tourism is the deal, we need people to understand that they can feel
comfortable and safe walking downtown. Both sides.
“I have a strong personal interest in this place as a musician, as a concerned
citizen, as a member of the black community, it’s all linked to the cultural
life of East Austin.” McMillan hopes his East Side Circuit project will soon
serve all aspects of this concern, fostering collaborations between artists of
color and the more mainstream acts in a way that promotes cultural and economic
development on the Eastside and enriches the cultural life and economic
activity of the area.
Toward this end, there are no silent partners here. Lindsey and Adams are
there for nearly every show, greeting customers and talking to the musicians;
Madeline Sosin, who helps McMillan with the booking at DiverseArts, is often
behind the bar; even Mr. Johnny Holmes himself frequently stops in just to get
the feel of the place — just to be there. And that’s what the Victory Grill
has over any other venue in town, it feels good just to be there.
“Without exception,” says Lindsey, “the folks who come in here are just
shocked. They can’t believe they’ve never come in before. They can’t believe
the place isn’t packed. They just love it. That’s what makes it all worth it,
recognizing the feelings I have for this place in other peoples’ reactions.
That’s what makes me know that I’m not crazy for doing this.”
The room itself is spacious without being too big. There’s ample room for a
good-sized crowd, but no spot is too far away from the stage, which can hold a
good-sized band, seven pieces easy. There is also a dance floor, plenty of
table seating, and an elevated balcony stage right, lined with tables and
booths. Lit up glass bricks on the stage and the bar, wood paneling
authentically aged, original steel and formica tables, red tablecloths, the
lack of neon beer lights, the tiny little ventilation fan in the top grated
window, all of these micro-elements link to form the feeling that the Victory
Grill gives. It’s a serene pause in the otherwise frenetic space-time continuum
of frequenting clubs and shows.
Adams is greatly responsible for this, paying amazing attention to the minute
details of comfort. Table arrangements, light levels, where to lay the ash
trays — everything. But trying to explain the appeal of this room is like
trying to convey what was so special about Chicago’s Wise Fools blues bar, or
the necessity of a weekly meal at Juan in a Million, or why Billie Holiday can
alternately make you love the world or want to open a vein and end it all. In
the vaguest of terms, all of these things exude a certain sense that they are
exactly what they should be at that specific moment in time. In the most
specific sense, it just feels right.
 cover photograph by John Carrico |
equation together,” says Adams. “I want to bring together the young and the
established so that they can collaborate on the level of mentoring as well as
just creating music. We can all learn from one another, and I think that
bringing the artists together will bring the audience together by family
connections and friends and word of mouth and the development of a sound. There
is interest there, I know there is.”
And this idea, like all the ideas being tossed around at the Victory Grill, is
more than just talk. In the future, Tuesday nights will be dedicated to this
purpose through the aforementioned mentor jams. “It’s such a wonderful thing to
bring these people together,” says Lindsey. “It goes right along with the
philosophy that we’re operating under here at the Victory Grill. We want to
bring things together, erase boundaries and preconceptions and
misunderstandings.”
In an unlikely move, Lindsey and Adams have decided that New Year’s Eve will
be a night off. They’re not programming any shows, nor are they accepting
private parties, though requests have been numerous. This has left a whole
bunch of people disappointed, but that doesn’t change anything. “I spend New
Year’s with my family every year,” explains Lindsey. “It’ll be time for a day
off, and if there’s gonna be a private party, I’m here, you know? And I don’t
want to be here until all hours of the morning watching and cleaning up after
people because on New Year’s Day my granddaughter is turning six and she wants
her party to be here. That’s another little bit of feedback that makes this
seem right. She’s had her last couple parties at the Chuck E. Cheese, and this
year she said she wants cheese pizza, a movie, dancing, and a microphone, all
at the Victory Grill. I mean, she picked this place over Chuck E. Cheese! I
know I’ve arrived.”
This article appears in January 3 • 1997 and January 3 • 1997 (Cover).