After 13 years, Johnny LaTouf is closing the Skylark Lounge. The beloved music venue at 2039 Airport hosts its final shows this weekend; the lineup has yet to be announced.
When asked by the Chronicle why he was closing the blues club, known for hosting key artists like Soul Man Sam and the late Austin Music Hall of Famer Margaret Wright, LaTouf said, “It’s just time.” In addition to the universal challenges of running a music venue in Austin’s ever-changing, increasingly expensive landscape, he cited the death last year of his brother Terry – who helped LaTouf and his business partner/ex-wife Mary run the Skylark – as a major factor.
“We were really close, and he did a lot to help the bar go on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “And losing him has been very difficult.”
Unlike most fallen Austin music venues, LaTouf said he isn’t being shut down due to financial issues or skyrocketing rent. “I’ve got an amazing landlord,” he said. “Every music venue should have my landlord. He used to have the bar before me, [and he] really supported us. I think they might have gone up on the rent, in 13 years, one time. It just brings tears to my eyes because they were really, really supportive of trying to keep it in their own way.”
“He tried to convince me to stay,” he added. But for the 66-year-old, running a roots music hole-in-the-wall in a city overrun with tech and other competing interests has become too much.
“It takes a lot more than it really used to,” LaTouf said. “The customers are split between football and other sports and other things that are going on in the city and South By and those things… There’s a lot of those dollars going around, and so it becomes harder and harder for my bartenders to make the tips that they used to.”
It’s not lost on LaTouf that the Skylark Lounge – which was known as the Airport Bar and Grill before he and his wife took over – has become one of the last standing Eastside venues that primarily books Black artists. As a native Austinite and longtime entrepreneur, he grew up owning small businesses on East 11th and East 12th.
“My customers and my businesses there were the Black community on 12th Street,” he recalled. “And I knew a lot of those bar owners, Johnny Holmes and L.D. Davis. They’d come through my little convenience store that I had when I was 20 years old on 12th and Comal, and I got to know them, and I got to know their bars. And so when I got the chance to see this one, to keep it going, it was just to keep it going. I didn’t want it to die, because I had been ingrained in the culture for 20-something years.”
“It’s sad for the employees and sad for our musicians, especially our musicians of color. It was one of the places that they counted on to play,” LaTouf said. “And so it comes with a really, really heavy heart to even think about it. I’ve really had to almost force my hand to do this.”
“When you get to a point of closing your business, closing your music venue, you really want to look for things that are out of your control – to call it that – because who wants to walk away? It’s really hard,” LaTouf continued. “Honestly, I thought, ‘You know, I kind of wish the landlord would go up on me,’ so I had a reason. Or, ‘I wish [there was] something outside of my control.’”
The co-owner said a Skylark Lounge employee attempted to buy the venue, but the deal didn’t come to fruition. “A few well known restaurateurs” looked into it as well, but nothing has worked out. There’s still a chance he’ll sell the venue, but “I’ve had a tendency with all the businesses I’ve owned in Austin to just run them all the way to the end, keep them for a long time, and then say I’m done,” he said.
Until then, LaTouf plans to use his final weekend open as a chance to say goodbye to his musical community.
“There’s a relationship here with the people who supported us,” he said. “There’s a relationship with the city, there’s a relationship with the musicians. There’s a relationship with the employees. And just locking the door and having some announcement you’re done – I need to have closure with everyone.”
This article appears in April 25 • 2025.
