World Premiere: Friday, March 12, Paramount Theatre
Even now, 10-20-50 (!) years off its peak, Austin is considered a blues town – across the country and around the globe. And we have Clifford Antone to thank for that. Thank you, Clifford. For importing your Port Arthur passion for music, planting it in the fallow Sixth Street soil of Seventies Austin, and helping turn a turnip into a beanstalk: Live Music Capital of the World. (Cue fanfare.) Down from which climbed the likes of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins. Jimmy Rogers, Hubert Sumlin, Pinetop Perkins. Eddie Taylor. Around these giants gathered the children – Jimmie Vaughan, Kim Wilson, Doyle Bramhall, Angela Strehli, Lou Ann Barton, Derek O’Brien. Stevie Vaughan. Who in turn seeded the next generation (Charlie Sexton, Toni Price, Sue Foley), sometimes literally (Doyle Bramhall II), with another on the way: Gary Clark Jr., Jake Andrews, Eve Monsees. Director Dan Karlok and executive producer Lucky Tomblin line them up, great and small, to pay tribute to the teddy bear who transplanted Austin’s once thriving Eastside blues scene into the back room of his initial local endeavor, a clothing store. Along the way, there are a number of poignant setups, including Antone revisiting all three of his namesake venue’s previous locations, and the club owner on the days immediately before and after his “going away,” 2000-2003. The pacing is unhurried, Karlok’s only real lapse occurring with the inexplicable absence of Antone’s partner in blues, sister Susan Antone. Otherwise, this thoroughly imprinting documentary should be screened at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. Antone’s: Home of the Blues is Texas State History.
Antone’s: Home of the Blues screens as part of the 24 Beats Per Second program at the Convention Center, March 19, 5:15pm.
This article appears in March 19 • 2004.
