Austin, Texas - not just a city of music

By GRAHAM REID

Few cities live up to the claims they make for themselves. If you are a tourist in Auckland, or a resident without access to a boat, just what does "City of Sails" mean to you? Austin in Texas claims to be "the live music capital of America" - but you can believe it.

It's not just that 6th St bars and restaurants throb with Texas blues and rock every night of the week. And it isn't that famous clubs such as Stubbs or Threadgills built their reputations on legendary live bands - although these days both make their money from the vast, overpriced restaurants attached.

And it isn't that the city comes alive during the South By South West and Austin City Limits festivals, when thousands of musicians - Kiwi rock bands now among them - for the former descend on the city.

It's all this and more. There is live music in small bars and clubs on the outer rim of the city as well. At any time.

On my first stay in this city of margaritas and music, I caught Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore on consecutive nights. That might not mean much to you, but if you have any interest in the hard-edged, country-folk poetry of west Texas then these guys are legends.

A fortnight ago I was back and on the first night went to the Continental Club, the bar where Lyle Lovett was discovered. It was Monday and I caught Dale Watson, a honk-tonk guitar-twanging truckstop rocker who pulled a room full of drinkers and dancers. It cost $5. Beers were $1.50, if I recall. It was Dale's regular gig.

Two nights later I was back there for James McMurtry whose misanthropic hard-hewn imagery has always appealed to me. He and his band the Heartless Bastards were terrific (better than their current live CD) and the opening act, Jon Dee Graham, formerly of the legendary Austin post-punk rockers the Skunks, was also exceptional. That cost $7 and it was McMurtry's regular Wednesday gig for a month or so.

A couple of nights after that I was at Threadgills for Jimmie Le Fave and his band. A hefty $12. And there was more.

Yes, Austin is the undisputed capital of live music, and you'll get agreement on that from people who have checked out New Orleans and New York.

But there is more to this city, with its strong Mexican flavour and a cowboy heart. It can be sophisticated if you dress up and have cocktails at the elegant, historic Driskill Hotel with its western art and muted lighting, or downhome, if you take beers to the park and watch bats fly from under Congress St bridge just after sunset.

One of Austin's most interesting attractions is unexpected and seldom gets mentioned: the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum on the east side of the sprawling university grounds.

Johnson never expected to be the 36th President but the assassination of John F. Kennedy in late 1963 threw the tall Texan Vice-President into the role. For the anti-Vietnam War generation he was the one who presided over the military build-up and the target of the street chant, "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids you killed today?"

The huge museum and library - which looks like an outsized mausoleum - allows for all of that in its extensive display of the man's life and the history of the nation during that period of social upheaval. But it also offers much more, a subtle shift of emphasis.

Anyone who has been to the Kennedy retrospective in the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas - from where Lee Harvey Oswald is alleged to have fired on the Kennedy motorcade - comes away with the impression that the brief Kennedy era was one of ringing rhetoric, photo opportunities and of promises but little political pragmatism.

Kennedy spoke of a new generation, of a presidency born of the 20th century. Yet LBJ was a product of the 20th century also, albeit of another kind. "Born in a log cabin" seems a cliche and from another era, but in LBJ's case it was true - on both counts.

LBJ was born in a plain wooden cabin on the Pernaldes River in 1908 and after schooling briefly became a schoolteacher in Cotulla, Texas, where he taught poor Mexican children. It was a period which shaped him, as he acknowledged in 1965 when, as President, he spoke before Congress.

"I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country.

"But now I do have the chance - and I'll let you in on a secret. I mean to use it."

Johnson was an astute, pragmatic and often tough-talking Texan. He was conniving and manipulative, often rude and sometimes patrician. But the man got things done. Legislation which had faltered under Kennedy was kicked to life by Johnson.

He cajoled, deal-brokered and persuaded through an enormous amount of social legislation, and did it with urgency and energy. He declared war on poverty, advanced civil rights legislation, believed in affirmative action and spoke out against the breakdown of black families. His Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the door for black America into the political process.

He wanted things done, and he expected them done right away. It was as if he knew he was on limited time.

And he was. In a word, Vietnam. When Bill Clinton visited the library during his 1992 presidential campaign he never mentioned Johnson's name and today few Democrats talk of LBJ, one of the most progressive and proactive of their Presidents of last century.

That's because his name is forever linked with the disaster that was Vietnam, and Democrats - particularly now - don't want to be associated with any kind of war, least of all one of their own making. And a defeat.

Yes, LBJ expanded the parameters of the war. However, when he saw what it was doing to his country, and in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, he declined to stand for a second term. It was a rare political move but as his museum shows, he was a rare man.

He was often crude, prone to blunt humour and plain speaking. There is a life-size animatronic replica of the tall Texan telling jokes in his slow drawl. They are clean jokes, but his often weren't. "Get them by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow," was one of his more memorable aphorisms.

The museum is also politically sanitised as might be expected. The questionable circumstances surrounding his first election to public office are not mentioned.

But it is still one helluva museum. There is a very cool presidential limo for a start. And some moon rock, television footage of civil rights movement protests, and impressive (or bizarre) gifts from world leaders and slightly demented civilians.

Lady Bird, his wife, gets her due for her contribution (education, highway beautification), upstairs there is a replica of the Oval Office for that photo-op, and the gift shop sells the George W. Bush Family cut out and dress-up paper dolls. (See George in his undies!)

The walk through LBJ's life also comes with a great soundtrack from the Texas country music of the early 20th century through to the counter-culture psychedelic rock of the late 60s.

So if you are in Austin for the live music - as most people are - check out the LBJ Museum and Library. It's a journey through a significant part of the 20th century and by the end that "Hey hey, LBJ" chant will seem more than slightly shameful.

And, hey, take some Democrats with you. They might learn from the trip, too.

* Graham Reid is a Herald journalist on holiday in the United States. He is travelling courtesy of BMW.