The outrage from the music community was swift and intense, and the protest became a national story. I broke the story online in 2009 that UT was closing the Cactus, having received a call from Steve Chaney, whose daughter worked there. I’m sure Cactus regulars can identify with that mental belt-loosening.Ģ009 photo of Griff Luneburg and Butch Hancock by Jay Janner I lasted only three songs at the Backroom. At the end he went to the piano and played another brand new song, “Have a Little Faith In Me.” Think of how great that must’ve been and times five. Nobody yelled out requests for earlier MCA material, as we were all- “the Cactus 14”- blissfully along for the ride.
Also solo, he opened with “Memphis In the Meantime,” then followed with other brilliant songs we’d never heard before: “Thing Called Love,” “Tip of My Tongue,” “Stood Up,” all sung with incredible soul. I just wanted to hear “She Loves the Jerk” and head on over to the Backroom.īut Hiatt was so great I still remember what he was wearing (white dress shirt rolled up sleeves, with brown corduroy-looking pants). Glass Eye and Brent Grulke and all the other people who told you about music were always raving about Richard Thompson. Across town that night, the Backroom was packed for Richard Thompson’s solo show. This was right before Bring the Family would revive his career. Among the best I saw were Kasey Chambers, Todd Snider, Maura O’Connell, Gillian Welch and Lyle Lovett.īut the one Cactus night I remember most fondly was when I was among 14 people to see John Hiatt in the Spring of ‘87. Think of anybody who’s written a song in the past 30 years that gave you goosebumps- they almost all played the Cactus. As an emmajoe’s regular- and Alamo Lounge before that- Luneburg knew very well who were the best singer-songwriters in town.īuilt in 1933, the Chuck Wagon became the Cactus in 1977. folk club emmajoe’s just closed and the likes of Butch Hancock, Eliza Gilkyson, Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett and Townes Van Zandt were looking for a new home. He started booking the Cactus full-time in 1983, which was good timing because Guadalupe St. Then he was in charge of the Thursday night open mic. Perhaps 1979 is considered the birth year of the Cactus because that’s when student Griff Luneburg started working there, first as a bartender who taught himself how to run sound. The occasional music bookings in 1977 included jazz singer Natalie Zoe, folkies the Shucker Brothers and the Cabaret Revue of show tunes. 1978 “Is Rock Dead?” panel of famed music critic Lester Bangs, Sterling Morrison (ex-Velvet Underground), writer John Morthland and Alex Chilton, who played Raul’s the night before. In its first two years, the Cactus was used mainly for plays, dance recitals, meetings and symposiums, like the Nov. But student IDs continued to be required until 1973. Charges against almost all the “Chuck Wagon 21” were later dropped. Days earlier, the Texas Union board voted to restrict the Chuck Wagon to students, staff and faculty. “Pigs Keep Out” was spray-painted on the wall to no avail. 1969 riot, when police were called to remove longhaired townies. During Vietnam it drew radical hippies and runaways and was the site of a Nov. It was a campus restaurant that became more of a beatnik hangout in the early ‘60s- Janis Joplin sang there. But long before that, going back to 1933, the space was known as the Chuck Wagon. When the Texas Union reopened in 1977 after a two-year, $5.7 million renovation, it featured a new coffeehouse called the Cactus Café.
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