Thirty years ago this month an Austin legend was born on the campus of the University of Texas. In the southwest corner of the Texas Union building, to be exact. Originally a nondescript coffeehouse, the venerable Cactus Café has, in three decades, become a legendary live music venue that offers a uniquely intimate setting for some of the best performances Austin has to offer. “It hasn’t really changed a bit,” says general manager and artistic director Griff Luneburg.
When Mandy Lauderdale extends an invitation to a show, you can trust you’ll get a little more than with most performers. In the grand cabaret tradition, Lauderdale's shows completely obliterate the fourth wall, incorporating audience members as cameos, costars, and accomplices in every number. When the lights go down and the show heats up, the entertainer is as likely to be found sitting on the lap of one of her spectators as she is tickling the nose of her keyboardist (with a feather boa, of course). Wherever she is, Mandy Lauderdale is certain to be reinvigorating the vamp persona with her singular take on cabaret.
Local non-profit brings music education to low-income schools. His heart pounding out of his chest, his breath heavy as the audience awaits those first few notes, José, a trumpet player, sits on the infamous stage at Stubb’s in front of a few hundred people. As he begins to play, his nerves subside. As he completes the last note of a stirring solo, the audience explodes into applause. And he hadn’t even graduated high school yet.
Guitar gods come in all shapes and sizes, just like the rest of us. Some go to great pains to dress and act the part. Some don’t. Redd Volkaert, who looks more like a salt-of-the-earth character in a shoot ‘em up western or the produce manager at Randall’s than one of Austin’s most gifted shredders, belongs to the latter category. But when he plugs in and begins to spray notes from the stage like he’s manning a Gatling gun, or takes it way down with the finesse that belies a man with fingers the size of Elgin sausages, you know you’re witnessing a player who belongs in Guitar Town’s top-tier—the elite of Austin’s vaunted guitar army.
The resurgence of the ‘60s psychedelic rock scene has been in full swing in Texas since the turn of the millennium. The phoenix perhaps rising for good with Roky Erickson’s return to public life in 2005 after his long battle with mental illness.
22 questions with Freddie Krc
Freddie"steady" Krc has been an Austin institution who has been one of our musical ambassadors over the past few decades ...
When Mandy Lauderdale extends an invitation to a show, you can trust you’ll get a little more than with most performers. In the grand cabaret tradition, Lauderdale's shows completely obliterate the fourth wall, incorporating audience members as cameos, costars, and accomplices in every number. When the lights go down and the show heats up, the entertainer is as likely to be found sitting on the lap of one of her spectators as she is tickling the nose of her keyboardist (with a feather boa, of course). Wherever she is, Mandy Lauderdale is certain to be reinvigorating the vamp persona with her singular take on cabaret. 
22 questions with Freddie Krc
Freddie"steady" Krc has been an Austin institution who has been one of our musical ambassadors over the past few decades ...