Sagebrush has been a music venue, bar, and business for over 70 years. The building was first built in the 1940s as an army barracks. It later became “Gil’s Club” in 1955.
After Saturday night’s show at Bass Hall, Jason Isbell headed down to the much smaller, but very legendary Continental Club on South Congress in Austin to play a surprise sit-in set for folks lucky enough to experience it, sitting in with Joe Ely’s band The Booze Weasels.
There’s no more hypothesizing what Austin might look like if the music scene is bled out of its system. All you have to do is walk down 7th Street or Red River to see it. So will the solutions be small baby steps that look to support the dwindling artists and infrastructure that’s still left? Or will there be big proposals and bold plans that not only fix Austin music, but fix Austin in general?
Who knows what goes into deciding what bands and artists launch into the stratosphere. and which ones are destined to slag it out on a slow build spending umpteen hours in a smelly tour van. All I know is I’ve seen Mike and the Moonpies get name checked by Sturgill Simpson and open for the Turnpike Troubadours on numerous occasions, and never did their music strike me as second class.