Per Michael Corcoran, Longtime AAStatesmen Music Writer; History of the Continental Club 1955 - Present on SoCo
History of the Continental Club 1955-Present
All is right in Austin when Steve Wertheimer's club is pumpin'
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This is the latest in our series of 10 Austin music venues open at least 30 years.
In the 1930s it was home to Spears BBQ Kitchen, then became a washers-only Half Hour Laundry in 1947. The Continental Club opened there in 1955 as a swanky private club featuring lounge acts with Vegas dreams. It was later a topless bar and day drinkers dive. But the 1315 address of South Congress wouldn’t be a magic number until the ‘80s when it became a black box clubhouse for a new generation of local alternative guitar groups like True Believers, Zeitgeist, Wild Seeds, Doctors’ Mob, Dharma Bums, T.I. and Glass Eye, as well as van-touring bands like the Minutemen, Replacements, Sonic Youth, 10,000 Maniacs and so on.
This new Austin scene was born in ‘83 in a manger upstairs from a mechanic’s garage on Justin Lane called Sparky's. Open only a few months, with sporatic bookings, Lyle Zurik’s “club” hosted the future “New Sincerity” bands when that sounded like a new feminine hygiene product. “You brought in your own PA and set up in the corner and played,” is how Alejandro Escovedo described it. “They didn't really give out the address because there was something illegal about it. But it was a lot of fun and it generated great spirit amongst the bands.”
That BYOB club “sparked” a musical clique that became full-blown at the Continental in South Austin, and the Beach near campus the next year. But the scene was smoldering by 1987, when the Beach became the Crown and Anchor Pub, the True Believers broke up, and Zeitgeist had to change their name and for some reason chose the Reivers.
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The Continental Club closed its doors for good on August 29, 1987. It was replaced on New Year’s Eve, four months later, by the Continental Club, no relation. Ski Shores owner Steve Wertheimer bought the club from the Shuler family and recast it as a Fifties-style hamburger joint with red-and-black-tiles, and live music at night, like Hut’s. Was it a diner or a nightclub? It didn’t matter, people stayed away that soul-less first couple years until Junior Brown’s Sunday night residency christened it in roots/country/blues. The guit-steel maestro didn’t draw in the beginning, and Wertheimer had to pull money from the bar register to keep him coming back. But after word got out that the room was perfect for a guy who sang like Ernest Tubb and played guitar like Jimi Hendrix, the line outside the Continental on Sundays would go all the way up to St. Vincent DePaul. Then, Alejandro Escovedo provided an indelible link when he rocked delirious fans as he’d done with True Believers. Another great continuation were the LeRoi Brothers. Today, the Continental of Steve Wertheimer and his veteran staff has grown into an internationally-known roots-rock haven. It’s a rare and beautiful thing for a club to have two golden eras with different owners.
During the Pratz/Ward era, the Continental’s rival for rock dive supremacy was the Beach Cabaret in a former UtoteM store at 2911 San Jacinto St. In the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, it was folkie hangout You Scream Ice Cream (later Folkville Ice Cream), where Michelle-Shocked got her start as Michelle Johnston. If you lived north of the river, the Beach was your favorite club.
The Continental was a better live room, but what Chris Mossler’s club had was a great big patio, which was often a great escape from what the open booking policy dragged in. Many bands made their live debut at the Beach- sometimes three the same night! It was the Dog N’ Duck outside and Raul’s inside.
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When MTV’s Cutting Edge program came to town in ’85 to film Austin bands in action, they didn’t use the Beach, shooting most of the live stuff at Liberty Lunch and the South Bank (Mossler’s new club.) It may have looked too much like a hangout than a viable venue, but bands like Scratch Acid, Criminal Crew, Cargo Cult, Vertibeads and the Crybabies, who mixed it up on the calendar with all the bands who took up guitar after “Murmur,” loved playing the 125-capacity club because it was like rocking out in a living room jammed with friends. Sparky’s lives!
Every live music venue was hurt when the legal drinking age was raised to 21 in Sept. ’86, but the Beach didn’t wait for the inevitable. The dive where freshmen and sophomores learned about punk and art rock and Daniel Johnston, who got his first cheers of encouragement (and a few jeers, too), opening for Glass Eye, shuttered on the morning 21 and up went into effect.
The adopted son of infamous Houston socialite Candy Mossler (acquitted in the murder of her millionaire husband in the ‘60s), Chris Mossler died in a one-car accident in 1990, at age 37. He was a passenger in a 1985 BMW he’d just sold to the driver, who was going 70-80 MPH on that deadly stretch of North Lamar between MLK and 32nd when he lost control and crashed into a tree.
The Beach was open only three years, while the Continental- still going strong- has been a vital live music venue since 1979 when the owners of the shuttered One Knite took over the lease at 1315 S. Congress. “It was a neighborhood bar with a pool table and pinball machine,” recalled Roger “Oneknite” Collins, of the sad joint that opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 8 p.m. “Martin (Shuler), the owner, wasn't thrilled when he heard we wanted to put live music in. He was concerned about his vending machine money, so we had to guarantee in the lease he'd make a minimum amount from the pool table and pinball.” Summerdog was hired as bar manager and Wayne Nagel booked the talent.
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Stevie Ray Vaughan played every Wednesday, once sustaining a note so loudly it made a chunk fall from the ceiling. Perhaps less a testament to the powerful guitar than the building’s decrepit condition. (Gary Clark, before the “Jr.”, would also play every Wednesday in the early 2000s.)
Pratz, Ward and soundman Terry Pearson took over the bare bones club in 1983, kicking up the national bookings with Louis Meyers on the phone, while keeping the focus on local acts that could draw. The club struggled to break even.
We have celebrated significant Austin clubowners: Eddie Wilson of the Armadillo, Clifford of Antone’s, the Majewskis of Soap Creek, and so on. But they had only one club at a time. Like Charles Gildon (Charlie’s Playhouse, Ernie’s Chicken Shack), Pratz and Ward ran two of the all-time greatest live music venues in Austin history, simultaneously. It was an insane amount of work. But the psychic payoff was substantial.
When Liberty Lunch started getting more touring shows in the ‘80s, after the Armadillo was bulldozed, it made more sense for the Pratz pack to concentrate there and close the Continental, which had three times the rent and 1/3 the capacity. Still, it was crushing news.
On the last night here were three times more people outside the club than were able to fit inside, where it was brutally hot and gloriously sweaty. Sitting in little clumps on the sidewalk and standing in the street behind the stage, the throng drank 7-11 beer, smoked joints and reminisced about nights spent in that wooden box of glory.
That final lineup was advertised as Glass Eye, Wild Seeds and Zeitgeist (a month before the name-change to the Reivers). True Believers had another gig in town that night, but, thanks to the generosity of Zeitgeist, who were more of a Liberty Lunch band, they would play the very last set. The buzz went through the crowd as the Troobs turned up at the back door at 1 a.m. like gunslingers. With Brent Grulke (dressed in drag) at the sound board, the Escovedo Gang was so loud that folks in the street needed earplugs. It was great, but True Believers blew out Zeitgeist’s amps after about four songs. Lasting memory from loadout: John Croslin talking to TB bassist J.D. Foster about paying to repair the amps and Foster shrugging, “Hey, man, that’s rock and roll.”
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Let’s go back to February ‘55, when Austin businessmen Morin Scott and Dorsey Wier (Rusty’s father), who owned the Montague Club in Houston, plus muralist/designer Jacques de la Marre, opened the Continental Club as a “private” lounge so they could serve mixed drinks. The opening week featured the Four Guys vocal quartet from Houston, where they packed ‘em in at the Montague and Shamrock clubs, with future Hogan’s Heroes actor Larry Hovis just out of high school.
After nine months of operation, the Continental and another private saloon, Jesters Club at 3010 Guadalupe St., were challenged by the Texas Liquor Control Board on their loophole to sell mixed drinks (which wouldn’t be legal in Texas until 1971). The clubs were caught selling liquor to non-members. The result of that injunction was the Continental opening to the public in 1956, serving only beer and wine and setups to go with the jazz and the Geezinslaws, who made the club their homebase circa ‘61.
In the ‘60s, the Continental was a topless bar- the second in Austin after Frank Hoffman’s Mardi Gras Club (6208 N. Lamar). Hoffman took over the Continental in ’66 and was shut down a couple times for lewd behavior. The entertainment changed to go-go dancers in bikinis for the next few years.
Dorothy Armstrong bought the joint in 1972 and got a permit to sell liquor by the drink. Thus began the club’s barfly years.
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We can all marvel at what the Continental has become, especially with the Gallery listening room upstairs. Like Mark and J’Net before him, Steve is a special kind of club owner, who fosters a family atmosphere with his staff, which is why he keeps waitresses and bartenders for decades- and musical residencies as long. Toni Price isn’t there any more for Tuesday’s “Hippie Hour,” whose intermission turned the street behind the club into a Cheech and Chong scene for almost 25 years. But Jon Dee Graham, James McMurtry and the members of Heybale! were assured at least one payday a week for years.
The club’s wild card was recently-retired go-go dancing back bartender Clara Que Si, who rode the Continental back to ’66 when, moved by the music, she hopped onstage to do the Pony, the Watusi, the Swim, the Jerk and other old-floor moves she learned from watching Hullaballoo as a toddler in Mexico City. "Wow, you just made the groove blow up," Mario Matteoli of the Weary Boys said one night, speaking for just about everyone. Any band that felt upstaged by Clara didn't belong at the Continental.
The sacred building at 1315 S. Congress Avenue has got quite a history, and more is being made nightly. Fuck the scooters and the SoCo snooters: This is still Austin as long as the Continental Club is rocking.
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