Walking to the newest Antone’s place on 5th Street between Trinity and San Jacinto, I felt to be an outsider. A carpetbagger only in the large, nasty isle of Manhattan to defraud another piece of Austin’s mystique. I had been a damn Yankee despite being here for a couple of years.
In a period when a lot of music venues – and the place’s musicians – are fighting, a nonprofit that is new says it needs to give a hand.
The Clifford Antone Foundation, named for the famous Austin blues nightclub operator who perished in 2006, has a twofold mission: Making sure that the city’s live music arena remains lively while also caring for the Austin place’s people of musicians that are aging.
Over time the site has encouraged many blues musicians that were recognized in addition to new and had garnered national and international interest along the way. The club helped the city of Austin maintain its charge as the “Live Music Capital of the Planet.” Antone’s has hosted an impressive variety of blues masters, including Muddy Waters, B. B. King, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Otis Rush, Albert King, Lou Ann Barton, Angela Strehli, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Doug Sahm and Stevie Ray Vaughan often performed at Antone’s.
“Folks are coming for Antone’s expertise, not merely to visit a particular artist,” Bridges shared. It enables one to do what Clifford did; that was current music not merely encourage it.” If you may get that momentum going.
That I couldn’t be excited about the official kick-off of the Clifford Antone Foundation and “The board said the president of the foundation’s board of directors and Clifford Antone’s sister, Susan Antone. “We all have an incredibly real and personal link to Clifford as well as our team can’t envision a much better method to symbolize him than by supporting the local community, especially youths as well as our seniors, and ensuring the Austin music scene proceeds to flourish for generations to come.”
Along with its primary mission, the foundation also plans several other music-centered tasks, like archiving and maintaining many different cultural and musical artifacts so future generations can enjoy them, in addition to mentoring and training underprivileged and at-risk youths considering music.
By 1987 Antone’s Records which recorded live shows and Antone had created studio sets. The club, as well as the record label, have made records of guitarist Eddie Taylor, James Cotton (whose album was nominated to get a Grammy Award), Mel Brown, and Memphis Slim. The label’s release of Doug Sahm’s Juke Box Music earned the award of the National Association of Independent Record Distributors and Manufacturers, an Indie. Antone was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Blues Foundation for his contributions.
“Clifford realized how significant it was to join the younger generations using their seniors and he used music to achieve that,” foundation board member Will Bridges said. “Enhancing music education for our youth, particularly the underprivileged, and honoring and caring for its particular abundant history and our city’s seniors. Focusing on both of these regions is critical to keeping our culture and we must act on it. You’ll find already attempts on the ground, but the primary aim of the Clifford Antone Foundation will be to raise consciousness and involvement so that we can drive more resources to all those attempts.”
The 300-person capacity room not only functions as an occasion site (they currently have a wedding booked), but nevertheless, it will likewise work as an overflow room for sold out shows. Can’t get right into a concert that is ticketed? You’ll be able to listen via two giant speakers, grab a drink and to go upstairs at no price.
The newest owners declared which they would be going to the two-story Maxey Glass Company building situated on East Fifth Street and only within several blocks of the nightclub’s first site. The newest place offered 5,800 square feet on each floor, and plans were made for the nightclub (with a capacity of 350 to 400), a gift shop, a green room for artists, office space, and retail space.
A preliminary round of grants will go to Home Chances for Entertainers and Musicians, Children in American Youthworks, a New Groove as well as the Pinetop Perkins Foundation.
By pooling our resources together and putting them to work in an active and very energetic manner, we can produce a long-term and noticeable impact in our community as well as on the trajectory of our city’s ethnic preservation,” Bridges said.