Time for city to face the music panel

Originally published on November 19, 2008

Watching Paul Oveisi at the recent Fun Fun Fun festival kickoff party, it's easy to see why the 36-year-old Momo's owner and talent manager is in charge of the Austin Live Music Task Force.

With his easygoing manner, it's hard to see that running the task force - charged with figuring out how to integrate rapidly expanding Austin with its identity as the "Live Music Capital of the World" - has been an exhausting and stressful process for Oveisi. It has put him in the position of herding cats on a 15-person board with wildly diverse interests.

After months of debate and cajoling, amendment and agreement, the task force presents its final recommendations to the City Council on Thursday . No wonder Oveisi looks 40 pounds lighter than he did in April.

Oveisi, in leather jacket and baseball hat, moves through the crowd at Club De Ville and Mohawk, schmoozing without seeming disingenuous.

"I think Paul has done a fantastic job," James Moody, Mohawk owner, Transmission Entertainment partner and task force member, said in September, as the task force was firming up its suggestions. "He was the perfect choice for chair. He has done a great job as a mediator, he's bridged the gaps, he's been the therapist."

And there were all sorts of gaps. Task force member and planning commissioner Saundra Kirk advocated for a lower decibel threshold and was opposed to expanding the music districts. Venue owners such as Moody were worried about the expansion of condos downtown. Musicians were worried about making a living from club owners who were worried about keeping their doors open.

Live music in Austin means a lot of things to a lot of people: Blues on the Green, shows at Shady Grove, late nights at the Continental Club and Beerland, and the Austin City Limits Music Festival. The task force was designed to address all of them.

Mayor Will Wynn "appointed Paul as the chair not just because he was a member of the Austin Music Commission," said Wynn's chief of staff, Rich Bailey, referring to the permanent board of volunteers that advises the City Council on music development. "He was a venue owner with a good reputation in the music community, and he had a good broad level of experience on a lot of the issues that the task force has been looking at."

An Austin original

Oveisi was born and bred in Austin. "My dad taught economics and finance at UT and St. Edward's," he said. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Texas and went on to law school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

"That opened my eyes as to how special Austin was," Oveisi said. "I lived here pretty much my whole life, took all this for granted." He landed a job as a civil litigator after law school but quickly found that it was not for him. Oveisi purchased Momo's, an indoor and outdoor venue on top of Katz's delicatessen on West Sixth Street, in early 2001.

Bars didn't interest him, but he became fascinated with the live music business. "I found something I could be passionate about," Oveisi said.

Then the dark times hit. Oveisi bought the Metro on Sixth Street in 2002, which he renamed the Six of Clubs and booked for a few months before shuttering it the same year thanks to a defective sprinkler system and ancient plumbing that would have cost more than $40,000 to repair. Also that year, he bought Steamboat from Danny Crooks. "That place bled money," he said.

Steamboat closed in 2003, about the time Oveisi's marriage ended. He was never home. And for what? Clubs that he couldn't keep open?

"It's funny, when you hit rock bottom, it can become a big source of power," Oveisi said. "Momo's was next on the list, and I just swore if we were gonna go down, we were gonna go down swinging."

He cut staff, bartended and hoped it would get better.

It did. Talent buyer David Cotton took over booking. Oveisi was instrumental in getting a couple of acts who played regular gigs at Momo's to pool their talents into the Band of Heathens. He managed the band for a brief time. Most of the music at Momo's is pop/rock, singer-songwriter fare. Dan Dyer (Oveisi's client), Seth Walker and Warren Hood are frequent acts.