Unveiling -- Austin Music Hall

Music hall rising from rubble with more space, new sound

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, November 24, 2007

Mere days away from his rebuilt concert hall's opening to the public, Direct Events President Tim O'Connor walks around the Austin Music Hall, blue hard hat in place.

He points out where the stage is going, how the bathrooms are finished, how the permanent power is up and running for what will be the biggest, and perhaps swankiest, ballroom-style venue in Austin.

The new hall, at 208 Nueces St., gives the Live Music Capital scene the high-end concert venue it's been lacking. The original hall, which was torn down in May, was a 3,000-capacity room, but it had the charm, acoustics and air conditioning of an airplane hangar.

A revamped music hall, with a capacity of 4,400, couldn't come at a better time. Live music is moving away from multi-use arenas and stadiums and toward smaller, more intimate venues. Austin already has plenty of solid indoor and outdoor clubs in the 200-1,500 person range. O'Connor's own outdoor venue, the Backyard, can accommodate 5,000. A nicer, better-sounding music hall enables promoters to book Backyard-size shows during the winter, the better to compete with San Antonio venues and draw out-of-town fans. It also gives the city a showcase ballroom for national events such as South by Southwest.

In the future, competition will come from Stubb's, which owner C3 Presents plans to rebuild into a 3,000-outdoor-capacity and 1,500-indoor-capacity venue. A completion date for the downtown venue's remodel has not been announced.

Although the music hall is staging an opening party Monday, it still has to be finished before the big names can roll in.

"I don't blame people for thinking we wouldn't be done in time," O'Connor says, referring to the proposed completion date of this fall. "It's hard to tell from the outside."

Outside, off the third-floor roof deck, two construction workers are balancing a 65-foot-long steel girder on a couple of metal pylons. Dozens of workers move about the building, checking concrete, welding exterior steel, wiring fuse boxes.

O'Connor has been planning the overhaul since 2006.

"It sounds really corny, but for 36 years, the Austin music community has let me have the life and career that I wanted," O'Connor says. "I wanted to do this one last project and build something that would be around long after I'm gone."

The hall's coming-out party Monday will benefit the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians and the SIMS Foundation, the musician-oriented mental health organization. The event, featuring performances from Del Castillo, Bobbie Nelson and many more, is somewhere between a soft launch and a premiere for the much-anticipated building.

But O'Connor notes that a few small things won't quite be in place for the event. The second-floor bleachers will not be in. The brand-new sound system will need to be fine-tuned over time.

"All of the final details will be in by Dec. 8," O'Connor says, the date of KISS-FM's Bobby Bones anniversary show featuring national acts Sean Kingston and Good Charlotte.

In the cosmic cowboy days, O'Connor owned the Castle Creek Club and the Austin Opera House, the latter with Willie Nelson. He co-produced Willie's Fourth of July picnics and Farm Aid. As well as the music hall, his Direct Events company operates the Backyard, on Texas 71 west of Austin, its adjunct venue the Glenn and the downtown venue La Zona Rosa.

The original music hall, once a chili factory and a disco, opened in 1994 and hosted such acts as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton.

O'Connor initially thought two walls would remain from the original building, but he decided in May that the entire thing had to come down. He more than doubled the floor space by building out over the cliff on Shoal Creek, expanding the second-floor balcony and adding a third floor. Twelve massive pylons had to be sunk into the ground.

The rebooted music hall has also taken steps to mitigate the noise issues that will inevitably arrive with new downtown condos. The live music community recently panicked over a proposed lowering of the public noise levels from 85 decibels to 75 decibels, a 50 percent reduction in loudness.

"I'm not concerned about noise," O'Connor said matter-of-factly, noting the layers of concrete, metal and R-19 sound-dampening insulation that will be between the music and the outside. He also worked in the early stages of the project with Andrews Urban, the developer of the 360 Condominiums at West Third and Nueces streets, essentially next to the Music Hall. "We want to be good neighbors from a sound standpoint."

The old hall had significant sound bleed.

In March, South by Southwest clearly missed having the music hall around. SXSW often showcased the conference's biggest names in the old building. The Austin Music Awards, traditionally held at the hall, were in the convention center, as were many shows.

"We sure are planning on using it," SXSW Music Director Brent Grulke said. He also expects the music awards to move back there.

"It's not the size of the venue that's important to us as much as the flexibility it allows us, for lots and lots of reasons, not least of which is the level of professionalism that is available there," Grulke said. "Bigger acts feel really comfortable there."

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926