“Sounds like Wonderland”
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We walk down the streets of NY, two Austin transplants uprooted from the floral hill country dirt and limestone into the concrete garden of streets and towers. We admire an abandoned fire department building, it smiles down with its stack of story-sustaining bricks and large glass windows. The design begs to become a playground, the fire pole a means of creative rush letting the relics of the spirit boil up to the mind's eye with excitement as an artist floats down to the first floor.
I share a dream with Brock as we slow our pace to gaze up at the old space our feet kiss the pavement as two old friends make their way through memories lived and imagined. Brock, a childhood best friend and football star of our youth, rose up to ivy ball at Columbia while I had pursued a roots and wings path with the anchor of a Bachelors of Science in business whilst measuring my life against the wings of the great unknown. I’d soar to new places within myself and beyond, exotic cultures and journeys down the aqueducts of our ancestral neural ways connecting with indigenous cultures around the universe. Whereas Brock furthered his ivy vine down to Wall Street where he turned his football in for stocks and figures. What we share is our roots, our Hill Country amiable nature that looks for the best in others and flips the script of conversations that point out the worst.
Like Earth and air, Brock and I come together in symbiosis, taking care of one another and giving form and purpose to the substance of each other's dreams co-conspiring with reality. The fire department is a shooting star across the sky of buildings, jumping out to me and coming alive as I see my vision for an electrified collective. It would become an artist studio, wellness center, cultural hearth, and urban garden cafe. I share this aloud, mixing revelries into the soundtrack of people on their way.
“Sounds like wonderland” Brock cooeed back to my bird song of a dream deferred perched on our conversation. I smile at him genuinely, “you’ve heard of it?”
He laughs, “No, it sounds like a pipedream, not gonna happen.”
“Wonderland”, that’s a great name for a calling such as this.
I’ve seen a dream like this come to life. I reminisce as we walk in pleasurable silence towards our Italian dinner reservation, easing my way from the city shore down the slipstreams of my imagination. Originally the venue at The 1411 Lavaca Stree twas a disco called Muthers my mom and her partner Doug Moyes made ends meet at. Both new to Austin, on the cusp of 20 years old working between University and thrills. Quickly Doug sailed his way up the promotional riviera till he rose from busboy to the manager. The dress code was cheeky neon hot pants for the ladies and an open wardrobe for the guys. It was 1972 and the fluidity of the ’60s was taking center stage amidst the night scene— a sexual renaissance and the disintegration of, the less progressive, 50’s cultural norms was nigh. With this came the freedom for gay couples to shine their way in public which did not sit well with the East Coast city ‘slimeball’ of an owner (as my mother fondly recalls) who was trying to imitate other discos in town. This political act sent an angry ripple amongst the nightlife crowd and a fatal decline in customers. With the beginning of a hopeful song playing in Doug’s heart, he saw potential against the odds and with a borrowed investment from a wealthy uncle bought out the bust disco and established a new era of music through the venue Castle Creek.
Castle Creek was inspired by the adventurous road my godfather Doug and mother took while living in Aspen. A relic of a way of living that made dreams a lifestyle by way of adventure, action, and joy. The method as Doug rejoices was, “to book bands I liked,” a simple recipe that fit the palettes of a generation looking for more soul and genuinity. The first to play the club was a mixing pot of evolution from Folk to Cosmic Cowboy to rhythm and blues aficionados from Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine, Jimmy Buffett, Willis Alan Ramsey, Willie Nelson, to Taj Mahal, Muddy Waters, Big Momma Thorton, and Little Feat. “We were one of the few lucky enough to be living our dreams,” Doug would smile to me.
The club became a safe haven for all corners of ingenuity and a wide breadth of ranking orders, from politicos, academics, cocktail waitresses, artists, singer songwriters, Hall of Famers, journalists, junkies, drug runners, and even little siblings. There was something in the springs bubbling up from the breath of time running through Austin that began to draw the life out of lost pockets of the U.S. and into the bloodline of this capital's rivers and music lanes. An equal playing field was planted at the club, full of expression, knit with the resemblance of a family, and an original seed in the garden of Austin’s heritage as the live music capital of the world. The business was a thread to my mother and Doug’s home, a farmhouse on the outskirts of town that kept the pulse of Austin’s joy alive after the 12 o’clock curfew struck the city’s bars. There was horseback riding through fields of gold, ancient arms of oak trees shepherding artists and ears to play together by the glow of a setting sun, and a safe place to rest your head and heart.
It was wonderland and a reminder that I too have a dream that is waiting for an opportunity for redemption. Maybe even a busted up fire department, abandoned with a hopeful spark on the streets of Brooklyn.
