The story of the Armadillo World Headquarters is rooted in Austin's long and vibrant live music traditions. Historically, Austin's neighborhoods south of the Colorado River housed working-class Anglos and Mexican Americans, along with the businesses they owned and frequented. In 1970, Eddie Wilson, manager for local group Shiva's Headband, located an abandoned armory-shaped structure amidst an auto repo lot, a cafeteria, and a roller rink near the intersection of Barton Springs Road and South First Street just south of the river. Wilson, who had been looking for a new performance space for Shiva's Headband and other groups, decided to lease the building. He and a group of collaborators soon christened their new venue the Armadillo World Headquarters. It would become the epicenter of Austin's bourgeoning music scene for most of the 1970s.

The physical structure of the Armadillo did not exactly prove ideal for the near-utopian imaginings it often housed. A large, open central space with inadequate roofing made, at least initially, for poor acoustics and precluded effective climate control. Though renovations would eventually correct many of these issues, public memory often continues to enshrine the place as it was in its threadbare beginnings. In addition to the large central performance space, a network of surrounding rooms constantly shifted in function to meet the needs of the Armadillo's ever-changing mission-offices, makeshift apartments, art galleries, recording studios, bakeries, and arcades came and went.

The venue's staff made the most of these accommodations, and a talented group of visual artists-Kerry Awn, Ken Featherston, Jim Franklin, Danny Garrett, Henry Gonzalez, Jack Jackson, Guy Juke, Bill Narum, Micael Priest, John Shelton, Sam Yeates, and others-created a vision of the Armadillo that transcended its humble physical existence. The kitchen was a constant in the Armadillo equation and, under the stewardship of Jan Beeman, it became well-known among national touring acts for its hearty meals and down-home hospitality.

Perhaps the most popular of the Armadillo's modifications was an outdoor beer garden that expanded the venue's capacity and gave it an outside stage. In all, the "Dillo," as it was often called, was an unwieldy, awkward, but charming beast that lived up to its namesake. It seemed an unlikely space from which to transform the cultural identity of the State Capital, but, through the labor and imagination of a spirited legion of participants from 1970 to 1980, that is precisely what happened.