Though gaps persist in the record thus compiled, at this stage it does help verify certain patterns over time at the Armadillo World Headquarters. These patterns demonstrate much of the life and identity of the place as it fits into the larger narratives of Texas and American music of the 1970s. These patterns suggest a series of propositions, four of which the remainder of this article will briefly elucidate.

First, progressive country did indeed dominate performances at the Armadillo for a period of time in the early 1970s. Based on the calendar, the following graph charts the percentage of several genres' rates of performance on the Armadillo stage over the 1970s.

For example, if an audience member were to walk into the Armadillo World Headquarters on any given night in 1973, there was a 55% chance that he or she would find a country or country-identified act on stage. The preponderance of such acts from 1972 to 1974 would seem to be the most significant fact yielded from the graph, along with the corresponding decline of blues and rock during that period. This moment, then, marks the beginnings of the progressive country scene with which the Armadillo has been most closely identified.

A number of scene narratives date the origins of progressive country to a single performance-that of Willie Nelson at the Armadillo on August 12, 1972. After that night, supposedly, everything fell into place for a distinctive regional country scene to develop. The data substantiate this claim to an extent, as the number of country-identified artists at the Armadillo explodes in the fall of 1972. It should be noted, however, that Nelson's country performance, while an essential catalyst to the developing scene, was not unprecedented on the Armadillo stage. Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine, Freda and the Firedogs, Bill Neely, Kenneth Threadgill, and Earl Scruggs had all taken the Armadillo stage prior to Nelson's first appearance, although their repertoires tended to reflect more of a folk or singer-songwriter approach, rather than the "hard" country influences that Willie Nelson brought to the scene.

Armadillo audiences would likely have seen Guy Clark or Marcia Ball as youth culture peers, elevated by their artistry, no doubt, but peers nonetheless-and an Earl Scruggs or Bill Monroe represented a safe, distant, folk past in Appalachia. The modern honky-tonk sensibility that Nelson carried with him, on the other hand, evoked for many the decade's "silent majority," the contemporary white working class, a contingent of Austin portrayed as antagonistic to the university-based youth culture. At the same time, the slippage between folk and country labels for such individuals as Kenneth Threadgill or Jerry Jeff Walker is a reminder that the hybrid nature of progressive country drew on numerous generic conventions. It repackaged and redirected, but did not eclipse, the youth counterculture's enthusiasm for folk, rock, and the blues.