It wasn’t until the Dillo came along in the summer of 1970 that Austin could boast an alternative place large enough to bring in national touring acts and showcase promising local music. Tracy Nelson and Mother Earth opened the club in July, followed that fall by an eclectic mix, including Freddie King, Mance Lipscomb, ZZ Top, Lightnin’ Hopkins, the Incredible String Band, and Doug Kershaw. Local bands included Shiva’s Headband, Storm, Ramon Ramon & the Four Daddios, Hub City Movers, Wildfire, and T. Tellonious Troll.

Not much in this assemblage could be classified cowboy-western; that was yet to come. But the prevailing mood was indeed laid-back—at least in part because of a brutal summer that enforces a relaxed pace three-quarters of the year. Slowly but surely the first pioneers of Austin’s parallel universe settled in, working to “get back to their roots” (the last in the trilogy of ’60s banalities), whatever they may have been.

For some musicians, that meant reprising old Bob Wills standards, cryin’-in-the-beer stuff they’d been weaned on in Texas. People like the Vaughan brothers, Paul Ray, Angela Strehli, and Lou Ann Barton went with the blues, Eric Johnson explored the outer reaches of weird jazz with the Electromagnets, and Christopher Cross sang Beatles tunes. Different strokes.

These diverse tastes in music were mirrored at the Armadillo, as its steadily expanding staff plumbed individual depths—whether in music or in other creative endeavors. The club, originally conceived as an arts project, sought to embrace numerous flights of fancy. For one, the Dillo supported a Texas terminus on the San Francisco–Austin underground-art railway, which produced front-line alternative poster artists and cartoonists like Gilbert Shelton, Jack Jaxson, Jim Franklin, and Micael Priest. Photographers such as Burton Wilson and Coke Dilworth, among others, roamed the wings recording the proceedings for posterity. The Mad Dogs—writers Gary Cartwright, Bud Shrake, and friends—contributed money to keep the club afloat and an encouraging word.

In a 1971 Sports Illustrated article, Shrake wrote: “Exactly why armadillos are taking hold as a youth symbol is a matter for speculation. Armadillos are paranoid little beasts who prefer to mind their own businesses. They love to sleep all day, then roam and eat all night. They are gentle, keep their noses in the grass and share their homes with others. Perhaps most significant, they are weird-looking, unfairly maligned and often picked on, and have developed a hard shell and a distinctive aroma. They do far more good than harm, and yet the usual social reaction toward an armadillo is to attempt to destroy it.”

Over time, the Dillo developed as something of a cross between a family business (you couldn’t get a job there with a résumé) and the prototype Japanese model (which meant working long, hard hours of real labor, at low wages, for the principle of the thing). It was a grand experiment in harnessing hippie energy. And it was what they made it.

With limited resources in 1971, the Armadillo again ventured far and wide, bringing in acts like Ravi Shankar, the Velvet Underground, Taj Mahal, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Fats Domino, Leo Kottke, Captain Beefheart, John Sebastian, Leon Russell, Earl Scruggs, and Jerry Jeff Walker. But a definite country tinge could be heard coming from many of the popular Austin acts playing the club, bands like Greezy Wheels, Shiva’s Headband, Freda and the Firedogs, Balcones Fault, Tiger Balm, and Snaker and the Shakers. Maybe more swing, more kick, more pseudo-religioso jive—yet somehow country. And what Austin wanted to hear in 1971–72: a “progressive” country.

This home-grown music also profited from the influences of seminal Austin musicians like Steve Fromholz, Rusty Wier, Townes Van Zandt, Willis Alan Ramsey, Jimmy Buffett, and a steady influx of new names, which grew to include Jerry Jeff, Michael Murphey, Joe Ely, B. W. Stevenson, Asleep at the Wheel, and, of course, Nashville expatriate Willie Nelson: the “cosmic cowboys.” The weight of all that talent ultimately—inexorably—commanded attention nationwide.