Austin: Broken Spoke

James White built the Broken Spoke the day he got his Army discharge — swung a hammer on the South Lamar property while still figuring out what kind of place he was making. What he ended up with, on November 10, 1964, was the last true Texas dance hall in Austin: a low-ceilinged, neon-lit honky-tonk where the chicken-fried steak is still legendary and the two-step has never gone out of style.

The name came from a western White liked, Broken Arrow starring James Stewart, mixed with an affection for old wagon wheels. Davy Crockett’s ghost haunts the place, according to White’s standard-issue legend: “Old Davy came through here on his way to fight at the Alamo and he liked what he saw. He said, ‘James, don’t change a thing ’til I get back.’ Well, poor ole Davy never made it back, so we ain’t changing nothin’.” White told that story for 57 years, right up until his death in January 2021, and it captures exactly what the Broken Spoke has always been — a place that refuses to become something else.

George Strait and the Ace in the Hole Band cut their teeth on this stage throughout the late 1970s and into 1981, playing the Spoke monthly for years before “Unwound” cracked the Billboard charts and everything changed. Willie Nelson was here first, booked by White for $800 a night starting in 1967, back when he was still clean-shaven and wearing a sport coat. Bob Wills brought the Texas Playboys through. Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Tex Ritter, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, and Garth Brooks all took turns under the low ceilings. Even Mick Jagger couldn’t resist — he dropped in during November 2021, the night before the Rolling Stones played the Circuit of the Americas, as if even a rock god needed to see where Texas music actually lives.

The “Tourist Trap Room” — White’s phrase, not a complaint — holds decades of memorabilia: hats, photos, and trinkets from everyone who passed through. George Strait liked the place so much he put the Spoke on the cover of his 2019 album Honky Tonk Time Machine. If you want to know how a Texas dance hall should look and feel, that album cover is your blueprint.

The building has outlasted everything South Austin has thrown at it: the disco era, the urban cowboy boom, the tech boom, and a real estate development called The 704 that rose on both sides of the property and turned the Spoke into a kind of wooden ark floating in a sea of condos. “The Broken Spoke occupies a place in our collective consciousness where ‘historic’ gave way to ‘mythic’ in real time,” said Hector Saldaña, music curator at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University. Texas finally made it official in April 2023 with a Historical Marker — though as White used to say, Davy Crockett told him not to change a thing, and that was all the designation he ever needed.

James White’s wife Annetta, their daughters Terri and Ginny, and son-in-law Michael Peacock run the Spoke today. Two-step and swing lessons still happen several nights a week. The chicken-fried steak is still on the menu. Cold beer, of course, is still cold.