Austin: Stubb’s Bar-B-Q

Before there was a stage on Red River Street, there was a pit master in Lubbock feeding musicians for free — the same spirit that lives on today at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in Austin.

Christopher B. “Stubb” Stubblefield, an Army mess sergeant turned barbecue cook, opened a small joint on East Broadway in Lubbock in 1968. It held maybe 75 people, but on any given night the crowd might include Joe Ely, Terry Allen, or a young Jesse Taylor trading licks in the corner, and Stubb’s Sunday jam sessions are remembered as drawing everyone from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Muddy Waters, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and B.B. King before the restaurant closed in the mid-1980s. Stubblefield moved to Austin, sold barbecue out of the blues club Antone’s, and eventually bottled his own sauce — the “Stubb’s Legendary” brand that would outlive him. He died in 1995, a year before a group of Austin partners opened the current Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in his honor.

From Watutsi to Waller Creek

The building at 801 Red River Street dates to the 1850s and has cycled through more identities than most city blocks: a residence, the nightclubs Watutsi and One Knite, a furniture warehouse, a bookstore, and finally, in 1996, Stubb’s. John Scott, Eddie Patterson, Scott Jensen, Charles Attal, and Jeff Waughtal opened the restaurant and an indoor stage the following year, then built the outdoor Waller Creek Amphitheater — now holding upward of 2,000 fans under the open sky. The Fugees played the debut show during SXSW 1996, and the amphitheater has since hosted Lady Gaga, Foo Fighters, Adele, Metallica, R.E.M., Blondie, and Weezer, along with an early, pre-fame Keith Urban gig. Ween recorded their 2000 live album here, and the long-running Sunday Gospel Brunch remains one of Austin’s beloved musical traditions.

Live Music Capital, Under New Ownership

Charles Attal went on to co-found C3 Presents — the promoter behind Austin City Limits Festival and Lollapalooza — and kept booking Stubb’s for the next quarter-century. Live Nation acquired a majority stake in C3 in 2014 and bought Stubb’s outright in 2022, folding it into the Red River Cultural District alongside neighbors like Mohawk and Empire Control Room. Like Gruene Hall in the Hill Country, Stubb’s carries a story that runs from barbecue smoke and jam sessions straight through to Texas’s modern touring-festival economy — a direct line from a mess sergeant’s grill to one of the city’s signature stages.

I’ve been here ♪