by Allyson Lipkin

Owners Sue and Mike Donahoe are neat people. They own and operate Local Flavor Tapes and CDs, located at 305-B East 5th. Their business, which they've operated for four and a half years, is unique to Austin -- friendly and exciting in that grass roots kind of way. They stock local CDs and tapes from all over Texas, but the majority of their collection comes from Austinites.

"When we moved here we knew music was what we wanted to do. So we just started calling up bands in the Austin Musician's Register and kept getting them to bring stuff in. We opened up five South by Southwests ago. That's our anniversary. We started with six titles and now we stock 600 or 700 titles. We're not sure how many."

Are you a musician looking for good resources? Step into Sue's storefront and she'll talk you "blue" about the deep blues scene that is still a thriving Texas tradition. She'll tell you how to get yourself a write-up in one of the many magazines abroad covering Texas music. She herself writes for a few publications.

"I write for Real Blues magazine in Canada. It is published in Canada but known worldwide. All our friends in Europe and in Australia know the magazine. They accept news from people all over the world. I write a little piece of that. The Texas Blues News Report, and also The Musicians Trade Journal, who gave us this delightful award a couple of years ago. For three years I have been writing a column for them called "Sixth Street Buzz." It's a chatty, energetic report on the news of the scene, the newest releases, the artists that are touring. This year I have been asked to write for two magazines in Belgium. Back to the Roots magazine; it's a neat publication. It's focused on the deep blues scene. But two magazines in one country is a little unrealistic for me to be doing. So now I only write for Roots Town Music. It's a very quarterly publication that gets us phone calls and email constantly. They cover the broad spectrum of music. Tejano and Cajun and the singer-songwriter scene which Austin just simply must own. And country and rock. I focus on Austin music. We get to be a big part of introducing a lot of Austin music to the world and it's very exciting to us. Who doesn't want to be the first guy to show something great?"

Local Flavor is a resource, and one which should be taken advantage of. The CDs, tapes, 7-inches and t-shirts you bring in might be bought on consignment, but rest assured you'll get noticed -- and paid. Fastball's signed 7-inch is displayed with pride.

"That was from when they were Magneto USA. They came in and signed it because they knew we had kept it ever since they got signed. We had paid for that one and said please someday sign it for us. So they came back and gave us big hugs and informed us that we were the first record store in the world that ever actually mailed them a check. We are so proud of them."

I think that if you are a local musician and you have something out, you should peddle your way over to Local Flavor and put it there, because they also have valuable information for you to finger through -- information on music journals and magazines from abroad that eat up all that is Austin.

"Customers in Europe know that bands like Slashbelly and the Voodoo Hounds own the regular Wednesday night at Joe's Generic. Graham Cheplo, whose radio show in New Zealand is famous for bringing Austin music down under. Raymond Peters, whose radio show in Belgium reaches 200,000 listeners in Belgium, Holland and Germany, plays lots of Austin music. Eddie Russell, a DJ from Texas, broadcasts over public radio in Spain, and broadcasts shortwave all over the world. He plays a lot of different kinds of music, from everywhere, but is dedicated to helping independent Texas artists get their names known. He wrote us a letter about how excited he was about this scene, right now at this moment while new-ness is exploding -- when artists have quite waiting for a label to discover them and have pushed themselves out there. At the same time the archivists are digging up great stuff from all these previous years from the Texas music history and some of those things are getting released.

"It's the love of the fans for the music, and people all over the world know that Austin is a source for original music, for brand-new songs. It's very exciting for us to be in a position to have at our hands and in our heads, since we study this music, about 6,000 new songs that most of the rest of the world doesn't know," Sue states.

"I didn't know the Headhunters was an Austin band," I explained, "I saw that they had a huge write-up in the LA Weekly."

"That doesn't surprise me," Sue says, "They are about to release an album that is going to kick some serious rear end. They make a blues harmonica a lethal weapon. A real energetic jump-up-in-the-air kind of Big Foot Chester style of blues punk. In fact they have cuts on a new punk compilation, South Austin Kicks Ass. Brand-new Squat Thrust and Voltage. It's a brand new label. The leader of Jesus Christ Superfly Rick owns the label."

I ponder in amazement. So much music here that even if you go out every night and scan the papers every day you will only begin to feel the scope of it.

Sue explains, "Of course there is a great blues scene and a diverse blues scene and also a wonderful experimental and now new age and techno music that's making significant breakthroughs. I think we can be optimistic these days about all of our artists having more people looking at their work. There is not a hard-core blues fan in the world that doesn't know Austin as being a center for new-ness, and people know what's out there. But what's famous now wasn't fifteen years ago. You could go see it with eight people. What's really happening is that the rest of the industry is just starting to scratch their heads and go, 'You mean there is punk in Austin, too?' But the Artists themselves are most responsible for making breakthroughs. Happy Valley in the new age/techno genre. They have just sort of expanded. Now their product will be out in October. They are considering it world fusion music. They have gotten great reviews and great press in significant magazines that break through new new age artists. So again, the success of the independent artists is because of the independent artists constantly working that to push their name out there. Since more are doing that now the rest of the world is open to the variety that we have in Austin."

During the interview, the postman drops by. He's got this amazing thick drawl that I hadn't heard in a while. He tells Sue about a couple of girls that play "amazing cajun music, real good and talented." "Bring 'em down," Sue exclaims! "Tell them to drop by some music. Sue yells excitedly, "Yes, even the postman on this block brings new artists to the shop and gets us focused on them!"

He also brought a package that the Donahoes were eagerly awaiting.

"This is a new release scheduled out in October, says Sue. "A German band called Borrowed Tunes which features Whitey Ray Hewitt, one of Austin's first coffeehouse poets from back in 1961 at Austin's first coffeehouse, The Id. He was a sit-down songwriter and beatnik poet from the era. Whitey Ray does acoustic blues and acoustic country. Over the years he shared a stage with Townes Van Zandt and with Willie Nelson. In the 70s he locked into the cowboy outlaw thing with a full band. He pretty much stopped playing music for a couple of decades. He raised a family, then his daughter's family. Two years ago he started picking again, and we were really happy to see him alive, healthy, well, and still performing. We encouraged him to participate in the Acoustic Music Festival. He met Clause from Borrowed Tunes in that festival, and they had both been Townes Van Zandt's friends. Townes used to stay at Clause's house when he went to Germany, and they wanted to work together. They are doing each others' songs. Whitey Ray flew over to Germany and played with Clause at the Rattlesnake Cafe in Munich and it was broadcasted live over the radio." The CD delivered in the mail was appropriately entitled Local Flavor.

"One of the real joys of our shop is when we get tourists to come in. The tourists come to this city to enjoy it. We ask our customers if they are from out of town, we find out what music they like and steer them to that shelf. We go through the Chronicle or XL to tell them who is playing. When they go out at night they don't end up in a place they don't want to be. No matter what their taste is, you can find something that is just right."

I ask, "What are people looking for when they come to see Austin?"

"Some don't know anything about it but expect country and blues because that's what Austin City Limits is and what is known here. They are overwhelmed, thrilled. They say, 'wow, this is all Austin?' and we say yea, it's about a third. Their trip is much more fun, more broad. They quit bothering with "Pinch Me, I'm from Texas" refrigerator magnets and focus on something that is real, alive. People come to Austin all the time for Austin City Limits. That brings them here. Bonnie Raitt's not playing at a club on Sixth Street. They capture what is graduated. It is a graduation mark. There needs to be more because it doesn't capture nearly enough of the categories. The Texas Music Cafe in Waco is not a cafe. It is a live music show of Texas music. It competes rather directly with Austin City Limits. It is paid for by local hotels and motels in the Waco area. It brings tourists to Waco to hear live music. It's working. They have made it available to anyone for free to any PBS station in the US. It's now on 60 markets. They are paying for it with sponsorship, so it's free. All that PBS has to know is that it is out there. Karen Tyler's been on it, Flametrick Subs, Danny Santos, The Sandblasters, a diverse mix. AMN could do the same thing. Make that available for a little bit of money. You don't have to give it away. Austin City Limits is $100,000 a year for a PBS station. There is a lot of difference between $100,000 and zero. So a bit of revenue could come to the city."

Something about this interview made me happy. Probably the energy, vibe and knowledge contained in the small shop. I looked around and saw many of my friends' bands and lots of bands that I didn't know yet. I filtered through the 7-inches on the floor and my eyes lit. Cool, here's a Big Horny Hustler single!

"Those are numbered," Sue says. Mine was number 14. "I bet I nabbed the last one left in the whole damn city!!!"