Armadillo World Headquarters co-founders Jim Franklin (the club’s artistic director and frequent master of ceremonies), attorney Mike Tolleson, and Eddie Wilson discuss the legendary Austin, Texas, venue during this 2018 panel discussion at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, held during the opening weekend of the exhibition “Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s.”

Also joining the panel is Gary P. Nunn, whose signature song “London Homesick Blues” salutes the venue and contains the lyric, “I wanna go home with the Armadillo / Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene.” The refrain was adopted as the musical theme for television series “Austin City Limits.” Longtime Texas music journalist Joe Nick Patoski—author of “Willie Nelson: An Epic Life” and writer and director of a documentary film about Doug Sahm—moderates.

The Armadillo hosted thousands of performances in the 1970s as the primary venue on the city’s booming music scene, providing a place where hippies and “rednecks” could come together to listen to artists such as Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, bluesman Freddie King, and roots and country favorites Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen. The panelists dig into the venue’s colorful history, and its enduring impact in Austin and well beyond.

Presented in support of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s major exhibition “Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s” (May 25, 2018, through June 5, 2022).

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