06/01/2026
🎶 TEXAS BLUES REUNION! KEEP THE HISTORY ALIVE AT BLUE MONDAY TONIGHT! 🎶
🎸 Every Monday night at Kenny Dorham’s Backyard
⏰ Doors at 7:17PM | Show 7:45-8:15PM | Jam 8:15–10PM
📍1106 E 11th St | Austin, TX | 78702
Happy Black Music History Month!! Join us tonight at Blue Monday Blues Jam and help carry this tradition of Blues fellowship into the future of East Austin! To celebrate this month, we are sharing the documentary project, TEXAS BLUES REUNION, one of the few living records of East Austin’s African American cultural heritage.
A historic reunion concert was held on Juneteenth, 1987, at the Victory Grill on East 11th St. Some of the greates Blues musicians, including B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland, who had played there decades earlier gathered and shared their stories of the scene.
Event and video was conceived of and produced by Tary Owens. Scriptwriter and interviewer was Martha Hartzog. Paul Congo directed and edited the video production.
Blue Monday Blues Jam is how we honor the history, uplift the creative originators, and ensure the African American cultural memory of East Austin is carried onward with the next generation of creatives.
Harold McMillan brought this memory back to the forefront in a facebook post this past week and offered his insight...
“Believe or not, austin blues used to be Black. and it lived at the Victory Grill on E. 11th St....and at Sam’s Showcase, the IL Club, Charlies Playhouse, Ernie’s Chicken Shack and several other joints that were gentrified out of existence.
so, you say you’re part of the austin blues tradition and your knowledge only goes back to Clifford Antone (whom I loved as a person and for the work he did), you’re missing the point and you don’t really know where you are.
if Clifford were alive today, he would tell you where he found his early local blues players—before he brought folks from Oak Cliff, West Texas, Louisiana, and Chicago. and he could tell you this history his own self. educate yourself. know where TF you is at.”
- H
