A proud inhabitant of The Drag, the Hole in the Wall stands uniquely in its own right across from the University of Texas. With warm yellow paint and a lit-up, groovy sign, the Hole is hard to ignore. Its own siren songs sung by Austin’s very own musicians beckon people to come in and experience just what the bar is all about for themselves.
At any given time after 3 p.m., people young and old fill the bar stools and booths along the wall. Some proudly sport UT shirts, others are head to toe in business attire, and the rest in whatever the hell they want with a cold beverage in their hand.
“It’s definitely a spot that’s not within the norm,” Austin Leos, the general manager of the Hole in the Wall, said. “So I think people that are outside of the norm see it and it resonates with them.”
For Leos, offering a spot for anyone and everyone is what has given the Hole some of its best tales from the past.
“Mike McCoy, for example, [has] told me that he showed up on a Greyhound, walked past this place, and someone goes, ‘Hey, man, you look like you should be inside here,’” Leos recounted. “That’s what [happened] and that’s still what happens.”
A vast contrast to the multistory hotel to its left and the fellow bar and grill to its right, it’s hard to explain what the Hole in the Wall is on a deeper level because it is heavily dependent on whoever is describing it; what the Hole represents to one who frequented the bar in the 80s may be vastly different compared to a college student spending their Saturday nights there right now.
“You come here and you make your own story,” Leos said. “I mean, like, whatever it is.”
However, no matter who you ask, a sense of culture and community in even the smallest forms is present in all stories. For UT senior Rachel Green, a sense of community and the ability to connect with others is what music is all about.
“Coming here out of the pandemic… it was almost overwhelming emotionally, and I just needed to be next to someone,” Green said. “It obviously affected the live music community a lot. I feel like it allowed us to reprioritize a little bit.”
Music is a guiding light at the Hole, but more important than that is the actual people who send the buzzing electricity of emotion coursing through the bar. And COVID made that truth all the more obvious.
“It was loud and out of control when we got back… and it was the first moment we had been allowed to have music on the front stage post-COVID,” Leos recalled. “People were crying, people were moshing, they were dancing… It’s just the human condition, right?”
As an observer, it is easy to see that the bar is what it is because of each individual who steps inside: the community made up of bartenders, customers, musicians, and even pugs (it’s true that there was once a pug in the bar accompanied by its owner who was just as respected as a valued customer as their human counterpart). In Leos’ opinion, that’s the nature of being a community bar.
“Hole in the Wall is one of those places,” Leos said. “[It] has a unique identity that fits in multiple ways. It’s a local bar, you know, it’s a regular’s bar, it’s a music venue. It’s just kind of all things.”
A place where bands can “cut their teeth” and “learn their trade,” where former workers come back and recount their times there as if it was yesterday, and where “you can be whoever you want,” is how Leos described the local gem.
“We’re constantly working with groups and raising money, trying to be a home for wayward musicians or ideas or causes,” Will Tanner, operating partner of the Hole in the Wall, said. “This place has had its own personality since, you know, three years after I was born.”
With the recent $1.6 million grant gifted to the Hole in the Wall from the Iconic Venue Fund, the personality of the bar will be able to grow and prosper for another 20 years to come. Upon dodging the recent rent scare, Leos has hope that through the preservation of the Hole in the Wall, smaller venues will be offered support and viewed as valued contributors to the community and cultural landscape of not only Austin but the whole country.
“We’re not going to be the only venue… this year that’s going to be getting this, which is great,” Leos said. “[It] means we preserve at least three other venues in town. And then, really, now on a national level, that people look at this [and] realize how much that they get out of the live music experience.”
An avid fan of the music scene in Austin, Green hopes regulators will “put their money where their mouth is” and continue to support local, small music venues more, rather than solely focusing on major festivals in the city.
“I feel like places like Hole in the Wall… [they’re] the reason why we can say Austin is the live music capital of the world,” Green said. “Hole in the Wall is a really good place that really does put on display the diversity of bands and music in Austin.”
The recent gifting of the grant to Hole in the Wall is very important to Leos. A sign that, socially, we seek to preserve history, music, art, and culture; “a drop in the bucket to preserve something that’s what people want,” he said.
While going through the process to receive the Historic Venues grant, Tanner was reminded of the reality that what the Hole in the Wall promotes every day–music–is just as valid a mode of art like a sculpture or painting is.
“Really going through [the grant] process is when I realized we’re getting a grant like the Museum of Art,” Tanner said. “And what’s nice for me is we’re the first one, and they want to do it all over the city, and all over the country. And I’m really happy about that.”
At the Hole in the Wall, the power of music, human connection, and creating culture is continuously evident. As one who seeks out just what allows Austin to keep calling itself weird, Green said the live music scene in Austin is what the city is all about.
“I think live music and art more broadly gives us a way to express ourselves in a way that is more vulnerable than we would normally be comfortable with,” Green said. “And it makes you feel in a way more deeply than I think normally a lot of people are comfortable accessing.”
In a state that can feel “very reserved” for Green, being able to see live music in its truest forms–whether that be through dancing around on stage or talking about taboo things–can help people open up.
“Hole in the Wall specifically… I think it’s just important because it’s a place where you can meet and not necessarily spend a lot of money and experience art, which is something that I think is so important to do,” Green said.
For Tanner, a member of a band himself, and someone who could “drop a needle on a record by the time [he] was four or five,” the importance of the art of music in his life is a natural part of his being.
“For me, I think it’d be like asking how important your lungs are or something,” Tanner said. “It’s something that I’ve always had and always needed and always used.”
As new music arises over the course of the next generation and different tunes spill out of the bar’s speakers like beer flows out its tap, Tanner hopes the bar continues to be earnest and authentic–the guiding light for the bar.
“That’s all really I’m after,” Tanner said. “I just want to be able to pass this thing along to somebody else.”