Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe (Galveston)

When the original Old Quarter in Houston closed in 1979 — the tiny room on Congress Street where Townes Van Zandt had made his live album — Rex Bell, who had co-founded it, relocated to Galveston and opened a continuation on 20th Street in the old downtown. He named it the Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe, an explicit act of continuity, and ran it on the same principles as the Houston original: acoustic music, small room, the music taken seriously as the main event rather than as accompaniment to drinking.

Townes Van Zandt played the Galveston Old Quarter in the years that followed, as did Guy Clark, Nanci Griffith, and the broader community of Texas songwriters who had made the Houston venue what it was. The Galveston room occupied a quieter position in the mythology than the Houston original — the live album had been made in Houston, the legend had formed in Houston — but it was the room where Rex Bell kept the spirit of the thing alive after the original address was gone. Bell died in 2009; the cafe has continued under subsequent ownership.

The Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe is still operating at 413 20th Street in Galveston, making it a rare thing: a small acoustic music room that has survived more than four decades of economic pressure, hurricane damage, and the general hostility of the music industry to venues that refuse to scale up or chase commercial bookings. The building is nondescript, the neighbourhood is a quiet stretch of Galveston's old downtown, and the room inside is exactly what it has always been.