Digging the Heat? Support our mission to keep Austin ~actually~ weird with the best of Austin-centric news and reflections. Get 20% off forever Here’s the thing. Talk about smoking dope in polite society and this is the image it conjures. Gilbert Shelton, 1971. What’s less discussed is the connection to our culture and the timeless appeal of pot. Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers have held their ground for a good half century because a lot of people like to get high and laugh a little. Shelton drew inspiration from the characters creating Austin’s cool in the smoke-filled 60s and 70s, when Keeping it Weird took root, when Oat Willie ran as a cartoon candidate for governor, and when The Rag broke down how to get down. Oat Willie, Gilbert Shelton. The Rag’s Peter W. Davis chops up the biz in 1974. With demand came supply. “For a minute there, some cats were flying right into Austin. A stretch of Loop 360 hadn’t been connected yet. So the planes would just dip and drop.”  Bruce Spelman’s the lead singer for funk band Extreme Heat. “We played a lot of sold out shows where there were only 10 people in the audience. Didn’t matter, every single night there needed to be something on the books. We even opened for Marshall Tucker.  We don’t have anything in common with Marshall Tucker. That’s what I told the booker. He said “of course you do, you both have flutes.”  Bands gigged constantly, genres overlapped and cash that needed to be cleaned flowed through clubs, restaurants, and real estate — every corner of our culture. Undercover Records, for example, was started by smuggler Sandy Stokes, who signed Extreme Heat and paid for studio time with stacks of bills pulled from a duffle bag. “Airplanes, boats, barges, we used it all.” H.R. “Sandy” Stokes, Texas Writers Association Book Festival, 2012. “We were selling a thousand pounds at a time and the revenue was incredible. We were banking it! At some point during the next few months I approached Rob and said ‘We have got to do something more responsible with this cash.” Sandy Stokes, Crazy , pp. 165-66. The “Rob” that Sandy writes about opened one of Austin’s iconic restaurants, here to this day. Sandy, however, ended up in prison. As did Greezy Wheels frontman Cleve Hattersley. He was on his way to play The Fillmore with thirty pounds of weed in his suitcase. The twine holding things together broke. That earned him a couple years in Huntsville. Greezy Wheels, often referred to as The Armadillo house band. Hattersley wasn’t the only local legend to take a detour. Roky Erickson was busted for a single joint. To avoid prison he pled guilty by reason of insanity and ended up in Rusk State Hospital. Clifford Antone was twice convicted in federal court of marijuana trafficking. Willie Nelson’s mugshot from a 1974 pot bust. To fully appreciate the whole scene, take a trip back with this rare concert film from Willie’s 1974 Fourth of July picnic . And yeah, even now, he’s still making the gatekeepers nervous… So here we are in 2024. Living in one of the 19 states where weed hasn’t been decriminalized, which has birthed a wackadoodle world filled with all sorts of oddball workarounds. In new Austin pot doesn’t even smell like pot. I remember sharing a joint with Louis Black, the SXSW and Austin Chronicle co-founder, noting that it came from Willie’s old school back-in-the-day dealer. To which Louis cackled and replied “Everybody who was dealing weed here in the 70s was Willie’s dealer.”   “I’ll be stoned one thousand years.” Willie Nelson, 2013, Texas Monthly . Willie Nelson’s statue in front of ACL was dedicated on 4/20 at 4:20. We celebrate these legends because of their music, their genius, their creative contributions to Austin in all sorts of ways. It’s time to close the circle, make things whole. As The Rag wrote in ‘74, “Legalize, tax, and use the proceeds for good will.” Happy 420 y’all. Alan Berg, Publisher MAKING A STATEMENT IN LOCKHART Activists in Lockhart are working to decriminalize low-level marijuana use. They’ve posted petitions in local businesses, and they’re also dropping some pretty cool merch, designed by Maddy Bickerton in a collab called The Lockhart Freedom Act . Snag some merch at the Lockhart 4/20 Crawl this weekend. GO CELEBRATE WITH A LEGEND Eddie Wilson famously observed that Austin was built on “cheap beer, cheap rent and cheap pot.” He broke in managing Shiva’s Headband and started Armadillo World Headquarters at the tender age of 26. Following that, Wilson ran Threadgill’s until it closed during the pandemic. He’s a living link to what makes us cool, and Eddie’s celebrating his 80th birthday Sunday at Sagebrush . The event’s open to the public, it’ll be a good time. Eddie at the Armadillo….Threadgill’s…and earlier this year with Ray Benson and Gary P. Nunn. More 4/20 Happenings 420 Drag Brunch - A special Sensational Saturgay at Industry Eastside. Cumbiadélica Festival - Two stages. Cumbia music all day/night at Hotel Vegas. The Concourse Project is throwing an "Earth day & Night Weekender" to raise funds for Bye Bye Plastic and Djs for Climate Change. Check it out here If you know 4/20 better as Record Store Day , Antone’s, Breakaway, End of an Ear, Waterloo and Drinks Records have what you want. Go see something, tell us about it, we’ll share more stories next week. Let’s build something together. We’d be forever grateful for your help, and an easy way to do so is by subscribing to the Happy Heat Substack. What comes in goes right back out in artist commissions and live shows. To which you’ll get to come! For the first 100 subscribers, we are offering 20% off forever. Get 20% off forever