Texas Music Museum discusses proposal to expand its location

AUSTIN (KXAN) — From photos to rare recordings and videos, the Texas Music Museum has been archiving, preserving and highlighting the contributions of Texas musicians for 40 years now.

The Austin Chronicle once dubbed it the best roving museum for its exhibit at local museums and other venues. It does have a headquarters in east Austin, but the museum needs more room, and it’s hoping to have an even bigger presence in the area.

Jay Stanley with the Texas Music Museum spoke with KXAN on Thursday to go into more detail.

Read the interview below or watch the full interview in the video player above. Some responses have been edited for clarity.

Avery Travis: So, we know that you guys do a lot of different work. But give us an idea of the scope of what you have — the materials that you have and that you’ve really been collecting over the years.

Jay Stanley: The Texas Music Music Museum is this nonprofit where we’re trying to highlight all this Texas music history that people may not even know about. So we have things from Lydia Mendoza’s dress. Lydia Mendoza is a famous Mexican American folk singer, and then even Eva Garza — we’d like to think that they paved the way for other Tejano artists, like Selena. We have the famous Robert Shaw Barrelhouse piano inside the museum as well. We have Manuel Donley. I guess you can say he is someone who went on to evolve Conjunto music. We have his first guitar that his family donated to us. We have an Edison Amberola and Edison phonographs. A lot of people who are born after me and honestly, my generation, probably have never seen these things. So, really just try to create a space for this newer generation to see these things and the older generation to, you know, I guess remember what their grandparents maybe had in a house as they were growing up.

Mike Rush: Space really is (the issue) right now, because where you’re headquartered on East 11th, right, you have less than 2,000 square feet. You really need, kind of, six times that — somewhere around 13,000 — to put all these artifacts out there to be shown. But as luck would have it… right across the street is a proposed development. I don’t want to confuse the proposed development with what you guys already have going on. That could be a good opportunity for you guys.

Stanley: Right? It would be awesome. It will keep us right in the center of where we want to be in east Austin, because we have all these exhibits that specifically focused on African American musicians and Mexican American musicians. So it would really just tie in, not only into Texas music history, but Austin music history as a whole. And yeah, it would just be really beneficial and awesome and really paint the picture of what we’re trying to portray.

Rush: And give us an idea of what that is.

Stanley: It’s Blocks 16 and 18. Block 16 is right across the street from the museum. It’s an empty lot. And I noticed a lot of people use it, where they’re like trying to go to Franklin’s or just trying to park in the area, while block 18 is where Kenny Dorham’s Backyard is — a very iconic cultural space that a lot of musicians, such as myself go to and perform and get out, get our chops in essentially.

Travis: Advocates for you all spoke before the Austin City Council just last week. What were those conversations like? How did it go?

Stanley: I think it went pretty well. Myself and other Texas Music Museum members, such as Dr. Clay Shorkey and Sylvia Morales, went and spoke in favor of Blocks 16 and 18. We’ve also been working with a nonprofit called Austin Texas Musician and also the Austin Texas Music Commission who’ve been helping us to, I guess, essentially put together a proposal to you know, announce it to the city council. So, everything has been going pretty well. We’re still going at it. And I think it will be beneficial not only to us, but to Austin, Texas as a whole. And we will be successful, I believe.

Rush: Yeah, I hope so. So this, this was last week when you spoke before the council. And so this is going to be a long process because it’s a big development. Where do we stand now? What did they leave you with that day?

Stanley: Well, it’s really hard to say where we’re at right now. But all I can say is that we are moving forward and we are making progress. We’re just going to keep having meetings with the Austin Texas Music Commission and Austin Texas Musicians nonprofit who are helping us.

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