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Chronicled only in the clouded memories of those who stumbled through her smokefilled chambers, San Marcos, TX's 70's live music venue, The Too Bitter, barely survives as one of Central Texas' legendary live music venues gone by.
When I arrived at Southwest Texas State in 1976, The Too Bitter was already shakin' the rafters with live music about three to four nights a week. Remembering at that time, SWT was ranked (by Playboy magazine nonetheless) as the #2 party school in the nation (behind Pepperdine), two years running. There was a reputation there, a well-deserved reputation which the modern Texas State University is still trying to live down. The Bitter packed quite an entertainment punch for such a small market venue and hosted many famous and soon-to-be-famous bands, like it's neighbor to the north the Armadillo World Headquarters.
Not wanting The Bitter to forever remain unappreciated and undocumented, I went about searching out, in vain for some time, someone with some knowledge of the venue.
Enter Ira Kennedy, a Central Texas renaissance man of many talents, who emailed me with a great story about the birth of the Too Bitter and his part in it. It's a great read and documents well the interesting life and time s of a great music venue.
The story begins around September,1974. At the time I was a student at SWT living upstairs (far left) above what was a furniture store when a young man stopped me on my way to Fat Friars. He introduced himself as Jeff Henry (currently of Schlitterbaun) my new landlord. Jeff was fresh out of high school and informed me he was opening a place called the Too Bitter. The name is a play on the word two bits — 25 cents.
In high school Jeff had his own business owning and servicing games like foosball and pong. His plan was to fill the building with such machines, plus pool tables and the like. Jeff’s father owned Landa Resort in New Branunfels and gave him the choice of college or starting a business.
Jeff decided he wanted to go into business and his dad financed the start-up.
“We gotta talk,” I said and told Jeff he should rethink his plan.
“Listen,” I explained, “do you want to make quarters or dollars? The place is likely to fill up with young kids from the Gary Job Corps and high school students with change in their pockets and a host of problems.
Or, you could turn it into a club and restaurant and attract the college crowd with real money to spend.”
I went on to explain that the interior with its mezzanine could overlook the stage and given the size of the structure he could pack them in the place. As it turned out the legal capacity was over 640.
He wanted to know if I’d like a job. I asked for free rent and $100 week after taxes. That was pretty good pay at the time — at least for me — and Jeff agreed and I was hired as one of three managers, the other being a couple with the wife as personnel manager and the husband as construction manager.
Our first problem was getting an on-premises beer and wine license and for that we needed a zoning change. I had narrowly lost a city council election earlier that year and knew we didn’t have the votes on the council to approve the rezoning. After some deliberation I came up with a plan. Two of the recently elected councilmen were certain to vote against the change unless they were convinced to either abstain or vote for the proposition. One was an electrician and the other was in the refrigeration business. If they responded as I expected we would get the zoning change. What to do? Hire them. Needless to say the plan worked.
Meantime I was busy designing the interior beginning with the mural behind the stage with the motto: “Art is for Man’s Sake, Support the Arts for Your Sake”. Then the columns supporting the mezzanine and a freeze above the columns with a rose motif were designed. The front doors received a like treatment.
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 One of Ira's murals sometime after the close of The Too Bitter.
The bartop and tables were another spark of innovation. Jeff and the construction manager had harvested huge tree trunk stumps to support the tables. But the tops were another problem. I knew the city sanitation manager (Romero Lugo?) and he informed me that they were hauling away large quantities of wooden pallets to the dump. I asked if we could have them. He agreed with the stipulation that they had to be off the sidewalk within ten minutes. With my promise, they were delivered until I yelled Uncle.
The pallets were disassembled, sawed into strips and with the fresh side up were assembled into the bartop and table tops, then laminated. Before long the place was really looking great.
I hung several of my paintings from my New York days on the wall (you may not know, but back in 67-69 I had two one man shows in NYC and participated in a group show, The Art of Money, in the Chelsea Gallery with such notable artists as Andy Warhol and Larry Rivers). Several of my pieces were stolen out of the Too Bitter so I had to take them down.
Anyway, Jeff was anxious to open, but I wanted to complete the project with a mural on the exterior — I had designed a mural back in my NYC days in the theatre district on the Upper East Side that was 40’x60’. (It no longer exists.) Jeff, being the boss and all, had his way and we opened on on Thursday, October 24, 1974.
Invitations were sent out to hundreds of folks in town and on opening night when the doors opened the music from 2001 filled the room. Very dramatic.
place opening night invite scan here (front and back)
In the beginning we served lunch and everyone was so busy there was no time for work on the exterior. Before long, The Too Bitter was so successful that several problems began to worry me. One was the noise level. I couldn’t stand to be in the place for long so I stationed myself at the entrance checking ID cards to head off another of our major problems at the pass. Meantime, I was hearing complaints from the waitresses that the hanging lights above the tables were being turned off by the customers and it was difficult for the help to make change. I suggested cutting off the chains hanging from lights but Jeff insisted that the customer’s comfort came first.
place menu scan here (front and back)
The final straw came when Jeff held a staff meeting and said that three of us would have to compete for the honor of manager. The other two would have to go. I was relegated to working behind the bar. Needless to say I was none too happy with the situation. Apart from my instrumental efforts already mentioned, I designed the menu, flyers and ads for the place while attempting to insure we weren’t beyond capacity, and other tasks such as meeting with the Chief of Police to keep uniformed officers from their walk-throughs during the evening.
Within a few days I was pretty annoyed and Jeff walked past the bar, turned to me and said, “Smile”. Well that was the deal breaker. I walked around to the other side of the bar, ordered a pitcher of beer and sat down with friends. I quit.
Later, Jeff hired someone to paint a mural on the outside which I considered a disorganized mess with no relation to the interior. Jeff was a brilliant young businessman and a hard worker, but he simply didn’t understand the political and social implications of the image the Too Bitter projected from the outside.
Sometime after that Jeff leased the place and the new operator, Tony Bolieu (sp?) who hired me to design ads for the place. After a time I told Tony that he could publish a tabloid for less money than he was spending on advertising. To make a long story short, he hired me for $100 a week to edit the publication which I named “Rumors, Gossip, Lies and Dreams”. At the time I was working for Bob Barton as editor for TV Scene, a TV guide and entertainment publication. I couldn’t work for competing publications so I quit TV Scene. Eventually, I left Rumors to start my own business, Advertising Unlimited later incorporated as Advertising Diversified.
Ira Kennedy
© 2004
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Too Bitter Band List:
- Christopher Cross (almost a house band, like Too Smooth also became)
- Derringer (including namesake Rick Derringer)
- Marcia Ball
- Balcones Fault
- Beto y los Fairlanes - "Porque no, porque si, Porky Pig?"
- Blood, Sweat & Tears (with David Clayton Thomas)
- Joe King Carrasco
- Billy C. Farlow (from Commander Cody)
- Fever Tree
- Fools
- Steve Fromholtz
- Greezy Wheels
- Heyoka
- Hobson
- Cornell Hurd
- Eric Johnson (many times...a regular and guru for local guitar players)
- Gary Lewis & The Playboys
- Lickety Split (an all girl band)
- Augie Meyers
- Michael Murphy (before he added the "Martin" middle moniker)
- The Neville Brothers
- The Point
- The Police (yeah, as in Sting)
- Doug Sahm
- St. Elmo's Fire
- Southside Band
- Steppenwolf (a reincarnation, I think, with John Kay, as I recall)
- Angela Strehli
- Too Smooth
- Vince Vance & the Valiants
- Mitch Watkins
- Van Wilkes
- Wommack Brothers
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Thanks for the newest contributions from:
- Dawn Donaldson - a former SWT journalism major who worked for Ira Kennedy on Rumors and did a brief stint as a barmaid at the Too Bitter.
- Buddy Lerch - Another Too Bitter/Rumors employee under Tony Bolieu and Annette Raburn. Buddy worked for the Too Bitter/Rumors for a total of about a year, from about April '78 to about May '79, as he recalls, starting just before graduating from SWT. First as a flunky graphic artist doing ads and layout for Rumors, and then promoted to Art Director and got put on salary to make $114/week for his 80+ hours of hard labor, doing posters intermittently for the Too Bitter in his spare (HA!) time. Buddy quit and they put out one more issue. They always had problems getting paid by their client-advertisers, and therefore employees did, too.
"A financial backer came in my last few weeks (don't recall his name) promising more money for me, but by that time I was crispy burnt-out. I had already asked for and got denied more salary. I then went to work doing graphic art and day bartending for Ed "Bubba" Tarbutton at The Hungry Stick on the Square, a much more benign occupation. Same money, half the hours, and ALOT more fun. I also was a weekend driver/hand for Tom & Paula Goynes at their Pecan Park Goynes Canoe Livery. Then after nine months there at those two jobs, it was off to be an oilfield driver/equipment operator for Halliburton out of Luling, tripling my wages instantly, and then some. "
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