Elgin honky-tonk is the creation of two Austin musicians

This occurrence has become a common one, as word travels fast in Elgin, population approximately 10,500. A honky-tonk opening on the square is the most exciting news of the year in a small Austin suburb that now calls a number of musicians home — Dawson and Mann included.

A few weeks ago, a woman was playing at the meadery next door to what will soon be Lightnin’ Bar, puzzled at the holdup. 

“Everyone’s talking about it, what’s going on?” she asked Dawson.

He was taken aback. He’d seen folks like the gentleman who hoped to pop in for a quick midday beer and heard vague rumblings from the community. But everyone? Where were they, then, he asked.

She just smiled. “They don’t have a place to go,” she said. 

Putting Down Roots

Dawson and Mann are two Austin lifers who in recent years were priced out of Austin and now call Elgin home.

Mann and his wife and (now) three children have resided in Elgin since early 2020. Dawson bolted Austin for Bastrop County in 2016. Both have worked mostly at jobs they already had in Austin since then: Dawson in landscape construction and Mann at various bars in town.

In February, Mann told me that he wanted to open a dive bar in Elgin, his way of putting down roots. Dawson went about 30 steps further: he decided that he’d like to be mayor of Elgin within the next decade. In essence, neither wanted to be commuters. They want to be stakeholders in Elgin.

What better way, they eventually figured, than to create a honky-tonk smack dab in the center of their town? It wouldn’t just be a place for their Austin buddies to schlep out to on weekends. Lightnin’ Bar would be a regular music venue for the people of Elgin: the rockers, the two-steppers, anyone who enjoys a cheap beer, and live sounds. The unifying theme isn’t genre based.

“We don’t want to alienate people in Elgin by booking bands that are going to make us appear to be outsiders,” Dawson says, “when we’re Texans. This is our culture, too.”

The long-haired, scruffy rockers — Dawson drummed with Roky Erickson, Mann is a guitarist for Cactus Lee, and both play in Blue Jean Queen — have met little resistance from the seemingly more conservative faction of the small Texas town. So far, they aren’t seen as interlopers, or hipster doofuses, but rather as the kind of folks that a sleepy Austin might have embraced so many years ago.

“I am shocked to say that we are not seen as the enemy,” Dawson says, draining his Lone Star Light. “They just get it — why we’re here and what we’re doing.”

Mainly, Elgin is synonymous with sausages, new developers, and, well, not much else. In fact, Dawson says that the fact that they are bearded beer drinkers looking to start a small business instead of members of a faceless corporation dropping cough drop-shaped condos into Elgin works to their advantage — at least in securing a lease.

Though downtown Elgin has its share of vacant storefronts, the duo had high standards for their yet-to-be-named space and clashing ideas of what it could be. Early on, they tossed around doing a combo general store/bar, but the perfect space they found fell through following a process in which interested parties presented their concepts to the city.

Told they were the front-runners to take over the historic downtown building, they lost out to a more established gallery in the end, despite overwhelming enthusiasm for their ideas.

“We were the new kids in town,” Dawson says. “And we were a little over-ambitious with our budget, I think.”

The city liked the concept — “except for one guy who fell asleep,” Dawson laughs — but felt the other business was more ready for primetime. So they regrouped and talked to a local man named Alan Tolbert who owns multiple downtown buildings. One day, while looking at a building on Main Street that didn’t quite fit the bill, they explained another concept they’d been cooking up: a mosaic of great Texas dance halls, taking the best from each one, from Gruene Hall to the White Horse, right in downtown Elgin.

“His eyes just lit up,” Dawson says. “He said, ‘Man, that’s what it used to be like down here. We need that. But this is the wrong building.’”

Dawson cut him off, realizing they were mind-melding.

“Old Southside [Market] building,” Dawson said. The building owner nodded. The historic building — an original location for perhaps the oldest barbecue restaurant in America — is long and thin, with a perfect stage area, a spot for pool tables, and a big backyard. Dawson and Mann could picture it all as they walked through the space. 

It was too expensive for them, but by this point, Tolbert was sold on an Elgin honky-tonk. He agreed to a 20% rent decrease and a three-month grace period on rent for improvements while they got the place ready.

Excited to execute their vision as they were, Mann and Dawson were about to get an education in what it means to open a small business in a small Texas town.

The Waiting Game

Despite the duo’s enthusiasm and expertise — Dawson is a construction whiz and Mann has managed and worked in bars most of his adult life — that grace period they were afforded came and went, as did Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, the days surrounding the three holidays all as potential opening dates for the business. 

Just before Thanksgiving, Dawson and Mann sip on cans of light beer and take drags of Camel cigarettes inside their unopened dream bar, lamenting the delays, still unaware that more are coming.

In the back, two pool tables rest empty beneath gorgeous vintage fixtures. A beat-up jukebox is lit up and ready to play garage rock. But up front, near the entrance, a vintage Budweiser blimp sits limply on a bench across from an empty stage. The long bar is dusty from nearby bathroom construction and aside from a couple loose beers in the fridge for personal consumption, there is no alcohol in this honky-tonk.

As much as the people of Elgin — and even individual stakeholders in city government — approve of and yearn for Lightnin’ Bar, bureaucratic red tape has left the business in a five-month holding pattern. Dawson chalks up the mounting delays in part to Elgin’s reliance on a third-party company, ATS Engineers, in handling inspections, and in the massive amounts of large commercial developments taking up that company’s time.

Every few weeks since Thanksgiving I reach out to Mann, and I always get the same answer. On New Year’s Eve, I wish him well and ask for an update. 

“We’re just waiting on this last inspection,” he says. “I feel like I’ve been saying ‘about two weeks’ for 4 months.”

As of the first week of January, they’re in the same spot. Lightnin’ Bar is simply waiting on an inspector to put his or her eyeballs on it and sign on the dotted line, with no clear date in sight. 

The frustration is palpable for the co-owners, who are paying rent on a business that cannot generate revenue despite mounting evidence that the townspeople want to open their wallets. Four months into Lightnin’ Bar’s permit dilemma, Dawson finally got someone on the phone who could review their file, someone who was asking about their new build. Dawson had to keep his cool while once again reminding them that they were occupying a building constructed in 1908.

“I feel like the city has got to get somebody on staff that’s dealing with downtown, small business,” Dawson says. “Because they’re pretty much sending the message to everyone [with this]: you can’t open a business here.”

Honky-Tonkin’

In the meantime, Dawson has been spending off hours from his landscape construction job at the bar, including late nights and weekends, building bathrooms, fixing plumbing, and installing fixtures. Mann, a father of three young children, is there helping with every free minute he has. As soon as they get the sign-off, they can start booking bands and bringing in liquor.

The idea is to start slowly, with bands on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and to open it up from there. Do Elgin folks want to two-step on Tuesdays? If it’s feasible, Lightnin’ Bar will be a full-time venue. 

Regardless of the holdups, Dawson and Mann are confident that as soon as they are given clearance, their honky-tonk will live up to all expectations put upon them by the townsfolk who eagerly await opening night. 

Dawson reiterates that as Elgin residents, they want an authentic experience for the community, and that this isn’t a bunch of Austin club owners pulling the strings.

“This is ours,” he says, taking a drag of his cigarette. “And this is yours, people who live here.”