Learn more about the Daddy of the Texas Armadillo, Jim Franklin.

A crew of hippies, friends, kids, stage hands, artists, performers, setting up for a performance at The Armadillo World Headquarters. Working for beer and/or nachos.

This loaf of Whole Wheat bread weighs 2lbs. It’s made with organically grown stone ground wheat, water, raw honey, salt, soy oil, yeast — And baked by DAILY BREAD at Armadillo World Hdqs. 525 1/2 Barton Springs Rd. Austin, 78704

The Earl of Ruston was a short-lived and terribly panned Broadway play from 1971. The Country-Rock-Play found a few performances at the Armadillo, showing the wide range of performances held at the venue, switching from Psychedelic rock, to blues, to off-Broadway musicals, and more.

Fats Domino was a pioneer of Rock and Roll from New Orleans who helped give birth to what we now know as rhythm and blues. He was one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This performance at the Armadillo came the same year as his performance at Carnegie Hall, opening for Ike and Tina Turner. He lived in New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina tried to decimate the city. He died in 2017.

The Armadillo World Headquarters had a wide ranging style of booking bands to perform. They booked new bands like the Flying Burrito Brothers but also showcased blues players who were decades older than their audience like Robert Shaw and musicians who were traditionalists like Earl Scruggs. The club wanted to educate folks around town to the vast array of music that was just waiting to be discovered or discovered again.

The Armadillo World Headquarters had a wide ranging style of booking bands to perform. They booked new bands like the Flying Burrito Brothers but also showcased blues players who were decades older than their audience like Robert Shaw and musicians who were traditionalists like Earl Scruggs. The club wanted to educate folks around town to the vast array of music that was just waiting to be discovered or discovered again.

Freddie King, one of the Three “Kings” of Blues, revolutionized blues guitar in Texas, where he was from, and world-wide. He played alongside such artists as Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, and Grand Funk Railroad. Texas Governor Ann Richards ordered by proclamation that September 3 was Freddie King Day, and in 2012, King was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by ZZ Top.

Jim Franklin was more than just a talented poster artist. He often performed or emceed for the Armadillo wearing his own iconic, taxidermied armadillo as a hat, wearing outlandish costumes, and performing drums or other instruments he created himself. Franklin was a character that defined the Armadillo World Headquarters experience just as much as his poster art that illustrated the live music played there.

Oat Willie’s was the first major headshop in Austin. Their mascot, designed by UT students and underground comic legends, Gilbert Shelton, Tony Bell, and Joe Brown, became an icon of Austin’s counter culture and remains an icon for the franchise to this day. He even ran for Governor! Onward Thru the Fog!

This original design illustrates the process of print ads before computers. Each individual element of a poster was created with pencil, then pen and ink (you can see the eraser and white out marks!), pasted onto the poster, and then more elements added to flesh out details and imagery. From this a screen print was made, and exact copies in brilliant colors (or black and white) were able to be reproduced for distribution.

Copyright 1971 by Jim Franklin, and is published by the Texas transplants at the Rip Off Press, box 14158, San Francisco — Drawn mostly in Austin, Texas at the Armadillo World Headquarters, 525 Barton Springs Road, 78704… And the Old Vulcan Gas Co. over a period of three years. The zip code for Rip Off Press is 94184

Rip Off Press is an underground comics publisher in San Francisco founded by a number of Austin transplants including Gilbert Shelton, Jack “Jaxon” Jackson, and more. Rip Off Press was a base of exchange between Austin and San Francisco’s artist communities that led to influence from both cities on one another — evident in the visual identity of live music posters from the Psychedelic and 1960-1970s counter culture era.