The Live Music Capital

Austin trademarked the phrase "Live Music Capital of the World" in 1991 after someone counted more music venues per capita than anywhere else in the country, and the title stuck because the rooms behind it are real and still open. This loop threads the districts that earned it: a downtown blues club, the old entertainment strip on Sixth Street, a barbecue joint with an amphitheater out back, the theater that beams the longest-running music show on American television, a bronze Willie Nelson watching over it all, and two South Austin institutions where the music turns to two-steps and troubadour songs. It runs about ten miles across four neighborhoods — a driving survey of why a mid-size Texas city convinced the world it was the place to hear a band.