Live-music venues worth the trip in Austin, Texas

The purpose-built ~2,750-seat home of the Austin City Limits TV tapings, a downtown room with sound and sightlines to match.

A downtown barbecue joint whose Waller Creek amphitheater is one of Austin’s marquee outdoor rooms for major touring acts.

Austin’s home of the blues since 1975, the club where a young Stevie Ray Vaughan cut his teeth and Gary Clark Jr. came up on the stage.

A 1964 true Texas dance hall on South Lamar with a low ceiling and a wooden floor, long a stop for Willie Nelson and George Strait.

The long-running Austin punk-and-rock name, now a ~1,700-cap East Riverside room booking national touring bills.

A Red River club with a tiered outdoor stage and an indoor room, a dependable stop for touring indie and rock.

A tiny listening room on the UT campus running since 1979, where Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, and Lucinda Williams played early.

A 1955 South Congress institution, a low-slung roots-and-rock room that hosted a young Stevie Ray Vaughan and was later a regular room for Roky Erickson & the Explosives.

A south Austin roadhouse off the beaten path, running since 1981 with an unvarnished calendar of country, honky-tonk, and roots.

A South Lamar songwriter’s room since 1990, live music nightly and a long-standing home for Austin’s roots players.

An east-side honky-tonk with two-steppers on the floor and country, western swing, and rockabilly on the stage seven nights a week.