Eastside Kings: three decades of Black music in Austin

Austin's Eastside Kings Festival has just wrapped another year, and it's worth knowing what it actually stands for, because it's more than just a weekend of music. The 14th edition took place on October 17 and 18 along East 12th Street in the Rosewood area of historic East Austin, with more than a dozen bands playing each day across several neighborhood venues, all within walking distance of the East 12th and Chicon intersection. A Saturday night jam session at The King Bee rounded it out.

The festival is the public face of the Eastside Kings Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the African American blues, jazz, and gospel heritage of Austin — a cultural pillar that has held on through decades of gentrification. It pays tribute to figures like T.D. Bell and Henry L. "Blues Boy" Hubbard, who got their start at the legendary Victory Grill while stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base. Over the years, the stage has hosted names like Lavelle White, Blues Boy Willie, Jewel Brown, and Tomar and the FC's, and the circle has grown to bring in artists from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia.

None of this happened by accident. Bassist and producer Eddie Stout, a veteran of the Austin blues scene, founded the foundation in 1999 and launched Dialtone Records that same year to record Black blues artists who had often never set foot in a studio. The label's first release, the album Eastside Kings, featured musicians like Clarence Pierce, Willie Sampson, and Donald "Duck" Jennings. Stout, now 65, teamed up with Jason Moeller, a co-founder of the festival and former drummer for the Fabulous Thunderbirds, to turn that recording project into the event it is today. The festival itself didn't launch until 2013, and in 2018 the Austin Chronicle gave it the Best Cultural Preservation award.

The foundation does more than put on a festival. It works to get largely unknown African American musicians the exposure they deserve through grants, sponsorships, and international connections — in 2025, the organization brought roughly 20 people to Switzerland to perform. That work is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department and the JFNY Grant for Arts and Culture from The Japan Foundation, New York.

It's not all music, either. The weekend pulls in local vendors, a classic car show, and soul food, with the vendors on Saturday and the car show on Sunday free to the public. The 2025 wristbands ran $25 a day, with VIP badges at $100, and one attendee noted that attendance seemed to shrink a bit each year after the pandemic. Still, the festival keeps the focus where it started: on the musicians and the heritage that built the Eastside sound. If you missed this year, it's the kind of thing worth keeping on the radar for the next one.