Every Austin band from that era owes Danny a beer.
Steamboat wasn't a venue with him in it. It was Danny, with a venue around him.
Danny Crooks gave Vallejo their first Monday night, then their weekends, then the stage where a label found them. He did that for a whole generation of this town. Thirty years later, the brothers still pull him on stage.
Steamboat became family, thanks to Danny Crooks, who kept the place alive with soul and grit, sharing every dollar from the door with the bands.Danny: the sign misses you. Come see it. This one’s for you.
In Austin since 1970. Ran Steamboat through to its close in 1999. The Austin Chronicle called him infamously outspoken, which anyone who dealt with him will tell you was accurate and was also the point — a booker who says what he thinks is a booker whose yes means something. He wrote a memoir about it, Next To Famous, and a final Steamboat reunion was held at Threadgill’s in 2014, fifteen years after the club shut. Fifteen years is a long time for people to keep showing up for a room that no longer exists.
What he actually did
He paid bands from the door. Not a guarantee against a bar minimum, not a pay-to-play buy-in — a split of what came through the door, in a business where that has never been standard and is now close to extinct.
He ran a ladder, not a guest list. New bands got Mondays. Whether they moved up depended on whether people came back, which meant the calendar was decided by audiences rather than by who knew the booker.
He took the downside. A club that pays on the door in a week a band draws forty people is a club absorbing the cost of finding the next one. He did that for two decades.
He stayed. Austin since 1970, through every version of this city, including the ones that made running a music room on Sixth Street progressively harder.
Read the record
Common questions
Who is Danny Crooks?
The owner-operator of Steamboat, the Sixth Street club that ran from 1978 to 1999. He has been in Austin since 1970.
What was different about how he booked?
New bands started on Monday nights and moved up the week based on whether audiences came back, and the door money was split with the bands rather than kept against a bar minimum.
Did he write a book?
Yes — a memoir called Next To Famous.
Where is the Steamboat sign now?
Hanging lit in the record wall at 512 Studios, 2228 S Lamar Blvd.