Texas Venue Directory
Giddy Ups
Honky-tonk and dance venue · Austin
Giddy Ups is an Austin honky-tonk brand preparing to reopen. KECB keeps this directory page for the official venue link but does not publish it as an active event-scanner location until reopening is confirmed.
About this room
The bar traces its lineage to Dotson's, which opened in 1934 out at the south end of what was then Manchaca Road, well beyond the edge of Austin. It took the Giddy Ups name in the early 1990s. Nancy Morgan bought it in 1998 and ran it for the next quarter century - a small red saloon with a fireplace, a tiny dance floor, WC Clark playing the blues on Tuesdays, karaoke on Sundays, shuffleboard tournaments and open mics. Morgan died in 2023. The following year the bar lost its month-to-month lease and closed on August 11, 2024, after two final days of live music. It has been without a building since. Three people from the old operation - Roy Antognini, Carissa Bunker and Anna Bosworth, who had been general manager - are reopening it on Old Manchaca Road with a larger building and an outdoor stage.
History sources checked August 29, 2026.
Things you may not know
- The lineage goes back to a bar called Dotson's in 1934; the Giddy Ups name only dates to the early 1990s. Source
- It called itself the Biggest Little Stage in South Austin, and described the room as South Austin's biggest little living room. Source
- A blues legend held down Tuesdays: WC Clark played there weekly. Source
- There was a mural nobody knew what to do with. As the closure approached, staff did not know whether Penny's mural could come with them; not everything was going to be able to make the move. Source
- The closure came from a month-to-month lease, not a sale or a failure - a landlord repurposing a property. Source
- The reopening is effectively a staff buyout: the new operators include the old general manager. Source
- The venue's own site carries a trademark warning, stating it is a proud independent Austin original with no affiliation to any other establishment and that its name, logo and brand are legally protected. Source
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