Texas Venue Directory
Little Longhorn Saloon
Honky-tonk and neighborhood dance venue · Austin
Austin honky-tonk with recurring live music, dancing, and community traditions.
About this room
The building on Burnet Road is over a century old and has been a restaurant, a gas station and a bar. Ginny Kalmbach started behind the bar there in the early 1980s and took over the place in the early 1990s, running it for the next two decades as a no-cover honky-tonk. Some time around 2000 the bar started a Sunday afternoon game in which a hen is released onto a numbered board and the square she soils wins the pot. Chicken Shit Bingo made the Little Longhorn internationally known. Kalmbach retired in November 2013 and sold to her longtime bartender Terry Gaona and Gaona's husband David; Kalmbach died in December 2020. The bar still runs the game every Sunday and books honky-tonk, rockabilly and country.
History sources checked August 29, 2026.
Things you may not know
- The prize math is the ticket math. Under Kalmbach the bar sold exactly 57 tickets per round at $2 each and the winner took $114, the entire pot to the dollar. Source
- The owner's verdict on the idea that made her famous: it was never going to last. Source
- It came from cow patty bingo, scaled down from a game seen in California - Bakersfield, in one account - where the animal in question was considerably larger. Source
- More than a dozen chickens have held the job, among them hens named Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and Patsy Cline, and a pair of Rhode Island Reds called Henny and Penny. Source
- The jukebox is a broken Wurlitzer, the house drink is a wine-a-rita, and the chicken coop sits in back under a Lone Star light of the kind that usually hangs over a pool table. Source
- The game split in two. After the sale a rival Chicken Shit Bingo started at C-Boy's Heart & Soul on South Congress, and for a while Austin had two competing versions on the same afternoon. Source
Venue details
Plan your night
Official sources
Dance lessons
This venue has a current or repeatedly documented lesson program in Dance Lessons in the Halls. Open the official lesson source there and confirm final details before traveling.
Around this room
Culture, craft & learning
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