Hole in the Wall, Austin.

UT Austin's working country music dive.

Hole in the Wall opened in 1974 across Guadalupe Street from the University of Texas at Austin campus. Doug Cugini, a UT Austin English major and aspiring music promoter, took over a former hardware store and turned it into a country music dive. The bar's name was a deliberate joke about the building's narrow front and the modest ambition of the room. Doug ran the bar from 1974 until 1996. The current owner inherited the lease and the bar's twin music stages.

The room is a long rectangle: a front bar with a small stage at the back wall, a back room with a second slightly larger stage, a connecting hallway with the bathroom and the famous wall of paid-for jukebox slips. The two stages run independent music every night of the week. The front stage handles solo singer-songwriters and acoustic acts. The back stage handles full bands.

Why this matters. Hole in the Wall is the rare college-town dive that has hosted hundreds of important Texas country and folk acts before they were important. Townes Van Zandt played here. Lyle Lovett played here as a UT graduate student. Robert Earl Keen wrote half of his 1980s repertoire at the back stage.

The Townes Van Zandt jukebox slip wall.

The hallway between the two stages has a wall covered, ceiling to floor, with paid-for jukebox slips dating back to 1974. A jukebox slip is the small piece of paper a customer slips into the bar's jukebox to pay for a specific song. The bar has kept every paid slip since 1974 and pinned them to the hallway wall. The Townes Van Zandt slips outnumber any other artist's slips by a factor of three.

The wall is approximately ten feet long, six feet high, and contains roughly 18,000 slips. The Townes Van Zandt slips have been counted in three independent surveys at over 5,000. A specific slip from May 1979 paid for "Pancho and Lefty" eleven times in one night by a single regular. That slip is framed in the centre of the wall. The regular was Steve Earle, who was a UT Austin undergraduate at the time.

Lone Star pitcher and a Lone Star bottle.

• Lone Star pitcher: twelve dollars. The Texas pitcher of choice. Comes with three plastic cups stacked.
• Lone Star tallboy: four dollars. The single-serve option for a solo evening.
• Tito's Texas Vodka, soda: seven dollars. The bar pours Tito's because Tito's is from Austin.
• The Mexican Martini: nine dollars. The Austin tradition: tequila, triple sec, lime, Sprite, in a martini glass with a salted rim. Started at Hole in the Wall in 1989.
• The thing nobody knows: the bar will pour you a Pearl Beer at three dollars. Pearl is the cheap Texas lager that has been off most Austin tap lines for a decade. Hole in the Wall keeps a cooler running because the regulars want it.

Tuesday at 8pm. The country writers' night.

Hole in the Wall opens at noon and closes at 2am. Music starts on both stages every night at approximately 8:30pm and runs until close. Tuesday at 8pm is the country writers' night: the front stage hosts a rotating slot of three Texas singer-songwriters, the back stage hosts a country band, the bar is at 60% capacity, the booths are open, the jukebox slip wall is at its most legible.

The peak hour is Friday and Saturday between 10pm and 1am, when both stages are at capacity, the dance floor in the back room is busy, and the line for the bathroom is fifteen minutes long. Avoid Saturday before 10pm; the early hour gets the post-football game UT student crowd.

The Sunday afternoon at 3pm hour is the slowest scheduled time. The bar opens at noon for the Sunday brunch crowd. The 3pm to 5pm window has half-empty booths, no live music yet, and the jukebox handling solo Townes Van Zandt requests.

How the booking works, and why both stages run.

Hole in the Wall's two-stage configuration is unusual for a dive bar. The front stage seats approximately 80 people. The back stage seats approximately 150. The two stages have always run different acts on the same night, sometimes in entirely different genres, with the connecting hallway and the jukebox slip wall serving as the audience filter between them.

The booking is handled by a single in-house promoter who has held the role since 2008. Both stages run seven nights a week, fifty-two weeks a year, with a Christmas Eve break. The combined schedule books approximately 720 acts per year. Many of those acts are UT music students, neighbourhood Austin artists, and singer-songwriter regulars. The bar pays the acts a small guarantee plus a tip jar. The tip jar circulates between sets at both stages.

Twenty-five dollars per person, two pitchers night.

Plan for twenty to thirty-five dollars per person for a four-hour visit. Two Lone Star pitchers shared between two people at twelve, two Mexican Martinis at nine, twenty percent tip plus a five-dollar tip-jar contribution to one of the bands. A pair of friends drinks for fifty to seventy dollars total.

Cards are accepted. Cash is preferred for the tip jars. The bartender pool includes the door staff who manage the back room. Two dollars per drink in cash on the bar is the local norm.

The UT students, the Austin music regulars, the songwriter pilgrims.

Hole in the Wall draws three populations. The first: UT Austin students, particularly music school graduate students and the English department. The second: Austin music industry regulars, including session players, country songwriters between songwriting rounds, and a small contingent of Austin music journalists. The third: the songwriter pilgrim contingent, often visiting Texan country fans who have read about the Townes Van Zandt slip wall and want to add a slip of their own.

You will find some Austin tech crowd, particularly on Wednesday and Thursday. The bar's price point and the music programming filter the audience to a music-first crowd. The bar does not serve craft cocktails. The bar does not have a quiet room.

How not to be the worst person at Hole in the Wall.

• Do not photograph the jukebox slip wall with flash. The 1974 paper is fragile.
• Do not request "Pancho and Lefty" to be played twice in one night. The regular Townes Van Zandt rule is one play per night per song.
• Do not talk during the acoustic acts on the front stage. The bar will move you to the back room politely.
• Do not bring a stag party with matching shirts. The booths will be reseated for regulars.
• Do not ask the front stage musician to play "Mr Brightside." The front stage is country and folk only.
• Do not order a craft cocktail. The bar pours from the menu and the menu is what is on the menu.
• Do not, ever, take down a jukebox slip from the hallway wall. The slips are pinned in their original position. Removing one is grounds for removal from the bar.

Kerbey Lane, Hole in the Wall, the Continental Club.

The classic Austin music night: dinner at Kerbey Lane on Guadalupe at 7pm, the 24-hour Austin breakfast diner that has anchored the UT corridor since 1980. Walk three blocks south to Hole in the Wall at 8pm for two pitchers and the Tuesday country writers' night. Drive or Lyft south to the Continental Club on South Congress at midnight for one more drink and the late country set.

For more bars in the area, see our Austin city guide, the live music bars guide, and the UT-area hidden gems list.

Yes. Texas's most reliable singer-songwriter dive.