Villa's Music Garden: The debut of a new music venue in South Austin

Sarah Fox                   Photo by Charlotte Shafer

Take an acre of land on South Congress, a taco shack, and a musician looking for a place to hold a CD release party, and what do you get? A new outdoor multicultural music venue in South Austin, of course.

Villa's Music Garden is Grammy-award winning musician/producer Joel Guzman's new venture along with Tony Villafranca, who opened Villa's Taco Shack on the location at 4406 S. Congress Ave. in January. Other partners are music artist manager Ken Kushnick, Leonard Davila of the Austin Tejano Music Coalition, and Gavin Lance Garcia, publisher of Todo Austin.

The venue debuted Saturday night with a lineup including Los Texas Wranglers, Shawn Nelson and the Ramblers, Joel Guzman and Sarah Fox, and Ponty Bone and the Squeezetones.  Joel and Sarah celebrated the release of their new CD "Conjuntazzo".

It was certainly a multicultural affair, including Tejano, honky-tonk and Louisiana swamp music.  The common thread between all the groups was the ever-living accordion.

The music and the ice cold beer made it relatively easy to forget the oppressive heat of the evening, and after the sun set a beautiful breeze blew through and blessed the event.