It is the final day of 2025,
and we've been taking some time to
listen back and reflect on the year
that was here in Austinites.
Now, Austinites love supporting
their local shops and restaurants,
but the hard truth of it is that
running any kind of business in the
city is a difficult and expensive
pursuit.
Today, we're going to look back at
some local businesses who shuttered
their doors for good in 2025,
that's coming up next.
The Austin signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Jerry Quijano.
Plus we've got our staff's final
favorite song of 2025 and
some Austin music history for you to
learn good and well heading into
2026.
And New Year's festivities bring
on annual traditions.
Have you got yours ready?
Come and share some good home
cooking with us.
That's coming up next, right here
on Austin Signal.
Howdy out there, and thank
you for tuning in to Austin Signal
on this Wednesday.
It is the 31st of December,
the final day of 2025.
It has been some year and we
are glad that you spent part of it
here with us.
I'm your host, Jerry Kehannel.
Let's start today's show.
A former Austin police officer
sentenced to prison for fatal,
fatally shooting a man has been
acquitted by a Texas appeals court.
In 2019, Christopher Taylor fatally
shot 46-year-old Maurice De Silva,
who was in a mental health crisis
and holding a knife.
A Travis County jury convicted
Taylor, and he was sentenced late
last year to two years in
prison. Taylor's attorneys say his
acquittal is a, quote, powerful
rebuke to Travis County District
Attorney Jose Garza.
Garza called the decision by an
Amarillo-based state appeals court,
quote, absurd, and said
he would continue to work to uphold
Taylor's conviction.
We have more about that story
over at KUT.org.
It's tough running a business each
and every year, and 2025 was
especially tough for a few long-time
Austin institutions.
KUT's Travis County reporter Katy
McAfee spoke with host Jennifer
Staten about the local businesses
we lost this year.
So first of all, you've spent some
time researching longtime Austin
businesses that closed this year.
What are some of the places that we
lost?
Yeah, so there were quite a few this
year. Coriente, a
Korean restaurant downtown,
closed this year after more than 20
years.
Trudy's, the local Tex-Mex
chain, closed its last location
on Burnet Road after more then
40 years.
And then another place people might
recognize, Skylark Lounge,
the blues and soul music venue.
They closed after 12 years.
And we have about a half dozen
other places on our list that were
in business for 15,
20 plus years in Austin.
So Katy, I feel like we do these
discussions at the end of each year
about businesses that close, and I
feel there are fewer and
fewer local places in
Austin that have been in business
for say 10 plus
years. Why are we seeing what
feels like so many local businesses
closing?
Well, you know, a lot of these long
time places that are closing are
restaurants or stores selling
food and independent
locally owned restaurants are
really struggling right now.
A report that came out on Halloween
from the Texas Restaurant
Association found that and
this is statewide, 88%
of restaurants are facing higher
food costs, 66%
are higher wage costs
and 52% are seeing
a traffic decrease.
And then one thing that I've just
heard anecdotally is that not only
are restaurants seeing an overall
traffic decrease, but people
are drinking less alcohol when
they go out and that makes a big
impact on a restaurant's bottom
line.
And then a few places, you know,
Hanna World Market, the Asian
grocery store on Palmer Lane, they
said one reason they're closing is
because of tariffs.
They said it was really hard to
compete against big national chains
like H Mart and tariffs
had a crucial impact on their
business.
Right, so Katy, we've mostly been
talking about sort of
food centered and restaurant
businesses.
What about the local businesses that
aren't restaurants?
The ones that you know about, why
are they closing?
Yeah, so, you know, we do have
triple z threads on South
Congress is closing this year.
They sell vintage shirts and other
embroidered stuff.
And they said that they're closing
because they're being pushed out.
On an Instagram post when they
announced their closure, they said,
quote, a corporation with deeper
pockets will be moving in.
And that's something that we've seen
a lot in recent years.
We had South Congress books closed
last year after they were pushed out
of South Congress.
Lucian Disguised with Diamonds
closed, Tessarose Trading
Company, those were all sort of
long time businesses on South
Congress that were pushed out in the
last few years.
Sounds like it's kind of doom
and gloom for these businesses that
are closing for the variety of
reasons you've been describing in
2025.
Yeah, well, you know, it's not all
so sad.
Not every single local business
closed this year for financial
reasons.
A few business owners just said that
they were ready to retire.
Jim Jim's Water Ice, if you
can remember, they were an Italian
ice shop on Sixth Street.
They had their last summer this year
after more than 31 years, because
the owner, Jim Moy, is ready to
slow down and travel and spend
more time with family.
And that was, you know, a few other
businesses owners just said we're
ready to retire and move on with
life
Well, that's KUT's Travis County
reporter, Katy McAfee.
You can read about all the local
businesses that closed this year in
Austin and see some great
illustrations that KUT multimedia
producer, Michael Manassi drew of
each business at KUT.org.
Katy, thanks for walking us through
this today.
Thank you so much, Jennifer.
And you can keep up with Katy
McAfee's coverage of Travis County
at KUT.org.
In case you didn't know, Connie
Jo Kirk is a homegrown Austin
legend.
As a teenager, she helped to
integrate old Austin High.
As an adult, she became a renowned
musician and blues singer,
a civil rights activist,
humanitarian and champion for
historical East Austin.
And there is one other
accomplishment to add to that list,
celebrated home cook.
A few years ago, she spoke to
Texas Standard, invited them over
for a traditional New Year's
video.
I just took the cornbread out the
oven, homemade
cornbread, and I'm getting ready to
melt some butter so I can glaze it.
Hi, my name is Connie
Jo Kirk.
I'm from Austin, Texas and
I was born in 1948,
June 7th, in East Austin.
I have been
cooking since I was four
years old.
But I'm also a professional jazz
and blues singer.
I wear many hats.
Here, we're going to melt some
butter.
Yeah.
For New Year's, I'm doing the
African-American New Year tradition.
You have to have black eyed peas to
start your year off.
I have glazed carrots.
I have collard greens.
I ain't bragging, but my collard
green are to die for.
I'm serious.
Colegrains will make you slap your
momma, your daddy, your cousins,
your uncle, your dog.
Everybody up the street, you just
going down the street slapping
people.
And here we got some chicken that
I bought.
These are old black recipes the way
we cook.
People get to know you
when they eat your food,
it shows them that you have a kind
heart and that you're a special
person and that's
why so many people, I feed
at least 16 people every
week.
Hello, I'm here for some stuff for
Uncle Barry.
I'm the nephew.
He's taking up food from my adopted
brother.
We adopted each other.
That's the way black people are.
We don't go through no legal
channels. Girl, we don't need no
legal channel. I'll tell you,
everybody in whole East Austin knows
me as Aunt Agani.
Woo, this butter's been melted.
Nice.
Hey, cuz, if
Barry's your uncle, you're my
cousin. Come on.
No, you my nephew.
And taste that.
That's homemade.
That's after you glaze it with
butter.
I come from a family of great
cooks.
My great grandmother was the head
chef on the plantation.
My grandmother was born on the
plantations, but she was a free
slave.
They were excellent cooks.
My mother was one of 14.
Mother was number 13, so the
older sisters taught my mother how
to cook. There
was nothing like coming
home to fresh, skillet
cornbread and
chili beans.
Smelling outside the door,
all out in the yard.
Pickle beets, fresh pickle beets
and collard greens or either
cabbage.
And that made you a day.
You know, you look forward to
getting out of school and going home
to see what mama cooks.
I want many
people to experience the
wonderful flavors of home-cooked
meals, post-slavery meals.
That's one of my children.
Go let her in, baby.
Bye!
Where's Ta-Neh?
He's running late, but he's just
around the corner.
Ta-Neh! Ta-neh, y'all hold up.
Be quiet for a minute.
We thank thee, Lord, for this food
for which we're about to receive for
the nourishment of our bodies,
through Christ's sake, amen.
Come on, let's do this!
I'm Connie Jo Kirk,
professional jazz and blues singer
and chef from Austin, Texas.
That story was produced by
Texas Standard's Leah Scarpelli.
We'll have a link to it at kut.org
slash signal and in our
podcast show notes.
This is Austin Signal.
This is Jake Perlman.
I'm the senior audio production
engineer with KUT and KUTX.
So much great music that came from
Austin in 2025.
And one of my favorite songs is
the points, Itis.
The band is three people,
the keyboard player plays bass
on a keyboard at the same time he's
playing the keyboard lines,
the guitarist plays with a lot
of blues,
but blues from all over the world.
So there's a little bit of Thai
funk in there.
If you're a fan of Krungben, this
is sort of a sped
up version of Krugben I guess.
And the drummer swings behind the
kit. Just a funky machine.
They're all nice guys too.
A lot of their songs have some
really great instrumental breaks.
Vocals don't seem to be as
important to every single one of
their song.
I followed them for a few years,
the first time I got to see them.
They're playing on a double-staged
show at Sagebrush,
and they're just playing at the
front of the bar on a small stage
up there.
Just really set this cool mood and I
couldn't believe that these
guys were from Boston.
I just felt like a little window
into several different parts of
the world.
Oh
The vibe of this song is
playful, I think.
Kind of reminds me of like a Terry
Gilliam film.
My name is Jake Perlman.
I'm the Senior Audio Production
Engineer with KUT and KUTX.
And you can find out more of our
favorite songs from 2025
at KUTx.org.
This is the Austin Signal.
It's New Year's Eve.
Thank you for tuning in to the
show. Hopefully you are
on or about to be
on.
Vacation all I ever
wanted Vacation
had to get away Vacation
missed if they spent it alone
Yeah, that song by the Go-Go's
is a classic penned by Austin's
own Cathy Valentine before she
joined the band.
She wrote it as part of the Austin
band the Tex Tones in the 80s before
her and bandmate Carla Olsen
ventured out to L.A.
To make it big.
Here's Jason Mellard from the Center
for Texas Music History at Texas
State University with more
about Cathy Valentine.
This week in Texas music history,
Austin Punk reverberates through the
Rock Hall of Fame.
On New Year's Eve 1980, bassist
Cathy Valentine played her first
concert with the Go-Go's in Los
Angeles. The Go-Gos are legendary,
synonymous with the 1980s, the first
all-woman band playing their own
material to top the Billboard charts
with 1981's debut album,
Beauty and the Beat.
But many may not know the Texas
connection through Kathy Valentine.
The Go-Go's were already up and
coming in the Los Angeles punk scene
when guitarist Charlotte Caffe ran
into Valentine to whiskey a Go-go
and asked her about filling in with
the band.
Caffe knew Valentine's work from the
text tones, the group Valentine and
Carla Olsen had brought from Austin
to LA the year before.
Valentine agreed, joined the Go-Gos,
and the rest, chart-topping hits and
global tours, is history.
Valentine wrote some of those hits,
Head Over Heels for One, and
Vacation, a Textones tune that
draws a direct line back to
the origins of Austin Punk.
And Cathy Valentine was an
originator. She'd been steeped in
the Texas scene, a 70s teen
into ZZ Top and Doug Somm,
but she'd also been in a band in
London when Punk broke in 1975.
Back in Texas, when the Sex Pistols
brought English punk stateside,
Valentine and her friends were at
that legendary 1978 San
Antonio show.
Inspired, Valentine, Carla Olsen,
Marilyn Dean, and Jesse Sublette
then formed The Violators, and the
next month convinced Tejano Bar
Raúl's into giving them stage time.
Valentine and Olsen split for LA,
The Textones, and The Big Time.
In summer 1980, Kathy was back
home from California, visiting Raúls
to check out the new band.
She wrote the song Vacation on the
plane back to LA about that Austin
trip, a tribute, too, to the
scene she'd helped form and left
behind.
She'd come home again in the course
of her illustrious career, forming
the blues-rocking band The Blue
Line. She'd make it as a local
legend and global icon, inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in 2022, a
story told in full in her masterful
memoir, All I Ever Wanted.
You can hear music from the Lone
Star State 24-7 on the
Texas Music Experience at TMX.fm.
Support for this week in Texas Music
History comes from Brain Audio,
maker of portable speakers with
patented built-in subwoofer
technology to deliver deep bass
sound with waterproof design
and Alexa functionality.
Holiday inspiration at
BrainAudio.com
Well, thank you for tuning in to
Austin signal.
You can listen to us live here on
KUT news, 90.5 on
the KUT app and online at
KUT.org and of
course you can subscribe to our
podcasts wherever you listen to
your shows.
It is our final segment of 2025
and we are talking about
music to help us out.
We are joined by Maile Carballo from
our sister station.
KUTX Maile happy new
year.
I don't get to see you in the new
year, you know, have a little bit of
a break. So you know I think we
have written this discussion
yesterday about saying Happy New
Year. So I'm going to say it and I'm
gonna lean into it.
We'll have the new year.
But before we can get into 2026,
we had some news today about
a music venue on the final day of
the year.
Tell us about the music venue.
Which one is it?
Absolutely, so we're talking about
Monk's Jazz Club.
The Austin Chronicle reported this
morning that they will be ending
their time on the East Side.
They've been there for about a
decade now, but they're moving
over to the St. Elmo Arts District.
Okay, okay, that's a pretty
happenin' district for folks
who might not be familiar with
monks. What kind of a listening room
is it? What kind a venue is it.
Yeah, it's super intimate.
It holds around 60 people.
It's real kind of
DIY jazz,
typically just B-Y-O-B.
The less clanking, the better, I
think they always say.
And they're going to kind of keep
with that ethos going forward, but
actually their new location has
an actual bar this time,
so maybe a little schmancier.
Okay, so are they done for good at
their old location?
Are they gonna have like some final
show there? What's that status?
They are. They are done at that
location for shows, but
at their new location 310
East St. Elmo Road, Unit B,
they will still be hosting BYOB
kind of small gigs until their first
official show on January 2nd.
OK, well, yes, let's
let's make the most of what we have
left in 2025.
We were talking earlier about our
New Year's Eve plans, and I'm sure
there are a few listeners out there
who haven't quite finalized what
their night is going to look like
tonight.
So you have brought us three options
for the listeners out there.
So what's the first option?
Absolutely.
So just all options are very
KUTX coded, as
the kids say.
But the first one is one that
KUTx and UT Student Radio
Station KBRX, which I'm also
a part of, we're supporting, it's
Next of Kin with non-aid TC
superstar, Kyn Keith,
and so many more other special
guests.
It's at Antone's nightclub.
And yeah, it's a lot of KUTX
supported artists.
Next Of Kin was one of our Artists
of the Months this year.
Get a little bit of dancing with
TC Superstar, some electronic
action with Kai and
Keith and some good old fashioned
country.
And we have heard a good deal of
Next of Kin here on Austin Signal,
they're a great band.
They were part of our Austin City
Limits Music Festival episode.
And you can find more and hear a
really cool song from them that's at
kut.org slash signal.
That's our first show option.
The second one you were saying, it's
kinda got more of a Austin, a real
Austin feel to it.
What is that one?
Yeah, this is one that I would
probably choose.
This is my, my little niche.
Um, it's a 29th street ballroom
and Tweedies also known as spider
house. If you're from the older
gen, your old school, but it's
almost heaven, ha ha laughing.
Another artist of the month,
Jacuzzi, Holy wave, and
so many more artists, DJs
and more.
Um, and it's, yeah, more of a local
kind of DIY grunge vibe.
Um, also KUTX
supported artists.
Um, I think that one
would be really, really fun
personally.
And for the final option, we've got
something to really bring in the new
year with some style, with some
pizzazz.
What is that one?
Absolutely.
This is how I spent my New Year's
last year.
It's Golden Dawn Orchestra's New
Year Eve celebration at Radio East
with Superfonicos and Hard Proof.
And last year, I will say, Jerry,
they released a dove.
So if that tells you anything,
it's going to be a funky eclectic
time.
Well, hopefully they'll step up
their game a little bit.
You know, keep it safe, not anything
too crazy, but you know, kind of
step it up and outdo the final,
the last performance that is.
Well, on this last day of 2025,
and my last question for you,
what did you enjoy about Austin
music scene in 2025, and
what do you hope to see more of next
year?
Absolutely.
I was ruminating on this,
marinating, if you will.
And, you know, I'm still a
youngster, still getting used to
everything in Austin, but something
that really struck me this year was
just getting to dig deeper into all
the subcultures of Austin.
Two-stepping has gotten really big,
the whole kind of honky tonk music.
Has been amplified, I feel like,
because of that. You know, Boomer
Shack and Theo Lawrence and all
of these country artists in Austin
holding residencies at all the honky
tonks.
That was a joy to experience more
of. And of course, the DIY shows
too.
And I'm all about the psych
community.
Like I was saying earlier, kind of
that ballroom vibe.
Um, and so going to levitation
this year was really special just
cause you run into absolutely
everyone.
If you go to these events, you run
into so many people, familiar
faces.
And I think that's super cool
because people are always like, Oh,
is this the still the live music
capital of the world?
It's not old Austin anymore, but
Okay, well in 15 seconds, what do
you want to see more of next year?
Next year, more DIY
stuff, let's keep it weird.
Let's keep it weird and again, we
provide you to those three options.
You can see a little bit more about
that over at KUTX.org.
That is Maile Carballo from our
sister station KUTx.
Maile, you've been on the air a
little more this year and this
week. You're going to be on the
Air Anymore going forward.
Yes, sir.
When is that?
Uh...
Next monday
Okay, next Monday.
Okay, that's Maile Carballo.
Thank you, Maile.
Thank you, Jerry.
And thank you for tuning in to
Austin Signal.
We will be back with you on Friday
at one o'clock here on KUT.
And of course, you can find us at
kut.org slash
signal.
Have a happy new year.