To put a point on a timeline for the beginning of The ABGB, we'd probably place it right in the middle of the 2006 ACL weekend. That year, we started doing The Austin City Limits Music Festival the right way- with Amos' homebrew. Smuggled into the false bottoms of coolers, inside the innards of fold-up chairs, and of course, into our bellies during the stroll down the hill to Zilker Park from Amos' garage brewery. The scene repeated itself the following Spring at SXSW, with us bringing along his beer to back-alley showcases, parking lot tents, and fields on the East Side (remember what SXSW looked like back in 2007?).
We were making our musical experience better, and fortifying our relationships, with "our" beer. We loved it. Such good times. So we all started talking about what we were already thinking: what if it could be our own SXSW all the time? What if we could create our own festival, with our beer, whenever we wanted?
We started putting a plan into action. It took time, and more fun weekends with festivals and beer, of course. But soon enough, we had quit our jobs and learned how to brew beer commercially. We shifted our lives and moved to where we needed to be. We immersed ourselves into Austin's craft beer and music community. Along the way, we hooked up with a kindred soul (who also just happened to be an awarding-winning brewmaster).
As we did all this, we started to realize that as our own little community was getting made better by gathering for music and beer (and food, too), that we had the potential to scale that up and create something that would better the city we all love, too. Call it a philosophy, or a mission statement, but it's the truth of what we want to create with The ABGB.
