KUT Names New Manager For Cactus Cafe
The Cactus Cafe will have a new manager beginning Monday morning. Matthew Munoz, a recording industry veteran, will replace longtime manager Griff Luneberg, who has run the Cactus Cafe for nearly 30 years.
Munoz was previously director of sales and marketing at Justice Records in Austin, a label manager at Universal Music Group’s Fontana Distribution in Los Angeles, and worked in marketing and promotion roles at Warner Bros. & Reprise Records in Los Angeles and with Arista Records in Austin.
Now he’s saddled with trying to revive a Cactus Cafe known for its intimate setting and fantastic acoustics but that has been trading on its reputation for years*.
“Throughout the interview process, Matt distinguished himself as someone who could carry on and enhance the artistic tradition of the Cactus with an eye toward financial sustainability,” said Hawk Mendenhall, KUT associate general manager and program director. “His experience collaborating with booking agents, artist managers and their artists, and record label executives, combined with his experience managing budgets and negotiating music clearance and performance contracts, makes him the ideal fit.”
This has been a rocky year for the Cactus Cafe. In February, the Texas Union announced it was closing the Cactus and ending informal classes.
That news didn’t sit well with alumni and the Cafe’s many devout patrons. An enormous effort to save the Cactus resulted in the University revisiting the decision to close it. The University decided instead to bring it under the management of KUT, UT’s publicly supported radio station.
The change was meant to make the Cafe operations financially sustainable. KUT assumed venue management responsibilities Aug. 16. Daytime operations and the bar remain under the direction of the Texas Union.
Munoz didn’t attend UT — he earned a degree in music business at West Texas A&M — but he is married to a Longhorn, so that makes him part of the family.
*Update: A reader has noted that the description of the Cactus Cafe as having been “trading on its reputation for years” is clumsy if not inaccurate. As recently at 2009-10 it was named best Acoustic Venue in Austin by the Austin Chronicle. Perhaps a better formulation would have been to stress that its popularity with students does not quite rival its former glory, and that many of the Cactus’s most fervent supporters attended UT years ago.
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5 Comments
"Now he’s saddled with trying to revive a Cactus Cafe known for its intimate setting and fantastic acoustics but that has been trading on its reputation for years."
WHAT? Any Cactus fan or Austin music fan knows this is a crock of BS. The Cactus was more vital then ever w/ sold out shows night after night. According to open records, the venue had it’ biggest grossing year (500K+) the year before it was to be "shuttered". The Cactus was again VOTED Austin’s # 1 Acoustic Music venue in the Austin Music Awards by Austin’s discriminating music aficionados. I suppose thousands of people the world over came to Save a Venue "that had been traded on it’s reputation for years"? Do some research for cryin’ out loud and quit perpetuating myths!
Hamilton,
Thanks for this feedback. All good points. I suppose I meant more that it’s reputation among students had waned from previous years, but you’re right.
Tim
I don’t think it’s meaningful to try to decide if the description of the Cactus Cafe as having been "trading on its reputation for years" is accurate or inaccurate because we don’t know how many current students vs. non-students have attended shows at the Cactus recently. There’s no such statistics. Also, please do not forget that graduate students are students, too.
I wish you had included a little more background to the whole controversy. I understand that there’s probably space restriction for your piece, but no understanding of this story is complete without knowledge about the unethical behaviors of some UT decision makers and individuals.
Mr. Taliaferro,
It’s a myth that there isn’t enough student programming at the Cactus Cafe. Mother Falcon, Marmalakes, Sarah Jarosz, Eastern Sea, Leatherbag, some say leland, Balmorhea, and Tenlon’s Fort have all graced the Cactus stage during the last few months. This coming Tuesday, September 14th, UT Student Songwriter Round Up is happening where student bands will perform and the best bands will get the chance to open for national Cactus acts. Another UT Student Songwriter Round up is on October 5. Hell, Trout Fishing in America even has a kids show at 6:30. Most shows have a student discount. All of these shows booked by Griff. This rhetoric of new guard vs. old guard, students vs. community, is a tool the administration tried to use as they were justifying the closing of the Cactus. Yet there was never any substance beyond the words.
Thanks,
Zachary Bidner
Recent Texas Ex 2010
Co-Founder Student Friends of the Cactus Cafe
I forgot to say the most important thing in my previous comment.
When I said "there’s no such statistics," I was trying to say that there’s no data to support what you said in "Update" ("its popularity with students does not quite rival its former glory") and your response to the first comment on this article ("it’s reputation among students had waned from previous years"). Sorry it was unclear.
As a graduate student (2000 – 2007), I was fortunate enough to attend MANY shows at the Cactus. It was my favorite place on campus and still has a special place in my heart. Griff Luneburg is the person who created that wonderful musical & spiritual community. It is sad to see the story end like this.