Austin vs. San Antonio? In new video, Garrett T. Capps picks his winner
“And if we’re judging just by tacos, then there’s only one place to call home,” sings Garrett T. Capps in his newly-released single “I Like Austin, But I Love San Antone.”
Capps speaks — of course — of San Antonio as the primary Tex-Mex taco city, resolving (at least for himself) a longstanding dispute between the two towns.
Already known for his 2016 hit single “Born in San Antone,” later used in the opening sequence of the third season of the Netflix series Billions, Capps has redoubled the effort to tout his hometown with a new honky-tonk album titled I Love San Antone, to be released digitally Aug. 20.
Perhaps beset by pandemic lunacy, Capps produced a madcap promo video for the single, staged at The Lonesome Rose honky-tonk, which the musician co-owns.
The video begins at a food truck with Capps ordering a decidedly Austin-style “baja shrimp taco, with the hibiscus-infused cole slaw” on a black-bean infused tortilla. He is then set upon by a traditional San Antonio puffy taco, which chases him into the empty bar for a goofy dance-off that features prodigious cleaning of the bartop.
Capps lyrically serenades his city as a “melting pot,” and nods to local classics such as the old Farmer’s Daughter 8,400-square-foot dance hall, which in 1961 hosted as its first band Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, and dancing on the Hermann Sons rooftop (which once purportedly featured a concert by George Strait).
Austin is treated with kid gloves in the song, likely because Capps maintains a frequent presence there as a musician, but in his estimation, it can’t compare to the feel of its slower-moving South Texas civic cousin:
These days Austin is still a groovy place to be
But it’s been taken over by strangers and the big man’s companies
And San Antone is still layin’ low and takin’ it day by day
And Fiesta with that Tex-Mex soul,
And we’ll treat you like family
It is perhaps telling that by the end of the video, Capps and the puffy taco, played by musician James Steinle, make friends and dance together. Though Steinle currently calls Austin home, he’s given a pass on partisanship, having been born just outside of San Antonio in Pleasanton.
The first album release show — or “fiesta,” in Capps’s terms — for I Love San Antone will take place Aug. 20 at the Lonesome Rose, followed by shows in Austin, Dallas, and Houston.
