Austin Lounge Lizards

The Austin Lounge Lizards are a musical group from Austin, Texas formed in 1980. The band includes founding members Hank Card and Conrad Deisler, along with Tim Wilson and Kirk Williams. The third founding member, Tom Pittman, retired from the band in the spring of 2011. The band started out experimenting with folk but was still heavily country in its style, combining the bluegrass form with which Pittman was familiar with the progressive-themed folk rock Card and Deisler had been accustomed to. Between the members a large number of different instruments have been played, including a rich variety of string instruments such as the banjo, mandolin, and fiddle. The band got its name because, Deisler explained, "I think it was a slang term I'd heard my grandmother use to describe gentlemen of easy virtue who hung around in bars. When we started out, that's just what we were doing—hanging out and playing for beer and tips and stuff like that." The Austin Lounge Lizards began by playing covers, but eventually they wanted to move towards trying to write their own songs.