Sonic Guild Names Bobby Garza Executive Director 

Sonic Guild, the membership-based music community founded in 2013 as Black Fret, welcomes Bobby Garza as its Executive Director this week.

The former Chief Program Officer at the Long Center for the Performing Arts is thinking concretely about music’s connective social function and looking to the community for input as he steps into the new role with an aim to increase membership and support for Austin artists. 

“What I am really interested in digging in[to] deeper with the board and with other folks in the Austin community is: What [do] wraparound services for Austin artists look like?” says Garza. “I really am interested in taking those conversations further and engaging people, artists, the Sonic Guild members, [and] the general community.”

While Sonic Guild has expanded over the years with chapters in Seattle, Colorado, and the Ozarks, Garza feels strongly that “community solutions have to be rooted in whatever community in which you’re trying to make an impact.”

He intends to lend his localized experience in the entertainment ecosystem to the leadership position. In addition to his time at the Long Center, Garza has spent years in the Austin music and entertainment ecosystem as the founder of Massive Silhouette, a consulting and production firm that has worked with performance extravaganza Fusebox Festival and the growing Waterloo Greenway, among others.

“Something that I really learned when I was working at the Long Center and we were coming out of the pandemic was [emphasizing] collaborative efforts amongst nonprofits instead of trying to either compete or do something better,” Garza says, reiterating that his preferred path is “really thinking about how our community provides services.”

Additional tour grant announcements and a list of 2026 Sonic Guild artist recipients will be released in the fall, and the organization’s annual celebratory ball, open to the public for the first time last year, will reprise in December 2026. 

Lammes Candies is wrapping up 141 years of handcrafted sweets, according to a note posted on its Round Rock location late last month. “This decision comes after careful consideration of changing market conditions and the long-term sustainability of our operations,” the note reads. The family-owned business is known for its confections based on local ingredients, like the pecan, chocolate, and caramel-combining Longhorns and its habanero-pecan pralines. Though the Round Rock business closed on April 24, generations of Texans are mourning on Instagram, Reddit, and in line at the still-open flagship storefront on Airport. The Lammes family could not be reached for comment and has not yet announced a closing date for their Austin location, but signed off their announcement letter with a note of appreciation: “Thank you for allowing us to be part of your traditions and memories for more than a century.”

Yard Bar, Austin’s first dog park/bar, is shutting its doors on May 30. “We’re not closing because Yard Bar failed,” owner Kristen Heaney Clark told the Statesman. “We’re closing because the economics of this location have grown faster than what any business at our scale can reasonably absorb. There’s a ceiling to what you can charge for the experience we provide, and we’ve been bumping against it for a while now.” The bar, eatery, and backyard-style park, which opened in 2015, says it will celebrate its final month at 6700 Burnet with special events and offerings to be announced on Instagram, like this Saturday’s Pickles & Pups event, sponsored by Grillo’s Pickles. 

Sabine Ellison, Austin Music Award-winning bassist now based in Germany, is battling an aggressive Leiomyosarcoma cancerous tumor. “She is now dealing with a melon-sized mass in her abdomen, and school medicine has given up on her. But she hasn’t,” Ellison’s ex-husband and bandmate, Ulrich Ellison, wrote to the Chronicle. To help sustain life-extending Hyperthermia therapy, he’s launched a GoFundMe where he’s shared more about her condition and updates. “I want to help her so she can keep shining her light with music, art, and design,” he writes.  

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