Waterloo Records

Waterloo Records is an intimate, limited-capacity in-store performance room inside Austin’s long-running record shop. Its current North Lamar home opened on August 30, 2025, with a larger stage, café-style seating, and a beer, wine, and coffee bar. The concrete distinguishing detail sits underfoot: the stage incorporates flooring donated from the original Austin City Limits Studio 6A. Capacity is event-dependent, creating a close-range experience geared to performance-and-signing crowds.

A record store built for the set

Louis Karp opened Waterloo Records on April 1, 1982, off South Lamar; John Kunz joined as co-owner that year and became sole owner in 1987. The shop moved to the Sixth Street and North Lamar corner in 1989, where its in-stores became a regular part of the store’s identity. A 1991 Nirvana performance captured the make-do character of that early era: with no formal stage, the band played atop Waterloo’s shipping-and-receiving desk, in a packed room. In 2025, Kunz moved into a chair-emeritus role as Gold Rush Vinyl founder Caren Kelleher and entrepreneur Trey Watson took ownership. Waterloo closed its previous site on August 24 and opened five blocks north on August 30, with extra event space and new production facilities.

The room today

Programming follows record-store logic: touring acts and Austin locals mark releases with short in-stores and signings, and the booking approach carries no genre preference. That makes the room useful for country, indie rock, singer-songwriters, experimental projects, and any artist with a release to introduce. The larger in-store stage now sits alongside a Dolby Atmos mixing room, rentable podcast studio, on-site lacquer cutting, and the café-bar lounge. Arrive ready to stand close, browse between sets, and treat the performance as part of a music-shopping afternoon.