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Meet this year’s Sound and the Jury finalists: Mobley
Now in its third year, Dell’s the Sound and the Jury contest, an online battle of the bands, offers independent, unsigned bands a shot at performing before thousands during the Austin City Limits Music Festival. An online vote produces 100 finalists, then a panel of judges narrows the field to 20, before online voting reopens and produces the final five, who will perform in front of judges and fans live. To have a chance at winning, bands must be marketing experts, employing tools like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace — as well as good old-fashioned phone calls and word-of-mouth.
The American-Statesman talked to each of the five finalists for this year’s battle of the bands to hear their stories of struggle for a shot at one of Austin music’s sweetest prizes. We will be running these interviews in advance of the final round, which will take place at Antone’s Nightclub, 213 W. Fifth St., Wednesday Sept. 30 at 7 p.m.
The band: Danceable hook-heavy rock with flourishes of electronica, represented by lead singer and songwriter Anthony Watkins.
Point of origin: Austin
American-Statesman: There’s a lot of variety in the band’s songs — how do you typically describe your sound?
Anthony Watkins: We get compared to British bands a lot and I joke a lot that I musically aspire to be a Brit. We like pop songwriting in the traditional sense and we all just like to explore and not feel like we’re boxed into one particular sound.We have a song that’s got a horn section, with a jazzy, swing element, we’ve got alt-country songs, we’ve got songs where everything is synthesized — it’s pretty all over the place.
AS: Do you have anything special planned for the live show?
AW: We’ve got some surprises in store. When we first moved here, we kind of sat down and decided that before we started playing we wanted to have our affairs in order. So we spent the first 7 months we were here acquiring a lighting rig and making videos to accompany the show. So at all our shows we take a rig and TVs to show videos on, so it’s a production every time. But we’ve thrown in some extra elements and we’ve got a few new things to pull out for the battle.
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