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Bright Light Social Hour wins ACL Sound and Jury Contest
Bret Gerbe FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
- The A-List: Sound and Jury Finals at Antone’s
A crowd of hundreds turned out at Antone’s Wednesday night, as five bands dueled for pop music supremacy and a Friday open slot at the Dell stage at the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival. And when the smoke cleared, Austin’s own Bright Light Social Hour, a funky rock quartet, stood triumphant. A combination of audience votes and an industry judging panel — including Voxtrot’s Ramesh Srivastava and 101X’s Jason Dick and Toby Ryan — decided the winner.
“When we played I was kind of expecting one-fifth of the crowd to be really into it and the other four-fifths to be really lukewarm but the crowd was receptive to us and really nice to us,” said bassist and vocalist Jack O’Brien. “And having hung out at Antone’s since 5:30 in the morning doing interviews and stuff, we just had all this pent-up energy from being still all day.”
The band will kick off the Dell stage on Friday at 11:45 a.m. It will be a long day for the band, who have a performance at the Beauty Bar the night before and are required to trek to Zilker well before dawn.
“We’re playing a show at the Beauty Bar Thursday night that we booked long before the Sound and the Jury. So we’re playing, I think around 12:15 a.m., so we should be out of the club around 2:30 a.m.,” said O’Brien. “And they want us to be at ACL around 4:30 in the morning, and available for press between then and 6 p.m.. So it’s going to be a long day. But we’re ready. We’re excited.”
The Bright Light Social Hour will perform tonight (Thursday) at the Beauty Bar, 617 E. 7th St., at 12:15 a.m. as part of Art Disaster No. 9. Other performers include the Lemurs, White White Lights, and last year’s the Sound and the Jury winners, the Steps. More about the band.
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By Andrew
October 1, 2009 10:50 AM | Link to this
Well deserved, they absolutely carried the show. The competition was full of talent, but Bright Light Social Hour’s live performance is in a league of their own.
By Ann
October 7, 2009 11:34 PM | Link to this
The group I was with was blown away by the Bright Light Social Hour at Antoines. What a way to start ACL. I expect to be seeing and hearing a lot more of this group.
By Ann
November 14, 2009 11:07 AM | Link to this
Each band had their own groupies, but when BLSH played, it didn’t matter who they came to hear. BLSH blew everyone else out of the water.