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SXSW 2009
March 26, 2009
Relive SXSW on ME-TV
ME-TV, Time Warner channel 15, will repeat some shows taped during SXSW. Rebroadcasts, in a continuous 6-hour block, start at 6pm on Friday, March 27th:
Hour 1: M.Ward; BLK JKS
Hour 2: The Features; Wild Yaks; First Communion Afterparty
Hour 3: Akron/Family; Love Language; Gomez
Hour 4: Andrew Bird; Razorlight
Hour 5: Elliott Brood; Peter, Bjorn & John
Hour 6: Pete & the Pirates; P.J. Harvey and John Parish
This block of performances will continue every 6 hours throughout the weekend (midnight, 6am, noon, etc.)
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SXSW post-mortem: End of an Ear's SXSW sales report.
End of an Ear just released their SXSW sales figures and not only did they have a recession-beating SXSW, the product they sold matches anecdotal tales of the continued fall of the CD and rise of vinyl among hardcore music buyers, who are of course End of an Ear’s most loyal customers, not to mention the sort of folks who might stop by a SXSW in-store there for, say, Texas psych cult figure Powell St. John.
End of an Ear store managers said sales were up 26.5 percent for the SXSW week over last year’s SXSW. Year-to-date the store is now up 7.2 percent over last year. Sales of new CDs were down 26 percent this SXSW over last year’s; new CDs sales are down 13.7 percent this year over last. Used CD sales are up 61 percent over last year’s SXSW. Economic belt-tightening (and a well-curated used section) might be helping there.
However, new LPs sales were up a whopping 84 percent this SXSW over last; LP sales are up 42.4 percent this year over last. It should be noted that many new LPs come with a coupon for a free digital version of the album. Used LP sales are up 53 percent.
Top 15 sellers during SXSW were:
Bonnie Prince Billy “Beware” (Drag City)
Balmorhea “All Is Wild All Is Silent” (Western Vinyl)
Various Artists, “Dark Was the Night” (4AD)
Strange Boys “And Girls Club” (In The Red)
Pains of Being Pure at Heart “s/t” (Slumberland)
Black Joe Lewis “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is! ” (Lost Highway)
Alela Diane, Alela “To Be Still” (Rough Trade)
Death “For the Whole World To See” (Drag City) (Managers notes that three out of their 15 biggest spenders during SXSW bought a Death CD or LP. The collection of unreleased songs by an extremely obscure Detroit proto-punk band has been a critical and hipster hit. It is also totally awesome and deserves to go platinum.)
Case, Neko “Middle Cyclone” (Anti)
Here We Go Magic “s/t” (Western Vinyl)
Wavves “s/t” (Fat Possum)
Vivian Girls “s/t” (In The Red)
Vetiver “Tight Knit” (Sub Pop)
Bon Iver “For Emma, Forever Ago” (Jagjaguwar)
Gui Boratto“Take My Breath Away” (Kompakt)
So, how did everyone else do? Austin retailers, STAND UP.
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March 25, 2009
SXSW global: Video clips of 3 standout international acts
While the buzz of big name acts like Kanye West, Jane’s Addiction and metal gods Metallica dominated the festival, hundreds of international bands made epic cross-continental treks to take the stage in Austin during SXSW 2009. International music had a huge presence at this year’s fest, with organizers claiming that 40 percent of showcasing acts were from outside the U.S. I spent the final two days of the fest pounding the pavement, getting my global groove on. Here are three great acts I checked out.
The band: The Pepper Pots
Hometown: Girona, Spain
The showcase: 11 p.m. Saturday at Opal Divine’s Freehouse
Three utterly adorable female vocalists oozed enthusiasm as they gave their take on a sixties Motown girl group. With tight harmonies, choreographed dance moves and retro hair and dresses they had the audience eating out of their outstretched hands. Backed by a robust ensemble with a solid horn section the sound was full, the energy was great and the overall effect was a whole lot of fun. This was the Pepper Pots first trip to the U.S., but with a new album produced by Binky Griptite of the Dap Kings in the works and a sock hop revival steadily spreading across the country, I expect they’ll be back again soon.
The band: Cafe Funque
Hometown: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The showcase: 10 p.m. Saturday at Opal Divine’s Freehouse
Lead singer Cacao (Lady Acid) is a rock star. She straight up ruled the stage. Clad in a skeleton costume with a painted face, she shimmied, scowled and even threw up devil horns. She also belted out songs from the bottom of her heart and threw herself writhing onto the floor. Killer.
The band: Choc Quib Town
Hometown:Bogota, Colombia
The showcase: 1 a.m. Saturday at Copa
With tight harmonies, irresistible rhythmic interplay and a rhymestyle as ebullient as it was fearless this Columbian hip-hop fusion act tore the roof off at Copa on Friday night (Saturday morning). It wasn’t a full house, but the sizable and strikingly diverse group that crowded the stage rippled with excitement. And when the rappers cried out “Jump!” almost everyone in the house complied.
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March 24, 2009
SXSW begats new Eastside Fest?
The allnight party at the IONA Compound at 701 Tillery St., which didn’t end until 7 a.m. March 21, was such a blast that organizers are planning another blowout in June.
Working title is the East Side Escape Fest. Could this be another annual festival in Austin, with other venues east of I-35 getting involved?
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March 23, 2009
SXSW: Too many townies?
Hmmm. Just got off the phone with someone who reinforced what I’d been thinking. At times downtown during SXSW it seemed that the number of uncredentialed civilians to badgies and wristies was about 47- 1. The Levi’s/ Fader Fort gave out 17,000 wristbands and on the occasions I looked at the lines that stretched down E. Fifth St., not even bothering to get out of the car, there were many more folks without badges than with.
Sorry, Austin. Love ya, but the bands aren’t flying it at their own expense from all over the world to play for a room full of tattooed daycare workers and hip spring breakers who knew enough to rsvp online and overstate their music biz affiliations. (“I’m in band offspring management.”)
Can’t blame anybody for wanting to get as much out of SXSW as they can. More power. But if the overseas bands aren’t getting career results for playing private parties because all the booking agents, record reps, critics and DJs they invited are outside waiting, they’re gonna stop playing parties. But, then, maybe since they’ve come all this way, they might as well play.
Here’s what happening as far as I can tell. Party celebs like Rachael Ray and Perez Hilton and their sponsors want to come off as inclusive, plus they love the energy that freeloading townies bring to an event, so they make sure the public gets a crack at these “private” invites. The line outside Maggie Mae’s Saturday afternoon for Ray’s party featuring the New York Dolls and Hold Steady, was about three blocks long. Even approved media had to wait 45 minutes to an hour to get in, as the place quickly filled up with kids whose shift at Thundercloud didn’t start until 6 p.m. Having given up after about 15 minutes in the heat, I still have never seen the Hold Steady, who are touted as a great live band, but I’ve seen pictures and I don’t think that’s possible.
It could be, ironically enough, that the proliferation of day parties are actually helping the official SXSW showcases. SXSW organizers have long viewed these unsanctioned fringe-dwellers, which numbered more than 200 venues this year, as barnacles on the bow of their vessel. But since the hometown hellions learned to crash those parties- there’s nothing like getting totally wasted and then fed for free- it’s opened up space at the official showcases. Half of Austin is passed out by 9 p.m. (and ready to party again at 2.)
Meanwhile, the long lines to get into parties send many in the industry back to the Convention Center for the panels, trade show, TV tapings and the like that have long been a somewhat ignored part of SXSW.
Maybe this is the way it was meant to be. Amazing how there seemed to be no friction between SXSW and the “piggybaggers” this year.
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SXSW aftermath: Choffel impresses DeRo
Austin’s Brazilian-flavored folk/ pop singer Suzanna Choffel gets lumped in with the big girls in one of Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatis’ reports from SXSW. Read his rave here.
We’re looking for other Austin artists who received positive press. Send in the clips.
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March 22, 2009
SXSW review: Maya Azucena
(Midnight Wednesday, Mohawk Patio)
Taking the stage at midnight - shortly after Bavu Blakes had blown up the spot at the Mohawk - Brooklyn neo-soul vocalist Maya Azucena had a hard act to follow. Unfazed, Azucena used her voice as her band’s most powerful instrument, providing one of the evenings most unexpected delights as she radiated charm and finesse, revealing herself as one of the most approachable and likable divas you’d ever want to meet.
Although it might have made more sense to have hometown heroes Bavu Blakes and his Extra Plairs burn up the stage after Azucena so that the crowd didn’t thin after Blakes finished (which it did), the billing of the two artists was ultimately well-played as it allowed Azucena and her crack two-piece band to flex their own considerable skill in the aftermath of Blakes’ lyrical fury.
Guitarist Christian Ver Halen and “drum-cussionist” Ivan Katz were on point. Ver Halen never missed a lick, subtly and deftly providing the dominant musical melodies while Katz played a talking drum with one hand and a highhat with his other.
And then there was the statuesque Azucena. “She’s mesmerizing…and so full of energy,” one young woman in the audience shouted out to her friend (and in my ear) during Azucena’s clever R&B meets hip hop-soul “Junkyard Jewel.”
And it was true: it was hard to take your eyes off Azucena during tracks like “Down, Down” as her voice rattled the rafters with her fearless ability to hit the most difficult upper register notes. But Azucena seemed most stirred during her collaborations. For her song, “The Half,” she brought back up Kendra Ross (who had performed her own set at 9 p.m.) and the two bounced the chorus back and forth as if they’d rehearsed the song for years.
Likewise, the most impressive and inspired moment of Azucena’s set came during a collaboration between Azucena, Extra Plair Terrell Shahid and Blakes as she called them up to the stage for an impromptu joint (collabo) on Azucena’s best song, “G-Hetto.” Austin and Brooklyn yield some of the best musical talent in the country, and the pairing between Blakes’ freestyling flow and Azucena’s energetic precision appeared to raise the level of both of their game.
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SXSW review: Janelle Monae
(Thursday night, Austin Music Hall)
Two words: Janelle Monáe!
Gentle reader, every now and again at SXSW, if you’re exceptionally fortunate, you’ll encounter an artist that’s so singular in vision - so well rehearsed with music that is extraordinarily forward-looking - that you’ll know deep down in your marrow that you’re bearing witness to greatness.
Atlanta experimental-R&B/“afro-punk” musician Janelle Monáe gave a starmaking turn at the Austin Music Hall on Thursday evening, performing a total of four songs in less than 30 minutes while providing what surely were some of the most slammin’, genre-melting moments of the festival.
After a brief voiceover introduction wherein a sentient cyborg reveals its fears of death through disassembly, Monáe emerged looking more like a replicant from “Blade Runner” than a 21st century R&B singer. With unblinking eyes opened wide like a Japanese anime character, Monáe worked the entirety of the enormous stage like a pro, giving a nod to her NYC musical theater training. Her dancing was kinetic and purposefully robotic, electric and propulsive, all locked into the bombastically banging music.
Her ridiculously tight band knocked out her songs with precision and virtuosity: “Many Moons,” “Sincerely Jane,” “Violent Stars, Happy Ending,” seamlessly segued into one another leaving absolutely no time for the audience to process the career defining performance. During the empowering lament “Smile,” Monáe displayed the range of her multi-octave voice, skillfully knocking people out without any overwrought melisma or showy tonal acrobatics. Only a lead guitar accompanied Monáe as she belted out the refrain, recalling the soulful pathos of Billie Holiday combined with the charismatic sass of Liza Minnelli.
The afro-punk, electronica-inspired textures that Kanye West flirted with on his last record were given a more thorough exploration during Monáe’s experimental set. Unlike West, Monáe proved she is not just dabbling in the still emerging afro-punk genre; Thursday night’s set showcased Monáe defining the new musical movement as she transcended the typical genre trappings of R&B, soul, hip-hop, pop and rock as she combined them all into her deconstruction. In this new age of President Barack Obama-inspired hope, Monáe is on the forefront of expanding musical paradigms and possibilities, too.
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SXSW review: Titus Andronicus
(1 a.m. Saturday, Club de Ville)
Two months ago, Titus Andronicus played a packed house at the Parish Room, where they opened for Welsh indie pop sensation Los Campesinos! During the latter performance’s denouement, lead singer Patrick Stickles threw himself into the crowd a half-dozen times, surfing from one end of the Parish to the other with a giddy, boyish grin on his face. Despite being on tour with the group for, by that point, several weeks, Stickles had all the glee of someone who’d just discovered them for the first time.
Titus Andronicus brings that kind of unbridled enthusiasm to everything they do, including Saturday’s packed show at Club de Ville. The New Jersey punk rock quintet plays loud but is surprisingly literate — their name is an allusion to the identically titled Shakespeare play, and their music includes references to everything from Camus to “Seinfeld.” They were bubbly and enthusiastic Saturday, profusely thanking the openers, the audience and the show’s organizers, breaking out the harmonica for one song and delivering a rollicking cover of Sparta Bags’ “Waking Up Drunk.”
All that endless positive energy is a bit peculiar for a band with such routinely depressing lyrics — Stickles looks bizarrely happy when he croons, “You met the world naked and screaming/And that’s how you leave it.” But if the band truly believes such thoughts, you couldn’t detect it from their set, which was bouncy and hedonistic and utterly devoid of angst.
Perhaps that’s the essence of punk rock, though: when confronting ife’s problems, instead of getting sad, get angry, and try to have fun doing it.
It certainly seems to work for Titus Andronicus.
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SXSW review: Colourmusic
(11 p.m., Club de Ville)
Colourmusic’s show was an ominous development for music journalists everywhere.
A band’s sound is a tricky thing to articulate, so we often fall back on assembling two disparate genres into one as a handy way of summing up the listening experience. This is the very mindset that has given the lexicon such gems as “indietronica” and “tropical punk.” But Saturday’s performance by Colourmusic combined layers of reverb, droning guitars and spacey vocals with a relentless, pounding drumbeat, the occasional blaxpoitation-style bass guitar, and plenty of enthusiastically delivered “ba da ba ba da” vocalizations. At one point, the band seemed to briefly borrow the catchy, minimalist guitar part from LCD Soundsystem’s “Us V. Them,” but immediately followed it up with a long, reverb-heavy “Heeeeeeeeeyyyyyy!” that would have been perfectly at home in a Black Angels song. I was left with only one conclusion: “dance psychedelia.”
And with that, we’ve officially run out of hybrid genres.
But while this might make life more difficult for the rock writers of the world, the audience at Club de Ville sure didn’t mind, as Stillwater, Okla.’s Colourmusic engaged an audience with relentless shredding, powerful vocals and inescapable beats. One can only wonder why they took to the stage in an all-white outfit of tennis windbreakers and skirts, but it’s an oddly apropos gesture for a band that’s all about enigmas — trying to decipher lyrics under waves of reverb is an equally challenging mystery, and even lead singer Ryan Hendrix’s facial expressions were a puzzle, hidden as they were under his long, greasy black hair. Regardless, they were easily the most studly axemen to ever wear miniskirts.
All of which must have been pretty tantalizing to the audience, as they threw themselves back and forth and pumped their fists wildly into the air. The energy reached a fever pitch during what was intended to be the show’s closer. As Hendrix sang “Gonna give it up/gonna change the world/gonna live it up,” the audience took the words to heart and a dozen people rushed on to the stage to join the band in an impromptu dance party. After that transcendent moment, Colourmusic could only oblige their fans by giving them a one-song encore, an extraordinary rarity for an opening band at a SXSW showcase. Clearly, Colourmusic has the right stuff.
And if that means us music writers now have to look forward to, say, “techno bluegrass,” well, that’s just the way it will have to be.
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SXSW review: Ponytail
(Midnight, American Apparel/Viva Radio, Club de Ville)
It might not be entirely accurate to call what Ponytail front woman Molly Siegel does “singing.”
We traditionally understand that phrase to denote the use of lyrics. But Siegel, with rare exceptions, has all but abandoned those in favor of assorted “oooo”s, “ahhh”s, “yaaaaays,” and, every so often, an elongated distorted cooing that vaguely resembles the sound of a pigeon on PCP.
It’s a bit of a genius idea — after all, does anybody really care that Justice or MGMT songs even have words, let alone what they mean? Baltimore quartet Ponytail’s wholesale desertion of lyrics frees up Siegel and her band mates to belt out exhilarating, wholly indiscernible vocalizations that lend their songs an instantly powerful, sing-along quality.
Toss in dueling guitars with crushing solos and a drummer who puts seizure victims to shame, and you had Ponytail’s Saturday night show at Club de Ville, a movement-filled shot of adrenaline to even the most fatigued of festivalgoers. Incorporating the occasional flash of inspiration from the most unlikely of places — be it prog rock or the opening theme of “Shaft,” whose famous drum intro was seemingly incorporated into the band’s final song — Ponytail’s flood of dance rock got an entire venue jumping.
The night climaxed as the adorable Siegel, clad in a Ray Lewis jersey and looking like the cute tomboy you crushed on in middle school, tore into a piñata onstage, ripping into it like Romero zombie into a fresh torso. As she showered the audience with candy, guitarist Dustin Wong briefly inserted a rare line of decipherable speech, screeching “Oh no I left for school!”
Did the lyric make any sense? Of course not. And as a captive audience screamed and jumped and clapped their hands underneath pulsing lights, nothing could possibly have mattered less.
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SXSW Review: Jana Hunter
(8:10 p.m., Saturday, Beauty Bar Backyard)
Jana Hunter really got dressed up for the occasion. She wore shredded Vans, gym shorts, and a worn-out tank top with a sports bra underneath for her Saturday showcase. That didn’t stop a swarm of photographers from descending on the wide open space in front of the stage at the striking of her very first note.
It was probably a bit unsettling for the Houston native who now calls Baltimore home. She was already frazzled by technical difficulties that would ultimately subject her voice to an echo chamber, and she no doubt knew the loud bands that had already kicked off the night at surrounding venues were going to make it really tough for her to convey her lilting, tension-wire voice. Now she was the center of attention in a really small space. Good thing she and her two bandmates took a ceremonial shot of brown liquor at the onset of their set.
Nothing Hunter played was recognizable. Instead of the hurts-so-good, slowed-down pace of old-school Cat Power that inhabits her most recent album, the exquisite “There’s No Home,” her drummer and bassist played loping rockers over which Hunter would often plaster scuzzy guitar work. By the last song, the outside interference had apparently gotten to be too much, as Hunter opted to run a loop of her voice and focus on her notes. But despite it all, she never once complained.
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SXSW review: Third Eye Blind
(12:30 a.m. Saturday, Stubb’s)
I have a confession: Third Eye Blind is one of my favorite bands.
Depending on the age and degree of musical snobbery of the people I tell this to, I either get looks of intrigued surprise or disgusted disapproval. But either way, I’m always ready to defend my taste. Even on albums as recent as 2003’s relatively unnoticed “Out of the Vein,” the ostensibly throwaway ’90s pop stars were busy muscling up their arena rock anthems with slick riffs played in non-standard tunings, explosive unconventional rhythms and raw, confessional lyrics occasionally delivered with a hint of hip-hop flavor.
I’m not alone on this one, either. The line for non-badge and wristband holders hoping to get a last minute ticket to last night’s showcase at Stubb’s started forming three hours prior to the show and eventually extended the length of the venue and wrapped around the corner.
The band had been rumored for weeks to be debuting their forthcoming album, “Ursa Major,” at Saturday’s showcase at Stubb’s, and with the exception of “Jumper,” “Never Let You Go” and “Crystal Baller,” that turned out to be true. They didn’t even play their breakthrough hit “Semi-Charmed Life,” which was probably confusing to anyone who hadn’t heard them in years, but refreshing to longtime fans.
Unfortunately, the new material was largely hit or miss. Some songs, like “Bonfire” and “A Sharp Knife,” which have been floating around the web in bootleg format for a couple of years, blazed through delayed lead lines and urgent vocal delivery nearly as well as any Third Eye Blind staple. But others were cringe-worthy. In “1 in 10,” frontman Stephan Jenkins sings about trying to “turn butch chicks,” and “About to Break” builds up to the cliché sentiment, “When I see your face/I wanna be in the human race.”
Perhaps most disappointing of all, the cult favorite “Summertown” was completely made over into a tune that takes the hip-hop thing a little too far, with Jenkins proclaiming something about a “rap superstar” at the end. Whatever happened to the UC Berkley English valedictorian who wasn’t afraid to drop allusions to Greek mythology?
But hey, the album’s not out yet. Let’s hope with a few tweaks Third Eye Blind will have something on par with the rest of their catalogue by the end of the summer.
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SXSW review: Jimmy Webb & the Webb Brothers
(11 p.m. Saturday, Prague)
As far as Your Humble Correspondent was concerned, Saturday night was Family Night at South By Southwest. Let’s see, there was Alyssa Suede (sister of Beck) playing on one end of Sixth Street while Solange Knowles (sister of Beyoncé) was playing on the other. And then there was Jimmy Webb and the Webb Brothers, who were billed to perform in the dungeon-like confines of Prague, near Fifth and Congress.
Jimmy Webb? The “MacArthur Park” and “By the Time I Get To Phoenix” Jimmy Webb? And there were Webb brothers? Who knew?
Turns out that not only are there Webb brothers (that is, Jimmy’s sons), there are a mess of ‘em. James, Justin, Christian and Cornelius Webb all joined their dad onstage for a musical family reunion. “This is the first time Jimmy Webb and the Webb Brothers have played in Austin,” he announced, adding, “Or anywhere else. This project has been a spiritual experience for our family, and we’re glad to share it with you.”
The evening began inauspiciously, with one of the boys beseeching the crowd for a pair of reading glasses they could borrow for their dad. And, sure enough, in one of those not-infrequent moments of happy SXSW propinquity, the needed spectacles were promptly provided.
On their own, the Webb Brothers have released three albums, including the acclaimed 2001 set, “Marooned.” But on this night, their main role consisted (apart from singing two original compositions) of backing up dad.
And that’s not a bad assignment. Webb, after all, has been responsible for some of the most enduring pop songs of the past 40 years, and his and his sons’ all-too-brief set permitted only the briefest overview of his repertoire.
Still, fans were treated to up-close-and-personal renditions of “Galveston,” “The Highwayman” (the inspiration for the country supergroup of the same name), “If These Walls Could Speak,” “Wichita Lineman” and, after a thunderous ovation, an encore of “Adios.” Throughout, the family affections shone through, lighting up the dark confines of the underground club.
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SXSW review: Andre Williams
(11 p.m. Saturday, Continental Club)
“There’s a lot of people out there,” said one of the men in the dapper green suits in the back room of the Continental Club Saturday night.
A discussion about the pros and cons of a packed house ensued between this man and another man in a green suit. There were other men in green suits milling about, rushing their drinks and unabashedly inhaling stuff through their noses. Eventually, all of the green suits, plus two tattooed go-go dancers, took to the stage and settled into a galloping instrumental in the big-band style of the Blues Brothers. It was the equivalent of rolling out the red carpet. For whom, you ask? For the Black Godfather, of course, Mr. Andre Williams.
Dirty old man Williams is a purveyor of what one bystander called “R&B porn.” To play with the 72-year-old is to not only pay homage to him — the vices of life have debilitated him to the point that he doesn’t get out all that much anymore — but it’s to also join him on a journey to Sleazeville, where words like lips, hips, and potato chips dominate the dialogue. To say the line between musicality and comedy is straddled is an understatement.
In between one of his classic songs, “Jail Bait,” which pretty much speaks for itself, and another song wherein he repeated how he’s a bad version of what Rick Perry said adios to a few years back, Williams blessed Austin for the quality of its female population (his actual words were much richer). This got the attention of the Continental’s in-house dancer/back-room bartendress Clara Reed, who, sensing Williams’ dancers were on a smoke break or something, took to the stage and busted a move. Williams promptly raised his arm and shook his hand like he was about to roll dice.
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SXSW review: Alyssa Suede
(9 p.m. Saturday, live.create.lounge)
Alyssa Suede is Beck’s sister.
OK, that’s out of the way. She is also a young singer-songwriter from Los Angeles who made her South By Southwest debut on Saturday night at the live.create.lounge, an art gallery on Neches Street that was pressed into service as an SXSW venue.
On the one hand, combining art and music is a great idea. On the other hand, the space was an abysmal acoustic space, tall and boxy with a metal ceiling. One might as well try to sing in a silo or an oil tank.
Oh, well. Suede was a gamer, performing an eight-song acoustic set accompanied by her father, David Campbell, on violin.
One thing that struck this listener was how fast the young 23-year-old is progressing musically. According to her bio, she only began her career two years ago. One of her earliest songs, “A Thousand Times,” was full of earnest and overdone imagery, the sort of thing many fledgling songwriters begin with.
But the song that followed, “Anybody Out There,” which she was performing for the first time, was more melodically sophisticated and more mature and fully realized lyrically. The two songs, she said after her set, were written only 15 months apart.
“Everywhere you go in Austin,” she said at one point, “people are making music in the street and … and … in elevators.” That was as charming a summation of SXSW as yours truly heard all week.
Suede’s set was drawn for the most part from her debut album, “Black and White In Color.” Singing in a jewel-like voice (some might say a Jewel-like voice, but that’s neither here nor there), she moved with assurance between the upbeat pop of “Ferris Wheel” to the floating, dreamy “Jack and Jill” to the somber, contemplative “Hollow.”
One hopes she will return soon, perhaps with a band, definitely to a more forgiving performance space. On the other hand, there are always those elevators …
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SXSW review: The Wooden Birds
(9 p.m. Saturday, the Parish)
After his six-year sojourn in Brooklyn, it’s good to have Andrew Kenny home.
As the leader of Austin’s indie sensation American Analog Set, Kenny built a devoted underground following with his soft-spoken, rustling anthems.
And as fans learned at Saturday’s Barsuk/Merge Records showcase at the Parish, he’s picking up right where he left off with the aptly named Wooden Birds. Much like the songs of the Analog Set’s “Know By Heart,” the new tunes are delicate and organic, with a keen attention paid to intricate detail. Backed by brushed drums and a second percussionist who mostly shakes maracas and tambourines, the songs drift through smooth clean guitar and Kenny’s near-whispered vocals, creating a dreamlike atmosphere.
The simple yet sharp observational nature of the lyrics matched the powerfully understated music, as entire stories were often brewing beneath single stanzas. In set opener “Sugar,” Kenny noted, “Your little brother is a little shy/He keeps a Bible by his bedside/Under a bottle and some dim lamplight.” And in the more upbeat “Seven Seventeen,” he realized, “She was seven when I was seventeen.”
Kenny’s persona couldn’t fit the songs any better. The lanky, bright-eyed and thin-faced bass player bent his knees and grooved his hips to the beat of the midtempo numbers, and when each one was done, he’d turn to his four-piece band and meekly pay them compliments like, “That was pretty good, guys. Great job.”
To the glee of Analog Set fans, the Wooden Birds included a performance of “Aaron and Maria” in their set, but judging by the strength of the new music, they won’t have to rely on old material for long.
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SXSW review: Telekinesis
(8 p.m. Saturday, at the Parish)
“I was walking through the night/Underneath the starry, starry sky,” the frontman of Seattle’s emerging Merge Records artist Telekinesis sang with tightly closed eyes, and I just about rolled mine.
But only a minute later into Saturday night’s Merge/Barsuk Records showcase at the Parish, Michael Lerner laid down his small acoustic guitar, took his place behind the drums and never looked back. He and his band ripped through a half hour set of hook-heavy pop that sounded like the near-perfect soundtrack to a sunny day on the Santa Monica pier, but had just the right hint of gritty distortion and foggy melancholy to place it in the Northwest.
For a drummer who simultaneously sings and plays, Lerner was surprisingly accurate on both accounts. With his eyes closed and his head pointed slightly upward toward the microphone above the snare, he banged out rhythms with wildly flailing arms and sang with practically unwavering pitch.
The showcased songs came from Telekinesis’s upcoming self-titled debut, which was produced by Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, and the similarities between the two artists were apparent. Songs like “Coast of Carolina,” with its jutted blasts of guitar, could almost pass for a Walla solo song or early Death Cab tune if its more famous counterparts were given an adrenaline boost.
Telekinesis might not have the most substantive catalogue just yet, but without so much as an album for sale, their catchy songs and tight live show put them ahead of the game.
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SXSW review: Lou Barlow
(10 p.m. Saturday, the Parish)
Lou Barlow, frontman for indie rock group Sebadoh and bassist for Dinosaur Jr, told the audience at the Parish that Merge had invited him to be part of the showcase before they knew he had completed a followup to his 2005 solo release, “Emoh.” Joining him on stage was guitarist Imaad Wasif. In a low key set, which was often overpowered by conversations going on elsewhere in the room, Barlow played a collection of material from his upcoming album, as well as a few from his prior release.
The duo started out with “Too Much Freedom,” with Wasif’s fingerpicking complementing Barlow’s meloncholy folk. Wasif then went electric, adding a more psychedelic tone to the songs. Barlow and Wasif had an appealing musical back-and-forth going on, including on “Good Love,” from the upcoming release, when Barlow slowed the tempo and they played in unison.
Barlow’s songs are powerful, emotionally honest stories of relationships gone awry, and he played them with a rare intensity Saturday night. One standout was “Legendary,” a slow-builder sweetened by Wasif’s song-like guitar accompaniment. Barlow was clearly a little irked by the amount of talking going on, and late in the set he aborted a song, explaining that he and Wasif hadn’t played together in quite some time. It seemed for a moment that the set was about to take a wrong turn, but Barlow recovered and finished strong.
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SXSW review: Say Hi
Say Hi is a Seattle-based rock outfit led by singer/guitarist Eric Elbogen. Formerly known as Say Hi To Your Mom, Elbogen is a work horse. He’s released six albums since the band’s inception in 2002, including the forthcoming “Oohs & Aahs,” which the band played in its entirety on Saturday night at the Parish. Joined on stage by a bassist and a drummer, the music is rooted in rock, at times with turns toward garage and punk. Elbogen’s voice is soft and raspy, and he’s sort of an unassuming frontman for a rock band (definitely of the Criag Finn of the Hold Steady’s school of fashion), but he makes the music work.
Similarly, Elbogen doesn’t get too fancy with his guitar, only taking solos a couple times (although there was a bass solo). The more energetic songs are definitely his strong suit, with powerful refrains that add a nice tension to the music. Slower songs such as “November Was White, December Was Grey,” didn’t pack as much punch as the others, but didn’t ruin the set. Ultimately, it was a strong showing of a cohesive collection of songs which are definitely worth a listen when the album is released.
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SXSW review: P.J. Harvey at Stubb's
(10 p.m. Saturday, Stubb’s)
Some of us never quite got P.J. Harvey. The British songstress - a cult favorite of indie circles during the 1990s - seemed too absent and affected. Honestly, her music usually just sounded too far “out there.” There seemed to be an underlying demand that we look down at our shoes, then slowly toward the sky. Too much contemplation never equaled enough. Harvey influences John Lee Hooker and Jimi Hendrix sure struck home, but go ahead and keep that cadet Captain Beefheart. We’ll take Howlin’ Wolf, thanks.
We change. We grow. We understand a little more about contemplation. Turns out, some of us still don’t get P.J. Harvey.
Of course, we were distinctly in the minority Saturday night at Stubb’s. Festival attendees from far and distant lands - Norway, Ireland and a Columbian musician playing Copa later - overflowed the barbecue joint to hail Polly Jean. “I like her because she’s legit and she’s got it together,” said Brendan Williams, 23, of Dallas. “She’s definitely got the voice. I could just listen to it forever.”
Harvey has said that she enjoys songwriting more than performing. However, when called on it earlier this week during a KGSR in-studio radio performance, she hedged. The 39-year-old insisted - almost as if instructed - that she loves to take the stage to sing for fans. Maybe she’s grown, too.
Her performance suggested otherwise. Though stunning in a white dress, Harvey hardly engaged as she opened with material from her forthcoming album, “A Woman, A Man Walked By” (due March 31). On the up side, her crack quartet piqued interest backing new songs - most memorably, “Black Hearted Love” and “Leaving California” - with a rotation of jungle drums, spiky banjo and floating ukulele. Harvey herself upped the ante on older tunes like 1996’s “Taut,” but not enough to convert doubters.
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SXSW review: Kanye West at Fader Fort
At 9:05 p.m. Saturday, Kanye West and his stable of G.O.O.D. Music artists descended upon the Levi’s/Fader Fort stage at 1101 E. Fifth St. for what would become a highlight of SXSW 2009.
If you had ever visited the Graphic Glass Studio on Fifth Street, you wouldn’t recognize it in its incarnation as the Levi’s/Fader Fort. All of the floor-to-ceiling “Sanford and Son”-type items in the warehouse had been removed for its transformation into a Levi’s store, complete with all the ambiance of a store from a high end shopping mall.
Likewise, West’s performance was something of a transformation, too. West was as good as he needed to be (many people had been waiting for him to play based on a rumor since the early afternoon), and it was better than it had to be (he killed for two hours). The show resembled one of those “cavalcade of stars” tours from the late 1950s/early 1960s: West would perform two or three of his hits, then he’d bring up one of his proteges from his G.O.O.D. Music record label imprint and share the stage or feature them outright. Although West (and his ego) are notorious for being his own worst enemy, he really reined himself in Saturday night; he graciously played the role of a generous headliner and an excited mentor and label boss spotlighting his stable of artists in what was a marketing coup (for all parties involved).
“Amazing” from West’s most recent, most experimental work yet, “808s and Heartbreaks” started off his set with a pitch-perfect stomp, pricking up ears with its modern-yet-tribal groove and maxed-out Auto-Tune vocals.
“Gone” - one of the best tracks from his breakout sophomore album “Late Registration” — came in quick succession. The creative DJ then elevated the crowd further with a bit of “Drive Slow” as bodies and booties bounced in unison.
West was clad in a T-shirt and sleeveless jean jacket - and only one gold necklace (and a watch that’s probably more expensive than all our salaries combined). He looked more old school, and had shed the urban-futuristic-Afro-punk accouterments that he’s recently flirted with. Considering he didn’t have a soundcheck, nor any of the enormous stage show props he’s grown accustomed to using, his performance was spot-on evidence that his talent is not based on overblown production.
West’s diction was excellent, cutting through the bombast of his live band and DJ. And it’s worth noting that his band - bassist, drummer, guitarist, percussionist, keyboardist, DJ (with now requisite Apple laptop) and backup singer - were flawless. The percussionist played electronic drums and over-sized congas in time to the DJ, emphasizing the hypnotic snare beats, providing synthetic and organic tones. The live snare and kick drum were pegging the mixing board in the red, and cleaning out earwax, just the way it should be.
Likewise, West’s band used dynamics better than most bands, which tend to play with everything turned to eleven, loud and proud, full of nervous energy, never thinking to bring it down.
The star-packed show was carefully constructed with a song cycle that built in intensity over the course of two hours and reached a crescendo when super-surprise guest Common came on stage to perform his songs “Universal Mind Control” and “The Light.” At the end of “The Light” Erykah Badu appeared out of nowhere, representing Dallas and female power worldwide. Badu then flexed her skills in a freestyle joint with Common and West. Common is one of West’s longtime friends and collaborators, and his and Badu’s arrival sparked West’s biggest, most sincere smiles of the evening.
“I (expletive) forgot the words…I got too excited Austin!” West said during his climatic hit song, “Good Life.” Then as if to help out their mentor, all of the G.O.O.D. artists and Common returned to the stage as West found his footing again. The song’s lyrical reference to West’s grandmother and his recently deceased mother (who was also his manager) seemed to elevate the song in the audience’s consciousness; everyone appeared to appreciate the moment for its realness.
Whether you love him, hate him, or are apathetic, it’s nearly impossible to deny West is something of an anomaly in pop music in that he has critical acclaim, mainstream appeal, indie rock cred, Grammy awards and platinum-selling albums. West’s albums rest alongside Radiohead records in the vinyl collections of critics and tastemakers. From the hipster Pitchfork Media set to top 40/urban radio worshipers, West has both a ghetto pass and a suburbia pass, and his Saturday evening show proved that he can rock both arenas and a small 1,500-capacity boutique micro-festival.
The four-day long Levi’s/Fader Fort event was free for all, and included unlimited free booze and drinks (but alarmingly no food - a horrible planning flaw). The Levi’s/Fader Fort was evidence that the worldwide “economic downtown” apparently has not touched neither Levi’s nor Fader Magazine as the production price-tag of the event would likely be enough to feed a small West African nation for a month (or more); also, toward the end of West’s set, he shouted “Levi’s get that check ready.” Austinites appeared to be in the minority, as New Yorkers, West Coasters and assorted folks from around the world appeared to make up the majority of the audience (I overhead too many conversations about Williamsburg and the Bay area).
Setlist
1. Amazing
2. The Good, the Bad, the Ugly (Consequence featuring Kanye West)
3. Don’t Forget Em (Consequence)
4. Gone (Consequence featuring Kanye West)
5. Drive Slow (featuring GLC)
6. Big Screen (GLC featuring Kanye West)
7. Spaceship (featuring GLC and Consequence)
8. Disperse (Consequence featuring GLC and Really Doe)
9. We Major (featuring Really Doe)
10. Plastic (Really Doe featuring Kanye West)
11. Crack Music (featuring Malik Yusef)
12. spoken word interlude by Malik Yusef
13. Diamonds Are Forever
14. Getcha Some (Big Sean)
15. Way Out (Big Sean & Mr. Hudson)
16. Anyone But Him (Mr. Hudson featuring Kanye West)
17. Stay Up! (Viagra) (88 Keys featuring Kanye West)
18. Everybody (Fonzworth Bentley)
19. Welcome To Heartbreak (featuring Kid Cudi)
20. Sky Might Fall (Kid Cudi)
21. Buggin’ Out (Consequence, Kid Cudi, Kanye West)
22. Day ‘N’ Nite (Kid Cudi)
23. Universal Mind Control (Common)
24. Get Em High (featuring Common)
25. The Light (Common & Erykah Badu)
26. freestyle session (Common, Erykah Badu, Kanye West)
27. Heartless
28. Paranoid (featuring Kid Cudi & Mr. Hudson)
29. Good Life
30. Love Lockdown
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SXSW review: Kat Edmonson at Elephant Room
(The Elephant Room, 12:45 a.m. Saturday, the Elephant Room)
By the time one o’clock on the last night of South By Southwest rolls around, one feels a strong kinship with the guy who said, “I don’t want the ham and I don’t want the cheese. I just want out of the sandwich.”
But every few years, Fate hands you a present for your perseverance, and this year it came in the form of a willowy young jazz singer named Kat Edmonson, who had the unenviable task of hosting the last showcase of the last night of the festival at the Elephant Room.
I’d been turned on to Edmonson by a fellow writer at this paper, who hands out raves about as often as Scrooge hands out Christmas bonuses. So when he all but nominated Edmonson for homecoming queen, I paid attention.
Happily for the capacity crowd at the Elephant Room, Edmonson was just as naturally gifted and supple a vocalist as advertised. Much of her Great American Songbook material was familiar: Hello, there, “Summertime,” how’s it going “Angel Eyes,” what’s up with you, “Night and Day.”
But Edmondson, her pianist partner Kevin Lovejoy and a great combo that included Ephraim Owens and Chris Maresh provided tasty, inventive and at times counterintuitive interpretation of those classics. A lot of the time, wisely, they stepped out of the way and let Edmonson’s natural touch and pure tones (her vocals sounded almost like horn lines to this listener) have their way with the timeless material.
Edmonson is a slender young blonde who doesn’t look old enough to buy a drink in the joint, let alone command center stage, but she falls naturally into the headliner’s role. Even attired in jeans and a peasant blouse — not exactly the classic chanteuse’s ensemble — she came across with aplomb and real authority.
A surprising version of John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” and a nimble rendition of “I Walk A Little Faster” brought an end to this writer’s personal SXSW and Edmonson’s set. I’m happy to see the 2009 edition of the festival recede into past tense, but I look forward to sitting ringside and watching Edmonson and her combo work again, real soon.
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SXSW review: Kim Phuc at Beerland
Gunslingers, Obits, Flower Travellin Band, Kylesa with their old bass player amping up the band’s energy, the awfulness of Tricky….these are the things I thought I would take away from SXSW.
Then I saw Kim Phuc, a mid-tempo punk rock band from Pittsburgh. Two guitars, bass, drums, singer. Pretty straightforward., you might think.
Two songs in and I knew this was something I was not going to see everyday. There’s nothing in the world like being floored by a band you know very little about. Suddenly everything seems filled with possibility: “if these guys are this good, what else is out there I don’t yet know about that’s this good?” That’s the sort of thing that keeps us music dorks looking over the next hill again and again even though nine times out of 10 there’s nothing in the valley at all.
Two songs in and I recalled something Daivd Yow once told me in an interview for an oral histroy I wrote on the band Scratch Acid. He said with Scratch Acid, he consciously moved away from hardcore’s speed and into something slower because “it was more like getting beaten up.”
This is a really smart way of saying that at slower speeds, punk rock has a little more freedom to move. Those high velocity boom-BAM-boom-boom-BAM tempos can sound a little confining.
Kim Phuc, on the other hand, was just devastating.
First, they wrote real songs. Not strung together riffs, not a couple of parts played a breakneck pace. Real songs. Heavy, noisy, cruel sounding songs filled with rage and fire.
Second, as writer Doug Mosurock noted in “Still Single,” his column for the excellent internet zine Dusted, “(Kim Phuc represents) three generations of a scene commingling on the same stage. Singer Rob Henry was in Direct Action, one of Pittsburgh’s first hardcore bands, Corey from Aus-Rotten and Caustic Christ is on bass, and the rest of the band is filled out, and was founded by, the kids who grew up under their direct influence. That’s something you don’t see all too often.”
Amen. This should happen far more than it does, in every musical genre. The vets can spot the cliches, the kids can show old dogs new tricks.
That said, Henry was the straw that stirred the pitch black drink. A big man, he waded into the audience without making himself annoying (i.e. running into people) howling like a wounded animal. He rolled on the floor, shirtless, accidentally covering himself in the glitter on the Beerland stage. He was a glitter covered mess of a man while the band pitched and thundered behind him.
My jaw was on the floor. I wasn’t the only one.
I almost never buy seven-inch singles anymore. I bought both of singles they were selling the minute they left the stage. I would release their next records myself if I could. Someone please make them famous.
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Maybe the single funniest thing overheard at SXSW this year
“Hey, there’s Pamela Des Barre. I go to the same Curves she does.”
You’re welcome.
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SXSW Review: XYX at Spiro's Friday, then Beerland Saturday
XYX are a duo from Mexico, another act from the apparently absurdly fertile Monterrey scene (unless every single band from there is here this week). Drummer Mou Ortiz and bassist Anel Escalante played a whole mess of shows, but two stand out for the way they shifted the context of the band, opened up the ways to think about their music.
Friday, they played at Spiro’s on what has become a traditionally avant-garde rock bill brought to us by the fine people at WFMU, the legendary free form New Jersey radio station. They played with up and coming noisy oddballs such as Mayyors and Gary War and veterans such as the wonderful New Zealand band Renderers.
This made XYX’s music seem edgy and arty; this wasn’t unreasonable. Escalante’s bass drove the melodies, and there were melodies, complicated, buoyant bass lines that resolved into smart, catchy tunelets. Ortiz’s drumming was by turns devastating and lithe. Add an overplaying guitarist and you would have had a progressive rock trio the likes of which would have excited anyone who owned more than one King Crimson album.
Saturday, they opened local punk promoter Timmy Hefner’s non-SXSW showcase at Beerland. Here the band’s music also made perfect sense. Add a barre chording guitarist with a beaten up, sitcker-covered Gibson SG knockoff and a Marshall amp and you’d have a rock solid punk band with unusually smart bass lines.
The band made perfect sense in both contexts. They delivered excellent sets both times. Next year, I look forward to them opening some big, slick rock show at Stubb’s or on stage at Mess With Texas. The stuff could work anywhere.
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SXSW Scene Report: Final night madness
A special blend of exhaustion, tension, mild panic, regret and excitement — there’s nothing like the final night of SXSW, and this year was no exception.
Brief highlights:
The big news of the night, of course, was Kanye West’s performance at Fader Fort, where the crowd had gathered for hours awaiting his “surprise” appearance. He brought up Common and Erykah Badu as well.
Just a flew blocks north in an old Safeway, Perez Hilton’s party was in full swing. Hilton, donning a stunning pink version of Aretha Franklin’s inaugural bow hat, introduced each act, which included surprise guests the Indigo Girls. Ladyhawke in particular was impressive. A few hours later, Kanye got on stage and performed. That’s right. The Indigo Girls and Kanye West on one stage in one night. Surprise!
Further east, Kanye rumors (and more) were swirling around the other major SXSW party, the Red Bull Moontower. As other parties and showcases ended, the crowd here got bigger, of course, and everyone was ready for something close to magical. After all, this is where the party had gone on all night every night during the fest. But around 2:45 a.m., toward the end of Goldielocks’ set, organizers announced that the music had to stop because of safety and noise concerns. Erykah Badu had been scheduled to go on at 3 a.m., followed by the Crystal Method. As someone pointed out, why it was OK to be loud on a Thursday night and not on a Saturday night was unclear. Although disappointed, the crowd began to disperse relatively calmly.
Elsewhere, at SXSW venues across town, Echo & the Bunnymen, Jane’s Addiction and other classic groups sent their fans over the moon. Janelle Monae won over more converts, and the Waco Brothers played their traditional closing set.
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March 21, 2009
SXSW Scene Report: The Knucklerumbler with Rollingstone.com party, Peckerheads
3 p.m. was a little early, it seemed, for the die-hard Lady Sovereign fans to queue up for an opportunity to see the pint-sized British hellraiser Saturday. Lines were nonexistent at Peckerheads, where she was slated to play at 5:30 p.m..
That meant getting in for two of the festival’s biggest buzz acts, Janelle Monae and the Love Language, was shockingly easy. Say what you want about Peckerheads — while the ventilation may be poor, the beer selection questionable and the floors stickier than a suburban movie theater, they know how to put on a show. With a genius dual-stage setup that let the venue toggle between artists with practically no lag, the day ran smoothly.
Monae took the stage on schedule at 3:30 p.m., with a band member announcing her as “from Kansas City by way of Atlanta, one of the most astonishing performers of our time,” which would have seemed conceited had it not been clearly true.
Bursting onto a stage adjacent to a fog machine — which are entirely too rare at SXSW — the Grammy-nominated artist bounced from corner to corner of the stage like a human pinball for the next half hour. A mere three songs in 30 minutes, the set was heavy on instrumental jams, but the ever-snappily dressed Monae electrified the tiny room with her blend of modern hip hop hustle and old-school soul swagger.
North Carolina’s the Love Language, a jangly eight-piece indie rock ensemble, took the stage next. The group’s self-titled debut album is one of 2009’s strongest under-the-radar releases this year, a messy, sweeping, enthusiastic effort that sounds a bit like something the Arcade Fire might make if they got drunk on whiskey. The set’s highlight was single “Lalita,” currently a mainstay on Austin Powell’s local and new music program “Next Big Thing,” on 101X. The band took advantage of their final SXSW show to throw themselves into the crowd, sweat buckets and generally let loose with wild musical abandon.
By then, of course, Lady Sov.’s devotees had begun to take over Sixth Street, as the venue hit capacity and a line extending west had begun to form. One can only wonder if they noticed Monae exiting the venue — sporting her best formal wear and tailed by her entire musical entourage — and pondered what they had missed.
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SXSW scenes: Notes in brief...
— Everyone who saw the Circle Jerks on Thursday night at an utterly packed Beerland was floored.
“Really, really fun,” No No No Hopes/Camp X-Ray bassist Mark Grady said. “All old stuff.”
“The last bit was all old Black Flag songs,” Transmission co-owner Graham Williams said. (Circle Jerks singer Keith Morris did time in Black Flag.) “It was like a weird dream, like you’d tell someone ‘Yeah, I had this dream where I went to Beerland, but Max wasn’t at the door, it was this other girl stamping your hand and for some reason the Circle Jerks were playing.’”
Circle Jerks played the Mess With Texas fest Saturday evening and Morris was spotted backstage in a Beerland T-shirt.
— Was that Kanye West checking out Kid Sister’s set Friday night at Club De Ville? Observers said whomever it was, and those who danced up closer swear it was him, say a wig was involved, but so were two large bodyguards.
— By the way, if you can’t make it to the Kanye show tonight at Fader Fort, know that it is streaming on fader.com.
— It seems to have been a good year for old people, by which I mean bands with members older than, say, 35. Strong buzz is out there for the sets from Obits, Flower Travellin Band, DEVO, Absu, Slough Feg and others.
— For a band known for having a sullen lead singer, Echo and the Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch should be given some sort of award for not punching Echo touring rhythm guitarist Gordon Goudie while on stage. Goudie displayed some of the most annoying, distracting hey-look-at-me rock movies of the entire festival, non of which fit with the band’s music. Dude, nobody needs to look at you. They are here to see Ian and guitarist Will Sargent. Now, I admit that those two dudes don’t move much and your guitar adds much needed noise to the proceedings. Still, as the kids said back in the Bunnymen’s ’80s heyday, take it down a thousand.
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SXSW panel report: Wax Attacks!
The gist: Vinyl is making a comeback. Speakers from the pressing plant to the record shop discuss how they cater to the crate diggers and casual fans.
The panelists: Moderator: John Kunz, owner, Waterloo Records; Douglas Hanners, owner, Austin Record Convention; Jay Millar, marketing director, United Record Pressing; Monti Olson, senior vice president, Universal Music Publishing /Interscope; Mason Williams, director A&R, Rhino Entertainment; Sandy Bitman, owner Park Avenue record shop, Orlando.
The lowdown: According to Jay Miller of United Record Pressing, the plant has been producing vinyl since 1949. “Vinyl was king,” he says, “but it died off in the 1990s. I wasn’t even purchasing vinyl back then. It was mostly dance and hip hop DJs buying 12” records, and for a decade that’s what kept us afloat. But the rise of digital has led to a resurgence. As soon as I got my first iPod I was looking at my walls and walls of CDs and didn’t want to let go of all that artwork and those liner notes. And that’s exactly what I liked about vinyl, so I started selling my CDs and putting the money back into vinyl. People wanting artwork are turning to vinyl.”
Sandy Bitman, owner of Park Avenue record shop in Orlando, says for DJs, the 12” is all but dead. “They don’t come into our store any more. Instead it’s people wanting to buy LPs. It’s fun to watch kids of 15 or 16 competing with guys in their 50s and 60s to flip through the vinyl and get to the next letter.
Monti Olson of Universal Music says if consumers are going to spend 30 to 50 dollars on a record they demand a piece of art. “They’ll ask questions before buying a record, like ‘does it come with the original poster’, ‘is it a gatefold’, etc. Artwork is increasingly important to the audiophile market … there’s a social issue with playing vinyl. With an iPod you can’t really have a friend over to listen to music, but with an LP you can put it on, look at the sleeve. And I think we’re going to see more of that.”
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SXSW scene report: Mess with Texas
It’s rare to see Transmission Entertainment principle James Moody looking nervous, but checking out the massive line outside of Mess With Texas at 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon, you could understand his concern.
“More people that we thought came out today,” Moody said as he waved folks in after they received their drinking-age wristbands. “But we’ll deal with it.”
While Mess with Texas didn’t have as many stages as Fun Fun Fun and didn’t take up as much of Waterloo Park as that autumn rock fest, it felt about as big. Thousands of Austinites showed up for the free concert, from crusty punks looking for a beer to families with babies wearing ear protectors to hipsters taking a break from the Red River party on the last say of SXSW 2009.
“I thought people might be lining up around 5 p.m., but I was not prepared for a long line early in the afternoon (because we didn’t have huge names),” Transmission co-owner Graham Williams said. Williams, backstage, carried around the bag of payouts for the bands; it might as well have had a big dollar sign on it, cartoon bank style. Occasionally a band manager approached him and received an envelope. “I ended up calling a bunch of Transmission folks as soon as I got to the park: ‘Hey, can you come down and help get the line moving?’” By 3:30 p.m., the line seemed under control, though a steady stream of folks kept arriving as the afternoon wore on, through surprisingly energetic sets from acts such as Cursive and Abe Vigoda.
Backstage, there was definitely a feeling of the festival winding down and sense of camaraderie between the bands. As Vivian Girls set up on the main stage to play their umpteenth show of the weekend, they asked for some help.
“Are the Coathangers here?,” Vivian Girls bassist Kickball Katy said to either nobody in particular or the entire crowd. The Coathangers are an Atlanta band; everyone who has seen them seems to love them.
“We just saw King Kahn earlier and he had a dancer so we asked the Coathangers to dance with us but they’re not here,” Katy said before launching into the band’s increasingly popular indie garage-pop. Ah well.
Acts slated for later in the day included buzz bands Akron/Family, Kid Sister, the Thermals and the Black Lips.
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SXSW interview: Langhorne Slim
Langhorne Slim narrows the divide between folk and soul by fueling timely tales with timeless grooves. The New York-based songwriter - born Sean Scolnick in Langhorne, PA - scored David Letterman’s endorsement and a national television debut last year. “(That acknowledgement) certainly makes you feel good and that you’ve come further than you were before,” he says. Catch Langhorne’s final SXSW appearance this evening at Purevolume.com. He’s scheduled to perform at 6:45 p.m. Second and Trinity streets.
American-Statesman: How’s your SXSW been going?
Langhorne Slim: Since I got here, I’ve left my laptop at the last place that we played and my phone in an old friend’s car. Hopefully, both will come back to me.
Have your shows gone better?<br>
They’ve been the most fun that we’ve had out here to date, that’s for sure. We’ve pretty much been doing our stuff. I haven’t seen the Avett Brothers, but their sound guy who we’re good friends with is now going to do the rest of the tour with us.
You have different style than the Avetts, but your energy level is pretty high, too.
Well, we give it our all just like those boys do. Our stage presence is different, but it’s coming from a similar place.
It landed you that gig on Letterman last year. How’d that impact your career?
Obviously, it was a dream come true for us. It’s kind of great and ridiculous at the same time. That gives you a sort of validity you had before, even though you’re the same band playing the same music. When people see you on a show like that it furthers people’s interest. It makes people take you more serious, which is silly. But I’ll take it happily.
Is there any self-validation involved?
That’s a good question. Absolutely. To give you an honest answer, yeah, there is. For a lot of us, this is who we are and what we do. We’re not going to quit over a negative review or something. But when it’s these songs you write and play all the time, it’s the same self-validation you get when you have a great show and people are freaking out and dancing and feel passionately about your music.
How has the state of the economy affected you as a touring musician?
We put out our record last April and toured about nine months straight on it. Then we took a well-needed break. So, when the economy was struggling, we weren’t getting hit on the head as much in the news with it. I wasn’t really seeing the effects because I was out in the country with my girlfriend, you know, walking dogs and trying to get better at playing piano.
What about your fellow musicians?
I hear from an (expletive) of friends and people we’re meeting, “Yeah, I just lost my job.” It becomes far more tangible when you’re meeting people and hearing them say, “I can make your show Tuesday night because I just got laid off and don’t have to wake up tomorrow.”
So, more people are coming out?
I feel as if the crowds are just as big, if not bigger. I’ve also heard that in bad economic times artists and entertainers often do better than before. But maybe that’s a cliché.
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SXSW Panel: Doug Sahm's "Mendocino"
(Noon Saturday, Austin Convention Center)
It’s been 40 years since the gleeful yelp of “The Sir Douglas Quintet is back!” kicked off “Mendocino,” one of the signature albums of the incredibly fertile era of the late sixties. And, in many ways, it encapsulated the fusion of grooves that Doug Sahm synthesized throughout his prolific career.
A Saturday panel at the Austin Convention Center brought together producer and record exec Bill Bentley, who has co-produced a tribute album to Sahm, who died in 1999; Austin Chronicle writer Margaret Moser; author Jan Reid, who is penning a Sahm biography; SDQ alumni Augie Meyers and Harvey Kagan; and Doug’s son Shawn to discuss the enduring impact of “Mendocino” and its creator.
“Most people never understood what a beautifully layered song that was,” said Moser, citing the mixture of hippie pop and Chicano soul that characterized the song.
“It went pretty quickly,” said Kagan, the Quintet’s bassist for the sessions. “Most of it was first takes. Doug never was the type of person to do things over and over.”
“That song was as simple as could be,” said Shawn Sahm. “Dad traveled a lot and he had girlfriends all over the place. I had more stepmoms than anybody I knew. And he was in Mendocino with this young chick and that sparked the song.”
The album helped make Sahm and the Quintet celebrities in the Bay Area, but his heart was always in Texas, and he moved back to Austin in 1973 and immediately galvanized the fledgling country-rock scene in town.
“Doug’s arrival turned Austin around. We were all amateurs, bar-rats,” said Bentley, who was drumming with a band at the time. “He turned everybody on to the professionalism that he had. We all knew that here was the one guy who really knew how to play. And at the same time, he would hang out and play with us and encourage us.”
Meyers recalled the Quintet touring America and Europe behind Mendocino and hiding their pot in microphone stands. “So we went on the road with 25 or 50 mic stands,” he recalled with a laugh.
“He’d call me up at my farm out in Bulverde, Texas, and say he was coming over for enchiladas,” Meyers said. “And he’d show up with Bob Dylan. And then the next time, it would be Jerry Garcia.”
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SXSW scene report: Gary Louris and Mark Olson at Jo's Coffee
The Jayhawks are back together. The Jayhawks are back together. The Jayhawks are back together. Seriously, you’d have thought John Lennon came back from the dead to reconcile with Paul McCartney, what with the throng at Jo’s Coffee spilling out onto South Congress Avenue for the seminal alt-country duo’s Friday evening set.
Truth told, only the Jayhawks’ principal players, Gary Louris and Mark Olson, have reconvened, after Olson bailed on Louris 15 years ago. The duo played from its new album, “Ready for the Flood,” but the crowd wasn’t there for any of that business. They wanted to hear golden oldies from the albums “Hollywood Town Hall” and “Tomorrow the Green Grass.” They wanted to sing along to the song “Blue.” Well, they got what they wanted.
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SXSW Review: Still Flyin'
(1 a.m. Saturday, Independent)
At least a couple of the 50 or so people who hung around until nearly 1:30 in the morning for the San Francisco collective Still Flyin’ are going to look back on cell-phone photos of themselves dancing like total goofballs and feel a wee bit embarrassed. Such is the guilty pleasure of this reggae-inspired jam band that’s calculatedly off-the-wall to the point of hip.
To not boogie along to the baker’s dozen — composed of back-up singers, a horn section, countless percussionists, a dedicated dancer in the style of a pogo stick, and a “guru” who switched off from manning the smoke machine inside the tie-dyed “mystery tent” to doling out beers from his fanny pack — is to not, um, live.
Word has spread about Still Flyin’ ever since Okkervil River’s Will Sheff told Pitchfork it was essentially his new favorite band. Now, “hammjamming,” the term frontman Sean Rawls and his merry pranksters use to explain their half-serious, half-joking approach to settling into a groove, is becoming as in-the-know as the secret handshake of the Skull and Bones society.
If all of this sounds over the top, it is, but that doesn’t mean musicianship isn’t there. Take a song like “Good Thing It’s a Ghost Town around Here,” with its gleeful, breakneck pace, and you sort of start feeling like you’re watching descendants of Afropop legend Fela Kuti.
Photo by Kathy Hoinski
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SXSW Review: Deer Tick
(Habana Backyard, 1 a.m. Saturday)
As people were filing out of the Habana Backyard following a set from Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, I heard one couple talking about how glad they were to have stayed for the former Drive-By Truckers guitarist’s set.
All I could think was — You have no idea what you’re about to miss.
Call it folk, country, rock, folk/rock, alt-country or Americana, the young members of Rhode Island’s Deer Tick write and play some of the most soulful, inspired music around, littered with lyrics as sharp as a shot of whiskey and rapid-fire guitar solos strong enough to blow the dust off your boots.
Though the band’s Wednesday night performance at Club Deville exploded immediately, Deer Tick found its footing on Friday night a few songs in with a galloping rendition of “Art Is Real (City of Sin).”
“There gotta be some old recipe/’Cause I gotta get drunk/I gotta forget about some things,” the loopy-eyed frontman Joseph John McCauley crooned in his raspy howl, cigarette stuck between his guitar strings.
But that was one of the only songs the band played from its 2007 release “War Elephant.” The rest were a tantalizing preview of the forthcoming “Born on Flag Day,” due out in June.
Some, like the soft “Blowin’ in the Wind” inspired “How Can a Man” hit hard with simple truths — “It couldn’t be much fun being a millionaire of one/’Cause a million’s just a million of one thing.” Others, like “Dance of Love” and the blues-rock closer ripped through frantic vocal delivery and tight interplay between the guitars and drums.
It was only one of the many SXSW shows Deer Tick had played and was yet to play, but it showed little sign of fatigue.
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SXSW Scene Report: Benjy Ferree at Okay Mountain
Benjy Ferree broke out the pixie dust at eastside gallery Okay Mountain Friday. His new folk-rocker, “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee,” is a concept album about Disney golden boy Bobby Driscoll, who experienced childhood fame as an actor and as the voice of the animated Peter Pan before booze cut his adult career short and led to a premature, penniless death. Ferree might have been over-thinking it when he came up with the idea of packaging songs as a chronicle of Driscoll’s rise and fall, coupled with the rite-of-passage themes from Peter Pan, but all of that was irrelevant in the live delivery.
Ferree - sans the beard, glasses, and hobo hat he wore at last year’s SXSW, perhaps as a way to inhabit the ostensibly clean-cut Driscoll persona - was joined in duet by lost boy Drew Mills. They breezed through songs like “Big Business,” about the hard knocks of Hollywood, and “Fear,” wherein Ferree stretched his Jack White voice to sound more soulful than bluesy. Along the way, the duo interspersed a lot of synchronized whistling, and Ferree shouted out, over and over again, “Peace, love, and all that,” to the sparse crowd. It was almost as if he’d been smoking the pixie dust before he started spreading it.
Photo by Kathy Hoinski
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SXSW Review: Beach House
(Cedar Street Courtyard, Friday night)
There’s a reason Beach House is so frequently dubbed “dream pop.” From the moment Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally took the stage at the Cedar Street Courtyard, the narrow performance venue and bar carved out of the space between two buildings, they made every effort to give their set the same ethereal and otherworldly energy that characterizes REM sleep.
Setting the tone with the slow, methodical “Gila,” off of last year’s “Devotion,” Legrand’s lilting voice and Scally’s understated guitar quickly established an atmosphere of quiet beauty. Underneath soft green lights and surrounded by walls covered in ivy on either side, Legrand’s voice was buried underneath layers of reverb that made her sound less like a live presence and more like a voice in your head.
The tempo changed three songs in, with the comparatively driving “Used to Be,” off October’s 7-inch single. Legrand picked up the pace and Scally was granted the occasional guitar solo, though they served more to punctuate the lyrics than anything else. The addition of that most quintessential of upbeat instruments, the tambourine, to Legrand’s arsenal signaled a transition to a slightly more pop sound that took hold through the rest of the set.
By the time they closed with the catchy “Master of None,” it was clear Beach House’s atmospheric take on pop had struck a chord — a previously uppity audience had put down the iPhones, lowered the cameras and been swept up in waves of bittersweet pop melodies. In retrospect, between the punk rock stylings of preceding band Pete and the Pirates and the later frat guy reggae of Bedouin Soundclash, it had all seemed like a particularly poignant dream.
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SXSW Review: The Ettes
(Friday night, the Mohawk Patio)
In a world that can often be very male-dominated, it’s refreshing to see women. The Ettes, a Nashville-based punk outfit consisting of two women, singer/guitarist Coco and drummer Poni, along with male bassist Jem, definitely rocked the Mohawk Patio on Friday night.
Poni’s drumming was nothing short of explosive, adding an addictive energy to the songs that made the band another highlight, along with Gringo Star and the Hold Steady, of what was one of the strongest showcases of the week. Likewise, Coco’s inspired vocals proved that she was worthy of comparisons to Blondie and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
She noted that the band had been fired up by the Sonics earlier in the night, and although the Ettes weren’t exactly covering Little Richard, there was definitely a similar excitement in the air for the set, especially on the songs “Reputation” and “I Get Mine.”
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SXSW Review: Asobi Seksu
(1 a.m. Saturday, Habana Calle 6)
After a late start, Brooklyn dream pop band Asobi Seksu (meaning “playful sex” in Japanese) headlined the Polyvinyl showcase at Habana Calle 6, rocking tracks from their new album “Hush” as well as a few older songs from their previous two critically acclaimed studio albums.
The band’s unique spacey, expansive sound - complete with the creaks and grinds of two glaciers colliding - emanates from the strengths of its two members: keyboardist/lead vocalist Yuki Chikudate and guitarist James Hanna. Saturday evening the band was filled out by two of their friends, drummer Larry Gorman and bassist Billy Pavone. And although the rhythm section was tight and at times quite inventive in their ability to turn the beat around, the Asobi Seksu sound is grounded in its two essential elements: Hanna’s dreamy, washed-out guitar-work and Chikudate’s ethereal voice mixed with her inventive keyboard flourishes.
Chikudate was all business throughout the eight-song set. Her voice sounded more relaxed, more emotional than their records, as she toyed with the melodies, tastefully dancing across multiple octaves mainly in falsetto. The band played several tracks from “Hush,” which was released last month, including “Meh No Mae,” “Sing Tomorrows Praises” and the supersonic “In the Sky.”
A close listen to “Familiar Light” revealed Asobi Seksu’s still pushing the bounds of dream pop, adding math rock and classical elements - complete with alternating rhythms and descending melodies - that rival Sigur Ros in their ability to create mood through ornate arrangements and lush, ambient soundscapes.
During the outro of the set closer, “Red Sea,” Chikudate moved from the keyboards to drums, bashing out a slow, powerful beat that was heavier than you’d expect her 5 foot tall, 95 some-odd pound frame would be capable of pounding. Then with white noise blasting from Hanna’s guitar as it echoed far from the Habana Calle 6 patio stage and into the night sky, Chikudate allowed a half-smile to slip out as the band successfully wrapped one of the most experimental, stunningly provocative sets witnessed during SXSW.
In comparison, many of the indie rock bands at this year’s SXSW sound similar in their race down the wide and deep well of mediocrity. Asobi Seksu’s ability to challenge conventional sounds and arrangements in rock music leave them with few peers that can match their creativity. (Let’s just hope it doesn’t take another three years to pass before their next release.)
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SXSW Scene Report: Mohawk surprise
Sometimes SXSW can offer up pleasant surprises.
Seattle-based rock trio The Blakes canceled their 9 p.m. set (no word on why) at Mohawk on Friday and were replaced by Gringo Star, who apparently dragged their gear across town at the last minute to appear.
The Atlanta-based foursome knew what they were doing, with an eclectic sound that pulled not just from no-frills psychedelic rock, but punk and even at points jazz. Despite the obvious influences, at no point did the band come across as knockoffs. Their well-crafted songs all seemed to contain something that kept the listener interested, including the piano parts on “Come on Now” and “No Man,” or the thumping bass on “Rebel Kind.”
Similarly, the various members of the band, who shared singing duties, brought a tongue-in-cheek intensity to the music that made it an entertaining live experience.
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SXSW Review: Loney Dear
(Habana Calle 6, Friday night)
“We love the Paramount,” frontman Emil Svanangen of Sweden’s Loney Dear said near the end of his band’s set at the Polyvinyl Records showcase on Friday night. “We were there a few weeks ago. It was freaking marvelous.”
And indeed, everything about Loney Dear’s opening gig for Andrew Bird at the Paramount last month was freaking marvelous — the venue, the sound, the band.
The band’s South by Southwest performance wasn’t bad, but it was certainly different. Svanangen had a few less members and thus a few less instruments backing him. Paired with the lack of the Paramount’s stunning acoustics, Loney Dear sounded less like a twinkly, floating folk with charming melodic sensibility than stripped-down, hard-driving rock backed by electronic samples.
And unfortunately for audience members near the back of the venue, the door to the bar had to remain open for the majority of the show because of fire hazard restrictions, so the sounds of the pounding blues band inside collided with Loney Dear’s melody-driven music to create an awful mess of sound.
But that was hardly the band’s fault, and near the front of the stage, the samples that backed songs like “Airport Surroundings” and “Everything Turns to You” from the band’s latest album, “Dear John,” raced forward and got the crowd moving, while the backing vocals from the new female keyboardist resonated with a haunting echo.
Other songs, like the ambient “I Was Only Going Out” just sounded out of place at a venue that gave the music such a rough edge.
It was a decent performance by Loney Dear, but it definitely highlighted the difference a venue can make.
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SXSW Review: Sam Amidon
(Friday, 18th Floor of the Hilton Garden Inn)
Sam Amidon doesn’t write his own songs, but instead rearranges traditional folk numbers. The result is a somber, sobering trip to centuries past, where life’s hardships and heartaches seem slightly removed from today’s.
If that sounds heady and slightly depressing, it is. But at Amidon’s Friday performance at the top floor of the Hilton Garden Inn, the twenty-something musician offset the seriousness of his music perfectly with a bizarre brand of deadpan humor.
Amidon began the set with his somber acoustic version of “Wild Bill Jones,” a usually upbeat bluegrass number about a murder committed in cold blood out of jealousy for another’s love. At the peak of the song, just as Jones is shot down, Amidon sang, “He let out a dreadful moan.”
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR,” he then screeched with a straight face for a good minute. When he finally dove back into the song, the befuddled audience erupted in laughter and applauded.
The set was full of similar surprises. During a bluesy banjo number, Amidon repeatedly asked, “Whaddya say, banjo?” before his smooth-moving solos. At the end of the song, he walked to the back of the stage and asked, “Whaddya say, pushups?” Then he did twenty or so. Again, the audience ate it up.
Humor aside, the music and the stories behind it were captivating. In “Saro,” an immigrant to the United States pined for the love he left behind, while in “O Death” the speaker pleads with his inevitable end to “Spare me over just another year.”
To wrap things up, Amidon enlisted the audience to help him sing the words to “Relief” by R. Kelly: “Isn’t it a relief/That we are one/The war is over/There’s an angel in the sky/Love is still alive.”
“It’s not true, but I guess it’s a nice thought,” he said.
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SXSW Review: Superdrag
(11 p.m. Friday, Pangaea)
Superdrag, Knoxville’s perennial underdogs of power pop, blasted through a short set of three-and-a-half-minute pop nuggets during their powerful set at Pangaea.
The “ultra lounge” with bottle service appeared to be one of the most unlikely places to catch a band that spent the better part of the last two decades traveling around the country in a van, living out of the lint in each other’s pockets, but there appeared to be fans in the roped-off area that were taking advantage of the club’s exclusive (and expensive) bottle service. The attention to alcohol was quite ironic considering frontman John Davis’ reported battle with alcoholism and his re-born Christian sobriety that suffuses its way into his newly penned lyrics.
Superdrag reformed last year after a 5 year hiatus; their set included a sampling of songs from their lengthy career and several new tracks off their new album “Industry Giants,” which was released on Tuesday. Retooled (and seemingly quite sober), the new Superdrag actually featured the return of the original lineup: vocalist / guitarist Davis, bassist Tom Pappas, guitarist Brandon Fisher and super-steady drummer Don Coffey.
The band opened with “Slow to Anger,” the opening cut from their new album. With Davis repeatedly scream-singing “slow to speak, slow to anger” during the verse, the lifted biblical passage transformed into a mantra, appearing aggressive in tone instead of a plaintive adage.
“Keep It Close to Me” and “Down on the Inside” followed quickly, cracking forth out of a glowing tube-amp distortion squall from their dual guitar attack. Davis diced up buzzsaw leads on his Gibson SG during the bridges and choruses, recalling the elements that allowed Superdrag to put the power in power pop.
The band also made sure to include their 1996 radio/MTV hit “Sucked Out.” The song blasted with fury and contempt of a music industry that is now taking it hard on the chin just as Superdrag is elevating like a fiery-winged phoenix. After a rollercoaster ride of a career that began in 1992, Superdrag is clicking right back up the hill again.
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SXSW scene report: A concert for one
Jason “Jug” Costanzo owns and operates Sound on Sound Records on E. North Loop and plays bass in the excellent Austin band the Young. He had a couple of parties this year and played a few himself. He works hard and runs a good store that’s become a rock-solid part of the Austin punk community.
He threw his second of three days parties Friday. Though slated to appear, Mexican psych-punk act Los Llamarada, one of the underground breakout bands from last year and one of Jug’s faves, didn’t make the show. (They played a terrific set at Sound on Sound during SXSW last year.)
They showed up around 7 p.m., a good hour after everyone had gone home. “There were maybe two people here,” Jug said Saturday morning. Jug told Los Llamarada that the party was long over.
The band asked if they could play anyway.
“Sure, I guess,” Jug said.
So they set up. Then they asked Jug to join them on bass, which he did. Again, virtually nobody in the store, just one band jamming with a good local player who also happened to like them a lot.
Jug said he had an amazing time.
“I got my own little SXSW show just for me,” Jug said. He totally deserves it.
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SXSW Review: Kylesa at Red 7
(Red 7, midnight Friday)
OK, ow. Man, I’m getting old.
There were a couple of reasons the Savannah, Ga.-based metal band Kylesa’s set worked so, so well at Red 7 Friday night.
First, they are, in general, an absolutely top flight metal band, blending thrash, doom, bullet-belt hardcore and whatever language Neurosis made up into something startlingly heavy and absolutely perfect for running into each other. Their new album, “Static Tensions” (Prosthetic/20 Buck Spin) might be the smoothest yet admixture of these elements, codifying them into that which sounds like nothing except Kylesa.
Second, their bass player since the first album, Corey Barhorst, is back in the band after a hiatus from rock for greater than a year. This is crucial. While guitarists/screamers Philip Cope and Laura Pleasents are the only consistent members, Barhorst has been there since nearly the very beginning and his hard-swinging bass and on-stage energy is crucial to making their live set as good as it can get.
Third, two drummers, sometimes in lock step, sometimes playing off each other, both setting up rolling thunder for the other three players to vibe off.
Add it up and it makes for thrilling, visceral metal, enormous, crashing riffs, some of the head-banging-est music at SXSW (word to Metallica, I guess). It also makes for the most kinetic pit I’ve been on the edges of in quite some time. From life-long metal heads to hardcore Kylesa fans juiced to see their best frontline back in action to guys who just like running into each other … well, my back is killing me. And I was just on the edge.
But I’d do it all again. No question.
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SXSW Review: Tricky at Austin Music Hall
(Friday night, Austin Music Hall)
Oh, Tricky. What the heck was I thinking?
I blame myself, really. Your debut album, “Maxinquaye” is without question one of the best albums of the 1990s - dark, sexy, druggy, weird, smart beat-science and atmospherics, a sweaty, one-night stand of an album suffused with languorous menace. The follow-ups, the even-druggier “Nearly God” and the excellent follow-up “Pre-Millennium Tension,” were nearly as good.
Then the wheels kind of came off over the next few records and by the millennium we all moved on. Dude’s tried to come back a couple of times, but last year’s “Knowle West Boy” got OK reviews. Friday night at Austin Music Hall, maybe my man could deliver the show I’d always wanted to see.
Um, no.
“Rocking out” has never quite been one of Tricky’s skill sets, as much as he might like. At Austin Music Hall, he alternated between letting his backup singers do the work (the classic “Karma Coma” didn’t sound quite so classic here) and bellowing into the mic and jumping a round a bit. So the rocking was a little weak by default.
The other problem is his best music has always been deceptively detailed and that couldn’t have worked at the still-mostly-lousy sounding Austin Music Hall either. Most of the songs came off as early 90s industrial dance music - big beats, big sounds, not much else. Even classics such as “Karma Coma” were roughed up by the sound and presentation. The closer, “Vent,” a scary juggernaut on album, felt overlong at the show, straining under the effort to make it transcendent, Tricky, shirtless and wearing suspenders, doing his best ranting like a madman.
As one local musician put it on his Facebook status, “(I) did not know live music could be as bad as Tricky was tonight.” I wish I could say I disagreed. I really do.
Photo by Jay Janner
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SXSW Review: The Hold Steady
(Midnight Friday, the Mohawk Patio)
The Hold Steady probably didn’t need to come to SXSW. They enjoy a cult following of people who think they are the best band in rock ‘n roll, as evidenced by a crowd on hand for their Friday night set at Mohawk that sang along to every song as they pumped their fists in the air. There was crowd surfing, flying beer and even a guy who showed off a tattoo on his back that read “damn right he’ll rise again” — the same tattoo belonging to a character in their song “Your Little Hoodrat Friend.”
The fact that the band maintains that kind of hold on their audience is impressive. Constantly on tour, they play Austin at what seems like six-month intervals. Their set lists, pulled mostly from last year’s release, “Stay Positive” and 2006’s “Boys and Girls in America,” don’t vary much, but for as many times as they play signature songs such as “Stuck Between Stations,” “Party Pit” and “Massive Nights,” these guys always seem to make it seem louder and more passionate then the last time they played it.
“Killer Parties” is almost always the closing song, with Craig Finn giving the same goodnight speech about how we’re all the Hold Steady, and the crowd always eating it up. Finn has taken the Bruce Springsteen comparisons to another level, as they are at the point where, like the Boss, they can draw energy from the fact that the crowd knows exactly what to expect from the performance.
This all happened Friday night/early Saturday, and with the exception of some technical problems with Galen Polivka’s bass gear and some newer songs that weren’t quite as epic as the rest, the show was another highlight of the festival. “Constructive Summer” and “Sequestered in Memphis,” both from the most recent album, have both reached a similar status as the crowd-pleasers from “Boys and Girls,” and the organizers of the showcase gave them an extended hour-long time slot in which to stretch out, which made it feel less like a SXSW showcase and more like a Hold Steady show.
Photo by Jay Janner of The Hold Steady at a day party at Red 7 on Thursday, March 19
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SXSW Review: Laura Marling
(Central Presbyterian Church, midnight Friday)
In retrospect, the soaring nave of the Central Presbyterian Church was the perfect venue for English singer-songwriter Laura Marling. Propelled by a clear and elegant voice that swooped and darted like a sparrow through the vast, A-framed space, Marling’s songs, crowded to the bursting point with verbiage and imagery, had room to breathe and expand.
A performer who came highly recommended on the basis of two EPs and a debut album, “Alas I Cannot Swim,” Marling has only been performing since 2006 and is, as they say, in her tender years (her SXSW bio states that she is just 18). Nonetheless, she conducted herself with aplomb, putting the audience — many of whom seemed vaguely discomforted sitting in church pews after a night of drinking and carousing — at ease with gently self-deprecating humor. “I feel like I should say something important that would change your lives,” she said at one point, “But I don’t have anything.”
Partnered with a multi-instrumentalist accompanist, Marling put wings to subjects both light and dark in songs like “Ghosts” and “My Manic and I,” punching the keystone lyrics with extra emphasis. In her crystal tone and delivery, there were hints of both Joni Mitchell and Sandy Denny.
Marling’s body of work is small, her breadth of experience limited and her lyrical tools not yet wholly sharpened (I, for one, would like to see her pare down her verbiage — there’s too much to absorb for proper reflection). But she seems self-assured, talented and she has time on her side. A church seemed like a good place for her and her listeners to count their blessings.
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SXSW Review: Felice Brothers
(Habana Bar, 10 p.m. Friday)
Hardcore fans hail the Felice Brothers as Americana’s second coming. Call them urban saviors of the jeans and T-shirt crowd.
Perhaps. New York’s most forward-thinking roots rockers absolutely combusted Habana Bar Friday night. Rising crowd tension — the joint was stuffed unmercifully, compounded by literally overflowing outhouses (only one per sex) and a single drink station — fueled its fire. “Hello, friends and family,” lead singer James Felice howled against a tide of white-hot enthusiasm. “This song’s about drinking whiskey and killing your woman. C’mon, boys!”
Unhinged enthusiasm immediately backed the band’s reputation. Beer drinkers and hell raisers united blissfully. The road went on and the party never ended. Clearly, these folks weren’t new to the show.
But Friday afternoon’s appearance at the Lucero Family Picnic at the Dirty Dog - before everything grew a touch worse for the wear, the band drinking Lone Star tallboys like water - better showcased the Felice Brothers’ recent artistic strides. Material from the forthcoming masterwork “Yonder is the Clock” both torpedoed hearts and shook homes. Easy highlights like the scattershot country blues “Run, Chicken, Run” and “Ambulance Man” offered brilliant Southern Gothic narratives.
Real American idols provide faith to the hopeless and eternity to the lifeless. “Oh, how sweetly I do sleep on the bathroom tile where the porter sweeps,” James warbles and moans on the profoundly poignant “Penn Station.” “With a nickel in my hand like the star of Bethlehem.” Few eulogies chill as deeply.
Photo by Jay Janner of James Felice at the Dirty Dog Pub earlier in the day on Friday, March 20
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SXSW Review: Ponderosa Stomp
(Friday night, The Continental Club)
In a way, the Ponderosa Stomp, held throughout the night on Friday at the Continental Club, is SXSW writ small. A swarm of acts come together in one spot, resulting in sensory and musical overload. Some are celebrated, some obscure. There are surprises, disappointments and unanticipated triumphs. Older stars are justly acclaimed, while the unknown have their moment in the sun. And the hits, as they say, just keep on coming.
Over the past few years, the Stomp has become one of my favorite components of SXSW. A roiling gumbo of roots music, blues, soul, swamp pop, New Orleans groove-masters, one-hit wonders and never-say-die warhorses parade onto the postage-stamp size Continental Club stage for mini-sets that range from exhilarating to what-the-hell-was-that-about?
Ducking in and out of the club over the course of the night (the Alejandro Escovedo Orquesta show across the street pulled me away for a while), I took in bits and pieces of the Excels, who rocked the teen clubs and frat parties of the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the 1960s and the Elite, who created a goofy (and instantly unforgettable) regional hit called “One Potato,” which, in a burst of creative insanity, combined the children’s nursery rhyme with the “papa-ooh-mow-mow” lick from the surf-music hits of the era. Classie Ballou, a charmer from Lake Charles, La., who, in the day, worked with everyone from Boozoo Chavis to Big Joe Turner. Ballou got his groove on with a combination of soulful ballads and whipsaw instrumentals that combined swamp pop with Afro-Cuban-rumba inflections.
Austin’s own Eve Monsee and her band, the Exiles, backed up several of the bands with deceptive, elastic ease throughout the evening.
The Stomp (my portion of it, anyway) ended with Eli “Paperboy” Reed backing up Barbara Lynn, the great left-handed guitarist from Beaumont, who rendered hits like “Oh, Baby (We Got A Good Thing Goin’)” and “You’ll Lose A Good Thing,” which was covered by the Rolling Stones. I had to roll before the mighty Roy Head took the stage, but hey, there’s always next year.
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SXSW Review: The Young Republic
(Maggie Mae’s rooftop, 8 p.m. Friday)
While masses started swarming to Stubb’s for Metallica’s “surprise” concert Friday night, early arrival on Sixth Street unearthed an actual revelation: The Young Republic. Envy youthful ambition. By 8:15, the Tennessee quartet - mixing folk against heavy metal, sing-along pop atop space echo - transformed the rooftop at Maggie Mae’s into a boundless futuristic rainbow. By 8:30, the darkening sky seemed a Technicolor daydream.
Fueled by devilish foresight and fiery aim, lead singer Julian Saporiti engaged immediately. “For those of you not hip enough to know, we’re from Nashville,” he jousted. “It’s country music and us.” True enough: The Young Republic traced every surrounding firmament but seemingly avoided its hometown’s signature sound.
Eager listeners cheered rolling funk (“The Alchemist”), art house pop (“Napoleon Roses”) and irresistible love refrains (“Girl from the Northern States”).
“Black Duck Blues” - its dirty slide a spontaneous drag race of outlaw spirit and illegal smiles - does owe more to Hank Williams than Muddy Waters. And Saporiti did spike his boiling exclamations with piercing hip thrusts and seismic gyrations - nearly mounting his acoustic guitar at one point - pinched directly from the Elvis Presley playbook. Perhaps new millennium country and western screams in the night.
“We’re gonna play a pop song for you because we want more dancing,” Saporiti said, introducing the tongue-in-cheek anthem “Why Don’t White Boys Dance Anymore.” “This is our one and only four-part harmony.” Imagine Soundgarden and the Four Tops splitting verses on a Weezer song. Even better, its buoyant melody and irresistible call to action inspired a balding, bespectacled caucasian man to spin his best moves down front. Perfect.
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SXSW Review: Ben Nichols
(Maggie Mae’s, 8 p.m. Friday)
Ben Nichols carves lines as exacting as Raymond Carver. “In my hands I hold the ashes,” he sang Friday night at Maggie Mae’s. “In my veins black pitch runs.” Witness a novelist’s eye opening.
Fittingly, Nichols’ new solo EP deconstructs vibrant literature. “I read Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’ in 1999 and again recently,” Nichols told us in an interview immediately before the show. “‘Last Pale Light in the West’ is mainly built around the general idea of each character. Each song is based on a different character’s perspective. There was a lot of great imagery and great characters I wanted to steal - or borrow. Let’s say it inspired me.”
Clearly. Encourage Nichols to continue paralleling his night job with equally pulsating solo projects. Forget rehearsal. The Lucero front man’s too-feverish delivery — he is, after all, paced like a locomotive — only heightens anticipation. “Sorry for the informality,” Nichols said, accepting his second whiskey from a fan. “Usually I’m a taskmaster, but tonight I decided to let myself go. Figured I’ve already played three times (at SXSW), so it’s all right.”
Nichols wildly derailed “Davy Brown,” later recovering and crashing once again. Trademark territory (wine, women) set the landscape. Nichols gladly honored Lucero requests (“The War,” “Hold Me Close”) and debuted oven-fresh material (“I’m 100 miles past lonesome, 100 miles past anything called fair,” he sang on one unrecorded track).
“Obviously, I wasn’t trying to encompass the entire novel or make any overall statement on the book,” Nichols continued earlier. “I’m definitely not an authority, but there was a lot in there that I thought would be cool in songs. It was suitable for an acoustic record, too, something a little more old-world.”
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SXSW Scene Report: Vivian Girls at the Pedestrian Bridge, 3 a.m. Saturday
In a SXSW overrun with sponsorships, corporate branding, promotional swag and industry insiders, the pedestrian bridge punk rock shows remain a particularly devout hold-out.
Taking place every year in between the close of the bars and the rise of the sun, the show takes three punk bands, drops them into the middle of the Lamar Boulevard bridge, and surrounds them with an unholy mix of hundreds of hipsters and hardcore punk rock fans. Girls in oversized glasses and guys on fixed gear bicycles share space with tattooed and pierced metal fans in leather jackets and Misfits T-shirts, and for one night, at least, they get along swimmingly.
Truthfully, the music isn’t always great. Since the equipment is minimal and bands play on the same level as the audience that surrounds them, you can rarely see or hear much unless you’re within 15 feet of the band. But the night, with its violent mosh pits, projectile beer and quality people watching, does provide one of the city’s best tastes of underground Austin culture.
Saturday morning, an enthusiastic college student cornered observers for random high fives. A blond-haired man with a grungy beard and a knit cap handed out free Pabst Blue Ribbon beers from his backpack. And bits of debris — cans, cardboard boxes, fabric — went flying through the air, serving as a kind of low-budget confetti.
Of course, when the music does click, it really clicks. The Vivian Girls perhaps recognized the unique qualities of their audience, and played loud, fast and hard. No song lasted more than 2 minutes, and many were compressed, speedier versions of the already punchy songs that debuted on their self-titled 2008 debut album.
Bassist Kickball Katy spun around the makeshift stage like a Whirling Dervish, looking, with her bangs and red hair, like a more heavily tattooed Jenny Lewis. And lead singer Cassie Ramone proved herself worthy, assuming she needed to, as soon as she took colliding with a drum in stride. The Vivian Girls clearly believe in what they do, and both on general principle and a series of solid shows, they deserve kudos for their hard work.
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SXSW review: Devo
Art punk legends Devo took awhile to move the full house of the Austin Music Hall Friday night, opening with new songs and minor old ones like “Peek-a-Boo,” but from about the 20-minute mark on, when the synths were traded for real bass and guitar, the spuds from Akron proved to be a great rock ‘n’ roll band.
There are two elements that fuel Devo; a great drummer- and Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle) was just that- and Mark Mothersbaugh’s robotic tenor voice. Mothersbaugh was terrific all night, hitting all the right notes on “Gates of Steel,” perhaps his most challenging vocal, and mid-set standout “Uncontrollable Urge,” the nerd-rock swipe at Zeppelin.
Receiving the same $250 fee as any other band playing SXSW (including Metallica), Devo didn’t put on a big spectacle, mainly performing in front of a video screen in fairly minimal wardrobe. But that was fine. Devo was always, before they were MTV novelties, a tremendous band. Such songs as the encore coupling of “Jocko Homo” and Gut Feeling/ Slap Your Mammy” would sound cutting edge if a band of 21-year-olds from Scotland did them, but, then, it’s not that easy. And there’s no feedback necessary.
A couple of nits: bassist Gerald Casale ruined the appearance of Booji Boy by telling everyone the plastic-faced loon was coming up on “Beautiful World.” It would’ve flipped everyone if he had just come out during, say, “Satisfaction,” which needed a little extra production value. Also making Booji a rapper was maybe a little more of a statement than was neccessary.
But as shown over 75 minutes at the Music Hall, with very few leaving even as hipper bands were playing all over town, we’re ready for a new dose of devolution. Just keep playing the classics, fellas, and give Mr. Freese whatever he wants.
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March 20, 2009
SXSW scene report: Josiah Wordsworth at the Elephant Room
I was a little surprised to discover a line outside Austin’s jazz cellar with SXSW staffers limiting the club to badges and wristbands only. Inside the scene was somewhat sedate, with couples cozied up at candlelit tables and obviously unapologetic music nerds holding up the walls.
On stage, a three-piece combo of average looking white dudes were setting up. The group, Josiah Wordsworth from St Paul, Minn., opened with an abstract avant jazz piece but then quickly segued into a frentically paced, tightly complex number that boggled the mind. As the group continued, throwing down instrumental jazz joints that escalated into near punk rock mayhem before dropping into beautiful lyrical passages then regaining maddening momentum, the line began to make sense. A whole lot of sense.
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SXSW: On the scene at Metallica ...
8 p.m.: Your intrepid Metallica reporter here, e-mailing live from the V.I.P. deck at Stubb’s. Joint’s about three quarters full though it’s not clear if any of that is riff-raff left over from the Spin party. Either way, it doesn’t bode well for the legions lined up outside. More to come.
8:04 p.m.: Just asked and got word all the Spin folks got the boot. Which means all the people here are staying. Place is just about packed right now.
As a side note, the V.I.P. deck is barren of big names. It’s early though.
8:12 p.m.: Are Silversun Pickups the luckiest band of SXSW? They get a packed house early in the night and can win over a couple thousand new fans right before their new record drops. They’re making the most of it, too. Noisy rocking goodness.
8:23 p.m.: I’m probably wrong but I think one of the Blues Traveler dudes who’s not John Popper is up here. Unrelated: Silly me, I always thought the gal in Silversun Pickups was the singer, doing a Balinda Butcher thing. Turns out it’s the dude with lots of effects. You learn something every day.
8:30 p.m.: Pickups lead singer just said how lucky the band feels to be here. Maybe so, but they’re earning their keep and the crowd approves. This is what Smashing Pumpkins should have evolved into.
8:35 p.m. … marks first whiff of a certain herb floating up from the crowd. I did not inhale. Pickups’ favorite Metallica songs: tie between “Creeping Death” and “Sanitarium.”
8:47 p.m.: Pickups’ best song, “Lazy Eye,” gets embellished with some nice feedback and shredding and earns them roars from the crowd. Give these cats two hours in an amphitheater and they’d melt skulls.
And now a moment from the M.O. (dba Matthew Odam):
8:48 p.m.: Doesn’t look like any more people are being let into Stubb’s. The top level of neighboring parking lots are lined with fans and the scene on the street is chaotic with serpentine lines filling sidewalks. Metallica to go on around 9:30 p.m. or so. People being polite to Silversun Pickups and other openers, but it is obvious the crowd is here for one reason. Lots of local musicians in attendance, including members of Ghostland Observatory and Lions, among others.
And back to Chad …
8:56 p.m.: Now we wait. Some Guitar Hero prodigies up soon to show off on stage and pass the time.
By my count there are three cabinets holding at least 20 guitars on stage. Absurdly awesome.
(Editor’s note: If you see a guy drinking coffee and reading a New Yorker in the corner, it’s our own Chris Garcia. Total metal-head. No patience for the pre-hype.)
9:05 p.m.: Just a stray thought here while I’m waiting. This showcase is billed as “featuring members of Metallica.” What kind of riot would ensue if it turned out to be just Rob Trujillo and Kurt Hammett playing Guitar Hero with folks for a couple hours? Just sayin’. I do find it odd there have been NO Metallica sightings around town yet. (Garcia adds that rumors are flying that Lars didn’t show up.)
9:29 p.m.: Jason Dick from 101X intros the “band” as “the luckiest bunch of virgins you’re ever going to meet. Give it up for… Whatever they wanna call themselves.” Funny. The No Names just finished an impressive version of “Fuel.” Worth noting: while introducing himself Dick said he’s “71 percent sure I’m not fired.” Times is tough at Emmis Broadcasting. Even after Dick and his cohost Deb O’Keefe took first and ninth place for radio hosts at the Austin Music Awards on Wednesday.
9:44 p.m.: Sound check in progress. Hello Mr. And Mrs. Earplug. Your night’s about to get interesting.
9:55 p.m.: Matthew Odam reports that more badge-holders are being let in. He’s told they will hit capacity with the badge-holders.
9:59 p.m.: Lights down. Instrumental of “Unforgiven” playing.
10 p.m.: First song “Creeping Death.”
10:14 p.m.: After “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Hetfield says, “Surprise. The best kept secret in rock. We thought we’d join your party. We’re really just a struggling band from Norway.”
Now laying “Harvester of Sorrow.”
10:15 p.m.: Odam says some of the people in the audience are in a kind of shock (the good kind). Several people turning to him, saying, “Can you believe it? I still can’t believe it.”
10:21 p.m.: I’m 20 feet above Metallica while they’re playing “One.” Good lord, how did I get here?
10:25 p.m.: That one got a nice but kinda timid pit going. Step ya game up SXSW.
10:28 p.m.: Time for some new stuff which I’m admittedly not familiar with. Something about what doesn’t kill you makes you more strong. Sounds all right to these ears, though.
10:36 p.m.: Time for “Cyanide.” Worth noting that the back two-thirds of the crowd is close to stock still while the quintessential metal band of a generation is killing it on stage. Lots of folks here just to be here which is a shame.
10:44 p.m.: They’re moving a little more now for “Sad But True.” So that means “Enter Sandman” should blow the roof off the joint. If there was a roof, of course.
10:49 p.m. Hammett doing his thang on “Sanitarium.” We’re still in the brooding opening. The rawk arrives momentarily.
10:54 p.m.: Now we’re off to the races: “Master of Puppets.”
10:57 p.m.: Mega solo time, just as I was wondering when we’d get one. Well, gents. Almost like they’ve done this before. This is still part of “Master,” by the way.
11:07 p.m.: Firmly in old school territory now. “Blackened” ends first set. Hetfield: “We feel good now! Thank you!”
11:10 p.m.: And we’re back. “Breadfan”! Is this real?
11:13 p.m.: Finally a pit worth the band up on stage. Barely.
11:19 p.m.: “Whiplash.” Hetfield asks if they want new stuff or old stuff. Guess which one wins. “Seek and Destroy” time.
11:23 p.m.: Hetfield says they’re done and they make with tossing guitar picks and drum sticks to the crowd. Lars and everyone wave, now and off they go. Outro music now so that really is it. What’s the over/under for how many people stick around for DJ Shadow? I’m guessing he’s lucky to keep 1,000.
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Best cover? Playing For Change does 4 Non Blondes
I love inventive cover songs, especially during SXSW when a well-placed chestnut can knock an already excited throng into the stratosphere. When Playing For Change, the international band behind the YouTube sensation “Stand By Me,” pulled out “What’s Up” by Linda Perry and company, it was all over. The crowd of about 300 shouted back the chorus and danced wildly when charismatic Amsterdam singer Clarence Bekker, a soul superstar in waiting, led the uptempo ending.
I had planned to only stick around for a song or two, having already profiled the global gumbo project two days earlier, but there was just so much joy at Opal Divine’s I had to soak it. The band’s two members from the Congo, held up by the state department for three days, arrived in Austin just yesterday where they met their bandmates in person for the first time. Don’t know when’s the last time I’ve seen musicians so happy to be onstage together.
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SXSW panel report: Slaughtering sacred cows
The gist: The “critic” part of rock criticism will be discussed in detail. Names will be named and exalted reputations will be savaged.
The panelists: Dave Marsh (moderator), editor/publisher Rock and Rap Confidential; Ann Powers, chief pop critic, Los Angeles Times; Jason Gross, Perfect Sound Forever; Jan Uhelszki, writer Uncut, Relics; Danny Fields, writer, 16 magazine.
The lowdown: No reputations were savaged at all. Apart from maybe Jim Morrison and the White Stripes - but they’ve never been music journalists. Fields said from the outset he “didn’t want to be mean to people.” Powers and Marsh said they did, but then weren’t very mean at all.
Quotes: “The music press today has become much more a part of the music industry process.” - Dave Marsh.
“I can repeat that Jim Morrison was a (jerk) but it’s a tired concept. I’ve stopped being a fan of bands anyway, unless they’re my friends like Jonathan Richman.” - Danny Fields.
“Hating the White Stripes has strengthened my soul. I felt they were affected and embraced as being innocent. I’m not comfortable with the idea of the hipness and cliquishness of indie culture. At the age of 11 I loved my Barry Manilow cassette.” - Ann Powers.
“Music journalists won’t come close and can’t compete with blogs and bulletin boards. And if you don’t think you’re competing with them, you’re delusional. They shape opinion whether you like it or not. Bloggers have much more influence than you think.” - Jason Gross.
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SXSW review: Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele
Dent May of Oxford is starting to get big in the U.K. with a luxurious troubadour sound that mixes Morrissey and Jonathan Richman with the bah-bump-bah-bah sound of the Beach Boys. But Dent’s a gent from Oxford, Mississippi, not England. But even with all the raves his 8 p.m. set Friday at Antone’s opened with only about 100 on hand.
May and his three-piece backing, which can go sparse to grandiose in two beats, as on “God Loves You, Michael Chang,” filled the empty spaces with soulful, good time music. “26 Miles (Catalina Island),” the first song May ever learned on the uke, was a cute lil’ toe-tapper, but other songs such as “Howard” and the Prince cover “When You Were Mine” hit deeper. Songwriting in the name of communication is the strength here.
Wish I could’ve stayed for the whole set, but I had other commitments. The crowd had doubled by the time I left.
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SXSW scene report: Flatstock and Club Deville
As people lined up inside the convention center to see the Proclaimers on Friday afternoon, SXSW’s annual poster show, Flatstock, attracted a few visitors as well. Inside were mostly concert prints, but some art wasn’t music-related. Mike Klay, a Seattle-based artist whose work focuses on outdoor scenes — chairlifts, fields, trains — has been attending the festival for three years. He said he wasn’t worried about the bad economy driving down sales, although he did say that he was looking forward to Saturday, which is usually his best day, and Sunday, a fourth day that was added this year. Click here for more information.
Over at Club Deville for Insound’s 10th Anniversary party, the line wrapped around the building for the $2 all-you-can-drink beer. There was a little buzz about the Obits and Cursive, who will be appearing at Don’t Mess With Texas on Saturday at Waterloo Park. Craig Finn and Franz Nicolay (wearing a very warm-looking tan suit) of the Hold Steady were hanging around a 3:30 set by Indie punks the Thermals. Finn and company later led what was basically a Hold Steady sing-a-long to a really psyched audience. The Hold Steady will appear again at 4 p.m. Saturday for some sliders at Rachael Ray’s party (Maggie Mae’s, noon to 5 p.m.).
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SXSW scene: In line for Metallica!
The rumors had bubbled for weeks: Metallica, the metal gods from Northern California, would be playing SXSW. Some saw it as a marketing stunt for the video game “Guitar Hero: Metallica,” which comes out March 28. Others thought that maybe not all of the band members would appear. After days of speculation, the Metallica gear now sits on the stage at Stubb’s, while hundreds of fans lineup outside.
People have wondered whether getting into the show would be akin to a papal vist. How early would you have to line up? Who would get in? Should non-bage holders even bother?
Die-hard Metallica fans Ron Clark of New Jersey, Jeff Holland of Virginia and their buddies — first in line at Stubb’s — left nothing to chance. The group flew down to Austin this morning after getting a deal on last-minute air fare. No SXSW attendees these. They flew to Austin solely to see their metal heroes. It will be the 58th show for Holland and the 128th for Clark, members of Metallica’s fan club, who heard about the show through the fan club Web site and subsequently won a raffle for spots on the band’s guest list along with dozens others in line.
Why fly thousands of miles to see a band you’ve seen so many times? Easy, says Holland, who got in line at 1 p.m. Friday. “When they do these special shows, those are the best,” Holland said. “The small venues are just more intimate.”
Clark, who plans to fly back to Clifton, New Jersey, after the show, says he doesn’t even mind wading through hipsterpallooza and a bunch of bands he doesn’t like to see Metallica rock. “If we have to sit through crappy opening bands, that’s alright with us,” Clark said.
The guys expect an hour and a quarter set, but as Holland says, “It’s not the length that matters, it’s the songs that matter to us.”
As for those songs, Clark and Holland, in true hardcore fan fashion, said they hope to hear more of the band’s obscure and older stuff, along with a few tracks from the new album. So, “Damages, Inc., “The Shortest Straw” or “No Remorse” would be just fine with this traveling band of brothers in rock.
At 10 p.m., much of downtown and parts of the city as far away as Hyde Park will all get an earful.
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SXSW scene report: Get your Fader wristband on Friday!
With the day shows ending at 6 p.m., people begin to flock to the Levis Fader Fort on the East Side, which stays open after the day parties end. I have been told that they will not be handing out wristbands on Saturday. So, if you are on the list, you best get your band today for what promises to be an electric night. And get here early Saturday, as massive crowds are expected for a rumored special guest whose name rhymes with Danye Fest.
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SXSW scene: the Spin party
Following the fuzz and wail of Scotland’s Glasvegas, as lines formed outside Stubb’s for the evening’s Metallica show, Jane’s Addictions Perry Farrell came out to introduce one of his big musical influences, Echo and the Bunnymen. The original lineup fired off their rumbling set with “Rescue.” Lead singer Ian McCulloch must not have read the weather report, as the Tim Burton look alike is dressed in a black pea coat in the 80 degree heat. Judging by his disheveled hair and dangling cigarette, though, I don’t think he really gives a damn.
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SXSW Scene Report: The East Side on Thursday
With the Radio Room line stretching for blocks along Sixth Street, and the throngs of humanity concentrated downtown, the East Side was an attractive prospect for SXSW festivalgoers who wanted to get away from it all on Thursday. Some of the day’s most promising events were held east of Interstate 35, where the crowds were thinner and the music plentiful. Here’s a rundown of some of the East Side’s more promising events throughout the day:
French Legation Museum
Alela Diane, 3 p.m.
Somewhere at the intersection between the darker, more idiosyncratic folk of Marissa Nadler, Emmy the Great and St. Vincent and the straighter country of Jenny Lewis and Neko Case — that’s where you’ll find Alela Diane. The 26-year-old acoustic songstress serenaded the comfortably seated crowd in the grass at the French Legation Museum with half an hour of her soulful Americana on Thursday afternoon.
The historic French Legation is one of the most quietly appealing venues at SXSW. There’s never a line to get in, the crowds are minimal even for a big act like Camera Obscura or (last year’s criminally under attended) Yo La Tengo. Sure, there’s no free beer to be had, no captivating swag — even the Ice Cream Man, who held down the venue last year, is nowhere to be found. The atmosphere is more garden party than day party. But for those looking for an escape from cramped spaces and tipsy hipsters, the French Legation can always be counted on.
Diane, playing an acoustic set without her usual full band, accompanied only by “(her) father, Tom,” on mandolin and one other vocalist, fit the venue like a glove. Diane played a distinctly bluegrass-sounding set rich with American lyrics and beautiful harmonies. Wearing a blue dress she bought for SXSW — she didn’t bring Texas clothing — she nailed the first single off her new album “To Be Still,” the spare and powerful “White as Diamonds,” and even on a sunny day brought darkness when the material called for it.
Those looking for a refuge could do a lot worse.
The Peacock
Wavves, 4 p.m.
Stalwart indie blog Gorilla Vs. Bear’s “Gorilla Vs. Booze” had one major problem: searing, fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk, surface-of-the-sun heat. The Peacock, an ancient, poorly ventilated building, is stuffy even at the best of times. But with 200 scenesters crammed into it, the venue was so uncomfortably hot that it seemed of questionable safety for bands to play inside. Even all the free beer in the world couldn’t fight that.
That didn’t stop 22-year-old San Diegan Nathan Williams, better known as the one-man noise pop project Wavves, though. Williams, whose album is a challenging, lo-fi listen buried underneath layers of fuzz and distortion, plays amazingly clearly and energetically live, with hook-filled songs that are often difficult to parse on the album. More in the crowd than above the crowd, Williams pounded out a strong 30 minutes to a sweat-drenched room, clearly aware that anybody patient enough to take the heat deserved his best.
The Longbranch Inn
King Khan and the BBQ Show.
5 p.m.
The long, narrow, minimalist bar attracted Canada’s best minimalist garage rock duo, Marc Sultan and Blacksnake, better known as King Khan and the BBQ Show. A no-frills pairing, the two mix garage rock with doo-wop. Despite playing a staggering number of SXSW shows both before and after this gig, the two rocked the confines of the Longbranch Inn so hard passers-by might have feared the structure’s collapse. Clad in a Rick James wig, lead guitarist Blacksnake leaped off the stage into the crowd almost immediately, inciting dance parties and gazing longingly at hipster girls. Managing the impressive feat of playing guitar, singing and drumming all at the same time, Sultan held court at the back of the stage. At times, he looked distractingly reminiscent of “Shaun of the Dead”’s Nick Frost, but this show, with its loud, messy jangly punk sound, was anything but moribund.
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SXSW Review: Blitzen Trapper at Radio Room Patio
(Midnight, Thursday)
Blitzen Trapper debuted a new member of the band at Thursday night’s Sub Pop showcase. That member was a total surprise. That member really stole the show. That member is probably not going to be welcomed back. That member was … feedback.
From soundcheck until the closing song — the third different one wherein lead singer Eric Earley invoked God — intermittent ear-piercing feedback bludgeoned a set already beleaguered by band members weary from the long road they’ve been traveling in support of their new album of case-study genre-skipping, “Furr.”
Now, about that genre-skipping: you’d think a six-piece that can maneuver effortlessly from lyrical folk to fuzzy psych-rock to the outer regions of space-pop and even hip-hop — and can incorporate a kazoo, three synthesizers, and sundry other musical tchotchkes so seamlessly into that configuration — would be able to handle such setbacks. Nope. In addition to losing the battle with feedback, the band was constantly imploring their sound man to raise and lower their respective monitors. Talk about nitpicking. Talk about melodrama. Talk about not rising to the occasion.
As of press time, there was no fallout posted to Blitzen Trapper’s Twitter account, which is usually rife with comments on the previous night’s show. “Follow” them to find out if they issue an apology or place blame. Either way, I’d still pay to see them again.
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SXSW interview: Devo!
Which is why the Ohio new wave punk “devolution” band that started warning us 30 years ago that we were headed in this direction have popped back up to, they hope, smack us upside the head one more time to try to shake us awake. They’re working on new material, playing shows with plans for an extensive tour and have hopes for lots of the wacky multimedia madness they started concocting as art students at Kent State University more than 30 years ago.
After a refreshingly frank sit down with music journalist and DJ Nic Harcourt on Thursday, founding members Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale afforded us some time to go further in-depth about their reemergence (can’t call it a reunion since Devo never broke up) and how it’s all come to this.
Has society devolved the way you thought it would?
Casale: More.
Where did you think we’d be verus where we are now?
Casale: we thought that things were on track but there were some ominous things on the horizon that could derail it and that we were in a sense optimistic. I mean, we were complaining but we were Romantics. But that’s not true. There is no basic OK thing that just needs a little fixing.
Mothersbaugh: We thought even greed would kick in somewhere along the line before the planet became this far trashed. … But instead it seems that fundamentalist thinking from many different places kind of took over and common sense was thrown away a long time ago.
Did you see yourselves as akin to saying ‘The British are coming! Things are really going bad’?
Casale: That’s what we were doing in an entertaining, humorous way but what’s happened is the core intelligence of western society took a dump. You can see that there’s such a flaw in the prevailing human nature that it seems irretrievable. Take a small example like Rush Limbaugh hoping that Obama fails. What that means is everybody fails and things get bad for everybody. It’d be like hoping the captain of a ship, who you didn’t like, hoping that his boat sinks. Only you’re on the boat. And how many people cheered Rush Limbaugh on, with that mentality when we’re all (expletive) to begin with is just amazing to me. It’s proof positive to me that human beings are not getting it together in any way.
Have you ever seen protest songs or artists trying to raise awareness who have made a difference? And do you see that as possible right now?
Casale: No. I should say yes and no. Yes, as an inspiration to millions of people in a generation, protest singers in the ‘60s did influence and maybe redirect the path of lots of teenagers’ lives. I don’t see that as possible now.
Mothersbaugh: I’m in agreement with Jerry in that I don’t feel like there is an artist that… part is that what an artist represents in the culture now is different. There used to be big icons like the Beatles and Rolling Stones and a half a dozen bands that everyone listened to and now it’s all disintegrated. In its place is a web of info where you have to do a lot more searching to find the pieces that are relevant. You can find things, but the chance of there being another big icon… it could always happen, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
If Devo were forming brand new right now, would Devo even be a band?
Mothersbaugh: We were reduced to being a band. When Jerry and I were first conceiving, (what) we were thinking about was being more of a think tank. We wanted to update what was going on like Andy Warhol with The Factory and lots of different mediums. We saw ourselves as being a think tank where mediums didn’t matter and we’d use any medium it took to solve the problem.
There are obviously bands for who you guys are a big influence.
Casale: Lots of them come right out and say so.
But even if they didn’t you can hear it. Are there many acts out there now that you see promise in?
Casale: There are some that at first I like but when you listen more they adhere very closely to a corporate rule of being meaningless. I think there’s a conscious desire from a lot of artists to make sure the stuff they make doesn’t mean anything.
Mothersbaugh: When we did a fest in London the guy from Pulp, Jarvis Cocker, I like a lot of what he talks about and his sensibility politically.
Casale: I hear Ting Tings, Santogold, MSTRKRFT, LCD Soundsystem, Justice, some stuff by Knife…
Mothersbaugh: Most of that, though, is because it’s great dance music and has a great sound.
Casale: But a song like “North American Scum,” who is that, James Murphy, right? That was really cool.
What are you trying to accomplish with this new music? Was there a goal?
Casale: If you’re a creative artist you want to be connected in some way to your culture even if it’s on a critical level to criticize the culture. You want to have a voice because it makes you feel like you have a purpose in what you’ve wanted to do. We have ideas for a stage play, a musical, an Internet channel. It’d be nice to get to do some of that.
Mothersbaugh: The nice thing is that now all these crazy ideas we’ve always had are being recognized. Where we really had so much resistance in the past to anything that wasn’t making an album, making a video and touring and repeating that. You talk about a Devo film and our manager wouldn’t get it, but if you say a solo album then they could get behind that. But they couldn’t get the idea of us doing something like a Broadway show. That was too weird, so why would they even think about doing that?
Outside of the band, what’s on your radar screens?
Mothersbaugh: I’m (scoring) a couple features right now. One’s for Sony called “Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs” and the other one’s called “Ramona” based on a popular book for kids of a certain age. One is an orchestra, the other’s smaller like a Wes Anderson film.
How big do you think this could be?
Mothersbaugh: We want to do a world tour and see how far this will go. We don’t know how we’re going to fit into this climate, which has shifted even since we started talking about doing this. We’re trying to adjust our game plan to fit what’s going on in the world right now. If there’s a good response, we’ve got the energy and enthusiasm to do it for a while.
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SXSW review: Cocktail Slippers
An early highlight of Little Steven Van Zandt’s Magical Mystery Mondo Matinee at Antone’s Friday afternoon was a short, yet scorching set from this six-piece all-girl band of harmonizing garage punks from Oslo, Norway. Though the women onstage could almost pass for runway models, they know how to give the sometimes too reverent genre of underground garage a kick in the droopy black jeans. They generated some needed fresh air.
At times they sounded like Blondie or the Shangri-Las, but they play harder than those bands, smiling all the while. Gorgeous and gracious are not qualities that go together, but these Slippers are no divas and they seemed genuinely touched when tghe crowd picked up on the clapalong at the end of “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
With members of the Sonics and Sky Saxon looking down in delight from the VIP section, the gals started off with a theremin mood piece, then dove right into the guitar assault, with the rhythm section nailing the bottom down tight. “I Love the Summer” turned the dank club bright and it was hard not to feel the righteous heat.
The Cocktail Slippers play tonight at 11 p.m. at Red Eyed Fly, but if you can’t catch them then, head on over to the Spiderhouse Saturday when the Slippers play at 2:30 p.m.
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SXSW review: Big Boi at Austin Music Hall
(12:40 a.m. Thursday, Austin Music Hall)
Antwan “Big Boi” Patton headlined Thursday evening’s Afro-punk showcase at the Austin Music Hall with the same Dirty South bravura and amped-up vocal acrobatics that catapulted his band Outkast to world-renowned phenomenon.
Curiously, Patton never once mentioned his noticeably absent Outkast bandmate André “André 3000” Benjamin. The show was billed as a Big Boi solo gig. But outside of a few new tracks off Big Boi’s upcoming solo album “Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty,” 95 performed of the songs in the set with his band were joints missing co-creator, André 3000. Big Boi’s band’s musicianship was so overwhelming superior and the production values were so spot-on that it was entirely forgivable (except when he rocked Benjamin’s autobiographical revelation “Ms. Jackson”).
Aside from that glaringly ominous omission (they say they are still a band), Big Boi carried the show over the goal line on the back of his charismatic vocal style. He’s always been able to rock his verses and choruses in an accelerated double-time tempo, and last night was no different. Big Boi killed “So Fresh, So Clean” before he asked his band to increase the pace. “Ghetto Musick” and “B.O.B.” were euphorically transcendent. The DJ’s beats ignited the audience, joining them and the performers into one nation under a groove.
As Big Boi’s band and DJ vamped on the end of “B.O.B.,” he ever-so-coolly remarked, “Come on Janelle,” wherein Afro-punk firestarter Janelle Monáe returned to the stage after her star-making performance earlier in the evening to bust her signature get-its-freak-on dance, her arms flailing as her legs pounded in lock-step rhythm to the music.
With a respectably sized multi-ethnic, multi-cultural audience halfway filling the Austin Music Hall, it was such a beautiful sight watching all of the SXSW attendees from different backgrounds, from all over the world, move, bump and grind together to the “bom, bom, bomb” of “The Way You Move.” The song was undeniable, yielding writhing bodies from kids with their parents to senior citizen-age attendees.
“We got so many (expletive) hits that I don’t know what to do,” Big Boi said with a laugh. And he was correct. The only thing was that when he referred to “we” - and when he played so many Outkast bangers - he was ultimately drawing attention back to the fact that his very talented Outkast bandmate was missing in action.
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SXSW review: The Krayolas at Little Steven's Underground Garage Party
(1 p.m. Friday, Antone’s)
If garages didn’t exist, the Krayolas would have had to invent them. The ’70s-era ensemble from San Antonio who minted a string of regional hits got a fresh wind under their collective tail with the release last year of a new album, “La Conquistadora.” Now, with a new album (“Long Leaf Pine (No Smack Gum)”) and a new generation of fans, the Krayolas are a force to contend with once more.
Appropriate then, that the group should have been chosen to kick off Little Steven Van Zandt’s Underground Garage Party on Friday afternoon at Antone’s. Joined by San Antonio compadres the West Side Horns, accordionist Michael Guerra and Sir Douglas Quintet keyboardist Augie Meyers, the band showed just how timeless and infectiously fun unbridled, old-school three-minute-single music can be.
Like the SDQ a decade earlier, the Krayolas mix classic garage band rock with the Tejano influences that surrounded them in South Texas. Thus, “11th Sunday In Ordinary Time” incorporates the horn line from “La Cucaracha,” and “Chola Song” immortalizes a barrio princess who plucks her eyebrows and cruises the ‘hood.
It’s not all fun and games, though. In a chilling shift, “12 Heads In a Bag” used the traditional corrido form of border balladry to decry the horrifying drug-related violence in Mexico.
But for the most part, it was an upbeat set, with the West Side Horns punching through “A-Frame” like fighters working a speed bag, and Augie Meyers lending his roller-rink keyboard to a punkish take on the Kinks’ “Who’ll Be the Next In Line.”
“We’re legends in our own minds,” said frontman Hector Saldaña. “That’s the best place to be.”
Well said, brother.
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Free Indigo Girls at 5 p.m.!
One of the best-kept secrets at SXSW is the Belmont, at 306 W. Sixth St., which is hosting free and open to the public shows every afternoon. Today at 5 p.m. the Indigo Girls will be appearing. Come early to see Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles, who blew up Mother Egan’s last night.
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SXSW Review: Flower Travellin Band at Smokin' Music
(11 p.m. Smokin’ Music)
There was a certain amount of tension before Flower Travellin’ Band’s set at Smokin’ Music. Would people show up for this 30+ year old Japanese psychedelic rock band? Would they be playing to like 30 people, many of whom were there for the free smokes from American Spirit? Would the band be any good? The band’s heyday was in the 1970s, when they produced some of the most visionary psych rock around. But that was then and this is 2009 and these guys must be in their 60s at this point. Could they pull it off and would anyone care?
Yes. And yes.
The four members of the bands classic line-up - dreadlocked, absurdly fit singer Akira “Joe” Yamanaka; guitar, er, Sitala-ist Hideki Ishima; serious looking bassist Jun Kobayashi; and monster drummer Joji “George” Wada - were joined by keyboard player Nobuhiko Shinohara. Wada provided weird, almost Parliament/Funkadelic style burbles while Jun and Joji held down weirdly danceable-for-progressive-rock grooves.
All of this was in front of a packed house consisting of aging prog rock nerds, aging punks, hipster kids and people there for the free cigs. There was a massive amount of love for this band; most of the crowd dropped their jaws when it became clear this was no cash in. These guy were prog rock warlords who still had their chops, guys who understood that psychedelic rock needs musical space to work, that rolling, spacious, thunderous spacious music is far trippier than a wall of noise.
It looked at first like Hideki was playing a Chapman Stick, a stringed electric skateboard-looking thing associated with progressive rock bands that might be the single nerdiest instrument ever invented. But no, he was playing a massive Sitarla (sorta guitar, sorta sitar) that he would fret and solo with expert vision, moving from detailed runs one minute to massive power chords the next that he had to mute with this whole hand. It was
But the anchor was Akira, who still has his pipes, his voice powerful and ragged at the same time, a psych rock Billie Holiday (no kidding) who jumped in the air to end songs and danced as hard as anyone in the crowd to everything on stage.
They closed with their classic “Satori,” last show of their tour, first time in America. They killed every note of the set and when they ended and Akira made the mistake of starting to shake hands with the crowd, dozens of hands went up. It was a weirdly moving finale to the best set I’m likely to see of an exceptionally strong year.
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SXSW review: Jane's Addiction at Playboy and C3's Rock the Rabbit
Shows at SXSW always feature people standing around, trying to talk or text their way in and trying to get a peek inside to see what they were missing. But no amount of jockeying or calling in of favors was going to get you into C3 and Playboy’s “Rock the Rabbit” show at the old Safeway last night on the I-35 feeder road. This party is invite only, and many who got in were not even allowed a +1.
While the lineup was somewhat secretive, most everyone knew that they were descending on the venue to see the long-awaited reunion of Jane’s Addiction. And what better place for a gathering of rock’s burlesque bacchanalians than a seedy abandoned grocery store (eerily reminiscent of the set of “Been Caught Stealing”), but with cooler lighting.
After a 17-year hiatus, the band’s original lineup got back together last year at the U.S. NME awards, after bassist Eric Avery decided to sign back on. They’ve played a few shows this year in preparation for a run of shows with Nine Inch Nails, but Thursday night at the Rabbit was the band’s official jumping off point, and from the first sinister notes of “Three Days,” it was obvious the band was razor sharp, those 17 years of rust falling off like so many Dave Navarro shirts over the years.
The crowd, which had been building in anticipation, lingering to the side of the concrete dance floor made slick by spilled booze and seemingly hesitant to pop the cork on the party, finally burst at the seems when the alt sex rock icons who oozed more sensuality than the Bunnies walking the room began attacking a set that featured one big, ballsy hit after another.
Farrell was in his usual form. Donned in white undershirt and neckerchief, he looked like an absinthe-soaked Parisian poet hell-bent on setting the world aflame with his fierce singing and overtly sexual charisma.
Despite his long absence from the band Avery did not miss a beat, synching up with drummer Stephen Perkins to lay down a thunderous groove, the rhythm section mates exchanging smiles and looking thrilled to be back on stage with Navarro and Farrell. As Farrell preened, Navarro shredded his guitar, blazing through one legendary solo after another in a 45-minute set list that felt like a fever dream and included “Standing in the Shower … Thinking,” a rendition of “Ocean Size” that felt like it could be heard atop the UT Tower before, and a high-speed L.A. car chase “Stop!” that ended the set.
Farrell romanced the crowd at one point before “Mountain Song,” saying, “Austin, we’ve been waiting for you. We’ve been dreaming about you.” Indeed they had. They were ready and came out with all guns blazing, and for an hour, a dingy old supermarket was transported back to 1991.
Photos: C3’s Rock the Rabbit party
Image from James Trevenen
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Iglu & Hartly member arrested
Jarvis Anderson, the singer for California band Iglu & Hartly, was arrested last night after a fight with a security guard at the Hilton Garden Inn at 2:48 a.m. Bail for the charge of assault on a public officer was set at $7,500. It’s not known at this time if Michael Anderson Jarvis (the name he was booked under) is still in jail. Iglu & Hartly are scheduled to play Saturday at 9 p.m. at Vice. They also had a showcase Thursday night at La Zona Rosa.
According to police affidavit, the ruckus started when fellow I&H member Sam Martin took off his clothes and stood on a bench in the sixth floor lounge of the hotel while Jarvis, pictured, played the piano. When security guards showed up to remove Martin, the affidavit says, Jarvis rushed the security guard and punched him three times in the face.
There’s more on this on The Blotter at statesman.com.
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SXSW Review: Dallas Austin at the Austin Music Hall
(Thursday, 11:50 p.m.)
Pop-hip hop-R&B producer extraordinaire Dallas Austin used a whole lot of sound and fury during his Thursday evening set at the Afro-punk showcase, signifying that he is still finding his voice as a performer.
With five gi-normous-sized flatscreen plasma televisions covering the stage, it almost appeared that Austin was hiding behind the screens, as opposed to using them as an additional visual element. (They featured video footage of his new album’s many guest vocalists: George Clinton, Big Gipp from Goodie Mobb and several other Atlantans.) To further the appearance of identity concealment, he and his drummer emerged at the beginning of the set in Mexican wrestler masks.
Yet as Austin took off his mask, a few banging tunes started vibrating the speaker cones and motivating the audience (which had thinned a bit after Janelle Monáe’s starmaking 11 p.m. set). With a live band and an Apple laptop, Austin’s lyrical exploration of modern day societal ills was one of the more intriguing aspect of his show. Another highlight was his revisionist cover of T-Rex’s “Children of the Revolution.” The band’s original tunes were creative if not memorable, falling somewhere between the pop/hip hop glam of the Neptunes/N.E.R.D. and the rocking eletronica workouts of LCD Soundsystem.
Austin is definitely more of a producer than a frontman. He has a little bit to learn about engaging an audience and working a crowd of several hundred people (let alone several thousand). But he’s talented enough that he’ll probably figure it out eventually.
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SXSW Review: Balmorhea at Club 115
(Thursday, 11pm)
Considering the difficulty Austin’s classical aficionados Balmorhea had during soundcheck last night, it’s pretty clear that SXSW venues aren’t accustomed to the kind of eclectic instrumentation the six-member outfit employs.
But once the sound techs finally weeded out the feedback resonating from the three-piece string section, Balmorhea dove into a set of compositions that were sometimes invigorating and other times despairing, but always masterfully executed.
The young group began the performance with the pounding piano boom of “Settlers,” the waltz-like opener from the recently released “All Is Wild, All Is Silent” that spans three movements over seven minutes — a fresh arrangement technique for the Balmorhea. It’s also the first studio-recorded Balmorhea number to employ full-on drumming and a repeated line of lyrics instead of vocal filler. These new elements came together to tell, mostly through instrumentation, an energetic and hopeful story of heading home.
“Harm and Boon,” from the same release, didn’t have the same uplifting tone. It started out softly, stepping over slow, minimalist minor piano arpeggios, but soon jumped into a blast of drums and the rich, resonant jangle of clean, reverberated staccato guitar chords. And despite the downtrodden emotional tenor of both “Harm and Boon” and the subsequent “Remembrance,” their well-paced dynamics kept them lively and surprising in their own ways.
Balmorhea’s not your typical bar scene band, but their sets are full of a life and energy that many acts would have a hard time matching.
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SXSW Review: Doug Sahm Tribute at Antone's
(8 p.m., Thursday)
I’ve been in a Doug Sahm frame of mind this week. It’s hard to avoid reflecting how much SXSW, with its relentlessly catholic blend of genres and its communal search for the ultimate chord, owes to the spirit of the musically restless San Antonio native who never met a groove he didn’t like.
Thursday night’s tribute to Sahm at Antone’s, marking the decade since his untimely passing and the release of a new star-studded tribute album, was much like a conversation with the man himself: overstuffed, wide-ranging and ultimately exhiliarating.
Blues guitarist Jimmie Vaughan kicked things off with a tribute to the greasy, horn-laden Houston R&B Sahm loved so much (think Bobby Blue Bland and the great Peacock/Duke Records hits to come out of the Bayou City). Backed by an ensemble that included Sir Douglas Quintet drummer George Rains and an A-team horn section composed of Mark “Kaz” Kazanoff, Greg Piccolo (ex-Roomful of Blues) and Ephriam Owens, Vaughan’s guitar fireworks junp-started a crowd already brimming with anticipation.
The Gourds followed with an homage to the Tex-Mex border fusion of rock and conjunto/norteño that were the backbone of great Sir Douglas Quintet hits like “Nuevo Laredo,” “Nitty Gritty” and their own tip of the hat to the SDQ legacy, “Shake the Chandelier.”
Doug’s son Shawn continues the legacy with his own band, the Tex-Mex Experience. Joined by Dave Alvin and steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar, the younger Sahm embodied his father’s joyful, effervescent embrace of the musical moment: “Awrite, now we’re grooving!” he shouted after “Dynamite Woman,” “Now, let’s bring up some horns. If you guys want to play, come groove with us, that’s what it’s all about!”
After two numbers by Sarah Borges, Shawn Sahm returned to the stage to conduct the evening’s final segment, a stomping, shaking recreation of his dad’s last great ensemble, the Texas Tornados. Joined by Tornados stalwarts drummer Ernie Durawa and guitarist Louie Ortega, and featuring accordion king Flaco Jimenez, trumpeter Al Gomez, bassist Speedy Sparks and Doug’s right hand man, keyboardist Augie Meyers, the ten musicians punched thorough “Who Were You Thinking Of,” “Hey Baby, Que Paso” (the national anthem of San Antonio), “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” “She’s About A Mover” and “Mendocino” — five perfect songs, a 20-minute seminar in the solid gold musical legacy of Sir Doug Sahm.
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SXSW Review: Vetiver at Radio Room Patio
(11 p.m., Thursday)
Vetiver frontman Andy Cabic looks like he’s spent a lot of time staring at the cover of Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” album, sporting as he did a porkpie hat and a scraggly neck-beard at last night’s Sub Pop showcase. But instead of taking his folk to the country, like Dylan, Cabic took it to the canyon, as in the blissed-out Laurel Canyon of the ’60s, where the Byrds and Joni Mitchell and the Mamas & the Papas blurred into one.
The set’s prevailing mood was overwhelmingly sweet - we’re talking Burt Bacharach outtakes for the bicycle-riding scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” - when put into the context of the hard-rocking bands comprising the rest of the lineup. The listless audience said it all: chat, text, chat, text. But that didn’t stop Cabic from earnestly cooing about the many permutations of love, happiness and natural wonders that permeate his band’s glistening new album, “Tight Knit.”
The four-piece band backing Cabic absorbed his grace under pressure by closing their eyes and channeling the music gods. They made manifest delightful harmonies and well-measured playing. They were rewarded by Cabic with an occasional detour from pop into something more akin to a Jefferson Airplane incantation (“At Forest Edge”) or even a bossa-nova number (“Sister”). It was bound to happen: psychedelia, mixing and matching, outside-the-box thinking. Cabic is an apostle of freak-folk main man Devendra Banhart, after all.
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SXSW Review:Passion Pit at Emo's
(Thursday, midnight)
Bands such as the Australian group Cut Copy and MGMT have helped make synthesizer-laden, often danceable psychedelic music one of indie music’s more entertaining directions in recent years. Boston-based Passion Pit continues along similar lines with a group of songs that emerged from a Valentine’s Day gift to lead singer Michael Angelekos’ girlfriend. The songs are filled with head-bobbing beats that act as the foundation for Angelekos’ falsetto vocals.
On Thursday night at Emo’s the band had one of those great SXSW moments when a packed venue stops chatting and devotes its attention to what is happening on stage. Angelekos was clearly loving being up there, and the crowd, which was more evenly balanced in terms of gender than the dude-heavy scenes at many of the other showcases thus far, ate it up. The songs felt fuller in a live setting, which was aided by the presence of a full band (the EP is just Angelekos). People pumped their fists when the band broke into “Sleepyhead” and “Better Things.” Passion Pit also played some new material from their upcoming full length, which had a bit more of a rock feel than the other songs.
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SXSW Review: Jaguar Love at the Cedar Door
(Thursday, 1 a.m.)
As driving forces in what used to be Seattle’s ear-piercing, inflammatory pioneer hardcore act The Blood Brothers, guitarist Cody Votolato and vocalist Johnny Whitney are expert crafters of jarring hooks. Alongside former Pretty Girls Make Graves drummer Jay Clark, the two found themselves veering last year toward a danceable, more pop-sensible brand of abrasive punk in Jaguar Love.
As many fans found out last night at the Cedar Door, they’ve taken that sound a step further, as Clark has been replaced by a drum machine. It’s an interesting shift — rather than smashing into each other in frenzied mosh pits, fans now bob, bounce and flat out dance to the throb of electro beats. And though Jaguar Love held onto some of their best songs like “Jaguar Pirates” and “Highways of Gold,” many from last year’s debut full length have been replaced by new numbers, presumably because of the difficulty of translating the rhythms into programmable beats.
But for the most part, the elements that draw fans to Jaguar Love remain the same. Whitney still belts soulful yet slightly disorienting melodies in an impossibly high, seemingly helium-altered register between breakdowns filled with his primal screams. And Votolato’s razor sharp riffs still dance over dissonant scales before diving into power chord blasts.
Unfortunately, something wasn’t quite working with the sound last night at the Cedar Door. Whitney’s vocals kept getting lost in the mix, and eventually the onstage monitors gave out.
But overall, it was a nice preview of the next phase of Jaguar Love, and fans at least now know to come to shows ready to dance.
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SXSW Review: Cut Off Your Hands at Emo's
(Thursday, 11 p.m.)
New Zealanders Cut Off Your Hands cite Phil Spector as the only influence on their MySpace page, and a few of their songs, most notably “Happy As Can Be,” with a guitar part that actually sounds like it was borrowed from the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” prove that point. On Thursday night during the Frenchkiss Records showcase at Emo’s, the band seemed to recognize that this was definitely one of their catchiest songs, and they played the heck out of it. It also seperated them from sounding like the million other poppy post-punk bands.
That isn’t to say their other material is bad, because it’s not. Lead singer Nick Johnston made the songs come alive on stage as he swung, shook and dove into the audience with the best of them. Highlights included “Turn Cold,” which falls more on the dance-pop side of their catalogue, and the punchy “Expectations.” Both benefited from the fact that Johnston came across emotionally engaged in both the material and the performance.
Catch the band playing pretty much everywhere on Friday and Saturday, including the Don’t Mess With Texas event at Waterloo Park.
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SXSW Review: The Tallest Man on Earth at Buffalo Billiards
(Midnight, Thursday)
One of the best finger-picking folk guitarists at SXSW came not from the depths of Texas or out of the Midwest, but from overseas.
Sweden’s Kristian Mattson, who plays under the name The Tallest Man on Earth, took the stage on the third floor of Buffalo Billiards before a scattered room filled with chatter and clinking bottles. But when he picked up one of his three open-tuned acoustic guitars and began to swiftly work his fingers over the strings to produce gritty, lightning-slick riffs, heads turned and bodies gravitated toward the stage.
With a 40-minute time slot and a stage meant for a full band at his disposal, Mattson was able to flex his musical muscles. The tiny, thin-framed songwriter belted out song after song with a powerful rough-edged howl and slightly affected inflection that would make most stateside folk singers envious, playing nearly every cut from his critically acclaimed album “Shallow Graves.” As he trotted back and forth across the front of the stage, he stared just above the audience with glassy eyes that sometimes seemed lost in hazy contemplation and other times alive with wild fervor.
As on his albums, one of the centerpieces of the showcase became Mattson’s vivid lyrics, which resonated more and more with each gravelly shout. “As the early sigh of dawn will thunder/I see you stir the fog around,” he sang on the slyly creeping “Where Do My Bluebirds Fly,” while in the upbeat “Pistol Dreams” he urged the audience to “Throw me in the fire now/Come on!”
“I plan to be forgotten when I’m gone,” Mattson sang at the end of the set after putting his guitar in what he called the “goodbye tuning.” Not likely.
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SXSW Police blotter #1
Two injured in a scuffle near the Convention Center Wednesday night.
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SXSW Review: Grizzly Bear at Central Presbyterian Church
(Thursday, 8:30 p.m.)
At Grizzly Bear’s early evening set on Thursday night, everything came together to create a near perfect live music experience. The band merged haunting harmonies, arrangements that moved in and out of focus and new material from their upcoming release, “Veckatimest,” in such a way that it was a shame the set had to end. All of that coupled with the venue — the dark, cavernous chapel of the Central Presbyterian Church on East 8th Street — made the showcase a highlight of the festival so far.
The set began with “Cheerleader,” the first song officially released from the new album, with Edward Droste on lead vocals. The band then moved on to “Little Brother,” this time with Daniel Rossen, also of Department of Eagles, who appeared on the same stage the night before, taking the lead. Part of the band’s charm is the versatility in the mood of the songs depending on who is singing. Droste’s voice is big and mellow compared to Rossen’s which is a bit more dramatic.
Droste commented on how far the band has come, as the last time they played SXSW was four years ago, at an unofficial party. That was around the same time they recorded their last full length, which was released in 2006. Since then their follow up has become one of the most highly anticipated in the indie rock world. Based on how comfortable they seemed on stage, the band are at ease with the buzz. This was especially evident on songs such as “Knife,” a spacey, 60’s style pop jam and one of the Grizzly Bear’s more accessible numbers. “Two Weeks” was also a high point in terms of energy, in part due to Daniel Rossen’s bouncy keyboard part. Similarly, the vocal harmonies on “While You Wait For the Others,” especially at the end, were particularly uplifting.
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SXSW Review: Lisa Hannigan at The Parish Room
(Thursday, 9 p.m.)
Lisa Hannigan shames even the sweetest sparrows. The Irish songstress - equal measures Carly Simon and Kasey Chambers - could overshadow a fortified chorus any given Thursday. Witness her quirky, effervescent solo debut, “Sea Sew.” Depth and trajectory fuel loping crisscrosses throughout.
However, whispers at the Parish Room questioned Hannigan’s readiness to front her own outfit. The issue: Perhaps it’s too early for many to easily disassociate the vocalist from her star-making role as matchless songwriter Damien Rice’s dramatic foil. After all, Hannigan’s hushed, haunted harmonies effectively defined heart and home on his otherwise bleak international breakthrough, “O.”
Silence the murmurs. Hannigan - a fearless, focused performer, confident yet without arrogance - proved a consummate bandleader Thursday night. She moved gracefully between keyboard and guitar, laughed giddily and gushed often. “This is the one we played on Stephen Colbert!” she exclaimed before the gorgeous “I Don’t Know.” Sure, Hannigan could beef up her songwriting chops, but their were moments that nearly equalled Rice’s best (“Ocean and a Rock”). Either way, a mere five-song set was a let-down.
Good news, though: Hannigan captivated and distracted the crowd. Sorry, folks, while artists repeatedly hit their marks there was too much industry flight at this Hotel Café showcase to bear. Consider this verbatim passage from a synthetic young lady nearby: “I was, like, how do I know that song? It’s, like, a rap song. And I’m a singer-songwriter, you know, a singer-songwriter!”
Seek out actual singer-songwriter Anya Marina, who preceded Hannigan on the stage. The effortlessly sultry artist - “Kick off your boots,” she sang, “and stop being polite” - crafts radio-ready gems without wasting unnecessary sheen.
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SXSW Review: Black Lips at Cedar Street Courtyard
(Thursday, 11:30 p.m.)
I’ve seen a lot of degenerate rocker types in my day. Heck, having lived north of Detroit during the neo-garage boom, I’ve known and hung out with enough speed freaks and other undesirables that I don’t rattle easily.
But I’ll say this right now; Black Lips scares me.
Here’s why. Take your average scuzzy garage rock quartet and raise them down south (Atlanta specifically) in close proximity to a pipeline of crystal meth, and I’m willing to bet it’d sound like Black Lips. Hang out backstage after a show and, waddayaknow, wake up in a bathtub full of ice minus a kidney that’s been sold for money to buy some stash of a new drug the DEA’s only just getting hip to.
So the music? It’s like early Who fronted by four Charlie Mansons, assuming Charlie Manson loved The Beatles and The Stooges equally. Does that make sense? Probably not, but it’ll have to do for now. Y’see, one of the Black Lips’ guitar players - the one with the gold Lil Jon grill in his mouth, not the one wearing a poncho and cowboy hat - gave me a look like I’d crossed him about halfway through the band’s ripping set Thursday at Cedar Street Courtyard.
And that’s a dude or a band I don’t want to have peeved off at me. So I gotta go lock the door and hide under the bed while thinking that maybe this menacing uncertainty is one of the big things that makes rock music so great.
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SXSW Review: Guy Davis and John Gorka at the Victorian Room at the Driskill Hotel)
(Thursday, 10 p.m.)
Guy Davis single handedly stole the Red House Records showcase. Credit seamless interpretation: The New York City-based blues man’s breaking, aching “Sweetheart Like You” might rank as the best cover of the week. Davis effortlessly scooped soul straight off the page, laying it gently onstage with a devotion that Bob Dylan’s classic only fleetingly embraced. Davis’ every whisper offered a candied love note, every husky growl a pointed call to action.
The Driskill’s elegant (if stuffy) Victorian Room - seating fewer than 40 with standing room filled into triple digits - provided Davis a bright spotlight. All the cuts from his new album (titled after that Dylan track) connected. In particular, his hilarious, punchy delivery of the falsetto blues “Slow Motion Daddy,” fortified by choppy guitar and herky-jerky sidesteps, alone would satisfy any evening’s cover charge. Grateful as a sunset fade, Davis’ tribute to his late centenarian grandmother paused poignantly.
Though his “Chocolate Man” borrowed too indiscriminately from Mississippi John Hurt’s “Candy Man,” Davis’ peerless readings of Charles Brown’s “Driftin’ Blues” and Willie Dixon’s definitive “Hoochie Coochie Man” resonated deeply. Easy stage banter tied together disparate themes. “I once ran over Ray Bonneville’s harmonica with a car,” Davis said, introducing “Saturday Blues,” “and stayed in a hotel that smelled like John Gorka’s shoes.”
Predictably, Gorka’s own set - a gloriously scattershot string of raucous tales and highest art - turned the hotel room into a convocation hall. Keep an eye open for the Minnesotan’s new album in August. “I’m working on it,” Gorka said during an intermission. “(Singer-songwriter) Eliza (Gilkyson) just laid down some vocals (in Austin) yesterday. Its working title is ‘Illusion of Control.’ Of course, that’s been the working title of my last four albums.”
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SXSW Review: Richard Swift at the Mohawk
(Thursday, 8 p.m.)
They don’t come much quieter and more unassuming than Richard Swift. The indie pop singer-songwriter began performing at 14 in the modest venue of Quaker churches, which fits the modus operandi of a man who has guested on dozens of albums of all genres and rarely taken any credit for it. Swift’s songs, which deal with universal themes of love and loss, are simple but timeless, with strong-yet-understated instrumentation. No wonder Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy is so fond of the guy, tapping him to tour with the band and record at the Wilco loft.
Swift’s live show fits the same template: with minimal stage banter confined to the occasional “Thanks, now here’s another song,” Swift, toggling between keys and guitar with a strong backing band, kept theatrics to a minimum but played a series of tight, hummable gems of radio rock perfection to a captive audience.
Taking a request from the audience, he closed with “Lady Luck,” the laid-back lo-fi single that brought his voice into a high enough register to put a strain on the Mohawk’s amps. After singing the final notes, he quietly thanked the audience and set about taking down his equipment, looking nonplused as always.
Richard Swift plays the Hot Freaks Party at the Mohawk today at 4:30.
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SXSW Review:Rosalie Sorrels at the Victoria Room at the Driskill Hotel
(Midnight, Thursday)
So there was Rosalie Sorrels, friend and confederate to folk music giants like Odetta and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, holding forth in luxe surroundings amidst the bas-relief ceiling, swagged lace curtains, figured carpet, hardwood accents and private bar of the opulent Victorian Room at the venerable Driskill Hotel…all in all, the perfect setting for songs about hobos, beatniks, cowboys and poets.
Well, never mind, ain’t life funny that way. Sorrels, a raconteur and entertainer of the first order, held forth with to-the-manor-born aplomb. Dressed in black down to her cowgirl boots, resembling no one so much as a hipper Judi Densch, she said without any fear of contradiction, “I’m the only person you know that’s written two songs with (legendary beat poet) Lawrence Ferlinghetti.”
Even before she was introduced by her Red House Records representative, the irrepressible Sorrels was off to the races, spinning one engaging tale after another and occasionally managing to inject a song like “The Goodnight-Loving Trail,” a wickedly clever hipster take on “My Favorite Things,” and a meltingly lovely song called (I think) “Starlight On the Rails” into the mix.
“I’m 75, but that’s a lot, particularly if you were careless with the first part,” she acknowledged. After a cerebral aneurysm almost killed her in 1988, she confessed to having the occasional “senior moment” (a friend in California calls them “rolling blackouts”). But her charm, wit and ability to draw an audience into her own universe are undiminished.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Victorian Room, the pierced, tattooed and blogging young masses passed by, perhaps one in 20 throwing a questioning glance at the graceful silver-haired woman with the guitar. They had no idea what they were missing. As Sorrels said about another party, and she might have been speaking of herself, “Little old ladies are sometimes surprising.”
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SXSW Review: Obits at Radio Room
Do not go see Obits expecting scads of innovation. Do not go expecting the new, new hotness. Do not go expecting the sound the kids will be talking about in well-dressed circles that involve tight jeans and large sunglasses and little hats. They are not that band.
Guitarist/singer Rick Froberg has done his time in 90s indie-punk titans Pitchfork, Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes. Second guitarist Sohrab Habibion was in the D.C. band Edsel (he also wins the “Man, never thought we see him on stage again” award). The rhythm section is similarly in their 30s or older. This band practiced a lot, for like, two years, and played one show at the New York club Cake Shop on Jan 12, 2008 which appeared all over the internet the next day. (I know I got my copy then.) I don’t think anyone in this band planned for it to be famous or important or anything at all.
Yet, people loved them.
So now they’re on Sub Pop, four old guys with Fender guitars plugged into Fender amps on a warm Thursday night at 10 p.m., nothing fancy. Yet, they manage to avoid sounding like 90s vets who couldn’t have been bothered to leave their legacies well enough alone. In spite of some light technical issues (bass cutting in and out, at least in the monitors), the set was strong. Songs would crank for a bit, then settle to let Froberg and Habibion would lock up and spin out, trading spiky, logical solos that wouldn’t be out of place on fast, garage-ish Television or Wipers tunes.
Nothing was overlong, nothing tried too hard or smacked of overreaching. These were four vets playing with sounds they wanted to hear. Which made them sounds we want to hear.
The album, “I Blame You” is out March 24 on SubPop. I will be purchasing it on vinyl, such is my increasing fondness for these four dudes. Go and do likewise in the format of your choosing.
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SXSW Review: No Age at Radio Room Patio
(8 p.m., Thursday)
No Age must have had a plane to catch. The art-damaged L.A. punks were in and out of their Thursday showcase in roughly 20 minutes. But less turned out to be more, considering the amount of punishment doled out by drummer Dean Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall on any given song. There’s only so much of their anarchy - Spunt barking lyrics over the kit he’s annihilating, Randall banging his head and summoning aggro notes - one can take before you’re left feeling violated.
That feeling was reversed by the rock snobs gathered under the Sub Pop tent in the backyard of Transmission Entertainment’s newly minted Radio Room. Instead of joining the lone looney who was trying to form a mosh pit, as is the norm at No Age shows, the audience played the upright equivalents of the dude in the Maxell commercial who sits idly by as a speaker blows him away. Then again, the rock snobs may have simply been trying to process the complex mathematical equations that yielded the faintest of melodies.
It was thinking man’s punk. Think Sonic Youth. Think Fugazi. Think Pavement. And if that doesn’t hurt your brain, think about the t-shirt Spunt wore, which read “No Trend.” No Trend … No Age. No must really mean no.
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SXSW Review: Primal Scream at Cedar Street Courtyard
(Thursday, 12:30 a.m.)
There’s always the question of what Primal Scream you’re going to get when the Glasgow band is on a bill. Will it be the heavily produced, rave-ish atmospheric rock that’s won the band accolades over the years, or the Rolling Stones-meets-Oasis boogie rock that seems to be its more natural skin?
At Cedar Street Courtyard Thursday the six piece certainly tipped their hat to the former for a few songs but were at peak performance when lead singer Bobby Gillespie and guitarist Andrew Innes stomped all over the stage with a confident swagger.
That meant no songs from the classic album “Screamadelica” (which is almost more the work of producer and DJ Andrew Weatherall than the band itself) and more clap-alongs like “Jailbird” and “Suicide Bomb” that gave the packed house an excuse to dance feverishly from start to finish.
The only dip came when the band tried its hand at moody, nuanced songs like “Deep Hit” that lacked enthusiasm; it almost seemed as if GIllespie and his band mates were simply trying to cover all the bases from their wildly varied catalog.
That didn’t last long, however, and by the time “Rocks” and “Accelerator” came up as the closing one-two punch of the night, well, the only way you could stand still was if you were dead.
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SXSW Review: James Harries at St. David's church
8 p.m.
Corey Chisel worships Austin-bred songwriting legend Townes Van Zandt. The Wisconsin native, whose father was a Baptist minister, employs that reverence to cauterize generational divides.
“If I do believe in spirituality, the evidence I have is songwriting,” he told us recently. “People always call (Townes’) music otherworldly. Yeah, but it’s eerily plain. It’s very similar to a scripture being handed down. My friend (songwriter) Richard Julian used to hang with Townes. He’d say that you’d talk and there’d be the normal Townes, and in an instant he’d find a point and become elevated and transcendent.”
It might’ve been blissfully fitting to see Chisel channel inspiration at this gorgeous communion hall. Shame it didn’t pan out. Chisel - a swiftly rising star who calls songwriting “a jumbled sense of truth or reality” and shills for Lucky jeans in magazine ads - called to cancel his Thursday night gig at 4:15 that morning. On-site promoters confirmed an overnight case of shellfish poisoning.
James Harries stepped up. “Just avoid those oysters,” the British songwriter said, “and choose a cheaper option.” His deadpan soared overhead.
Only a handful of transients heard the comment anyway. Harries hardly acknowledged the sparse turnout. The deeply soulful folkie wielded his acoustic guitar like a weapon, twisting and squeezing heartbreak from “Are You Happy” and “Best Intent.” While he sang loudly and proudly enough to fill London’s O2 arena, few offerings resonated.
Perhaps Harries deserves the benefit of the doubt, given the circumstances. His presence, though, seemed entirely too practiced. “I need a business card for this one,” he said before easing into “Ghost Town.” A man from San Antonio offered his. “San Antonio? Never been.” (Harries weaved the card between guitar strings and started strumming.) “Sounds good in San Antonio!”
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Jane's Addiction reunites at Playboy/ C3 party
Well, big rumor #1 has panned out. Jane’s Addiction played a concert with bassist Eric Avery for the first time in 17 years earlier this morning at a converted Safeway on the I-35 access road and E. 12th. MTV reports the band, featuring singer Perry Farrell, guitarist Dave Navarro and drummer Stephen Perkins opened with “Three Days” and closed with “Stop!” The set left the slower songs in L.A.
Read more from the MTV report here.
Big rumor #2 is that Metallica will play tonight at Stubb’s around 10;30 p.m. #3 is an appearance by Kanye West Saturday night at the Levi’s/ Fader Fort on E. Fifth St.
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SXSW Review: Dinosaur Jr. at the Mohawk
(Jagjaguwar showcase, 12:45 a.m.)
Dinosaur Jr. had barely finished their first song when bassist Lou Barlow gazed out into the dense crowd at the Mohawk and, with a face as straight as a nail, said, “This is going to be our last song. Thank you guys for coming.”
It was a joke, of course — the trio quickly segued into a blistering version of “Been There All The Time,” off 2007’s comeback album “Beyond” and played for a full hour. But, in a sense, that abrasive bit of repartee served notice to the stage-diving, fist-pumping crowd that the band, like its fanbase, was taking no prisoners. Though the alternative rock trio known for big sounds, big hooks and melodic guitar solos has been kicking around since 1984, they still managed to provide the evening’s most hard-rocking performance. Far from seeming older or slower, Dinosaur Jr. blew away most of SXSW’s buzzed bands through hook-driven songwriting and sheer technical skill and proved themselves as a relevant act for any who might have voiced doubts.
Word had trickled out via Twitter, iPhone and good old-fashioned word of mouth that Dinosaur Jr., recently announced to have signed to Jagjaguwar, were the evening’s fabled “special guest,” and by 12:45 a.m. the audience was ready for them. Their fans no doubt made the band proud — drunker and rowdier than the crowds for any other band at the Mohawk that evening, they thrilled as the band blew through a selection of their hits.
For “The Wagon,” Dinosaur Jr. was joined by “not Secretly Canadian, openly Canadian” Kevin Drew, of Broken Social Scene. The legendary trio that inspired Nirvana and a legion of other grunge followers closed with the melancholic-yet-rocking “Feel the Pain,” and the legions of fans who poured onto Red River St. were no doubt glad that Dinosaur Jr. walked the earth again.
Dinosaur Jr. plays tonight at the Cedar Street Courtyard.
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SXSW Review: Justin Townes Earle at Antone's
(Thursday, 11 p.m.)
There is an old proverb, something to the effect of “As the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined.” Thus it is that Justin Townes Earle seems to be recapitulating his father’s musical pilgrimage in fast-forward. Steve Earle started his mainstream career as a sort of slick-backed punkabilly, but wound up working with the elders of bluegrass and country music in an ongoing effort to purify his music into a sort of eau-du-roots.
Similarly, Justin Townes (his middle name a tip of the hat to Townes Van Zandt — which, in the circles Justin travels in, is sort of like being named Bob Dylan, Jr.) has distilled his music to the point where a crowded blues joint like Antone’s felt like an add-on to the younger Earle’s back porch.
Clad in a casual shirt and mesh-topped gimme cap, the lantern-jawed Earle looked as though he’d just climbed down out of the cab of a Peterbilt parked outside on Fifth St. His sole onstage companion, banjo player/harp maestro/mandolinist/comic sidekick Cory Younts, made a similar sartorial impression.
Together, the pair made the most out of minimalism, blending elements of skiffle, blues, bluegrass, alt-country and even Dixieland in original tunes such as “They Killed John Henry,” “Glad I’m Leaving,” “Poor Fool,” the double-clutching “I Don’t Know” and the skeletal “Someday You’ll Be Forgiven.”
Most memorable, perhaps, was the nakedly autobiographical “My Mama’s Eyes.” “I was raised by my mama,” Earle said proudly. “Who was six-foot two and whipped my (butt) when I done wrong. She knocked my dad out once.”
Whereupon, he proceeded to sing, “I am my father’s son…But when I see my reflection in the mirror, I say to myself—I have my mama’s eyes.”
It was one of those moments when the proverbial pin dead-solid dropped.
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SXSW panel report: A Dream Deferred: Black Rock
The Thursday audience at the SXSW panel “A Dream Deferred: Black Rock” was a small but enthusiastic group of professors, musicians and music industry insiders that attempted to discover the roots of media marginalization of African American rock musicians.
“It’s no accident that this panel is happening this year,” said moderator and Princeton professor Kandia Crazy Horse, later referencing how the African American underground rock scene is beginning to bubble up into the popular culture. Crazy Horse noted the success of Bloc Party, TV On the Radio and a host of other black hipsters - or “Blipsters” as the New York Times cheekily dubbed them.
Princeton University professor Daphne Brooks noted that in the new age of President Barack Obama, where possibility appears limitless, artists like Santogold and TV On the Radio have graced the cover of Spin Magazine while their music reflects “anxious blackness that is alienated - and yet at the center of popular culture.” Brooks pointed to a black and white, independent film (which initially gained traction at SXSW 2008) called “Medicine For Melancholy,” noting that it was one of the first artistic mediums documenting the emerging “Generation Y” African American rockers, their hopes, thoughts dreams and scene.
Boldaslove.us blogger Rob Fields made an eloquent case that African American rock musicians began to lose parity during the 1970s as rock radio marketing executives figured out that there was money to be made in creating genre formats with specific playlists, as opposed to the genre-bending, free flowing AM radio stations of the 1960s.
“We’ve got to help audiences become more sophisticated,” he said after recalling how some of his African American friends will ask “Is that band Living Colour still around?” when “black rock” is mentioned as a genre.
“We’ve got to take our sista friends to rock shows,” Crazy Horse said. “And black folks … we need to take our children to (rock) shows, too” to expose them to the genre of music that African Americans had a heavy hand in creating.
“Context is key,” Duane Harriott said as the panelists almost unanimously agreed that when sample-heavy artists like Girl Talk mash-up everything with the kitchen sink and African American rock, young audiences consume that music without any idea of the original source material, unless they do their research.
Crazy Horse reminded the attendees that African Americans are not monolithic in their art; she noted that Public Enemy is still one of the most rockin’ bands around, and a perfect example of not necessarily being what people think of when the “black rock” genre is discussed.
Unfortunately many of the SXSW musicians that are a part of this emerging scene were likely still asleep during the 11 a.m. under-attended panel.
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SXSW panel report: The Risks and Rewards of Festivals
The gist: Panelists with considerable experience planning and working for festivals worldwide relay their dos and don’ts of running a successful event.
The panelists: Moderator Tom Windish , the Windish Agency LLC; Ruud Berends, Eurosonic Noorderslag; Marcos Boffa, director, Rebola Productions/Eletronika Festival; Martin Elbourne, creative director, The Great Escape Festival; Rick Farman, partner, Superfly Productions; Ira Padnos, executive director, MK Charities/Ponderosa Stomp Foundation; James Quinlan; Alex Schulz, managing director, Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg; Gerald Seligman, general director, WOMEX.
Takeaway points: If you’re starting a festival, you probably won’t turn a profit for the first three years.
Earning 80 percent of your revenue from ticket sales is a very powerful model, but more and more you need corporate and government sponsorship as well. Do your homework: if you have X thousand people at the festival, what percentage of hotel bookings could that represent? What percentage of restaurant trade could that equate to? It helps to sell the city on your idea. Cities do very well out of festivals. Tell them how many days visitors will spend there and what the festival will bring to an area.
Getting insured is vital, but Martin Elbourne, who also helps put on the UK’s Glastonbury Festival, said they don’t insure against the weather. “We had terrible floods at Glastonbury last year in the early hours of the morning,” he said. “It happened in Germany as well.”
Quotes:
“Festivals are really important culturally, and the live market - at least in the UK - is growing. The season over there now runs from May through to September and there are winter events as well. There were 450 festivals last year in the UK. 140,000 people came to Glastonbury and this year, tickets sold out in a day. But with the economy, there have been casualties.” - Martin Elbourne
“How do you minimize its impact on the environment? At a festival, the punters’ cars stand still for three days. And they don’t shower - so that’s very environmentally friendly.” - Ruud Berends
“Introduce a system whereby festival-goers can earn money for returning sacks full of empty plastic bottles and other waste. Plus solar cells are advanced enough now that they can accumulate enough electricity to power a stage entirely if it’s sunny. If it’s not, they can supplement it.” - Gerald Seligman
“We got the idea to start the Reeperbahn festival in Hamburg after a visit to SXSW in 2000. We have a lot of clubs and theaters right next to each other and we knew it was a good fit. It’s the fourth year of the festival this September.” - Alex Schulz
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March 19, 2009
SXSW scene report: Creative promotion on Sixth Street
(Members of Wet Secret, from right, Donna Ball and Kim Rackel, listen to the band TIK play on Sixth Street during SXSW on Thursday. From left are Christos Lymperopoulos and Drew Phillips. Photo by Deborah Cannon/AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
When Sixth Street is closed to traffic for a few days at a music event the size of South by Southwest, you’re bound to encounter some creative band promoters.
Some took the standard but courageous approach of busking by the curbside, like Oakland piano singer/songwriter Steve Taylor, who drew large crowds playing his electric piano alongside a drummer.
Others took more eccentric approaches. The Wet Secrets hit the streets in their stage attire of bright flamboyant red marching band uniforms to pass out business cards advertising their upcoming showcases of what they described as “creepy marching band rock.”
Classic rockers Bigelf, on the other hand, recruited a couple of young women to don giant plush leprechaun caps and pass out free badges to their performances.
In addition to passing out CDs and letting passers-by sample their music via iPod, Austin’s own piano powerpop trio Quiet Company hung giant cardboard signs advertising free hugs over their chests.
“Can I get a free kiss?” one girl asked.
“I don’t think my wife would appreciate that,” member Taylor Muse said.
But Victor Ituarte of McAllen, Texas, who also had a handmade sign advertising free hugs, wasn’t trying to market anything.
“I’m just making people happy,” he said.
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Quincy's invocation: the text
At the end of his two-hour keynote address, Quincy Jones asked those in the packed ballroom to stand and join hands. And everyone did. The Love maestro has that effect on people. Then he asked them to repeat the following words:
“On this day…
I will mend a quarrel.
I will search out a forgotten friend.
I will dismiss a suspicion & replace it with a trust.
I will rather say, “I’m sorry I did” than “I wish I had.”
I will write a letter or an e-mail or a text or a tweet to
someone who I miss.
I will always approach my creativity with humility and treat my
success with grace.
I will fight against the dumbing down of our culture.
I will encourage a young person who has lost faith and hope…
…And constantly remind him or her to stop stealing music.
I will keep a promise.
I will forget an old grudge.
I will fight for a principle.
I will express my gratitude to God every day.
I will tell someone I love them.
And tell them again, and again, and again.
And again. And again. And again.”
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SXSW report: Terrorbird/Force Field PR party at Red 7
(The Vivian Girls perform Wednesday at Red 7.)
At Red 7, the little club with the Soviet iconography that could, getting there early was as ever the name of the game on Wednesday.
Lines were non-existent for the party’s first two hours. But with a fixed gear bicycle-riding, Pabst Blue Ribbon-drinking, Pitchfork-reading hipster’s idea of a dream bill — including Beach House, the Thermals and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart — the club was bound to fill up eventually. And so it did at around 3 p.m., though those who had already gotten in and gotten stamped could enter and exit as they pleased.
Switzerland’s bubbly electropop duo Larytta — two guys with nothing but a laptop, a synthesizer and an electric guitar between them — kicked off the day inside, playing to a thin but appreciate crowd. They were unsuccessful at getting the audience to clap along, which would go on to be a running problem at least through my day — be it at Camera Obscura or Thao With The Get Down Stay Down, folks just don’t seem to be clapping this year. One can only wonder what this trend means if it holds true for the Phenomenal Handclap Band.
Twenty-two-year-old San Diegan Nathan Williams, better known as the one-man noise pop project Wavves, played afterward to a packed outside stage. Williams’ music is currently the next big thing among the music blog elite — which is sometimes hard to fathom, since it’s buried underneath more distortion than a Guided By Voices record. But when he plays live, stripped of the studio fuzz, he plays with astonishing clarity and energy. The early afternoon crowd was into it, participating in the day’s closest thing to a mosh pit, and Williams earned a second look.
Politically aware punk rock band the Thermals built a set around new material from their upcoming “Now You Can See” in the first of seven SXSW shows. The new songs, all short and punchy, were their most pop-oriented, aggressively enthusiastic songs yet. Sweaty lead singer Hutch Harris looked to be having the time of his life, and bassist Kathy Foster, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Rosario Dawson in the “Josie and the Pussycats” movie, threw her head to and fro with an abandon more common to drummers than bassists.
The centerpiece of the whole lineup, though, was probably the much buzzed-about the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, an indie pop foursome that’s probably the closest thing this year has to last year’s Vampire Weekend. They’re a quickly rising group whose name recognition is likely to shoot up very quickly. But they earned the attention with a brief but powerful set that took advantage of the Red 7 outdoor stage’s impressive sound. Vocalist and keyboardist Peggy Wang seemed the most aloof — she kept one hand in her jacket pocket through the entire show — but for the most part the band seemed overjoyed to be there. We’ll see if they can keep it up for all four days, but having had the chance to speak with them, I think they’ve got the moxie to pull it off.
The day concluded with a Sophie’s Choice for indie rock fans: Beach House inside, Vivian Girls out. With the Vivian Girls playing a frankly astonishing 17 shows during SXSW, more elected to check out the inside show. Fans were “Packt Like Sardines in a Tin Can,” to borrow a Radiohead song title. Folks who enjoy getting intimate with sweaty strangers no doubt were pleased. Dream pop duo Beach House played an elegant, intimate, atmospheric set with ethereal vocals courtesy of singer Victoria Legrand. It was mellow and soothing and, frankly, standing up and not nodding off were difficult. Catch them at a free show at Auditorium Shores at 5:50 p.m. Saturday.
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Review: Andrew Bird at 'Austin City Limits'
(Wednesday, ‘Austin City Limits’ studio)
Whether he is playing solo, with a drummer or accompanied by a full band, there are things you know you can expect when Chicago’s Andrew Bird takes the stage: enigmatic lyrics, artful whistling and layered loops of sonic strings.
Bird treated a near-capacity crowd at the Austin City Limits studios Wednesday night to a beautiful hour-long set. Looking like the TA in one of your college poetry classes, dressed in shock red pants and a bulky knitted scarf, Bird wasted no time setting his aural landscape, as he plucked and bowed his violin and then set the sounds on a loop while whistling over them and quickly discarding his shoes during a dreamy introduction that gave way to the Russian folksiness of “Why.” His sultry delivery of the lyrics “you’ll get your punishments when you show me your crimes,” had Bird sounding like a man lustily talking the ghost of a former lover into a corner of a darkened bedroom. Indeed, part of the beauty of Bird’s live performance comes from hearing the singer jazzily play with his lyrics, reshaping the songs from his albums.
Following “Why,” Bird’s band joined him for the Native American sounding beginning of “Masterswarm” that hit the road and morphed into some kind of gypsy love song. After the jaunty “Fitz and Dizzy Spells,” Bird thanked the crowd for the thrill of being able to play for them at ACL and admitted that he was “coming to like Austin more and more.” (Bird was here just last month at the Paramount Theatre.)
The brief 11-song set was highlighted by the Irish ballad sounds of “Effigy” that mutated into a country epilogue by song’s end and the rollicking “Fake Palindromes.”
Bird closed the set with a little help from the audience, enlisting their aide on the chorus of “Table and Chairs,” which rose like a tribal anthem of angels before turning softly into a gentle lullaby and floating off into the night like so many musical hummingbirds.
Andrew Bird plays a SXSW showcase at Stubb’s Thursday night at 11 p.m. Bird’s show was the second of ACL’s new season, which will air in the fall on KLRU.
Setlist from Andrew Bird @ ACL Studios, 03.18.09
- Intro
- “Why”
- “Masterswarm”
- “Fitz and Dizzy Spells”
- “Effigy”
- “Oh no”
- “Nervous Tic Motion (of the head to the left)”
- “Anonanimal”
- “Mitosis”
- “Natural Disaster”
- “Fake Palindromes”
- Tables and Chairs”
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SXSW scene report: Exotic Fever party, the crowds and more
- Man alive, there are a lot of people here. It used to be that Thursday was the new Friday. Then Wednesday was the new Thursday. Then Wednesday day was nearly as party filled as any other day. Now with film and interactive bleeding into music, unofficial night showcases and parties start the Saturday before the first Wednesday of SXSW music.
— Word has it that upwards of 300 people a morning have been showing up at the Four Seasons morning shows. Anyone gone? What’s it like?
— The Exotic Fever day party/unofficial showcase Thursday at the Music Gym highlighted, for the most part, bands on Exotic Fever Records, a small label based in the D.C. metro area. Label head Katy Otto was able to afford to come down by essentially asking friends she had worked with in D.C.’s activist punk community for small donations to swing the venue rental.
I hope she thinks it was worth it and I mean that sincerely. Exotic Fever is a great little label, but the crowd was pretty small most of the time. It was also pretty hot; the Music Gyma parties are set up essentially in their parking lot. The stage is shaded, but it can get pretty boiling for fans. Turboslut rocked, vibing like the little sisters of O.G. riot grrls who grew up with that sort of feminism as a given rather than a struggle. Instead of X=Ray Spex, they’ve clearly heard their share of sludge metal. Awesome.
I was there for Thank God, a hardcore band from South Carolina that hearkened back to the (well, my) good old days of 1991-1996 or so, when emocore wasn’t quite as dirty a word (or as unfortunate a cliche) as it is now. The band thrashed and burned, stop/start structures crashing into each other before smoothing out a few songs in, excellent vocal screaming, drummer drumming in undies, two guitars shifting between melody, riff and noise, often in the same package. Completely satisfying. Look for them to return when their album is released later this year on (surprise) Exotic Fever.
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Scene report: The Fader Fort and other Eastside action
As we’ve already reported in this blog, SXSW is expanding Eastward. A steady stream of party-goers flowed across the highway this afternoon confounding already irritated motorists at the intersection of Sixth Street and I-35. A whole slew of new parties are cropping up on Austin’s Eastside. Around four o’clock this afternoon, thrashy punk rock emanated from the Music Gym while oddly incongruous strains of the eighties George Michael joint “This Christmas” wafted from a DJ booth at Ms. Bea’s. Meanwhile the Iron Gate hosted a whole variety of bands.
The biggest new addition to the Eastside party scene is the ever popular Fader/Levi’s Fort, located in a tent in the parking lot by Progress Coffee. While the new location lacks some of the charm of its former home at the American Youthworks building, the new space seems to have greatly increased the Fort’s capacity. This afternoon even the badgeless locals seemed to enter the Fort with less effort and shorter wait times than many of the parties downtown.
As always, the Fort features a sizable Levi’s specialty store, a blogger lounge and a Ray Ban boutique. Fun novelties such as a photo booth, a “Skull Candy” listening station in a tree with dangling headphones playing everything from hip-hop to electronica and a screenprinting station are also features. The big draws to the Fort however are both the excellent lineup containing some of the fest’s buzziest bands and the three complimentary bars where Budweiser and Southern Comfort cocktails are swilled freely.
The party at the Fader Fort will continue daily from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. throughout the Fest with a special party til 11 p.m. on Saturday. And be forewarned, if the Fest’s biggest rumor proves to be true, the Fort won’t be nearly so easy to infiltrate come Saturday night.
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On the streets: Chatting with Annie Clark of St. Vincent
I ran into the amazingly talented Annie Clark (St. Vincent) this afternoon on Seventh Street. Hot on the heels of her widely praised show at Central Presbyterian, Clark was incredibly humble when I told her of the rave reviews I had been hearing since last night. The bill at the church last night, which included Anni Rossi, M. Ward, Department of Eagles and Camera Obscura, was so hot that I thought Twitter was going to melt at one point.
When I told Clark that people had been howling ever since, she — very modestly — said that was “silly.”
Clark’s new album “Actor,” which comes out on 4AD in May, has been called a “mindblower” by the Statesman’s Michael Corcoran, and many expect it will be one of the year’s best.
The lithe woman who knows how to shred said she had just come from seeing the Dirty Projectors at a day show. She cutely said that the Brooklyn-based band, which plays a showcase at 9 p.m. Thursday at Emo’s, totally owned and “ruled it so hard core.” Clark also said she was planning to return to the church tonight to see Grizzly Bear perform at 8:30 p.m. That show will be packed beyond belief, so go early or go somewhere else.
St. Vincent plays again at midnight Friday at Antone’s at the Billions Corporation showcase.
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Scene report: The Hold Steady at Found Magazine day show
In a slightly sad bit of production, comedian Andy Kindler, who is often quite funny, took the stage minutes before The Hold Steady to “warm up” the crowd with some jokes. The crowd got heated, but probably not in the intended fashion. One fan threw something at the self-effacing comedian as he stumbled through five awkward minutes before introducing the band.
The band took the stage and frontman Craig Finn immediately had the crowd worked into a frenzy, as the band romped through “Constructive Summer.” Finn, despite his grad school looks, has as much swagger and energy as anyone you will see at SXSW, and he had the crowd in the palm of his hand, as the band delivered electric shocks through the sweaty crowd in the forms of “Multitude of Causalities,” “Navy Sheets,” and the set’s highlight, “Sequestered in Memphis,” which had the crowd soul clapping and singing along to the chorus: “Subpoenaed in Texas, sequestered in Memphis.”
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Quincy's windy (and uplifting) keynote
It was a feelgood stunt that maybe only Bono or Joel Osteen could also pull off at a conference of music business professionals and wannabes. About two hours into Thursday’s scheduled hour and 15 minute keynote address, Quincy Jones said “It’s so beautiful to see you all today. You let me be myself and I thank you for that.” Then, he had the entire packed ballroom stand up, hold hands and repeat a chant about integrity and spirituality.
When you’re in a room with Quincy Jones and he has a microphone, you’re in for a long and uplifting and windy and grounded ride. He’s got almost as many proverbs as famous friends, but if anyone has earned the right to maybe go on a bit too long, it’s Q, who’se probably the coolest cat ever in the music biz. His story is among the sweetest music at SXSW and so the crowd let him ramble and namedrop. Just hangin’ with Q, which is something many of us thought we’d never get to do. At one point, he acknowleged that his talk had maybe been all over the place, but someone in the crowd yelled out “We love you Quincy!” to put him at ease.
And get this: in a two hour and ten minute speech, Jones never once mentioned Barack Obama, though Jones did push the idea for the appointment of a U.S. Secretary of the Arts. (For more details go to QuincyJones.com.)
After going through a lot of autobiographical material (blame it on his new book), including memories of “The Color Purple” that proved uneccessary padding, the 76-year-old finally addressed the dire state of the music business, citing a drop in record sales of $22 billion this past year. “We need to figure out a way to save this precious business,” he said, adding that he was open to any and all ideas.
Jones spoke most eloquently about the purity of music and addressed the crowd as fellow musicians and music lovers. “We do it whether we get paid or not,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t let them know that out of this room.” Then he said, “but we need to get paid.”
Referring to Napster as the turning point in the industry downturn, Jones said the file-sharing creator is now on the side of artists, working on acoustic fingerprinting that can identify songs being illegally downloaded. “The passion for music is higher than ever before… people need it for the soul.” Jones said that music is the only thing that effects the right and left sides of the brain simultaneously.
Jones also urged on those on hand to travel as much as possible as a way to better understand the shrinking world in which they work. “The soul of a place is in the food, the music and the language.”
He shared a couple pieces of advice from his old friend Frank Sinatra. “Frank always said he felt sorry for people who didn’t drink because when they woke up in the morning, that was the best they’d feel all day,” Jones related, to laughter. Then came another Sinatraism: “Live each day as your last and one day you’ll be right.”
With the hand-holding moment, this felt more like an invocation than a keynote speech. The times call for such spiritual measures, as a theme to Q’s talk emerged: “We’re all crazy or we wouldn’t be here,” he said. “But if you think you’re more than a terminal for a higher power, you’re kidding yourself.”
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Bianca Ryan surprise guest at Q's keynote
Fourteen-year-old singer Bianca Ryan, who won the debut season of “America’s Got Talent” in 2006, sang “God Bless the Child” at the end of Quincy Jones’ two-hour keynote speech.
Her piano accompaniest, Alfredo Rodriguez followed with a fiery jazz piece that sounded at times like he possessed a third hand. It was the young Cuban’s first-ever performance in the United States.
Both performances received standing ovations
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SXSW review: The Decemberists
A lot of people at Stubb’s last night or listening at home on NPR to the Decemberists’ live debut of the rock opera, “The Hazards of Love,” probably either really loved or really hated what they heard. And a lot of people probably weren’t quite sure what they heard. If you haven’t already heard about the album through the constant plugs on NPR, “The Hazards of Love” is fantasy rock opera by the Portland-based Decemberists. Fronted by singer/songwriter Colin Meloy, the band produces music that’s an interesting mix of rock and pop, and Meloy’s lyrics tend to dwell on Sweeney-Toddish, macabre Victorian stories. “Hazards” takes that a step further by telling a story that includes a shaper-shifter and an evil queen.
Beyond that, the production seemed to lack the visuals that would have given the audience a better idea of what exactly was going on. Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark voices the heroine, Margaret, and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden voices an evil queen. Worden was the more interesting of the two — her voice and general stage presence were stronger. The guitar-heavy rock music that accompanied the queen was also more engaging than the gentle ballads that Stark sang.
There were definitely some cool moments, including a point where pretty much everyone on stage except Meloy and one other person were playing percussion in unison; during another, eerie, childlike vocal effects were layered with a harpsichord sound from organist Jenny Conlee. Meloy definitely put a lot of time into crafting these songs, but they’re not terribly accessible. Out of all of the songs, “The Rake’s Song,” a mid-tempo rock number that comes about halfway through, probably most resembles the band’s previous work.
When it was over, Meloy came back out on stage. “Hi, how are you doing,” he said, “that was a workout.” Based on the live performance, which Meloy admitted he was nervous about, the album warrants a revisiting, and it wouldn’t be surprising if it gained some type of cult following in the future. The people that remained for the entire performance got to see a two-song encore consisting of “Raincoat Song” from last year’s “Always the Bridesmaid” EP and “I Was Meant for the Stage,” from “Her Majesty the Decemberists.”
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Massive queue for Q keynote
There looks to be about 2,000 people in line to hear Quincy Jones’ keynote address. But it should be worth the wait: There’s a grand piano set up on the stage.
(Note: an hour into Quincy’s keynote and he’s gone nowhere near the piano. Nice use of video screen, however, airing Ray Charles singing “My Buddy Quincy” in 1991.)
Kudos to SXSW for having the keynote later in the afternoon that usual. All the day party folks are off in search of their first half dozen free drinks of the day, leaving a little more room for the most serious.
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SXSW review: Avett Brothers
(11 p.m. Wednesday, Stubb’s)
Sometimes bands ask a lot of their audience in the way of patience required for a live show to blossom into something meaningful or at least entertaining. North Carolina-based Avett Brothers are not that band. The foursome, with brothers Scott and Seth Avett at the helm, hooted, hollered and plucked their way through a way-too-short set in the 11 p.m. slot on Wednesday night at Stubb’s.
For those not familiar with the group, the Avett Brothers draw from a variety of musical genres, most notable bluegrass and alt-country. In addition to guitar, banjo, some drums and keys, the band features a standup bass and a cello (which is also played standing up). They were clearly enjoying themselves (it probably didn’t hurt that NPR was broadcasting the show both on the radio and online), particularly Seth Avett, the more vocal of the brothers, who yelled to the crowd on “Go to Sleep” and fit SXSW references into some of the songs.
An interrupted version of “Paranoia in B Major,” from their well-received 2007 album “Emotionalism,” unfortunately disrupted the flow of the set, which only lasted around 30 minutes (it was unclear if this was planned, in order to set up for the Decemberists). Two songs that closed out the showcase, “If I Get Murdered in the City” and “I and Love and You,” were both particularly good examples of the duet-heavy vocals that make the songs memorable.
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SXSW review: Camera Obscura
(Midnight, Central Presbyterian Church)
You really had to feel for Camera Obscura. The Scottish indie pop sextet’s first U.S. performance in a long while had them practically begging audience members to stick around. Of course, while the crowd hemorrhaged members, that had nothing to do with the band — they were the final act in a long night and after a full day of partying most in the audience were tired, hungry and ready to head out. By the time lead singer Tracyanne Campbell belted out the final song, a rollicking, enthused “If Looks Could Kill,” from 2006’s “Let’s Get Out of This Country,” the venue was only at about one-third capacity.
Which is a shame, because Camera Obscura threw themselves into Wednesday night’s show. With horns blaring, hand claps a-plenty and stellar key playing, they delivered an hour and 10 minutes worth of short, catchy, gleeful pop perfection. The set was split between classic material and new songs off the upcoming “My Maudlin Career.” The new material was classic Camera Obscura, blending the harmonies of ‘60s girl groups like the Ronettes with layers of impressive instrumentation. “The Sweetest Thing” packed an extraordinary horn section with a superb guitar solo — a rarity for this band — while standbys from previous albums were delivered with gusto.
Still, after enjoyable and atmospheric sets from St. Vincent, the Department of Eagles and M. Ward — all infinitely better artists to sit down and listen to than Camera Obscura, who are best enjoyed upright and jumping — there was a definite sense that band and venue were mismatched. Campbell requested that audience members come up front and stay nearer to the stage in the aisle, which some did, but none danced. Perhaps if one brave soul had initiated a dance party others would have joined in and lifted the band’s spirits, but none did, and performers seemed shy.
Campbell frequently apologized for playing new songs, which was unnecessary. Though an energetic and technically excellent performance, the late hour, minimal lighting and subdued venue were inappropriate for a band as celebratory as Camera Obscura, and it showed. Fans might be better served checking them out at the French Legation Museum, where they play today at 3 p.m., or at the Mohawk at 5 p.m. Saturday. Those venues, with their less buttoned-down aesthetic, should prove a better fit.
The band is also scheduled to play at 9:30 p.m. Friday at La Zona Rosa.
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SXSW Review: Dosh
(10:30 p.m. Wednesday, Mohawk)
It’s not really fair to mention Andrew Bird when talking about Martin Dosh, because the Minneapolis-based musician’s eclectic brand of jazzy experimentalism has merit with or without its ties to the increasingly popular Bird.
But at the same time, the parallels between the two collaborators are undeniable. They both rely heavily on looping instrumentation, distill hard-to-grasp experimental sounds into hook-laden arrangements and seem to have a keener understanding of the fundamentals of music than many in the scene today. And with all of that, it seems they have both found a winning formula.
The nappy-haired, scraggly-faced Dosh took the indoor stage of the Mohawk on Wednesday night and showed the audience the possibilities of electronic improvisation. He would cue synth samples, then turn to the drumset to bang out a few syncopated rhythms before setting them on a loop. He’d then manipulate the sounds and push them back over themselves before turning back to the drumset. The explosive power of this looping and layering was none more apparent than in the frantic sprint of “If You Want To, You Have To.”
Though Dosh ably breezed through the first few songs on his own, his backing band was a welcome addition later in the set. Saxophone solos added a jazzy, naturalistic counterpoint to the electronic rush, which Dosh then distorted and looped back into the mix. In addition, electric guitar lines added a subtle but rich texture to the music.
Maybe you know him by name, or maybe you just know him as the backing tracks in another musician’s songs, but either way, Dosh is worth your time.
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SXSW scene report: Chronicles in insane brand promotion
Keep your eyes peeled as you traverse the downtown area for the world’s unluckiest worker: the poor soul stuck inside the Energizer Bunny suit, who’s marching around Red River and Sixth streets with a street team throughout the festival.
This delightful funny animal costume — perhaps the largest I’ve ever seen — looks like it’s probably not the most comfortable outfit even in optimal conditions, let alone on a hot Austin afternoon. As if to add further insult to injury, the poor soul inside has to spend his entire day constantly beating the bunny’s drum (which sounds like, but is not, a sexual euphemism) in the mascot’s trademark fashion. I can only hope the arms are automated.
As I was lucky enough to see yesterday, transporting this monstrosity actually involves picking him up and placing him in a flatbed truck, a tall order for all involved. Fortunately, random passer-by assisted the Energizer street team in this task, asking them if they required help with a phrase that in any other context would be the world’s worst pickup line: “Do you need some help groping that bunny?”
So should you see the Energizer Bunny out this afternoon, tip your hat to him and let him know he’s on your mind. A job like that takes the dedication to keep going over, and over, and over… and deserves our admiration.
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SXSW Interview: The Avett Brothers
The Avett Brothers likely struck vinyl gold last year. Influential producer Rick Rubin not only signed the North Carolina siblings to his American Recordings but also helped craft songs on their forthcoming major-label debut.
“When there are two people like Seth and I working on a song, you can only have so many dimensions,” Scott Avett says. “Rick does a great job of directing the progression of the song without making it his song.”
They played the NPR showcase at Stubb’s Wednesday night. Next up: a 3:45 p.m. Thursday performance at Radio Room, 508 E. 6th St.
American-Statesman: Anyone you’re looking forward to seeing during SXSW?
Scott Avett: Yeah, I want to see our friends Jessica Lea Mayfield and Valient Thorr. I haven’t seen Valient Thorr in a while, and we’re all from the same area. We went to art school together. But I just want to focus on putting on as great a show as we can. I try not to think about other shows, because they affect you. They get you inspired in some ways that’s distracting — which is good and bad, I guess.
Lots of people are hearing “St. Joseph’s” on the NPR SXSW sampler this week.
That’s great. Like most of our songs, that was written about a life experience. It was after one of our New Year’s Eve shows in Asheville, North Carolina. I went from on top of the world playing the show and this huge celebration to spending the rest of the night in the emergency room. It was an interesting night with bloody thugs in the ER and people storming out.
Have you finished off the new album yet?
We have. I think the majority has been mixed, and it’s set to be out in July. The title is “I and Love and You.” My brother wrote a sort of mission statement or — how would you put it — an essay or thesis almost on the concept. It’s very intense and weighted and all encompassing. I think our intention is to print it nicely and have it written in calligraphy by a friend of ours. It’ll be in the vinyl packaging and the CD and I’m sure you’ll be able to download it.
Talk about working with Rick Rubin. In Rolling Stone, I made the comment that we grew up with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” and lots of work that Rick produced and wrote. We were very impacted by it. It’s coming full circle now that he’s a peer that we work with. There’s a really awesome tie there, an understanding. What I tried to articulate — it wasn’t Rolling Stone’s fault, it was mine — was about working on a project with someone who’d affected us so deeply. He shaped that influential time in our life when we were 13 to 18 years old. A lot of those records from the Beastie Boys to the Chili Peppers were high on the rotation.
How do you feel about touring with the Dave Matthews Band next month? I understand that there are usually 15,000 to 21,000 people (at their shows). You can’t expect to make the majority of those numbers to be interested. You just go out and lay it down, and you know one of them is gonna recognize it. I think Dave’s philosophy is the same as ours. I think he’s really worked hard for it, and that’s where we’re gonna fall together in the same category.
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SXSW Review: St. Vincent
(11 p.m., Central Presbyterian Church)
God only knows which wise soul had the forethought to book Annie Clark, better known by her religiously inspired nom de plume St. Vincent, in the Central Presbyterian Church, but they really ought to be rewarded with a promotion for their selection of apropos venue.
The Tulsa-born multi-instrumentalist proved keenly suited for the intimate-yet-cavernous space as she and a full band performed a medley of songs from her 2007 debut “Marry Me” and this spring’s upcoming “Actor.”
Taking the stage shortly after 11, Clark began her set somewhat tentatively with the first single off “Actor,” “The Strangers.” Her band included a flautist whose performance seemed to have difficulty meshing with the other players. A somewhat uncertain version of the title track off of “Marry Me” followed.
It wasn’t until after a little stage banter — Clark, recently returning from tour, opined on the beauties of being back in Texas, namely Whataburger — that she seemed to loosen up. Warning that she was “kicking out all the new jams,” Clark performed two new songs, each with more energy than the last, and the flautist transitioned to saxophone then oboe then back to saxophone, becoming one of the evening’s more enjoyable players to watch.
If the new material is any indication, fans of St. Vincent need not worry about the dreaded sophomore slump. Every song off “Actor” proved catchy, striking and, most surprisingly, rather uptempo, energetic and, in some places, kind of rocking. St. Vincent is clearly forging a new direction — while the new songs aren’t radical departures from the sound of “Marry Me,” they do showcase a greater pop sensibility. “The Strangers” features a lengthy guitar solo that alone gives Clark more chance to shred than she had on the entirety of “Marry Me.”
Despite a rocky beginning, Clark left the stage with an utterly enraptured audience and perhaps, for those gathered for M. Ward or Camera Obscura before and after her set, even a few new converts. With a quiet, seated, attentive audience, the ethereal show was a nice balm for weary revelers who had spent the day trying to listen to performers over chit-chat and iPhone conversations. The venue filled up quickly and hundreds were queued up outside, but for those lucky enough to get in, it was clear: Somebody up there likes us.
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SXSW Review: Anathallo
(9:40 p.m. Wednesday, Mohawk)
The dreamy indie pop of Chicago’s Anathallo plays like a spacier, synth-driven Sufjan Stevens, and if you listen to the soaring melodies and twinkling orchestral instrumental work on their albums, you’ll probably expect something timid but charming from their live performance.
But Anathallo’s Wednesday night showcase on the indoor stage of the Mohawk was nothing short of explosive. The seven-piece would begin one song softly shaking handheld bells, and by the middle bass drums were booming over complex vocal arrangements, all of which stopped and started with well-planned precision to let floating piano progressions swell.
The band’s sharply executed performance was no accident. The tightly packed crowd before the stage waited anxiously for Anathallo to set up well past the time their showcase was scheduled to begin, but the band made sure they were ready before diving into their set, assuring the sound techs in the back of the room that they’d cut a song to make up for the lost time.
This extra attention to detail paid off. Old songs like “A Great Wind, More Ash” began with blasting drumbeats that slipped into a stumbling romp, while the bobbing vocal filler of “Italo” from last year’s “Floating Canopy” swam swiftly over brass instrumentation coupled with distorted guitars.
The only downside? The snippets of discernible lyrics you get from Anathallo songs hint at intriguing storylines — the band explained before “Lost Ring Finger” that the song is about Neil Armstrong and an unfortunate accident with a grain truck — but you can never quite follow them because the vocal delivery is so fast and densely layered. But the band’s aural ambience alone is worth getting lost in.
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SXSW Review: The Heartless Bastards
10 p.m. Wednesday, Stubb’s
The strongest asset of Austin garage rock band the Heartless Bastards is lead singer Erika Wennerstrom’s voice. The band was the first of three groups (the Avett Brothers and the Decemberists) to perform as part of the NPR showcase, which was broadcast live. Wennerstrom’s vocals were at once velvety smooth and sandpaper rough as the quartet, stomped their way through a set that included songs from their latest critically acclaimed release, “The Mountain.”
Wennerstrom’s stage presence belied many of the lyrics on songs such as “Done Got Old,” where she sang “sometimes I feel old/can’t do the things I used to,” sounding anything but old on the upbeat blues romp. Playing with expectations, however, is part of the band’s charm. Many of the songs feature restrained, almost sedate verses that explode into ripping classic rock guitar.
On “Into the Open,” the opener from the 2006 album “All This Time,” Wennerstrom started with a mellow piano riff, singing “things are coming into focus,” only to lead the band into a raucous hard rock guitar refrain.
Highlights included the title track off “The Mountain,” a southern gothic lament, complete with steel pedal guitar. If there really were any weaker moments, they happened on “Sway,” also off the new album, which didn’t seem to have the same energy as the rest of the set, and “Out to Sea,” which sounded like something that might come from a really good bar band, but didn’t have the oomph of the other songs.
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SXSW Review: Bavu Blakes & The Extra Pairs
(1 a.m. Thursday, The Mohawk Patio)
Bavu Blakes & The Extra Plairs did not suffer foolish monitor mixes, lead feet or stiff behinds lightly as they played the 1 a.m. highlight set during a hip hop-billed evening on the outdoor stage at the Mohawk.
“I am the mayor of Austin hip-hop,” Blakes blasted the audience (and sound engineer). After a quick stop to fix a bad microphone and an atrocious monitor mix, Blakes and his Extra Plairs clocked a fiercely tight set of rhymes and beats, putting his own stamp on the Dirty South hip-hop genre.
Blakes’ skills as an MC were unflappable: The easy bravado was backed up by polished skill, his charisma had all eyes in the house focused on the stage and his ability to build set momentum was unparalleled in the venue that evening. Yet, the secret ingredient of the “bounce with me” sauce that Blakes served up was potently anchored by his musical director/bassist D-Madness and his drummer, Brannen Temple. Few words can describe the synergy created between D-Madness and Temple’s lock-step grooves which laid the foundation for Blakes’ rhymes as he breezed around the entirety of the stage like a caged tiger watching his trainer dice raw meat.
And despite Blakes’ nonstop command, he graciously brought up Los Angeles rapper Karma Stewart to do two songs of her own: “On A Cloud” and “Look.” Stewart was all love and flow, staying on stage for the rest of the set matching Blakes line for line, spit for spit.
The feel of Blakes’ band was not unlike the pastiche feel created by Philadelphia’s Roots crew. Blakes even led his band through a medley (now seemingly an unspoken requisite move at hip-hop shows) as the band played snippets of “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” “Ice, Ice Baby” and Nelly’s “Hot In Herre.” With his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, Blakes was mocking the pop hits in his medley, ultimately using them as a hyped-up lead in to his own would-be hit, “Southern Man.”
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SXSW Review: DD/MM/YYYY
(Midnight Wednesday, Emo’s Jr)
When the guys in Toronto’s DD/MM/YYYY (Day Month Year) sing, there’s no way of knowing what they’re saying. But whether they’re blaring through your headphones or banging on their instruments onstage, you probably don’t care. It’s fast. It’s frantic. It’s steady, tight and hard-driving, yet still as wild as a spastic strobe light.
When this experimental audio assault — a technical post-hardcore onslaught devoid of nearly any trace of melody — hit the crowd at Emo’s on Wednesday night, some audience members were frozen in place. But many others couldn’t resist the urge to dance and groove to the unpredictable, off-kilter rhythms, especially during the bouncy guitar riffs of “Imagine,” which sounded like an instrumental performance of “Blitzkrieg Bop” on speed.
The experimental five piece’s setup onstage centered around the drums, which had an extra snare and splash cymbal affixed to the front of it. The band was constantly swapping instruments, but one member would always pound away behind the set while another whacked out complementary rhythms out front and shouted into a microphone attached to various effects pedals.
Throughout the performance, the cuts from the band’s latest album, “Black Square,” officially released just this Tuesday, were obvious standouts. The slow-building blast of the melodic “No Life” was distinctly different from angular rockers like “Bronzage” and “Digital Haircut,” but they hit equally hard.
As the set progressed, it became clear that DD/MM/YYYY didn’t just sound ferocious — they were really ripping through their songs. Drumsticks splintered, snare heads busted, guitar strings snapped and effects pedals came unplugged.
“Everything’s broken,” one member said from the side of the stage.
But the delivery always sounded controlled, and it kept the crowd entranced through the 40-minute set.
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SXSW Review: The Travelin' McCourys and the Lee Boys
(10 p.m. Wednesday, Smokin’ Music)
The Travelin’ McCourys took the stage Wednesday aimed and antsy — an hour early, no less — as if there was something to prove.
Of course, there was. The quintessential Nashville pickin’ outfit faced this unthinkable burden: What is the Del McCoury Band without its patriarch?
Answer: Equally exciting.
Mandolin ace Ronnie McCoury, who acts, sings and looks so uncannily like his father, fits naturally as this side project’s leader. He certainly shares Del’s buoyant and charming stage presence. The music might be serious business — folks, pick up a guitar or banjo and just try to keep up (good luck) — but Ronnie slays himself cracking wise plenty, too. “This one’s from a bluegrass songwriter named Robert Zimmerman,” he likes to say by way of introducing “Walk Out in the Rain.” “He’s better known as Bob Dylan.”
The Travelin’ McCourys mine landscapes with predictably woeful confessions — “It’s a shame I fell in love with a knocked up beauty queen,” Ronnie sings gleefully — but this quintet electrifies its message. Literally: Scorched-earth instrumentals like “Lonesome Road Blues” and the empty-hearted lament “Lonesome Feeling” quaked on the roll of an electric bass. Call it bluegrass for the new millennium. Bassist Alan Bartam’s exclamation drove home the modernization: “Check us out on Myspace!”
The Lee Boys doubled down. “We’re up here jammin’ with the McCourys,” singer Keith Lee howled as the Florida band joined the stage. “So, call it bluegrass or whatever you want. Talk about pickin’ on stage!” Make way for combustible instrumentals. Even better, the McCourys and Lee Boys — whose tight secular hymnals bringing to mind Robert Randolph and the Family Band — turned Smokin’ Music into heavenly eruption on “Celebrate.”
Good news, Austinites: Look for both bands at Old Settler’s next month.
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SXSW Review: Caroline Herring
(9 p.m. Wednesday, The Velveeta Room)
Caroline Herring stood firm like an oak tree against a tornado Wednesday night. Clearly, bold and brawny roots are the Georgia (and former Austin-based) songwriter’s strong point.
Imagine the distraction: For the majority of Herring’s 45-minute showcase, a thumping bass and piercing drum next door double-teamed her deep-browed acoustic set. Carly Simon would have better odds trying to outplay Green Day in a rehearsal room. No matter. Few performers summon the fortitude Herring employed to weather such constant interruption.
“We’re coming to the intimate portion of the program,” Herring joked with an eye roll and a smile, as the volume increased. “I won’t let that bother me. Really, it’s all right. This is gonna be fun.”
It was. Herring played to the near-capacity crowd as if the room was as silent a listening room as the University of Texas’ Cactus Café. Her enthusiasts certainly remained as reverent and engaged. In fact, the more bombastic the rumble next door, the stronger the bond between audience and performer seemed to grow.
There’s good reason: Herring shines a singularly noble light on storytelling. She’s a songwriter’s songwriter, an artist equally edifying and entertaining. Try to wrangle the raft of superlatives buoying her stunning 2008 collection “Lantana” and rainbows shake free. A few moments — in particular, the gorgeous “When I Lay My Burden Down” and “Stone Cold World” — resonated deeply against this evening’s tide. Meanwhile, Herring’s drop-tuned take on Johnny Cash’s “Long Black Veil” rippled for the ages.
However, her best-known song may soon run its course. “I’ve tired of singing this,” Herring sighed, introducing the tragic novella “Paper Gown.” (The unsentimental snapshot recalls headlines that scolded Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drowned her children in 1994.) “Gee, I wonder why: People leave notes in my email about how they hate this song. There are lots of murder ballads, and I just wanted to put my hat in the ring.”
Let’s hope she does again.
- Brian T. Atkinson
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SXSW Review: Randy Weeks
(8 p.m. Wednesday, The Velveeta Room)
Randy Weeks should be playing on everyone’s radio.
As a matter of fact, the Austin resident is such a fine vocalist and songwriter he should be singing directly to us. Opening for Jackson Browne at Red Rocks. Watching teenagers humming his songs and music scholars analyzing his breezy lyrics. Yet Weeks delivered his seamless showcase Wednesday night to a relative echo chamber.
Shame so few noticed him. Weeks — a former Californian who’s best known for penning Lucinda Williams’ “Can’t Let Go” on her masterpiece “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” — splits the difference between unshakable pop and groovy roots-rock like few others. (Think about it: Another songwriter dreamed up the most indelible cut on Lucinda Williams’ best album. Almost unfathomable.)
The Velveeta Room, a downtown comedy club with capacity to house 75 seated souls, proved an effortless fit for Weeks, his ebullient West Coast melodies and ace guitarist Tony Gilkyson. Though the sound was ratcheted two notches too high, Weeks thrilled with a string of wavy ebbs and flows from his new album “Going My Way.” Standouts — “Black Coffee and Lifesavers,” “Summer of Love” and the title track particularly shined — made it nearly unbearable to share with only 30 witnesses.
Weeks didn’t appear to mind. He forged full-speed, only halting to acknowledge another peerless songwriter in the room. “Chris Smither and I just had a little coffee and hung out,” he said midway through. “That’s what’s so cool about South By.” Unfortunately, “Can’t Let Go” didn’t make the set list, but punchy two-steps like “The Last DWI,” a smooth harp-fueled drive into the sunset, and “Fine Way to Treat Me” easily filled the gap.
- Brian T. Atkinson
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SXSW Interview: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Though New York-based indie rock shoegaze quartet The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have been kicking around the scene since 2007, their star has shot up in the month since the release of their self-titled debut album in February.
Friends Kip Berman, Alex Naidus and Peggy Wang formed the band for the purpose of taking part in Wang’s birthday celebration, but they went on to release an EP before adding drummer Kurt Feldman and returning to the studio to record what became their first album. With short, punchy songs that pack excellent pop hooks, “The Pains of Being Pure at Heart” received a “Best New Music” recommendation from Pitchfork, and the album is garnering blog buzz and college radio play across the nation. The hard-working, eminently hummable band is playing 10 shows at SXSW. We talked to the band outside the Red 7 on Wednesday to discuss their schedule, the hype and their unusual lyricism.
American-Statesman: You’re playing a whopping 10 shows during the festival, as well as giving interviews and making in-store appearances. How do you keep your energy up during times like these?
Naidus: I think it’s just fun. We could be sitting inside at a business desk.
Berman: Any band should be fun. You have this incredible opportunity to get on stage and travel and play shows and meet people. It’s not a hard lifestyle. And anywhere is fun for us — we have fun in Pittsburgh, we have fun in Toronto, we have a good time anywhere. I read this interview with Robert Smith once and he’s talking about how he’s the world’s biggest Cure fan. It’s not that he thinks the Cure is better than any other music that’s out there and that he’s so great, it’s just that he’s so enthusiastic about it. He’s always happy to respond to fan letters and answer questions and things like that, and that is the cutest thing ever. That’s good. You should really be excited about your music. To play these songs all the time means it has to be fun.
Wang: Getting to go on tour is awesome. It’s like a vacation except you have fun stuff to do. Although talk to me on Saturday and see if I still feel that way.
Things have snow-balled pretty quickly for you guys since you released the album last month — you’ve been getting booked for more shows and getting lots of press attention, from the Fader to the New York Times to ABC News. Is that ever surreal?
Berman: We haven’t really had a lot of time to stop and think about it all that much.
Naidus: I think the being on ABC thing was the weirdest, because it was totally unexpected to me. It was the kind of thing I could send to my dad as proof of what we were doing. My dad doesn’t know what Stereogum is, and he doesn’t care. But he knows what ABC is.
Berman: It was the first time that my grandparents understood what we were doing in the bigger context. And that means a lot. We wanted them to know it was something we enjoyed doing and we care about.
Wang: And we like to think we make our parents proud.
You’ll be making your TV debut on April 1 on “Late Night with Carson Daly.” Are you excited about that?
Wang: I do feel nervous. It’s one of those things that’s so outrageous that it’s just really amazing. I’m really excited. I would like to be like “Oh, it’s no big deal, I don’t really care.” But I do. I mean, I’ve never done anything else like it.
Berman: It’s scheduled on April Fool’s Day, so we thought maybe it was a joke. But no, it’s not a joke. It just makes me think about our first shows. When we self-released our first EP we put together a tour of the Southeast. And we think the average attendance was between three and seven people. So it’s nice to have people be excited about us.
You’ve got a very pop-oriented, upbeat sound, but occasional cynicism and darkness are big parts of your lyrics. How does that clash fit into what the band is trying to accomplish? When you sing about love but with the possibility of incest on a song like “This Love is F—— Right,” are the lyrics heartfelt or ironic?
Berman: The lyrics are very genuine and very heartfelt, but they’re open to interpretation. I love indie pop music as a genre, but I like the noisier, less perfectionist aspects of it probably the best. And I think there’s always a danger with indie pop to try to create too beautiful of a song, to try to idealize things to the point where it’s almost maddeningly optimistic. Human beings don’t spend their entire lives taking bicycle rides and eating cupcakes. Those are all beautiful sentiments and thoughts and things which for the most part I enjoy — but it’s important to try to relate songs to some kind of dissonance, whether it’s sonically or in the lyrics. Songs with elements that stand out and are dark get your attention and force you to think a little bit more.
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SXSW Review: Peter Bjorn and John
10:45 p.m., Vice
The only thing missing was a banana peel in the middle of the stage.
A Looney Tunes slip gag was seriously about the only thing that didn’t go wrong for Peter Bjorn and John Wednesday in a performance that was marred from the beginning by technical difficulties. Not that the Swedish pop trio did much to help themselves out of the mess either, despite taking the stage following nearly an hour of equipment setup time.
First it was a problem with drummer John Erikkson’s samplers, then the bass shared by Peter Morén and Bjorn Yttling going out, then Moren’s guitar falling out twice. With all those problems, at one point the band had managed only two and a half songs (including one restart) in 20 minutes and, unfortunately, what they did play wasn’t at all worth the wait.
Whether playing material from their 2006 hit record “Writer’s Block” or the new “Living Thing,” PB&J’s restrained indie pop took a beating with all the difficulties, which suggested the band members don’t have enough of a gigging and live background to power ahead in the face of adversity.
So while equipment was changed in silence by an unmotivated team of band soundmen, the band nonchalantly chit-chatted with each other instead of yacking with the crowd, hamming it up with some instrumental improv or anything else that would’ve passed the time.
You’ve got to give them some credit for playing out a full set to an often hostile crowd but at almost two altogether forgettable hours in the making, it’s safe to say few would’ve suffered if PB&J had just cut their losses and called it a night way earlier.
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SXSW Review: Glasvegas
(11:45 p.m., Vice)
The first thought that coalesces when Glasvegas starts pounding out its sweeping, grandiose Britrock is, “Why has no one pulled this off before?”
Not that the Glasgow quartet is reinventing the wheel, but it melds its base components — Swervedriver’s beautiful roar and The Smiths’ gift for great melodies and choruses — with a directness and simplicity that’s startling.
It was that way from Note One on Wednesday night at Vice, where band members James Allan (guitar/vocals), Rab Allan (guitar), Paul Donoghue (bass) and drummer Caroline McKay owned the expectant crowd from the very first note of “Geraldine” and didn’t let them go for the full 40-plus minutes.
It might seem like an insult to call a band’s music simple, but in all honesty Glasvegas make it look easy in the way James Allan (who is an absolute dead ringer for a young Joe Strummer physically, even down to the hair) uses an array of effects pedals to build a basic three-note guitar figure into a mesmerizing sound that envelops his simple (there it is again) tales of loss and longing in songs like “Daddy’s Gone” and “Go Square Go.”
About the only flaw in the night was the curious inclusion of the lullaby “You Are My Sunshine” at the end of “Flowers and Football Tops.” But not even that could detract from the freewheeling momentum the band enjoyed as its members bounded around the stage and produced some of the most joyous noise this reviewer has heard in a while.
If only more bands could make it look so easy.
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SXSW review: Ladyhawke
The lines outside Stubb’s Wednesday night were gnarly for Ladyhawke, so I caught a little of Vetiver at Emo’s (impressive with the amount of subtlety they brought to the rock box), then headed back to Stubb’s where I saw only the last three songs.
But they were quite powerful. My first perfect moment of SXSW09 was when Ladyhawke ripped on guitar during an utterly blissful “Paris Is Burning.” The New Zealander and her band are better live than on record, able to achieve rockability without dumbing it down. The tightness was supreme.
Stubb’s outdoors can be the best venue in town and the worst- it depends on how close you can get to the front. But even in the back, Ladyhawke made it work. “My Delirium” finished off the set, leaving me wanting to hear more. Maybe I’ll catch this band at Perez Hilton’s party.
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SXSW Review: Doug Kershaw
Doug Kershaw 8 p.m. Wednesday The Parish
Never let it be said that the people of South Louisiana don’t have a sense of irony. Fiddle-playing wildman Doug Kershaw, in a black sequined shirt with a mop of black hair, hopped around on the Parish stage like a raven on a hot stovetop. But, at 73, the celebrated Ragin’ Cajun can refer to himself with sly self-deprecation as the “Agin’ Cajun.”
Never mind. Famous for the frenetic quality of his performances (reminiscent of another Louisiana boy, Jerry Lee Lewis), Kershaw has hardly lost a step, riffing with abandon on fiddle, guitar and accordion. With his lopsided, jack o’ lantern grin and gangly frame, he puts one in mind of Ichabod Crane relocated from the Hudson Valley to the Bayou Teche.
Kershaw came to national attention courtesy of Johnny Cash’s television show in 1969, but by then he had spent years championing the vanishing language and culture of the Acadian people of south Louisiana. “Louisiana Man,” which he recorded with his brother Rusty, and which he reprised at the Parish on Wednesday, is an anthem of stubborn defiance and a cultural shout-out to a displaced people.
Kershaw kicked things off with another hit, “Diggy Diggy Lo,” and worked his way though “Calinda,” “Mama’s Got the Know How” and a punkish two-step version (you had to have been there) of Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya.”
Kershaw is a whirligig onstage, but he’s been dead serious about promoting Cajun culture and music for decades. That commitment, as much as his enduring energy and musicianship, commands respect.
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SXSW review: Hey Negrita
British band Hey Negrita’s rollicking take on country music seems better suited for midnight than 8 p.m. When they started Wednesday at Lambert’s, the place wasn’t quite half-filled and such songs as “Nine To Five” failed to generate much stir. The chattering from downstairs diners was annoying.
But the band, which features that rare banjo-accordion sideman, locked in on “Cold,” one of songwriter Felix’s more complex numbers, and by “Burn the Whole Place Down” and “One Mississippi” the room was filling up and the party was on.
A big plus for the band is harmonica player/ singer Captain Bliss, who seems to be onstage as much to punch up the crowd as to accent songs that seem rooted in old John Prine, yet fly off as their own birds.
The band plays again Friday at midnight (yay!) at Creekside at Hilton Garden Inn, which has been made over to resemble Britain club, the Bedford.
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Memories alive backstage at the Austin Music Awards
Austin Music Awards 9:45-10:30 p.m. Wednesday Austin Music Hall
“Don’t go out there! There’s old people pogo-ing!”
Those were the first words I heard backstage at the Austin Music Awards, midway through the festivities at the Austin Music Hall. The remark was a cautionary injunction in regard to the reunion of the Raul’s/Duke’s Royal Coach Inn/Club Foot punk warhorses, the Dicks. Sure enough, the graying members of the band bopped energetically onstage (“spry,” I guess was the proper word, a designation I’m sure the band members would be mortified to see applied to them) onstage.
Backstage, a somber shadow temporarily eclipsed the ebullience. Bandleader Cornell Hurd spoke movingly of the loss of his friend Danny Young, the “Mayor of South Austin,” musician and owner of the Texicali Grill. Young was shortly to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. “I never met anybody like him before, and I won’t live long enough to meet someone like him again,” said Hurd.
In an adjoining room, the late Doug Sahm’s old compadre and bandmate, keyboardist Augie Meyers, spoke movingly of his friend. “I loved the guy. Me and Doug were friends since we were 12, and I’m going to be 69 soon. His spirit is always floating around.”
Meyers would soon take the stage with Doug’s sons Shawn and Shandon and members of the Texas Tornados and special guests for “SDQ2: A Tribute To Doug Sahm.”
The clouds of loss were dispersed the moment Shawn Sahm plugged in onstage, yelped, “Are you guys ready to have some fun,” and kicked off an accordion-spiced rendition of the Sir Douglas Quintet classic, “Nuevo Laredo.” Meyers took center stage for “Hey Baby, Que Paso,” and after a full-house sing-along of “She’s About A Mover,” the ensemble yielded the stage to Alejandro Escovedo and the Fireants, who encored with Sahm’s “Too Little Too Late,” a song Escovedo reprised on a forthcoming tribute record to Sahm.
“We want to take this whole year to celebrate Doug and see that he gets a little cred,” said Shawn Sahm before the set. Wednesday’s Awards Show set marked an auspicious start.
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SXSW review: Kara Grainger
It was a pity that Kara Grainger and band were engaged for so long in setting up and plugging in. The upshot: A 45-minute timeslot (midnight at the Ranch) was whittled down to time for only five songs. And Grainger, a guitarist, songwriter and vocalist of the Australian persuasion, definitely needs more time to stretch out.
Not that what was on display wasn’t choice. Employing an electric piano, B-3 organ, horn section and her own bottleneck slide guitar, Grainger placed her musical GPS about halfway between Memphis and New Orleans. She divvied up her short set between new and unreleased songs (the deep Stax-esque groove of “If She Won’t, I Will”), a blues chestnut (Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen”) and songs from her debut released last year (“Dreamed I Was the Devil” and “Sky Is Falling”).
As a vocalist, Grainger has a throaty register that distinctly recalls Bonnie Raitt (the Ozzie accent falls away when she sings). It is a comparison of which she will soon tire, if she hasn’t already. But there you have it.
Midway through her performance, the room seemed to fill abruptly, as though ordinary, non-SXSW folks nursing their lite beers had been sucked in from the adjoining sports bar. Blame it on the cheap cocktails and the late hour. Blame it on free music. Blame it on the siren song of the slide guitar. But for my money, something in Grainger’s passionate performance reached out through the door, grabbed people by the figurative scruff of the neck, and propelled them inside.
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SXSW review: Jessica Lea Mayfield
A little gremlin from Tuesday’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities must have jumped in my computer because my first SXSW showcase was not at all what I had planned to see. Thinking I was attending a 9 p.m. set at the Parish by a band named Tokyo (that doesn’t appear to exist), I ended up being treated with a performance by Kent, Ohio, folk music wunderkind Jessica Lea Mayfield. Initially I thought the heavens had aligned against me; a few songs into Mayfield’s set, I realized my planning error was entirely a blessing in disguise. Miller performed an inspired, deeply soulful set on the opening night of SXSW that belied her 19 years on the planet.
Mayfield quietly walked on stage, picked up her acoustic guitar and proceeded to play the majority of her 2008 Dan Auerbach-produced album “With Blasphemy So Heartfelt.” Little Mayfield was congenial, but never too talky between songs, letting the music speak for itself. The Parish filled during her set, and much of the audience appeared familiar with her music, yelling and yipping during “Words of Love” and “Kiss Me Again.” The former song was the first spark that began to stir the audience’s collective soul as a lone lilting vocal played counterpoint to a strumming waltz on her acoustic guitar. Meanwhile drummer Anne Lillis pounded soulful syncopations underneath some innovative, atmospheric leads by guitarist Richie Kirkpatrick.
Watching Mayfield’s technical skill and charismatic assuredness, you couldn’t help but think of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of practice theory from his recent book “Outliers.” Mayfield appeared awfully darned close to being a master of her instrument and of her voice; she’s been performing since she was 8 years old. And considering she began writing songs at age 11, she’s very close to proving Gladwell’s theory correct.
During the first quarter of her set, I thought that she needed to have her heart broken a few more times to wrench some extra performance pain from the darker recesses of her soul. But then the songs kept coming, and as the set progressed the power of her lyrics became more and more overwhelming. “We Never Lied” and “Bible Days” dark and mournful subject matter began to penetrate flesh, moving hearts and vitals around.
“The One That I Love Best” rolled along like a Palace Brothers song, like the slower water in a Midwestern river bend. Kirkpatrick continued to display his atmospheric skills on the track, taking a solo that was movingly original. But it was the last song - “For Today” - with its echo and reverb-soaked guitar, measured vocal tone and lyrical depth that made me a believer (while convincing me that Mayfield has been around the crumbling city block of heartbreak more than once). Unless she burns out (unlikely), you’ll be hearing from this artist for a long time to come.
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SXSW review: Those Darlins
Ladyhawke was impressively powerful at Stubb’s, but the best band I saw on the first night of SXSW was Those Darlins, from Murfreesboro, Tenn., at Club Deville. Only two years old, the female-fronted band was like X from the hicks. Absolutely loved that sorority girl on bass, Kelley Darlin, who switched off on guitar for “Mama’s Heart” and “Cannonball Blues.” I would’ve really liked to have known how she got so badass, but I couldn’t find her after the set.
Talked to Nikki Darlin, with the baritone ukulele, who got things started off with “Wild One” and she said the band was thoroughly enjoying its first-ever SXSW. I think they could be an Austin favorite for years to come, with “The Whole Damn Thing” taking over where the Damnations left off.
Guitarist Jessi Darlin, with her big hollow-body electric, brought it home with “Red Light Love,” capping a set that was invigorating from start to finish. Don’t think there’s a more fitting band name at SXSW. Would love to see them at the Continental Club some night.
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March 18, 2009
SXSW interview: Tim Easton
Tim Easton’s forthcoming “Porcupine” - a seamless highway love letter due April 28 on New West Records - might be his best collection yet. The restless folk singer treads trademark roots-rock landscapes, but richer textures (“Burgundy Red,” “Get What I Got”) and endless grooves (“Baltimore,” the title track) triple returns. “Goodbye, Stormy, fare thee well,” he growls over melting guitars on “Stormy.” “I know something, (but) I ain’t going to hell for you.” Easton sat down with us after a fiery Tuesday afternoon set at Dog and Duck Pub.
American-Statesman: You always seem to be everywhere during SXSW.
Easton: I belong to the 13-timers club. My first time through here, I just crashed the party. Beck and Johnny Cash were playing at Emo’s, and I put my arm on Johnny that night. I remember passing out cassettes. My hair is gray enough to say that I was passing out cassettes at SXSW back in the ’90s. It was before I had a cell phone - that’s for damn sure.
You just said onstage that this is your SXSW retirement.
Yeah, I think it’s time to get started on my career (laughs). My favorite part of SXSW is coming to see all the different bands from all over the world. I love music, you know, and I’m not uppity about it at all. I’ll come back to SXSW when they ask me to be the keynote speaker in 2017 - after I work on my career a while (laughs).
How is this year different from others?
I have a record out and we’re playing all from that album. That’s exciting. I’m playing some louder songs. My M.O.’s kind of being a folkie, and it’s nice to play some electric guitar and making some noise.
Is that a career direction?
Well, every one of my records has been different. My next record might be just me by myself with no overdubs. I’ve written a whole new batch of songs called “Highway 62 Love Songs.”
You seem to be veering from political songwriting.
People can make their own interpretations. The thing about the porcupine is pretty timely right now. It’s cute and fuzzy from a distance, but when you get up close it’ll stick you. You can apply that to greedy living or whatever.
What are your hopes for the Obama administration?
I hope that he’ll get other people to take a deep breath and help other people realize that we could use a lot more love and a little less self-centered behavior. We’ve already done quite a number to this world, and it’s all we have.
Do you think it can happen?
Privately, I’m nervous about it, but I’m very optimistic. I want (President Obama) to do well and so I think he’s going to do well. I was in Holland (on inauguration night), and those people were so excited and giving hugs. They were saying, “You’ve done it, you’ve made change in this world.” It was really powerful to be over in Europe when people pat you on the back instead of lecturing you.
Tim Easton is scheduled to perform at midnight Friday at Habana Bar Backyard, 708 E. Sixth St.
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SXSW scene report: Emo's Annex and Radio Room
(Black Joe Lewis and the Honey Bears perform at the Paste Party at the Radio Room on Wednesday. Jay Janner/AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Free Lonestar was the star at Emo’s Annex, a tent on the corner of Sixth and Red River Streets that holds a few hundred people, for the IODA Opening Day Party. The line wasn’t bad around 3:15 p.m. for the second half of a set by Portland-based folk-pop outfit Blind Pilot, who expressed how excited they were to tour in a place that wasn’t cold and snowy. They were followed by We Were Promised Jetpacks, one the latest groups out of the thriving Glasgow music scene. Aside from the wacky name, WWPJ differentiates themselves from fellow Glaswegians such as Frightened Rabbit with bouncy bass lines and varied rhythm structures.
Over at the Radio Room (formerly Bourbon Rocks) for the free Paste Magazine party, the line moved quickly and they weren’t checking names off the RSVP list, a plus for people who didn’t take the time pour over the countless sign-ups for events this week. Inside, Obamicon-ized posters of the performers were a cute touch (Paste owns the Obamicon tool, which you’ve probably seen in action on Facebook), and a good amount of people were downing cups of Magic Hat beer, which wasn’t free but only recently made its debut in Texas.
Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears played a typically well-received set on the outdoor stage. The band seems to have gotten tighter. Maybe it’s the record deal with Lost Highway. Superdrag, which was supposed to go on after Black Joe at 4:30 p.m., was canceled, and after that everybody in the place piled into the inside room for M. Ward’s 5 p.m. set. Ward went on a few minutes late without the awesome band he had in tow for his appearance last fall at the Austin City Limits Music festival, but that didn’t matter much to the rapt audience, who shushed talkers when he took the stage. He played a mix of old and new material, including “Duet For Guitars #3,” “Poison Cup” and “One Hundred Million Years.” He’ll be appearing again on at 8:15 p.m. Thursday in a free show at Auditorium Shores.
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SXSW scene report: Mellow Owl at Club 1808
Club 1808 on E. 12th Street may not be in the heart of the South by Southwest action, or even an official venue of the festival, but it’s hosting plenty of talented independent acts for free through Saturday.
Among Wednesday’s acts, which spanned everything from the brass-accompanied piano pop of Pterodactyl to the electronica-infused noise rock of Rad Racket, was Mellow Owl, the experimental folk outfit more widely known as Peter and the Wolf.
Though the songs of Mellow Owl’s frontman Red Hunter are typically stripped-down acoustic numbers on his albums, you never know what you’re going to get live. Hunter played the African kalimba for “Strange Machines,” while he pounded out “Black Saltwater” and a new tune on a keyboard backed by programmed hip-hop beats.
Touring bandmate Remy L.B.O., who manned the drum machine and bass guitar, said he and Hunter wrote and arranged the new songs during Hunter’s time in Los Angeles so they would have enough material to tour behind on their way to South by Southwest.
Mellow Owl doesn’t have any official SXSW showcases lined up, but they’ll be playing at Creekside Lounge on Friday, OK Mountain Art Gallery on Saturday afternoon and again at Club 1808 on Saturday night.
Other performances at Club 1808 over the next couple of days include DD/MM/YYYY and Maps and Atlases.
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SXSW panel report: Saying the Unsayable with Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Cocker is the consummate university lecturer. Standing on a darkened stage wearing a jacket and tie, he holds a wooden stick to point at slides on a big screen. But before he starts, there’s a disclaimer: “All views and conclusions reached are my own subjective opinion,” he says. “But these are usually right.”
The Pulp frontman’s lecture, Saying The Unsayable, is about the function of lyrics in popular song. And he has several theories. One is that lyrics on their own aren’t important, but that together with music and delivery (he plays a clip of David Bowie’s “Heroes” video to demonstrate), it all comes together and the result, he says, can be “dynamite.”
We’re then treated to an acoustic rendition of the first song Cocker ever wrote back in 1978, entitled “Shakespeare Rock” - presumably to demonstrate how terrible lyrics don’t necessarily ruin a song (in this case they do): “I got a baby, only one thing’s wrong / She quotes Shakespeare all day long / I said baby why you ignoring me / she said ‘To be or not to be.”
It’s terrible as it sounds.
Another theory is that all songs should rhyme. “But beware,” he says. “This can also lead to some of the greatest crimes ever committed.” Take Des’ree, for example. Cocker sings the lyrics to “Life” karaoke-style, after which he adds commentary: “I don’t want to see a ghost (a common fear - quite logical) / It’s the site I fear most (it’s OK but a bit convoluted) / I’d rather have a piece of toast (it’s all over. Blatant use of a word just because it rhymes).”
If UT management is reading this, perhaps there’s a job for Cocker as a university lecturer. He certainly beats the the ones I remember.
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SXSW panel report: Annoying Things That Bands Do
Guitar players who pass out drunk at soundcheck. Drummers who set their kits on fire without a prior agreement with the clubowner. Singers who help themselves to top-shelf brands behind the bar. Bands that move into a club because their next road gig is two days away: These are a few of clubowners least favorite things.
That, at least, was the contention of the panelists addressing the many “Annoying Things That Bands Do” at a panel at the SXSW Music Conference early Wednesday afternoon.
Chaired by Katie and Tim Tuten, of the Hideout in Chicago, Jack McFadden of Union Hall and the Bell House in Brooklyn, and Cindy Barber of the Beachland Ballroom and Tavern in Cleveland (owners and talent buyers all), the panel was a rollicking look at all the ways hapless bands have of shooting themselves in the collective foot.
“Be realistic,” Barber advised. “Don’t call me and say ‘I really wanna open up the Neko Case show in your ballroom.’ Hey, you’ve never even played here before. I don’t even know what you sound like!”
“I don’t care who you are, don’t ask (the clubowner) for new socks. Come on, dude, you can afford socks,” McFadden chided good-naturedly.
“That’s our favorite thing!” riposted Katie Tuten. “What could be more practical?”
“If you’re a skinny little indie band that asks for a bottle of Jack Daniels and a case of premium beer backstage, well, you can’t handle that,” said Tim Tuten to appreciative laughter. “I’ll check on you. C’mon, let me see you put that away.”
Overall, though, the panelists came across more as avuncular aunts and uncles than the hardnosed businessmen they must necessarily be.
“You’re coming into our house and we want to treat you the way any guest would be treated,” Katie Tuten said.
“I liken it to a dinner party,” McFadden said. “Treat them (bands) like your family. Actually, treat them better than that.”
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SXSW panel report: Sustainability and Greening
Ryan Mintz describes himself as a “musician on a mission with a vision” - a vegetarian, car-free, recycling, eco-freak who approaches his music career (he’s a singer-songwriter) with the same values. Mintz was part of a panel on Sustainability and Greening on Wednesday at South by Southwest. The panel also featured Chris Baumgartner, a “sustainability consultant,” Mike Jbara from the Warner Music Group, and Joseph Malki, who works with green events and festivals.
Mintz toured the U.S. on Amtrak and Greyhound and is now writing a book about how to green the music industry. The question is whether taking the Amtrak is really practical. If you want to go from Austin to, say, Savannah, you have to go via Chicago. And anyway, because of scheduling and the number of stops, it often takes longer than the car. Baumgartner concedes, “It’s not easy being green in the music business.”
“The biggest impact bands have on the environment is through their touring,” Mintz says. “If there are five people in a band traveling in a car, that’s fairly efficient but if you’re in a duo or group, you should double up. If you live in San Francisco and are playing a show in Los Angeles, you could take the bus. It’s about taking little steps. One artist I came across converted their car to run on used vegetable oil. They now have free fuel forever; it’s very cost efficient touring for him.”
Marcie Bolen, formerly of the Von Bondies and now one half of Detroit’s Silverghost, says taking the Amtrak or Greyhound isn’t practical if you have a full band with a drum kit. “Maybe you could use electronic drum pads that can fit into a backpack,” she says. “When I was in the Von Bondies we once toured round the country in a 15-person passenger van with a trailer attached. I guess you could cut down on some of the people coming with you. We were a four-piece and one time we had eight people in the van — a sound guy, guitar tech, tour manager and someone to sell merchandise. Now’s the time for bands to make sacrifices because of the economy and for the environment.”
Deleano Acevedo, the other half of Silverghost, agrees. “If venues started providing more backline - drums and amps - that would help.” But he concedes drummers can be precious so it would be a big sacrifice. “We have friends playing SXSW on their way down from Detroit now - five bands in one van. So it can be done.”
What about musicians out there? What steps could you see taking to be more green?
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SXSW band interview: Gomez
(Photo of Gomez by Jay Blakesberg/Special to the American-Statesman)
Gomez well understands the impact song placement delivers today. In fact, television shows - particularly nighttime dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “House,” which employed cuts from 2006’s “How We Operate - have proved the British band’s greatest marketing tool. Gomez is scheduled to follow up that breakthrough with the experimental “A New Tide” on March 31. “We go through phases,” says drummer Olly Peacock. “This one is definitely pushing things forward more. It’s way more adventurous.” We talked to Peacock on Tuesday.
American-Statesman: You have a lot going on this week.
Peacock: Yeah, South By is busy. Once we get into Austin, it’s like we don’t stop. We’ve got the party tonight (Tuesday night at Pangaea), Stubb’s, La Zona Rosa.
Do you have any time in between to catch other shows?
We might - maybe - have a little time tomorrow night. I’d like to see Andrew Bird. This is our third time at SXSW, and we always have great crowds in Austin. We did a La Zona Rosa show one ACL - I think it was ACL - and went on around midnight. We had a few too many drinks, and (singer and guitarist) Ian (Ball) ended up falling off the stage. It was pretty amusing. We couldn’t tell if it was intentional, because he basically fell onto his face on the floor. We just turned on his pedals even more and carried on (laughs).
How has the band’s sound evolved since the last album?
We’re working with sounds that we’d never even tried. There’s a lot more computer and string work and a guest vocals from Amy Millan from Broken Social Scene. It felt like stuff on there had to be pretty original, because nowadays music seems to be just floating around. It’s good music, but nobody’s really doing anything that especially different. There’s some stuff on “A New Tide” that has folky tinges like the English folk scene that’s going on at the moment with electronics with cool guitars and harmonies.
Is there a lyrical theme tying the material together?
Not really. Some of the albums in the past were more based on personal relationships, but this one covers different territory. Our lyrics are better when they’re ambiguous and open to interpretation.
That’s certainly lent itself well to placing your songs on television.
Yeah, a lot of people come from the point of view that they don’t want to be associated with that or be seen in conjunction with something advertising like that. The reality is that it does have a lot of impact and it has massive potential. If you’re not played on the radio and you’re not a really commercial band, how in the (expletive) is anybody going to hear your music? It’s not just going to be organic and make the rounds. We were on “Grey’s Anatomy” a lot and a lot of that audience has come around to us in a regular sort of fashion. It’s cool.
Like ‘How We Operate,’ the new album’s on Dave Matthews’ ATO Records. How important is it to be on a label today?
We looked into possibilities of doing it in England on our own, but there’s still going to be a foundation that a record company has like marketing and press that we’d have to go and source out. We’d have to hire other companies to do that. If you’ve got the foundation of a smaller record company who - at least in our circumstances - are very much into you it makes sense.
Presumably wearing costumes onstage makes sense to you guys, too. Anything planned for the shows this week?
Well, we haven’t gotten anything lined up like that (laughs). Maybe I should suggest that. I know mariachi outfits have been suggested.
Gomez is scheduled to perform at 10 p.m. Thursday at Stubb’s, 801 Red River St.; Friday afternoon at La Zona Rosa, 602 W. Fourth St.
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Austin Music Awards - winners announced
In years past, the winners of the Austin Music Awards have been revealed at the ceremony and show, which is tonight at the Austin Music Hall.
This year, the Austin Chronicle has published them this morning instead.
Here are a few of the big winners (check out the full list here):
Band of the Year: Bob Schneider & Lonelyland
Best New Band: The Black & White Years
Musician of the Year: Alejandro Escovedo
Album of the Year: “Real Animal,” Alejandro Escovedo
Song of the Year: “Power to Change,” The Black & White Years
Hall of Fame:
Kelly Willis
Dale Watson
Danny Roy Young
The Dicks
True Believers
Pariah
Hosea Hargrove
Tonight’s show includes a tribute to the late great Doug Sahm.
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SXSW (un)officially kicks off at Pangaea with Gomez, Decemberists
(Robert and Lindsay Power loves them some Gomez. Photo by Brian T. Atkinson/Special to the American-Statesman)<
Diehard Gomez fans ate dinner early - or skipped it entirely - Tuesday night. No matter.
“We just love them,” said Robert Power, 35, who immediately ranked the British band his favorite the first time he heard 1999’s “Liquid Skin.” “They constantly reinvent themselves on every album. I can’t wait to hear new songs tonight.”
The Denton man and his wife, Lindsay, 26, earned a spot near Pangaea’s door at 7 p.m. That’s nothing: The couple arrived at Waterloo Records before dawn Monday to pick up wristbands just to enter the line.
Fans behind the Powers curled a block long from Pangaea to Ronald Cheng’s Chinatown Downtown restaurant on Fifth Street for Gomez’s SXSW warm-up with the Decemberists. The vibe near the front was pensive and relatively reserved - surprisingly sober for St. Patrick’s Day after dark - but others near the end weren’t as patient. “(Expletive) no, we’re not waiting that long for anybody,” said a spirited reveler, “no one’s that good.” The young lady offered her bust measurement as a quote.
By the time Gomez took the stage, the intimate venue boomed and bristled inside. “Good evening,” lead singer Ian Ball said to the 500-capacity crowd. “We’re here to inaugurate South By Southwest!” The band launched into “Detroit Swing 66” with the audience singing along enthusiastically with its loping “I’m trying to keep from getting uptight” refrain. Other favorites - particularly “Love is Better Than a Warm Trombone” and the radio hit “See the World” - electrified the evening.
But the crowd went wildest for the jungle drums and thorny guitar of “Airstream Driver,” a highlight of Gomez’s upcoming album, “A New Tide.” “I’d like to see you dancing, unless you’ve forgotten how to dance,” Ball said. The crowd eagerly obliged.
Gomez has two additional shows during SXSW - its official showcase Thursday night at Stubb’s and a Friday afternoon party at La Zona Rosa - but the rising quintet is already looking toward the future. (The Decemberists play Wednesday night at Stubb’s.)
“We’re touring with Josh Ritter right after South By,” drummer Olly Peacock told the Statesman Tuesday afternoon. “This is the second time we’ve toured together - we did some with him in England a few years back - and we’re big fans of his.
“We’re actually trying to (collaborate). Josh is piecing together a record of cover versions of other peoples’ songs, and he asked us to do one. Hopefully, we can pull that off at some point in the next couple weeks.”
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March 17, 2009
Ben Harper ticket giveaway
Harper, who has a new band made up of Austinites, is taping an episode of “Austin City Limits” while here for South by Southwest. CLICK here to sign up for a chance at “space available” tickets through the ACL blog. You have until noon Thursday.
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Hippest SXSW parties move east
The Levis/Fader Fort, which is kind of a mini-SXSW, has moved from the Youthworks location right next to the Convention Center to a huge tent by the railroad tracks at E. Fifth St., across from Progress Coffee. There was a big line Tuesday for folks to pick up their wristbands. The new location has a lot more room, but it’s hard to beat the old one, which is not hosting music this year.
Meanwhile, the former Safeway at 1107 IH-35 (Next to CVS) will host both Thursday’s Playboy/ C3 party headlined by Jane’s Addiction and Saturday’s Perez Hilton party. Tuesday, the crew had finished putting up the stage and steel-and-glass backdrops, but the real decorating starts Wednesday.
Hilton’s second annual “One Night In Austin,” will feature an all-female lineup of Ladyhawke, Lady Sovereign, Solange Knowles, Yelle, Ida Maria, Little Boots, Margaret Cho and more.
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SXSW: News, rumors, etc.
— The computers that match wristbands with purchasers went down for about 30 minutes Tuesday, resulting in a long line and rumors of a longer one.
Scott Wilcox, chief technical officer for SXSW, told a Statesman reporter that he was told by Convention Center tech folks that a switch “lost its configuration.” (This would be a great time for someone who went to SXSW Interactive to tell Austin Music Source what that means.)
The line cleared in about 10 minutes once the system was back up and the switch will be changed tonight.
— The music bags come with condoms. The film and interactive bags do not. There’s a joke in there somewhere.
— Jane’s Addiction (now with original bassist Eric Avery) is playing the C3/Playboy party Thursday night at the former Safeway/Obama campaign Austin HQ on the I-35 frontage road. Win a ticket here .
— Motley Crue is rumored for the Perez Hilton party. Could be true, could be the “U2 is playing this year” rumor which seems completely impossible and the 2009 version of the old SXSW standby “Dude, R.E.M. is playing Emo’s RIGHT NOW!!!!”
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SXSW behind the band name: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
(Photo of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone by Hannah Persson/Special to the American-Statesman)
The band: A solo project for San Francisco musician Owen Ashworth that uses lo-fi beats and cheap keyboards to generate dizzying swirls of melancholia.
How did you wind up with this name?
A friend of mine had just gone through a breakup and wanted some painful, sad songs. So I wrote and played some music for her, and when I gave her the tape I wrote “Casiotone for the Painfully Alone” on it as kind of a joke. She decided I should play a show, so she just put it on a flier. So I couldn’t back out of it.
Have you ever thought about changing it?
Every step of the way I kind of thought I should change it, and now I’ve lugged it around for 11 years. I have an Excel spreadsheet with probably about 85 pretty good names at this point. Every time I finish a record I’m like “Maybe, just maybe, I should call it something else.” But it never seems like the right time.
SXSW showcase: 1:15 a.m. Wednesday, The Beauty Bar Backyard, 617 E. Seventh St.
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SXSW behind the band name: This Bike is a Pipe Bomb
(Photo of this Bike is a Pipe Bomb from the band)
The band: A trio from Pensacola, Fla., who play politically oriented folk and country songs with punk-rock speed and energy.
Represented by: Bassist and vocalist Terry Johnson and guitarist and vocalist Rymodee
As anarchists, you’ve found a name that combines two of the movement’s greatest signatures: explosives and bicycles. Where did the idea come from?
TJ: We had already booked a tour with some friends, but we hadn’t chosen a name yet. So we were doing that thing where we were sitting around bandying names about, and gradually getting sick of each other. And then we like to say that the heavens opened up and dropped a name on us. And we just pulled it out of the skies. Basically my answer is that it was magic.
R: There were so many ridiculous things being thrown out. And we were like, hey, here’s one we haven’t argued about in 15 minutes. Let’s go with that one.
Your name has led to a lot of security scares — bikes with stickers of the band on them have shut down college campuses, mass transit lines and courthouses. How do you feel about that?<br>
R: It was definitely bizarre when we first started hearing about it. What’s bizarre is that the stories are almost identical, you just change the city name. They shut down the Metro in Washington, D.C., and I guess the worst case scenario was at Ohio University, where the Athens bomb squad came in with robots and destroyed the bike. We started so, so pre-9/11. There wasn’t anybody freaking out about our band name for 5 years. You could staple a sticker with our name onto your forehead and walk into a sheriff’s office and be fine. With the last one in Memphis I actually did break down and say something. If you’re going to take your bike onto a plane or a train or anywhere important, you shouldn’t with that sticker. Two cents worth of electrical tape will cover it, and we’ll send you another sticker. We don’t charge for them.
SXSW showcase: 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, Habana Bar, 708 E. Sixth St.
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SXSW behind the band name: Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt
The band: A Brooklyn dance rock band signed to David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, whose elaborate live shows incorporate costumes, light shows and more manic energy than you can shake a glow stick at.
Represented by: Frontman Neil Fridd
That’s an odd combination of nouns and adjectives. What is it supposed to mean?
I originally used to write organ songs. And I called myself Terror Pigeon, which was sort of an oxymoron, this terrible word paired with the most helpless and harmless creature imaginable. It was me; I was this little scrawny kid who was upset about girls so I was writing and yelling but I was also very harmless. “Dance” came in when I just wanted to put together a live show that was a total party with friends and screaming and dancing. The “Revolt” is about shooting for something that’s highly atypical, with no egos and no worrying about whether or not people are going to think to think what you’re doing is cool.
Are you happy with it?
I have a very love/hate relationship with the name. I’m sometimes like “Ugh, so many words.” But other times I’m like, “No, this is who I am.” But I do have friends who change the name of the band a lot, just in the middle of the show. We’ll call ourselves the Terror Squirrel Pants Patrol. I also have a friend who says we should do an album of Eastern Indian music and call ourselves the Turban Pigeon Dance Revolt.
SXSW showcase: 11 p.m. Friday, the Rio, 301 San Jacinto Blvd.
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SXSW behind the band name: DD/MM/YYYY
(Photo of DD/MM/YYYY by David Waldman/Special to the American-Statesman)
The band: A Toronto-based experimental art rock band combines everything from traditional six-string guitars to ‘80s video game synthesizers.
Represented by: Bassist Mike Claxton.
Just how do you pronounce that?
We’ve always said “day/month/year.” It rolls off the tongue after a while. We’re all about shortcuts. A lot of people pick up on it right away, but a lot of them don’t. And it’s fun to hear the mispronunciations.
How’d you settle on this name?
We’ve all been in bands before, and we were kind of sick of having to pick names in the first place. We were trying to think of ways to not have a name. So, we thought, why don’t we just use the name of the date of the show? Originally everything was just going to be the date it happened. Our name would be whatever the date of the show was and any record would be named after the date it was released. Promoters just ran out of patience and started billing us DD/MM/YYYY.
SXSW showcase: 2 p.m. Wednesday, SESAC Day Stage, Austin Convention Center, 500 E. Cesar Chavez St.
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SXSW behind the band name: Abe Vigoda
The band: A Los Angeles quartet whose combination of short, energetic rock songs and breezy SoCal vibes has been described as “tropical punk.”
Represented by: Guitarist and vocalist Juan Velazquez
How did you single out Abe Vigoda, of all people, as your band name?
(Abe Vigoda vocalist and guitarist Michael Vidal and I) had the idea of starting a band and we while were chatting late night on instant messenger and we stumbled across an episode of Conan O’Brien with him in it. We threw it out as a joke name. But it stuck around. It’s really silly, but I like it. We were very young teenage boys making a stupid joke, but nobody’s ever said it’s stupid, which should probably happen a lot more often.
You’ve got a lot of young fans — do they always get the reference?
Younger kids don’t necessarily know who he is. But on the other hand, we played a show at (Los Angeles all-ages venue) The Smell where some old guy in his 60s showed up, thinking Abe was actually going to perform and do a monologue or something. The door guy assumed he was one of our grandparents. I think that guy was disappointed.
SXSW showcase: 12 a.m. Thursday, Red 7, 611 E. Seventh St.
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SXSW behind the band name: Natalie Portman's Shaved Head
(Photo of Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head by Shari Simonsen/Special to the American-Statesman)
The band: A five-person strong electronica sensation out of Seattle, whose emphasis on frenetic beats attracted the attention of Lily Allen, with whom they embark on a nationwide tour after SXSW.
Represented by: Guitarist and keyboard player David Price
What inspired you to go with this name?
The story goes that (band mates Shaun Libman and Luke Smith) and I were sitting in humanities class in high school, doing vocabulary Olympics. And that was the day (Natalie Portman) had shaved her head for “V For Vendetta,” and everybody was talking about it. So for some reason or another we decided to pick Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head for our team name. And we won that day. And then we had our band name.
Have you had any contact with Natalie Portman?
Back in the day, the joke was that we put her on the guest list for every show, because we didn’t have all that many people coming anyway. But (bassist and keyboardist) Claire England’s sister works at Magnolia Café in New York, and one day Natalie Portman came in. Claire’s sister usually treats celebrities like regular people, but she told Natalie about our band. And Natalie said “That’s … interesting.” She did get a signed autograph for Claire.
What kind of impact does the name have on the band’s identity?
I think it kind of grounds us and keeps us in the state of having fun. Music doesn’t have to be a completely serious thing. You should be able to go on stage and freak out for an hour and play your songs and just enjoy it.
SXSW showcase: 1 a.m. Wednesday, Dirty Dog Bar, 505 E. Sixth St.
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SXSW: Last side parties list (we think)
So it’s happening. It’s here. The mad-crazy insanity that is SXSW Music kicks off tomorrow. Even if it’s a bit wearying to residents - “this city’s already lousy with hipsters,” according to our pal The M.O. after his lunch trek to Freebirds.
So head on over to our mega-super-huge SXSW side parties list and have at it.
New today:
Papa Mali’s Hoodoo Blast BBQ
Rachael Ray’s Feedback Party (updated)
W3ll People Showcase
Great Dads Showcase
Vinyl Entertainment
Folk Alliance International
Transgressive Records/Chocolate Industries
I’m outta here to get some rest, protein bars and a B12 shot. This is the real March madness!!
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March 16, 2009
Behind the SXSW Buzz: Martin Atkins
If it’s happened to a rock band on the road, British drummer Martin Atkins has experienced it personally or knows someone who has.
He joined post-punk band Public Image Limited at 19, spent six years on and off with them, played in industrial rock titans Ministry’s best lineup in 1989 and ’90, founded bands such as Pigface, Murder Inc. and the Damage Manual, runs Invisible Records, and has generally kept himself busier than most folks who have 30 years in the music business without ever hitting superstardom. Dude is a role model for how all of it should be done.
Which is why his book, “Tour:Smart” might be the single best monograph ever written about touring which, these days, is virtually the only way a working musician can generate continuous income. It covers everything from logistics to media exposure to why not to skimp on a bus to live sound to finances to sex and drugs while on the road. There are war stories and cautionary tales. There’s advice from tour managers, crew, musicians, promoters and more musicians.
It’s a shockingly useful document, whether you are a working musician or just want to think like one.
And it wasn’t like Atkins just talked to so-called experts. His experts are the musicians who lived it.
“The coolest thing for me (about putting the book together) was just the idea that I could learn from Sheep on Drugs,” Atkins says by way of example. (Sheep on Drugs is a notoriously, um, indulgent techno act.) “They put out a tin that said, ‘Sheep on Drugs alcohol fund, please give generously.’ I never would have thought of that and for them, it was sometimes the difference between eating after a show or not eating after a show. During the meals, they would go over the day’s events. Without those meals, they wouldn’t have made in through three days.”
He’s reluctant to boil the book down to an easy fix. “It’s not one thing, it’s 20 little things,” Atkins says. “You can’t smart your way through it. I don’t know if I’m particularly smart, but I’m the guy who touched the wet paint nine times and on the 10th time I thought, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t do that.’”
That said, there’s one thing Atkins is thinks almost no bands do: “Instead of arbitrarily deciding where to tour, more bands should tour where the fans are,” using programs such as Google Analytics to analyze Web site traffic. “It can be the difference between playing to two people a night and playing to, for example, 30.” Which can be the difference between eating and not eating for a band heading out for the first time.
You never know where fans are going to be. “I was just in Marietta, Georgia, for a lecture,” Atkins says. “There were 160 people out of their minds on Jägermeister. I was floored. Atlanta must have 20 suburbs like that. Lots of American cities do. It starts to change the way you look at touring. Just going where your audience is gets you the steam and fuel to keep going.”
The man is on a roll. “I was watching one of those restaurant programs on BBC,” he says. “If someone has a good meal they will tell five to seven people. If they have a bad meal they will tell 21 people. The same applies to touring. The pollution from a bad gig spreads quite far. Carefully planning a tour is all about minimizing the things that can make for a bad gig.”
Read that last comment again. In other words, if you pay attention to all the details that need to be paid attention to when your band is not on stage, it frees you up to be your best on stage.
Or as Atkins puts it, “It’s just really lame granddad advice, but touring is about risk management on one side so you can take risks on the other side.”
Perhaps needless to say, he would make one cool granddad.
Martin Atkins SXSW talk begins at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday in room 18ABC of the Austin Convention Center. It is open to SXSW music and platinum badgeholders only. He will be signing books noon Friday at Waterloo Records (600 North Lamar). No badge needed.
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SXSW watch: Kanye West at Fader Fort?
The biggest rumor so far of SXSW 2009: Kanye West playing Fader Fort on Saturday night. We’ll update as we learn more.
If this is true, West is up against the biggest hip-hop show at SXSW. The Austin Music Hall lineup Saturday night includes Dead Prez, Rick Ross, Bun B, B.O.B. and Killer Mike.
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March 15, 2009
SXSW: Music geeks, on your marks!
We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for new listings to add to our most excellent SXSW side parties list. And not a moment too soon since the whole shebang gets underway on Wednesday - though it won’t be too hard to find some early kickoff parties on Tuesday night.
You’ll have to find those elsewhere but for Wednesday through Saturday, we’re on it.
New to the neighborhood:
D’Addario Day Party
Girls Rock Camp
Lake Austin Aquatic Dance Cruise
New York Noise Show
Chain Drive Festivus
Dance Your Face Off
That’s What I’m Talkin’ About!
Spring Fling Festival
Austin Music + Entertainment Magazine Party
Lucero Family Picnic.
If there’s more, we’ll have ‘em so keep checking back.
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: Riverboat Gamblers
(Four of the five Riverboat Gamblers. Photo by Ricardo B. Brazziell/AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
The first time I attempt to talk to Riverboat Gamblers singer Mike Wiebe, he is late for a plane. He’s in Los Angeles, trying to get back to Austin after playing a festival in Australia. The connection is bad. It’s unclear if the rest of the band is on his flight. He’s totally scattered.
“There was construction in the hotel,” Wiebe says. “They moved me into a new room at 7 a.m. but they didn’t move my wake-up call. Nine Inch Nails was the headliner at the festival, but we were nowhere near them. But I did see Trent Reznor on the flight back from Australia.
The conversation ends thusly: “Oh man, I gotta g—.”
Welcome to the somewhat together world of the Riverboat Gamblers. For 12 years, the Gamblers have been the open secret among Texas punk aficionados, one of the most explosive bands around. They moved from Denton to Austin after their second album, 2003’s “Something to Crow About.” They blew minds at SXSW 2003 and released “To the Confusion of Our Enemies” in 2006, a record that seemed to be more about the music business than anything else. Their hyper-energetic live show continues to rewire brains. The fourth and new album, “Underneath the Owl,” is a rich, diverse collection, moving beyond the kinetic loud-fast rules of their earlier efforts. Wiebe says the band, which includes guitarists Fadi el-Assad and Ian MacDougall, bassist Rob Marchant and drummer Eric Green, approached this one differently.
“This record was very much from the very bottom up, way more collaborative,” he says from his Austin home the day after the Australia flight. He still sounds beat, but at least he’s back in Texas. It used to be that everyone brought in their own songs and band members would add flourishes.
A lot used to be different about the Gamblers, a band that was never expected to be full time when the members fell together in 1997. “Our first couple of years we did very little,” Wiebe says. “We just wanted to play with the bands we like who came through Denton, who were usually staying at my house anyway, if not also playing there.” Money was not a motive, often to the band’s detriment. “We would do shows at my house and it never really occurred to me, ‘Hey, let’s make some extra dollars off this and pay the rent,’” he says. “To this day, I’m not allowed behind the merch booth at shows because I just want to give everything away.”
But that was years ago (except for the merch booth thing). The band is about to tour on “Underneath the Owl.”
“The title is a reference to the Frost Bank tower,” says Wiebe, at 33 the band’s oldest member. (Look at the downtown tower catty-corner if you’ve never noticed how much it looks like an owl.) “That’s the non-metaphorical meaning. It’s also about living underneath these great, controlling riches. We’re all like mice.”
While Volcom Entertainment is putting out “Owl,” its genesis was a lot different than the previous record, “To the Confusion of Our Enemies.”
“We thought the last one was a little too slick, a little too affected,” Wiebe says. “Andrew Murdoch did the last record as well, but this one was a little more spartan. We stayed on the studio floor at night on mattresses and stuff. I got to do a lot of work just myself.” It may be more spartan, but “Owl” also has its own set of tricks. “We got (X drummer) D.J. Bonebreak to play vibraphone on ‘Robots May Break Your Heart.” The band got to know Bonebreak when the Gamblers joined X for a six-week tour. “Every night I got to go out and sing ‘The World’s a Mess, It’s in My Kiss.’ You never want to meet your heroes, but they were so nice. (X singer) John Doe became a good friend. I still call him about music business stuff.”
Not too shabby for a band that started with zero aspirations. But if you think they’re getting too professional, too with it, know this: Ian couldn’t quite make it to the Statesman photo shoot. He might have been asleep.
Welcome to the Riverboat Gamblers.
Riverboat Gamblers at SXSW: Midnight Friday at Buffalo Billiards, 201 E. Sixth St., and 1 a.m. Saturday at Emo’s Annex, 600 Red River St.
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March 14, 2009
Meet the SXSW band: The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
Singer Mette Lindberg of the Asteroids Galaxy Tour, a band from Copenhagen, answered our questions before the band’s first trip to SXSW. They’re playing at 11 p.m. Thursday, March 19, at Emo’s Annex, 600 Red River St., and 8 p.m. Saturday, March 21, at Maggie Mae’s, 323 E 6th St.
What do you hope to accomplish?
We hope to have a really good time playing, and make new friends. And of course that people will dig what we do!
What music can you not leave town without?
Billie Holiday, the best way to wake up an ice cold winter morning. Heat you up from the inside.
Last song downloaded?
“I Want You” by Elvis Costello
What’s your favorite piece of clothing?
My purple wool sweater with diamond buttons! I always wear it…almost always, always!
It’s late, you’re hungry and time is short: what’s your go-to fast food franchise and what do you order?
Sushi, everything with salmon.
What’s the best thing you learned in school?
Don’t hide someone else’s milk, and forget about it … the smell will tell …
You’re ordering pizza for the band: what’s on it? And where do you call?
We don’t fancy eating pizza, but if we should it would be a mix of chili and
everything else you can put on it.
What should SXSW audiences know about your music?
Hmmm, we play quirky pop music with references from all genres …. feel free to grab what you want from it ! Music is love !!
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Meet the SXSW band: Mike Badger
What do you hope to accomplish?
World domination naturally!
What music can you not leave town without?
Love Gene Vincent’s last couple of albums just before he died 1970/71.
Last song downloaded?
“You’re Gonna Need Somebody On Yer Bond” by Captain Beefheart- astonishing.
What’s your favorite piece of clothing?
My hand made Western style Brown Leather Belt -I feel naked without it.
It’s late, you’re hungry and time is short: what’s your go-to fast food franchise and what do you order?
Always hard for me being a Veggie- but you can get a fine potato and parsley savoury cake in Penny Lane Chip Shop.
What’s the best thing you learned in school?
A healthy disrespect for false authority.
What’s your favorite restaurant back home?
Casa Bella in Victoria Street Liverpool, it’s in an old bank and I always take my family there for birthdays or if I get a cheque in.
What was the concert or album that made you want to play music yourself?
Reckon it was Dr. Feelgood and Mink de Ville at Liverpool Empire 1977
A celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Yungchen Lhamo she’s beautiful in all ways.
What should SXSW audiences know about your music?
It sounds like Honky Tonk Angels on Motorbikes.
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Meet the SXSW band: Baby Robots
They’re from Austin, and this is their fourth time playing SXSW. Their showcase is at 11 p.m. Sunday, March 22, at Emo’s Jr., 603 Red River St.
What music can you not leave town without?
Brother JT and Syd Barrett
Last song downloaded?
Haven’t downloaded any music lately. But I just bought Psychedelic States: Florida Vol.3.
Are you more likely to go to day parties or SXSW panels?
Maybe a day party or two.
What’s the best thing you learned in school?
How to roll joints.
What was the concert or album that made you want to play music yourself?
Black Flag “Damaged”
Do you have a favorite celebrity chef?
Ina Garten
A celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Kate Moss.
What should SXSW audiences know about your music?
We like to play music. We hope you like to hear it, too.
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Four excellent bands playing at the same time as Metallica
That’s 10 p.m. to midnight Friday.
Mi Ami (Flamingo Cantina): Former members of 90s/00s D.C. punk act Black Eyes try out the trio format, get a little more abstract, a little more dubby, a little weirder. Since their record label, Touch and Go, is radically scaling back, they are a good band to check out if, say, you would like to sign them for future records.
School of Seven Bells (Radio Room): New outfit from former Secret Machines guitarist Benjamin Curtis plus identical twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, formerly of On! Air! Library!. Curtis was recently big-upped by the Edge in a Rolling Stone interview with U2.
Renderers (Spiro’s): Wonderful veteran New Zealand band whose blend of noise and melody melts hearts. It’s absurdly exciting they are playing here.
Absu (Spiro’s): Black metal/death metal/cult metal from the vicious land of…Plano!
Every single band here has released music I would rather hear than “Death Magnetic.”
But then again, “Death Magnetic” has also gone platinum, so your mileage may vary.
But then again, they need to be here far more than Metallica does.
Consider yourself armed.
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: Devo
Devo made me move to Los Angeles in 1978. A friend who lived there sent me the 45 of Devo dropkicking the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” and said I needed to get to L.A. pronto, tonto. “You’re not going to believe what’s going on with music over here,” she wrote. I’m not a fan of art bands or concept rock, but what sold me on Devo were the songs. The band’s theory of de-evolution and yellow Tyvek uniforms and plastic hair isn’t what capitivated me: it was that incredible debut album “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo.”
Forget what it’s about, “Mongoloid” is a wonderfully melodic folk song. Meanwhile, “Uncontrollable Urge” and “Gut Feeling” rocked as hard as what anybody in black leather was playing. “Come Back Jonee” and “Clockout” were otherworldly and yet tethered to the times. Don’t think Brian Eno’s produced a finer album.
“We were able to connect our brain to our pelvis,” bassist Gerald Casale said over the phone of the band’s “sexy nerds” approach to songsmith.
The band had a novelty hit with “Whip It” in 1980 and milked MTV for all it was worth with that video and the one for “Freedom of Choice.” But ten years later, with “Smooth Noodle Maps,” Devo stopped making records. Mark Mothersbaugh made dough writing music for TV shows, like “PeeWee’s Playhouse,” and the former fellow Kent State art student Gerald Casale directed big budget videos for Foo Fighters, Soundgarden and the like.
So here it is 19 years later and Devo is coming to SXSW like so many other bands, looking for a record deal. “We are coming to announce to the world that we’re back, with a new record coming up, followed by a worldwide tour,” said Casale, who co-wrote most of the songs, and collaborated on the band’s quirky visionary graphics, with Mothersbaugh. “Things have become suddenly harmonious and we’re ready to exponentially spread the rate of de-evolution.” Casale promised a big production at SXSW. “We feel like we’re the house band on the Titanic,” he says.
Casale said Mothersbaugh was the hold-out who caved to the idea that Devo was ready to make new music again when the Swedish production team Teddybears brought Devo back in 2007 for the tune “Watch Us Work It” for a Dell commercial. “We hit it off with a whole new crowd,” he said.
The band has been playing live quite a bit lately, including their first show back home in Akton, Ohio in thirty years at an Oct. 2008 rally for Barack Obama. “They never got us,” Casale said of the Rubber City return. “We didn’t play there in 30 years because no one would come.”
After the band rekindled onstage, they started writing new songs- about 17 so far. Devo will perform three new songs at SXSW, then load up on all the hits and misses.
I should mention that the year I spent in L.A. was one of the worst of my life. I didn’t own a car, the only job I could get was at Winchell’s Donuts and the punks made fun of my long hair when I went to shows.
Thanks a lot, Devo.
But I got my revenge. I was the one who told the band that they’d be going up against Metallica at SXSW on Friday night. Devo plays the Austin Music Hall at midnight, while in the worst kept SXSW secret ever, Metallica is expected to hit the lights at Stubb’s about an hour earlier.
“You’re kidding,” Casale said. So much for being the top ticket, the biggest buzz, of the night.
But the men of Devo have nothing to worry about. Q- Are we not men? A- We are Devo-tees. We’ll take the plastic hair over the headbanging.
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SXSW wristbands on sale now
SXSW wristbands are on sale now at Waterloo Records. The going rate is $165 a pop and only one is available per customer. Wristband will be put on wrist at the time of purchase.
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March 13, 2009
SXSW meet the bands -- Suckers
(Photo of Suckers by Victoria Jacob/Special to the American-Statesman)
Quinn Walker and Brian Aiken of Brooklyn band Suckers, who will be first-timers at SXSW, answered our questions via e-mail. The band plays at 8 p.m. Thursday at Red 7 Patio, 611 E 7th St.
What do you hope to accomplish?
Aiken: I think we would like to introduce Austin and everyone else at SXSW to our songs- in their full live and energized forms. Also, it seems a great place to meet like-minded musicians, artists, producers, or whomever. It’s good to know we will either be surrounded by (a) those passionate enough to travel all the way to the center of Texas, the remote Island of Blue, or by (b) the stalwart locals who fulfill their motto, to Keep Austin Weird.
What music can you not leave town without?
Walker: The Misfits, Arvo Part
Aiken: Personally I cannot leave town without a couple Radiohead albums, but I think Suckers as a whole would all agree on Neil Young, especially because it really lends itself to the open road.
Last song downloaded?
Walker: “Total Eclipse of the Heart”
Aiken: “As I Roved Out” by the Dublin Ramblers
Do you have a favorite hangover cure?
Walker: Gatorade
Aiken: Popping a couple tabs of Alka Seltzer in your mouth. A Russian secret.
What’s your favorite piece of clothing?
Aiken: I like the undershirt.
Walker: The hat.
What’s your favorite memory of Austin? Least favorite?
Aiken: I really enjoyed the BARTON SPRINGS. It’s a nice cool dip on the outskirts of town, with a diving board and plenty of room to relax. My least favorite memory was the ubiquitousness of bouncers at every single bar. I was traveling with a girlfriend who misplaced her I.D. and there were absolutely NO exceptions. I guess it is the law but …
It’s late, you’re hungry and time is short: what’s your go-to fast food franchise and what do you order?
Aiken: Wendy’s. A junior bacon cheeseburger, five piece chicken nugget, and a small dairy dessert.
Walker: Taco Bell, seven layer burrito and a sante fe chalupa or nuggets with honey at McDonald’s.
Are you more likely to go to day parties or SXSW panels?
Aiken: Definitely both depending on my mood and energy level.
Walker: Ditto.
What was the concert or album that made you want to play music yourself?
Walker: Probably watching “Under a Blood Red Sky,” or David Bowie’s “Tonight.”
Aiken: Green Day “Dookie” got me hooked on drums.
What should SXSW audiences know about your music?
Aiken: I think they should know that we are a fun live band with a barrage of samplers, keyboards, maracas, and that we are aficionados in multi tasking.
Walker: That they’ll like it.
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: the Thermals
Former Austinite and Spoon front man Britt Daniel lives near Hutch Harris’ Portland, Ore. residence. The Shins crooner James Mercer recently moved in not too far away. Throw a stone, and you might break a window belonging to a member of Sleater-Kinney, The Jicks, The Decemberists or Modest Mouse.
No wonder Harris is so proud of his adopted hometown.
“I’m not native but I’ve been here 11 years in May. That’s longer than I’ve lived everywhere else,” said Harris. “I totally feel like Portland is mine, and it’s hot right now.”
Not literally, of course — as Harris speaks over the phone from the City of Roses, it’s a nippy 49 degrees. But it’s also a Pitchfork wonderland, where the brightest-burning stars of indie rock have congregated on the east side of the Willamette River that cleaves the city in two. And Harris should know — as front man and one third of the alternative rock trio the Thermals, he is the hipster Kevin Bacon: a connected talent who’s never more than six degrees of separation from every other connected talent. The band’s videos have featured cameos from Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, they’ve recorded with Jinks, Quasi and Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, and their previous album was produced by Brendan Canty, drummer for legendary hardcore band Fugazi.
In some ways, he owes it all to another Pacific Northwest band: Nirvana.
“I think my Dad got me a guitar when I was 15. And it was the early ‘90s, which was a really good time to be a kid learning guitar,” said Harris. “After all those years of metal, you had a band like Nirvana come along. Their songs were great, but they were incredibly simple to play, too. So anyone learning to play bar codes could learn those songs.”
After graduating high school, he met Kathy Foster in San Jose. The two formed an instant connection, and each independently decided to move to Portland. In 2002 they formed the Thermals, a blistering alternative rock trio that played lo-fi, three-minute grunge anthems with all the restless energy of a bag of cats. Over a series of three albums from 2003 to 2006, their sound grew more refined and their songwriting more targeted.
“We started consciously in a place where we’d have a lot of room to grow. So we started recording, with the first album, on a 4-track cassette. You can’t get much more lo-fi than that,” said Harris. “We take small steps sonically each record. Each one we do sounds like we’ve made a lot of progress, sonically, because each is a little more produced.”
That process culminates in the upcoming “Now You Can See,” planned for release in April and the band’s slickest effort yet. Where 2006’s acclaimed and ambitious “The Body, the Blood and the Machine” told the Orwellian story of a young couple fleeing a dystopian near-future United States governed by religious fundamentalists, “Now You Can See” deals with broader themes.
“We thought (“The Body, the Blood and the Machine”) was like a reaction to growing up and having religion and Jesus pushed in your face, as well as the direction the country was taking at the time. We felt like we were pushing back,” said Harris. “We purposefully didn’t sing about religion and politics on this record and I don’t think we will for a while. We don’t want to get stuck being known as a politically or religiously obsessed band.”
Which is not to say the new album’s lyrics are devoid of deeper meaning — many of the songs deal with death, appropriately for the follow-up to an album that ended with a nuclear holocaust. But if the record’s cover — a solitary flower growing defiantly out of a pile of ash and rubble — is any sign, The Thermals have found new reasons to look on the bright side.
“I’m optimistic,” said Hutch. “I still think there’s a lot of room to grow.”
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NPR's Austin 100
National Public Radio listened to over 1,100 recordings of acts playing SXSW and they’ve come up with their top 100. Listen and learn.
You can also download a free ten-song sampler from that site.
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SXSW: The day parties, they just don't stop
Party peoplllllllllllllllllllllllllllle!!!!
Sorry, we’re getting a little punchy over here in Austin360-land, what with this year’s SXSW being only days away now. Can you smell it? Feel it? Taste it? Heck yeah, you can. Because we’re giving you what you really need, another heaping helping on our platter of SXSW side parties.
New today, parties from:
LXLKB
Gibson Guitars
Absolute Pitch
MusicGorilla.com
Fat Possum (update)
Nah Right
Give More Love
Standard Recording
Full Irish Breakfast Party
Buzz Bands L.A.
Live 88.5 Big Money Shot
Under The Radar
Co-Lab’s Eastside Escape (update)
Aussie BBQ
SXSW Musical Stimulus Plan
Texas Music Magazine
After The Jump House Party
SFxSXSW
Little Steven’s Underground Garage
Nervebreakers
Full yet? Of course not, so we’ll be around with an 18th helping tomorrow.
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March 12, 2009
Erykah Badu's band added to free SXSW show
Erykah Badu’s Cannabinoids have been confirmed to play Auditorium Shores Saturday March 21 at 7 p.m. Explosions In the Sky couldn’t ask for a hipper opening act.
The show is free and open to the public.
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SXSW: Watch some panels, music showcases live online
Ustream.tv has set up a SXSW studio at The Belmont and will be live-streaming multiple panels and music showcases throughout the festival.
The shows can be watched on the Ustream site or on Austin360.com. The Ustream player is also available to embed on other sites.
The schedule, subject to change, is below.
Friday, March 13
4:30 to 5:30 p.m. — Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel
5:30 to 6:30 p.m. — Adele
6:30 to 7 p.m. — Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel, and Adele
7 to 7:30 p.m. — Set the Film Free
7:30 to 8 p.m. — Are We Humans, Or Are We Bloggers?
8 to 9 p.m. — We Are the People: Gov. 2.0, Empowering Constitutes and Governments
9 to 9:30 p.m. — Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy
9:30 10:30 p.m. — Meet The Ustream Studio Team
10:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. — Special live music
Saturday, March 14
4 to 5 p.m. — Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel
5 to 6 p.m. — Emerging Idea Lab
6 to 7 p.m. — We Are the Futures: Big Thinkers Searching for Solutions
7 to 8 p.m. Set the Film Free
8 to 8:30 p.m. — Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy
8:30 to 9 p.m. — TBA
9 to 10 p.m. — Our World in Motion
11 p.m. to 1 a.m. — Special live performances
Sunday, March 15
3 to 4 p.m. — Emerging Idea Lab
4 to 5 p.m. Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel
5 to 5:30 p.m. — We Are the Futures: Big Thinkers Searching for Solutions
5:30 to 6 p.m. — We Are the People: Gov. 2.0, Empowering Constitutes and Governments
6 to 7 p.m. — Our World in Motion
7 to 8 p.m. — Set the Film Free
8 to 8:30 p.m. Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy
8:30 to 9 p.m. — TBA
Monday, March 16
3 to 4 p.m. — Are We Humans, Or Are We Bloggers?
4 to 5 p.m. — Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel
5 to 6 p.m. — Emerging Idea Lab
6 to 7 p.m. — Set the Music Free
7 to 8 p.m. — Set the Film Free
8 to 8:30 p.m. — We Are the People: Gov. 2.0, Empowering Constitutes and Governments
8:30 to 9 p.m. — TBA
9 to 9:30 p.m. — Ustream Meetup
9:30 to 11 p.m. — The Jeff ‘The Dude’ Experience
11 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. — Special live performances
Tuesday, March 17
2 to 3 p.m. — Green with Envy with Pat Green
4 to 5 p.m. — From the Land of 10,000 Bands with Roster McCabe, Daughter of The Sun
5 to 6 p.m. — Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel
6 to 7 p.m. — Emerging Idea Lab
7 to 8 p.m. Our World in Motion
8 to 8:30 p.m. Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy
8:30 to 9 p.m. — TBA
9 to 10:45 p.m. — Peter Himmelman’s Furious World
11 p.m. to 1 a.m. —Spirit 76, Heatbox, Cloud Cult, Doom Tree
Wednesday, March 18
3 to 4 p.m. — Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel
4 p.m. to ??? — Special live performances
Thursday, March 19
3 to 4 p.m. — Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel
5 to 7 p.m. — Meet and greet with USA Today’s Pop Candy blogger
7 to 8 p.m. — Special live performances
8 to 8:45 p.m. — Stereogum
9 p.m. to ??? — Saddle Creek Records
Friday, March 20
Noon to 6 p.m. — The Bridges, Death on Two Wheels, Sarah Borges, Indigo Girls
3 to 4 p.m. — Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel
5 to 6 p.m. — Indigo Girls
7 to 8 p.m. — Abalone Dots (Sweden)
8 to 9 p.m. Rachel Goodrich
9 to 10 p.m. — Chris Pierce
11 p.m. to midnight — Into the Presence
Saturday, March 21
12:50 to 1 p.m. — Live update from Ustream Studio
1 to 5 p.m. — Hotel Cafe Showcase (via Gibson showroom). Artists confirmed so far include Meiko, Cary Brothers, Chris Pierce, Jim Bianco and Greg Laswell.
3 to 4 p.m. — Are You Really Experienced?, a music/tech all-star panel
4 to 8 p.m. — Special live guests
8 to 8:45 p.m. — Fake Problems
9 to 9:45 p.m. — The Von Bondies
10:00 to 10:45 p.m. — Favorite Gentlemen Records
11 to 11:45 p.m. — Manchester Orchestra
Midnight to 12:45 p.m. — Glasvegas
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: John Cruz
Hawaiian singer-songwriter John Cruz is used to hearing calls for “Island Style,” his 1996 song that has become an anthem of easy life and family love back home. But when it was relayed to Cruz at a January show in D.C. that a homesick Hawaii native wanted to hear it, the request was something special. It’s not every day the President of the United States wants to hear a song you wrote. Cruz and his friend Jack Johnson sang “Island Style” for Barack Obama at an Inaugural ball.
“It’s just unreal that a guy from Hawaii is the president,” says Cruz, who grew up in Oahu, one of 12 children. “The hope is that now more national attention will be coming to Hawaii. We’re not just about hula girls and Don Ho.” Cruz says that, growing up in the shadow of Waikiki hotels, songwriting was not encouraged for up-and-coming musicians. “The only way to make money playing music was to do covers,” he says. “You don’t get acceptance for originality, but by how much you can sound like the guy who had the hit.”
Meanwhile, local radio stations play more “Jawaiian”- reggae played by Hawaiian musicians- than the indigenous music.
But that’s changing. New coffeehouses and original music venues are cropping up among the musical tourist traps. “There’s a cool underground scene going on,” he says. “Look at the bands coming to South by Southwest. None of us play what you would call Hawaiian music.”
Adding elements of slack key, slide guitar and falsetto vocals to his contemporary sound, Cruz, 45, is perhaps the most Hawaiian sounding of the five-act Aloha State contingent, which includes One Right Turn, featuring his two younger sisters and an assist from father Ernie Cruz. The surname comes from Guam, though John Cruz is often thought to be Hispanic. “When I played in Mexico recently, someone was surprised I didn’t know the language,” he says with a laugh. “I said, ‘man we don’t speak Spanish in Palolo Valley.”
His dream as a young man was to move to New York City to play music. While a freshman at the University of Hawaii he saw that the school had an exchange program with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Cruz transferred. After college, he moved to Manhattan, where he busked in subways and got gigs at places like the Bitter End and the Life Café in the East Village.
Cruz had no real intention of moving back to Hawaii- which can be a suffocating place for a songwriter - but he returned in 1995 to help his brother make a record and has been there since.
On “one small kine” budget he made “Acoustic Soul,” the record with “Island Style,” which has sold 100,000 copies in Hawaii, but very little elsewhere. The song is still played in the Islands on Top 40, adult contemporary, oldies and Hawaiian music stations.
Last year, Cruz released the self-produced “One of These Days,” which uses top Los Angeles sessions players. “Missing You” hit big in the Islands, though the LP aims much further.
“It’s hard for a Hawaiian to break out in the mainland,” he says. “We’re just so isolated and behind the times. That’s why we we all so thrilled when Barack Obama became the president. It just shows you that although it’s hard to make it on a national level from Hawaii, it can be done.”
John Cruz will be playing at Roy’s Hawaiian restaurant every night during SXSW, but his official showcase is 1 a.m. Friday March 20 at Submerged (333 E. 2nd St.)
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Metallica confirmed at SXSW: Austin Chronicle
Austin Powell of the Austin Chronicle says he’s received confirmation from the Metallica camp that the metal superstars will indeed be playing Stubb’s on Friday March 20 at 10 p.m. as part of the “Guitar Hero: Metallica” showcase. The Chronicle founded SXSW in 1987.
Roland Swenson of SXSW was not too happy with Thursday’s “Off the Record” scoop, however. “He didn’t get it from us,” Swenson said. “We were told not to confirm anything and we’re sticking by that.”
OK, so hypothetically, let’s say everyone believes that stadium headliner Metallica is going to play Stubb’s, a venue that holds only 2,100. Is there going to be any way the average fan can get in? Swenson said it will be standard SX policy, with badges and wristbands getting priority. There will also be a line for those willing to pay cover, but admission will be based on space availability.
It promises to be pure insanity. But here’s the good news: Stubb’s is an outdoor venue. Fans will be able to hear the band all the way to Hyde Park.
Powell said he got the confirmation two days ago and notified SXSW organizers that he planned to print it, but never heard back from them.
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Nah Right at SXSW
Hip-hop blog don (and highly entertaining Twitterer) Eskay from the seriously influential MP3 blog Nah Right has moved past his perception of SXSW as a fest for (ahem) “white rocker people who wear flip flops”. Nah Right, along with The Smoking Section will host a side party which will likely be the definitive unofficial hip-hop event of the fest. Scheduled performers include Mickey Factz, Blu & Exile, Curren$y, Brother Ali, Charles Hamilton, Buff1, Blue Scholars, Tanya Morgan, Black Spade, Nato Caliph & Rockwell Knuckles and more. Surprise guests will, no doubt, drop in. The party is at Peckerheads on Sixth and will go down all day long on Friday, March 20. RSVP here to get on the list.
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March 11, 2009
SXSW: Side parties! Free drinks! Oh yeah... and music.
Times being tough as they are it’s understandable that plenty of the thousands invading next week for South By Southwest will be on the hunt for as many free drinks and meals as they can muster. It’s rough out there, yo. But please, in your quest to two fist for 12 hours straight don’t forget the bands doing their damnedest to rock your face off.
In that spirit, more additions to our SXSW side parties list:
Louisiana Showcase
Clash vs. Relentless
Four Square Punk
AAM SXSW Extravaganza
Indie Ambassador
SPIN (updated)
Cheapo Discs
Platform One Entertainment
Musebox Day Party
Anarchy at SXSW
End of the Road
New West Records
Sound On Sound (in-stores)
Bands, Burgers and Beers
MySpace Records/Family Happy Hour
Lost In Texas
Bay Area Hip Hop Showcase
More to come soon…
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Behind the Buzz: Playing For Change
The video seen seven and a half million times on YouTube starts off with Santa Monica street performer Roger Ridley strumming the simple chords of “Stand By Me” and singing the first verse. Grandpa Elliott of New Orleans takes over on the second verse and then he’s joined by soul belter Clarence Bekker of Amsterdam on the chorus. The Town Eagle Drum Group of New Mexico adds their touch, as do the guitarists from Italy and Venezuela, the Russian cello player, the Congo drummer, the Israeli singer, the eight-piece South African vocal group and more. All wear headphones that play everything that’s been recorded up to that point.
The group, Playing For Change, which makes its live debut at SXSW on Thursday, March 19, at Momo’s, is the international stew stirred by Mark Johnson, a recording engineer/ producer who had a vision in a New York City subway station 10 years ago that music was an underused unifying force in the world: “There were two monks, painted white from head to toe, playing music amongst all the commuters. One was playing a nylon guitar and the other was singing in a language I didn’t know. There were about 200 people, of all types, just mesmerized by this music. Normally they’d be rushing past each other, but the music brought them together.”
Like his heroes John and Alan Lomax, Johnson and his crew sought out indigenous musicians all over the world.
“Music shows us what we have in common, not what is different,” says Johnson, who honed his love of world music as an engineer for Paul Simon. To record Bob Marley’s “War/ No More Trouble,” Johnson brought together, at least on tape, musicians from Israel, India, Ireland, the U.S. and several African nations to back the vocals of Marley and U2’s Bono.
One treasure they found, through a newspaper article about finding solace through backyard jams, was bassist Pokei Klass, who lives in a village of shanties in South Africa. Two months ago, the Playing For Change Foundation, funded by donations, built the Ntonga Music School in Klass’ village. Next is the Mehlo Arts Center in Johannesburg, later this year.
“The musicians have the sense that they’re playing for something greater than themselves,” says Johnson. “There’s been very little ego involved.”
At SXSW, the Playing For Change band will be a nine-piece, with members from the Congo, Israel, the U.S., Zimbabwe and Holland. Hear Music will release a CD/ DVD on the project April 28. Click here for more info.
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: Floyd Dakil
Floyd Dakil is about as humble as they come. The 63-year-old Dallas native has generally turned down interview requests from folks writing books on Texas music history in the past, because he felt his contribution did not warrant such attention.
In giving the world “Dance Franny Dance,” one of the greatest garage rock numbers, recorded in Dallas a year before the Beatles played Ed Sullivan, the Floyd Dakil Combo has achieved bar band immortality. The hard-driving tune with the irresistible chord change has been kept alive in Austin by a host of bands, including the Leroi Brothers and Eve and the Exiles. That latter group will back Dakil when he plays the Ponderosa Stomp showcase on Friday, March 20, at the Continental Club.
“So many younger people come up to me or e-mail me and tell me how much they love that song that I’ve started thinking that, you know, maybe my music did have some value,” says Dakil, who runs his own commercial real estate business.
Although he has rarely performed since the mid-‘80s, Dakil says “there’s something that music does when you get older — it rejuvenates you. I’m just rarin’ to play.”
Although a treasured 45 for collectors, “Dance Franny Dance” achieved only regional success, which was not matched by follow-ups “Bad Boy,” “Stronger Than Dirt” and “One Girl.” Dakil is technically one hit short of being a One-Hit Wonder, but in terms of influence “Dance Franny Dance” was a smash.
Dakil wrote the song after a high school pool party, in which the 2-year-old sister of the hostess started shimmying to a song on the jukebox and all the kids started chanting “Dance Franny Dance.” The next day, Dakil started strumming a B chord and singing “Dance Franny Dance” and then he went into the G chord that gives the tune a catchy lift-off.
An accomplished guitarist, Dakil was recruited to join Louis Prima’s band in 1972, but that gig ended after eight months when the band leader was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Dakil stayed in Las Vegas, where he played the lounges and opened for the likes of Bill Cosby and Phyllis Diller.
By 1984, however, Dakil retired from the music business and took a job in finance. “I don’t know how Dr. Ira (Ponderosa founder Padnos) found me, but he did,” Dakil says of his unlikely road to South By Southwest. “I guess I’m gonna go down to Austin and play like I’m 25 again.
“The music has that effect.”
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March 10, 2009
SXSW: Side parties? We got your side parties...
Prepping for SXSW is like cramming a presidential election cycle into the space of two months. Times like these are when even a novice webling like yours truly gets pressed into coding duty, putting that sweet, sweet side party magic up on The Internets.
New additions to our ever-expanding side parties list:
Sounds Australia House Party
Twangfest/KDHX Party
Chicken Ranch Records
A Breath of Fresh Air
Stomp & Stammer Last Annual SXSW Party
Pigeon Publicity
Terrorbird/Force Field (updated)
Florida Bandango (updated)
Kerrang!/Guitar Hero
Independent Pool Party
Canadian Blast BBQ
APA Showcase
Team Clermont/Utne Reader
Above The Radar
OK, more tomorrow. Back into the coding mines.
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SXSW: Get on the list for the Fader Fort, Paste parties and more
In his daily Web wanderings our colleague The M.O. stumbled across the R.S.V.P. for one of the perennially hippest (and hipster-ist) side parties of the festival. Lineup and location TBA.
More recent additions to our ever-growing side parties list include Paste Magazine’s SXSW shindigs, after hours events at the Palm Door and many more.
New parties:
Justice Records SXSW Party 2009
Paste Magazine
Nola Soul SXSoiree
L4M Music Showcase at SXSW 2009 with FatLip the Cool Kids
Double Stereo Tiniest Bar in Texas shows
Stem and Leaf Records day show
Ustream studio live Belmont parties Cardiac Music Group, Covalent Records, Roxwel, Favorite Gentlemen and more
Brodown Hoedown II
Bull Moose & Covert Curiosity
Brazilian Rock and Guests Dayparty
After Hours Caipirinha Party
Boogaloo Shampoo
Fool’s Gold
New Singer/Songwriters from Brazil Dayparty
Spider House presents
International Day At Agave On Sixth Street
Dart Music International
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Cheapo Records SXSW lineup
Cheapo Records on North Lamar at 9th St., will host the following sets, free and open to the public, during SXSW:
Wednesday, March 18th:
N Spain Colored Orange
1Natccu
2 Bad Credit No Credit
3 Triple Cobra
4 JWW & the Prospectors
5 the Vandelles
6 the Designer Drugs
Thursday, March 19th:
11 Willie Heath Neal
N: The Clutters
1 Tokyo Sex Destruction
2 Los Coronas
3 the Cynics
4 the DT’s
5 the Ettes
6 Kepi Ghoulie/Kevin Seconds (acoustic)
7 Lee Boys
Friday, March 20th:
11 TV Ghost
N Brimstone Howl
1 Greg Ashley
2 Thomas Function
3 Terrible Twos/Human Eye (will be sharing gear and play short sets)
4 Intelligence*
5 Lover!*
6 River City Tanlines
Saturday, March 21st:
11 The Sonics (Autograph signing ONLY)
N Diplomats of Solid Sound
1 Sons of Hercules
2 The Dixons
3 She Creatures
4 the Girls
5 TBA
6 Nick Curran and the Lowlifes
7 BLVD
Sunday, March 22nd:
N Anamieke Quinn
1 the Love Me Nots
2 the Sore Losers
3 the Bad Rackets
4 Horton Brothers’ “Roots Matinee”
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March 9, 2009
Behind the SXSW Buzz: Alaska In Winter
Sure, he gave a video interview in the distinctive accent on his MySpace blog, but Bethancourt, who performs idiosyncratic electronica under the name Alaska in Winter, was merely in Albuquerque and looking to amuse himself when he recorded it. “That’s boredom. It’s what happens in New Mexico,” said Bethancourt by phone from New York City. “You end up doing stuff like that and you have no idea why. I can’t be in New Mexico for too many weeks without going crazy.”
It’s not his first act of desperation inspired by the Land of Enchantment. An Albuquerque resident since fourth grade, Bethancourt ran out of his art school scholarship in 2004 and so he aimlessly set out for an unlikely destination: Alaska. He spent the fall in a cabin on the outskirts of Homer, on the state’s southern coast. The 5,000-person town was childhood home to Jewel and, according to a popular local bumper sticker, “a quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem.”
“It’s very isolated. A lot of really rugged, burly mountain men live in the homes they’ve built themselves. It was a totally different lifestyle,” said Bethancourt. “You’d look out the window and see nothing but pine trees and glaciers. You’re more likely to run into a moose than a person.”
It was in Homer that Bethancourt crafted “Dance Party in the Balkans,” a concoction of electronica, spare melodies and Eastern European tones and strings. He used a laptop and a keyboard to conjure up the album, which would later be fleshed out with contributions from guest musicians, including Zach Condon, of indie folk band Beirut. Though it wasn’t as loved as 2007’s other breakout recording by a lonely man in a cabin in the middle of nowhere — Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever Ago” — music blog cognoscenti stood up and took notice. And just as that paean to lost love was unplanned, so too did Bethancourt make his sojourn north without any intention of writing songs.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, honestly. I didn’t go to make music at all. I was just taking a break from everything I had done in my life prior to that. It was like going to rehab,” recounted Bethancourt. “But once winter started to set in I got a crazy itch and I couldn’t stay away from making music.”
It wasn’t long before Bethancourt’s wanderlust reasserted itself. This time he landed in Berlin, where he absorbed the techno influences of a city with clubs that stay open for 72 straight hours on weekends.
“It’s the craziest city I’ve ever been to. That city never sleeps, ever. It’s common to come home from a club at four in the afternoon,” said Bethancourt. “Being there helped bring out that poppier, dancier stuff that was in my brain, waiting to come out.”
The resulting album, 2008’s “Holiday,” was a danceable, pop-oriented record that drew comparisons to M83 and Daft Punk and praise from Spin and Pitchfork. Then there were the unusual live shows — Bethancourt performs solo alongside a recorded video projection in which he plays the song’s other instruments. As the real deal jams out on a keytar, his doppelgangers behind him, arranged in a Brady Bunch grid, follow along.
Bethancourt insists that his tendency to record albums in exotic locales isn’t purposeful. He has no plans to venture to the moon or the Sahara for his next album, which currently looks like “a mixture of Polyphonic Spree sing-alongs and little hints of 80s metal.”
“I haven’t really made any plans,” he said. “I’ll see where life takes me.”
So long as that’s not New Mexico.
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Metallica at SXSW?
Will James, Lars, Kirk and the other guy play a “surprise” show at Stubb’s ( a la Beastie Boys a few years ago) Friday night March 20? You can pretty much bet on it if my rumor radar is up. The gig will be part of the “Guitar Hero Metallica” showcase. There’s an empty slot of the schedule from 10 p.m. until midnight. Metallica is featured on a special edition of Guitar Hero which comes out later this month.
A higher up at Guitar Hero, when asked if the Metallica gig was happening, would only email back the non-denial “ummmmm.” But an insider at Stubb’s said they’ve been told to expect Metallica. The band recently flew back from Europe one gig short after James Hetfield caught a stomach bug, so they should be well-rested by March 20 and ready to promote their tails off.
Anybody hear any more about this hot rumor, which was first reported on the Brooklyn Vegan blog about six weeks ago?
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New Austin label launches at SXSW
Kevin Wommack’s Loophole Management will no longer need to shop such artists as Los Lonely Boys, Gary Clark Jr., Sahara Smith and the Steps for record deals. All those are now with Playing In Traffic Records, the new imprint from Wommack and partner Whitaker Elledge.
The label launch will be celebrated with a party from 3-6pm on Thursday, March 19th at GSD&M advertising agency and an official SXSW showcase on Friday, March 20th at Maggie Mae’s Gibson room. Both events will feature performances from the roster of Austin acts.
In a press release, Wommack said, “Whether it’s the change in the business of music, the economy or the growth of all things digital, never before has the independent spirit been so strong in the world of music. With Playing in Traffic, we are embracing this self-starting ingenuity and offering our artists a creative and nurturing safe music haven where they can continue to grow and flourish.”
The label will be distributed nationally by RED.
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March 5, 2009
That Petrol Emotion reunites at SXSW
Pop Culture Press will host the second American performance in 15 years by That Petrol Emotion, the British band that grew out of the Undertones. The party is at the Dog & Duck Pub on the afternoon of Saturday March 21. The band’s official SXSW showcase is Thursday March 19 at Elysium.
Last year, after some Undertones’ reunion work, the decision was made to reform That Petrol Emotion, too. But the band reconsidered and tried to cancel the gigs, only to find that one festival gig was under contract. To the band’s amazement, they drew 6,000 fans and, after a great show, they decided to take a reunion seriously.
Also playing the family friendly PCP party are the Handsome Family, Future Clouds and Radar, Irish buzz band General Fiasco and more.
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Horseshoe Bar opens for Colombian SXSW party
A new venue at 3109 E. Cesar Chavez St. is hosting a party Saturday March 21 for a showing of “Frekeunsia Kolombiana,” a documentary of the Colombian hip-hop scene. With 10 bands coming in from Colombia at SXSW this year, there should be a lot of natives on hand.
The party also serves as a sneak preview of the Horseshoe Bar, operated by Matt Kleiman and Patterson Martin, which is near the banks of the Colorado River. The venue’s first official event is “Reggae On the River” on April 4.
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: the Bar-Kays
The Wisconsin plane crash that killed Otis Redding in December 1967 also took the lives of four of the six members of the Bar-Kays, who were backing Redding and also performing their Top 20 hit “Soul Finger” on tour.
Bar-Kays bassist and bandleader James Alexander was not on the flight, riding in to Madison with the band’s gear. With trumpet player Ben Cauley, the only one who survived the crash, Alexander recruited Memphis music fixture Larry Dodson, who had been singing doo wop with the Temprees, to form a new version of the Bar-Kays.
“We had to totally reinvent ourselves,” says Dodson. The original Bar-Kays were known as a an instrumental group, but version 2 would be more of hot soul showband with vocals. Bassist Alexander is the lone original member, though Dodson has been with the group for 40 years.
Known as the second house band at Stax Records (following Booker T. and the M.G.’s,) the Bar-Kays also backed Isaac Hayes on such million-sellers as “Hot Buttered Soul” and “Shaft.”
“Losing Issac last year was a real blow,” says Dodson. “We’ll play a tribute to him at South By Southwest, as well as a tribute to Otis.” The band headlines the Memphis Music Foundation showcase at the Dirty Dog Bar on Thursday March 19.
There was a little bit of confusion this week over whether or not Larry Dodson would be allowed to bring his trademark albino python onstage for “Freakshow On the Dancefloor.” The band’s publicist said he’d heard that SXSW ruled against the snake. But SX’s Roland Swenson said that the band would only need to apply for a waiver. In Section XIV covering Non-Human Performers, in paragraph C it says: “Under no circumstances shall any reptiles on stage exceed the length of 10 feet or 3.048 meters.”
The Bar-Kays python is 12 feet long. Swenson joked that even after the waiver is approved, the snake would not be eligible for a wristband.
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Hawaii to SXSW: "Shaka, brah"
The 50th state is having quite a year. A kama’aina was sworn in as president in January and in August Hawaii will celebrate its 50th anniversary of statehood.
And on March 18-22, Hawaii will have its largest ever presence at SXSW. The state goverment and the music industry have teamed up to send five acts to SXSW, including John Cruz, who had a huge local hit with “Island Style,” Maui songbird Anuhea, the indie pop family band One Right Turn and Oahu’s David Tamaoka, an up-and-coming pop singer and songwriter. There’s also Pimpbot to represesent the ska/ punk side of paradise.
Phil Tripp of SXSW International says the contingent “will practically take over Roy’s” during the festival and they’ll be a major presence at the trade show.
GEEV ‘EM!
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March 4, 2009
SXSW: A whole slew of new side parties
We’ve been hard at work updating our SXSW side party list to make it as comprehensive as possible. Notable new adds include My Old Kentucky Blog and Aquarium Drunkard’s Vaya Con Tacos!, Do512 and Sweet Leaf Tea’s massive shindig and the return of Mess with Texas at Waterloo park.
Other new listings include:
Toilet Paper showcase
Rancho Relaxo
If I like it showcases
Roky Erickson’s Psychedelic Ice Cream Social
TJM Music Services Showcase
Gigotron and Videothing
KVRXplosion
Waterloo Records
Wide Eyed Booking
Goner Records
Insound’s 10th Anniversary SXSW Party
8th Impression day party
Exemplary Records, MeowPoww Media, Loco Nunca Magazine, Tangled Snark Productions
Danish Dynamite Dayparty
Toronto’s Optical Sounds Label Showcase
Dance Your Face Off!
People In A Position To Know Recordings and Olympia All Ages Project day party
Old Flame Records
Small Stone Day Showcase
Rumblefish and XO Publicity Day Show
Rajiworld
Paper Boat Music presents
Burnside Distribution
Lost in Texas presented by Scott Jawson & Vinyl Entertainment
The Cold Sweat Chicago and Thumb Print present A Lot of Deejays
Victim of Time.com Showcase
Alternative Press
Austin Town Hall Showcase
The PTS Folk-Punk Party
New Granada Records “No-fficial” Showcase
Annie Street Art Collective party
Mad Decent presents
Aussie Tastes and Tunes
All That Sparkles
PureVolume.com House party
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: Ladyhawke
New Zealand-raised singer songwriter Pip Brown started calling herself Ladyhawke after she left the duo Teenager a couple years ago to work on her own musical project. The name, which comes from a 1985 fantasy movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer, made Brown feel as if she had supernatural powers for infiltrating the pop mainstream with catchy, ‘80s-influenced numbers not unlike Kim Wilde’s “Kids In America” and “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac.
But Brown is a true hero for some of the things she had to conquer in her real life. Long before she made the music magazines, Brown was the subject of articles in medical journals. At age 10 she contracted a disease thought to be common only to seagulls. When doctors treated her with penicillin, she had an allergic reaction that put her in a coma. She’s also allergic to antibiotics and antihistamines and has been lactose intolerant her whole life.
As a teenager, Brown went to the doctor to see if he could explain her paralyzing shyness and discomfort with crowds. At the time, she was playing guitar for local garage band Two Lane Blacktop and would freak out onstage whenever she made eye contact with someone in the audience. She was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, which causes idiosyncratic social behavior.
Finally, Brown understood why she was such a loner, with a penchant for saying the wrong things. Those with Asperger often engage in long, one-sided conversations, without any empathy for the listener.
Another quirk, though unrelated to Asperger, is that Brown refuses to wear women’s clothing. Even backed by a cello and piano for a recent gig in a British cathedral, Ladyhawke wore a flannel shirt, jeans and work boots.
A symptom of Asperger is a preoccupation with a single subject and in Brown’s case that was music. She’s been consumed with beats and melodies since she was very young. Now 27, Brown played almost all the instruments on her 2008 self-titled debut and co-wrote the songs, including “Paris Is Burning” and “My Delirium,” which both charted in the UK, where Brown currently resides.
“Music that came out of the eighties had such a unique and definitive sound,” Brown wrote on her Web site. “Big production, big synths, and big guitar riffs. The songwriters were incredibly significant, and the whole musical era left an everlasting impression on me.”
She still gets nervous before shows, but Brown recently told NME that the fear subsides when the music starts. That eye contact thing is still a concern and Ladyhawke is an unrepentant shoegazer. If, by chance, your eyes do meet hers onstage at Stubb’s Wednesday March 18 at 9 p.m., please don’t smile. That will really freak Brown out.
Image from myspace.com/ladyhawkemusic
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March 3, 2009
New SXSW day parties and side events
Our SXSW day party and side party list grows ever longer. Notable events include Urban Outfitters Backlot day parties, Creme de la Creme’s Friday night SXSW bash with Raekwon and the inaugural East Meets Fest event at Uchi. There’s also the annual S X San Jose event and Bird’s Barbershop’s Eastside Space Camp, showcases from Brooklyn Vegan, Pitchfork and many more.
Other new listings include:
Save Austin Music parties
Blue Velvet day party
Nail Distribution (official) day party
Bemba Entertainment
Press Here garden party at the French Legation
Pitchfork/Windish day party
Stimulus Package
True North Records unofficial showcase
Captiva Media Group unofficial showcase
Baby Acapulco and Planeta en Ritmo Present The TXMX Recession Relief Music Showcase
Fat Possum
Brooklyn Vegan
Ioda
Pop Culture Press
Big Texas Jump Start
Cannibal Cheerleader
Pigeon Publicity
Giant Steps
Lucy the Poodle
Wide Eyed Booking
Bird’s Barbershop Space Camp
SX San Jose
Rhapsody Rocks
Side One Track One and La Snacks
Represent Austin
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SXSW: Hilton, Playboy parties to rock old Safeway
Two of the hottest afterhours parties during SXSW will take place at the former Safeway location next to CVS on the I-35 frontage road and East 12th Street. The Thursday night bash will be hosted by Playboy magazine and C3 Presents. Then, on Saturday at around midnight, gossip-monger Perez Hilton takes over. Lady Sovereign is the only confirmed act we could find for that one.
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: Jeffrey Steele
Steele, 47, is a Nashville songwriting phenom who has written nine #1 country singles and eight #2s in the past eight years. His hits include several for Rascal Flatts, including “What Hurts the Most,” plus “The Cowboy In Me” for Tim McGraw, “Big Deal” for LeAnn Rimes and “Brand New Girlfriend” by Steve Holy. Steele was named the BMI Songwriter of the Year in 2003 and 2007.
But that Jeffrey Steele won’t be taking the stage at the Ranch (708 W. Sixth St.) at 9 p.m. Saturday March 21. In concert, Steele is a soulful hard rocker, coming off more like Hank Williams Jr. than Sr. When he stomps out a number like “Swamp Thang,” with its Zeppelinesque riffage, it’s hard to believe that this guy has even heard of Rascal Flatts. As he showed at the ACL Fest a couple years ago, Steele is a southern version of vintage Bob Seger.
“Nothing pumps me up like playing live,” he says by phone from Nashville, where he’s currently producing the new band LoCash Cowboys. “It’s total joy.” Although a recent exclusive distribution deal with Best Buy gets Steele’s albums in those stores nationwide, and he’s built up a loyal following after his stint as a judge on “Nashville Star,” Steele doesn’t sell under his own name as well as the folks who record his songs. Still, he’s determined to make his mark as a performer and recording artist.
Songwriting success hasn’t changed the So Cal native, who started off in hard rock bands, fell in with the Lucinda Williams/ Jim Lauderdale crowd at the Palomino Club, then merged metal and country with his own songs. “I still have the curse of the working musician,” he says. “What songwriting does is afford me the luxury to go out on the road and play for people.”
His career is a bit like Willie Nelson’s in the ‘60s, writing hits for others, yet burning to make his own mark.
His pursuits have not been free of tragedy, as Steele lost his 13-year-old son Alex two years ago in an all terrain vehicle accident. Steele started a foundation under his son’s name, which pays for promising skateboarders, as Alex was, to receive more training and opportunities.
Steele came to Nashville in the early ‘80s as the singer and chief songwriter of Boy Howdy, which had a couple of hits during the Garth boom and then disbanded. “We did the same 10 songs every night, in the same order” he says. “I hated it.” Steele had issues with his voice and had to retrain it to sing again. In the meantime, he wrote songs and found a champion in producer Dann Huff (Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, Faith Hill). Once the hits started coming, Steele didn’t have to pitch his songs, producers and artists came to him.
His biggest hit is probably “What Hurts the Most,” which was originally going to be cut by Aerosmith, then Faith Hill had it on hold for awhile.
“That song was on hold for eight years, then Rascal Flatts didn’t want to do it because they thought it was too depressing,” Steele says. “The producer had to talk them into it. If I had to sit around and think about stuff like that, or trying to write songs for certain people, I’d drive myself crazy. That’s why I write every song for myself first.”
And he’ll work in compositional mailbox money like “The Cowboy In Me” or “Hell, Yeah” (a hit for Montgomery Gentry) during his live set, but it doesn’t always go over so well.
“We just played in Chicago and someone came up after the set and said they liked all the rockin’ stuff,” Steele says. “And then they said, ‘but why did you play all those country covers.’”
(Photo of Jeffrey Steele from D. Baron Media)
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March 2, 2009
SXSW: Meet the band - Beautiful Nubia
Have you been to SXSW before?
No!
What do you hope to accomplish?
We are hoping to catch the eye of a crazy, adventurous booking agent or promoter who’ll be interested in booking a subsequent tour of the US for the band.
Last song downloaded?
A song by Zimbabwean legend Thomas Mapfumo called “Chentemgure”
What’s your favorite piece of clothing?
Local Yoruba fabric called adire and ofi, and my jeans!
If you’ve been to Austin before, what’s your favorite memory? Least favorite memory of Austin?
I have been to Austin before, twice, for the Austin International Poetry Festival. My favourite memory was doing an acoustic set at the Ruta Maya. My least favourite memory was the hassles at the airport on the way back. There was a reggae festival on in Austin at the same time and I was taken for a rastafarian with my dreadlocks. I was hassled to produce my stash of pot, which I did not have.
It’s late, you’re hungry and time is short: what’s your go-to fast food franchise and what do you order?
I’m not a fan of fast anything but if I’m really in a tight spot I’ll dash into any corner store and get some chocolate.
What’s the best thing you learned in school?
How to be a good listener, hard work and perseverance, not always expecting everyone to see things your way.
Does your band have a pre-show ritual? Any superstitions?
Yes, we eat some food! That can be the difference between a good show and one in which the boys just stand around on stage like passengers in a moving bus.
What’s your favorite restaurant back home?
My own mother’s kitchen…
What was the concert or album that made you want to play music yourself?
Nothing specific. I have always wanted to play music from a young age. I always felt this was my destiny and seeing all those expressive album jackets of the 60s and 70s just served to strengthen that resolve.
A celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Cameron Diaz. I was disappointed when she went off with that Timberlake fellow, that should have been me!
Which web sites do you check every day?
beautifulnubia.com, for the new guestbook entries.
What should SXSW audiences know about your music?
This is not your run-of-the-mill African band. We bring something different to the party - good vibes, some old-age wisdom, some wildness, lots of drumming and jumping, and a lot of politics!
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SXSW: Meet the band - Alash Ensemble of Tuva
Peter Hasselbach
Austin Music Source: Have you been to SXSW before?
Alash: We’ve never been to SXSW, but we’ve been to Austin twice before and we love the town. We like TX in general, but Austin is great.
What do you hope to accomplish?
We’d like to get our music out to more ears, a wider audience than just a world audience, educate people about where we come from - The Republic of Tuva, and hopefully find an agent. We’ve been doing everything from our little log cabin in Tuva, which can some times make putting together international tours hard.
What music can you not leave town without?
We like Bela Fleck, Hazmat Modine, Johnny Cash, our Tuvan friends Huun-Huur-Tu and Chirgilchin, and a few other lesser known Tuvan musicians.
Last song downloaded?
We don’t download out here, not yet any way.
Do you have a favorite hangover cure?
Hair of the dog.
What’s your favorite piece of clothing?
I’d have to ask each member of the band that. Probably our Tuvan boots.
What’s your favorite memory of Austin?
Austin seems to always have good weather. The university is amazing, and just walking on the streets at night it is full of life and music.
It’s late, you’re hungry and time is short: what’s your go-to fast food franchise and what do you order?
The band likes plain quarter pounders from McDonald’s, though recently there has been a swing toward BK. So far Mexican food has not gained much acceptance, as our food in Tuva tends to not be so Spicy.
What’s your favorite restaurant back home?
We don’t do restaurants out here. We like to flip a sheep on its back, cut a hole under its xyphoid process, reach in, sever the dorsal aorta, skin it, butcher it, clean out the intestines and stomach (our ladies do that), fill em with blood, and make blood sausage. Meat and fat are the order of the day here in Tuva.
What was the concert or album that made you want to play music yourself?
There was a group called Ertinelig Tuva that used to tour here when we were kids, and they were some of the first people of that generation to really re-popularize our traditional music. Also, our families have lots of singers in them so we grew up singing the traditional songs of our people.
What TV shows are you recording back home while you’re in Austin?
We don’t have Tivo in Tuva.
You’re ordering pizza for the band: what’s on it? And where do you call?
Pepperoni, from anywhere local that’s not a chain - we like to try local stuff (beer, pizza etc.)
Which web sites do you check every day?
We’re lucky to get on the internet.
What should SXSW audiences know about your music?
Tuva is an amazing and unique place with amazing and unique music. It is music that is very ancient, coming from a time possibly before human language, but at the same time it is very modern, as we are the current young generation of bearers of this tradition. We’ve found that our experiments with groups like the Flecktones have worked rather well, and that Tuvan music has room for growth and change within the greater global music world.
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Robert Plant's son makes U.S. debut at SXSW
London-based rock band Sons of Albion, only 18 months old, will make its stateside debut at SXSW, with an official showcase Saturday March 21 at Latitude (AKA the British Embassy).
The band’s frontman is Logan Plant, 30, the youngest son of Maureen and Robert Plant. Nuno Miguel, Gones, & Francisco De Sousa round out the band. The Sons are finishing up their debut LP, with the single available March 30.
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February 27, 2009
SXSW: Win passes to Perez Hilton and Red Bull Moon Tower parties
The A-List scavenger hunt is back! We’re giving away passes to two of the most exclusive SXSW afterparties. One lucky reader will win a pair of passes to the invite only Red Bull Moon Tower party which keeps the SXSW Music fest rocking into the wee hours of the morning. The party will take place in East Austin from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. each night of the fest. Another reader (plus a guest) will be heading to Perez Hilton’s invite only Saturday night SXSW blowout courtesy of Austin360.
To enter, click through the 14 most recent A-List photo galleries to find three SXSW code words. Email the code words to austin360contests@statesman.com. Official contest rules.
The contest will end at 11:59 p.m. CST on March 15, 2009 and winners will be selected at random. Happy hunting!
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Free SXSW parties!
Chicago’s Bloodshot Records has announced the lineup for their SXSW party Friday, March 20 in the back of Yard Dog. The party, which celebrates the 15th anniversary of the roots-heavy label, is open to the public.
Set times:
12:15 Walter Salas-Humara / I’m Not Jim
12:45 Andre Williams
1:15 Charlie Pickett
1:45 Dex Romweber Duo
2:15 Ha Ha Tonka
2:45 Exene Cervenka
3:30 Deadstring Brothers
4:15 The Meat Purveyors
4:45 Justin Townes Earle
5:15 Scotland Yard Gospel Choir
5:45 Waco Brothers with Rosie Flores
The same day and times, the 7th Annual Sin City Social Club takes place at Maria’s Taco Xpress. Playing from noon on are: Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles, Pehr Smith Band, Tim Easton, Stone River Boys, Susan Marshall, Shurman, The Deep Vibration, Ian Moore, Austin Hartley-Leonard, Randy Weeks, Mike Stinson, The Mother Truckers, Heybale! and more.
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February 26, 2009
Behind the Buzz: St. Vincent
St. Vincent at the church could be the hottest ticket at South By Southwest this year.
“I did everything backwards on this record,” Clark said in a recent phone interview from her home in Brooklyn, with a fuzzy connection that made it hard to make out every fourth word. “I started with very complicated arrangements. Before I wrote any lyrics, I would watch some of my favorite films and write soundtracks for some of the scenes.” She wrote clarinet lines on the guitar and used the computer to come up with other parts. “Then I would write melodies and try to make each song as economical as possible.” The 26-year-old Clark has said her intention was to create “technicolor animatronic rides.” Produced in Dallas by John Congleton (Modest Mouse), the result is a huge sound that doesn’t forsake the core.
“I think the main difference between this album and the first (2007’s acclaimed “Marry Me”) is that these songs are all connected to each other,” she said.
Born in Tulsa, Okla., Clark grew up in Dallas, the middle of nine children. Asked if growing up in such a big family, where everything’s always going on at once, had an effect on her active arrangements, Clark simply said, “Hmmm.” She’s careful not to give away too much, including specific inspiration for her songs.
“I didn’t start writing this record until March of 2008 and all these songs are very much a part of that time,” said the former Polyphonic Spree guitarist, who received a scholarship to Berklee College of Music right out of Lake Highlands High to study guitar.
It should be noted that Clark can absolutely shred on the guitar. That sets her apart from the other singer-songwriters whose melodies can be called coy. “I’ve never owned an acoustic guitar,” she said. She got her first electric in 1994 when she was 12 and has been married to it ever since. There’s power in the beauty and beauty in the power of “Actor,” which should be on many “best of” lists at the end of the year.
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February 24, 2009
Meet the SXSW band: Girl in a Coma
What do you hope to accomplish?
Mainly our goal is to expose ourselves and meet other bands we could tour with in the future. You never know who’s going to catch your show.
What music can you not leave town without?
EVERYTHING. Before we had iPods we would make massive amounts of mix CDs for the road. Ranging from Patsy Cline to Babes in Toyland.
Last song downloaded?
Hurricane Jane… Black Kids.
Do you have a favorite hangover cure?
Bean and cheese tacos with a Big Red.
What’s your favorite piece of clothing?
I don’t think any of us have a favorite. As long as it doesn’t smell.
What’s your favorite Austin memory?
It’s always the people that make Austin for us. They’re always into our shows … and Austin kids have crazy dance moves.
It’s late, you’re hungry and time is short: what’s your go-to fast food franchise and what do you order?
I don’t know how late this place stays open and it’s not considered a fast food place… but it’s Veggie Heaven MMMMMm. Lucky 7.
Are you more likely to go to day parties or SXSW panels?
Day parties.
What’s the best thing you learned in school?
If you pretend that you’re working…you’ll pass the class.
Does your band have a pre-show ritual? Any superstitions?
We have to get into a circle and do pelvic thrust.
What’s your favorite restaurant back home?
Green and Tai Dee.
What was the concert or album that made you want to play music yourself?
Seeing Babes In Toyland at Sunken Garden theaters here in San Antonio.
What TV show s are you recording back home while you’re in Austin?
None of us have a fav show. Call us crazy.
Do you have a favorite celebrity chef?
Rachael Ray (Nina)
A celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Lindsey Lohan (Jenn)
What should SXSW audiences know about your music?
That we do it all for you.
(Girl In A Coma photo by Salvador Ochoa/Special to the American-Statesman)
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SXSW firms up free Auditorium Shores shows
M. Ward, Cold War Kids and Elvis Perkins in Dearland will play a free show on the shores of Lady Bird Lake Thursday March 19 beginning at 6 p.m.
On Friday, Towniefest will feature ARC Angels, Raul Malo and Bob Schneider.
Saturday’s Auditorium Shores concert will be headlined by Explosions In the Sky at 8 p.m., preceded by Baltimore’s Beach House. Kid-friendly music starts at noon on that Saturday.
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Echo & the Bunnyman to headline Spin party
Spin magazine has just announced the lineup for their annual SXSW party at Stubb’s on Friday March 20. Echo and the Bunnyman will be joined by Black Lips, Glasvegas, Justin Hawkins of the Darkness’s new band Hot Leg, Cut Off Your Hands, Passion Pit and more.
The party is invite only.
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February 23, 2009
Meet the SXSW band: Glacier Hiking
(Photo of Glacier Hiking by Jesse Jenkins/Special to the American-Statesman)
Ross Golan of the Los Angeles band Glacier Hiking answers our questions:
Have you been to SXSW before?
Yes. My first trip, I opened for the Strokes at the Iron Cactus. The second one, I got interviewed by Wayne Coyne on the Tonight Show. And this time…
What do you hope to accomplish?
Accomplish? To finish our showcase with gusto.
What music can you not leave town without?
For the 11 beautiful hours from El Paso to Austin, we usually get in a book on tape about some celebrated politician whose legacy has pedagogically descended through scores of generations… That being said, once we listened to “Piece of Me” by Britney Spears for a six-hour drive from SF to LA.
Last song downloaded?
“Dance To The Music” - Sly and the Family Stone… researching some of their back ups.
Do you have a favorite hangover cure?
More alcohol.
What’s your favorite piece of clothing?
My gray hoodie.
What’s the best thing you learned in school?
Focus on you, not your social life. The cool kids are not the ones answering these types of questions. They’re home reading the answers.
Does your band have a pre-show ritual? Any superstitions?
Pleading the Fifth.
What’s your favorite restaurant back home?
I’ll go with Walker Bros Pancake House.
What was the concert or album that made you want to play music yourself?
I’d been playing and seeing concerts my whole life. But the OK Computer/Kid A tour made me an artist.
What TV shows are you recording back home while you’re in Austin?
“24,” “Big Love” and “American Idol”
What should SXSW audiences know about your music?
If you show up, you will be forced to sing along. It’s how it is. If you’ve seen us, then you understand. If not, I’ll see you in Austin.
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Last chance for $129 SXSW wristbands
South by Southwest has announced that they will keep selling the $129 wristbands online at wristband.sxsw.com until 9 tonight. Tomorrow at noon, 500 more will go on sale online for $165 to Austin residents only. All purchasers must use a credit card with a local billing address.
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