SXSW 2018
So I now have my first SXSW under my belt. My living room floor is free of the shrapnel of dimes and cents(my hoover isn’t) and I’ve finally cleared enough of a backlog of work to write things down. I’d love to have a concise list of 5 up and coming bands that I saw and know will go far; each with an amazing photo. I don’t. That’s not really what we were there for. Our non-gigging time was much more random and sporadic. So here’s a big rambling brain dump where I try and recall it all for my own benefit. People have spent 3 years writing shorter dissertations for their Phd, so you can imagine the quality of this stream of consciousness. If anyone wants to read it, so be it. The majority of people who would have any interest in it have probably heard the best stories, so don’t feel guilty about not reading it.
The tl:dr version of this is, I advise all musicians and music fans to go to SXSW at least once, or even just Austin. Don’t try to achieve anything and don’t worry about being an official band. Just go and watch and take it all in.
Pre SXSW
We found out that it was a possibility that Emme Woods and band were going to SXSW in about November. It got confirmed in late December. The week before Christmas we bought flights and an airbnb. Lots of creatives begging, borrowing and stealing to go to the legendary festival despite knowing that it made no financial sense whatsoever. You’re only young once. In my case I’m pushing 40 and still using that as an excuse.
Just off the back of a successful Pledge Music campaign for recording, we didn’t have the clout to get further assistance from our fanbase. Funding applications proved unsuccessful. Having paid for it, we trundled along with a mixture of excitement and knowing guilt at our infantile and frivolous collective decision making.
The day finally came and Morgan(Emme Wood’s non-stage name. There’s a back up musician somewhere that can’t get used to calling Gordon ‘Sting’.) suggested we meet for a drink the night before. I’ve been ‘aff it’ since Hogmanay. No drink. I always do it in January to overcome the Dionysian excess of December. This year I got the flu in January, felt I had cheated; Dry January became dry February and before I knew it, I decided to remain healthy and full of energy for SXSW. As a result the prospect of meeting for a drink before an early morning rise was not high on my agenda, having just finished my packing and then printing, collating, stapling and colour coding everyone’s various immigration documents and proof of legitimacy to be in the country. My role as responsible adult means I’m the only one of us with a printer.
Morgan changed her mind. Gary was playing a function. Amy, Jamie, Luke and I had a few libations and finally let task lists and prep give way to excitement about the actual trip. Agreements are made for an early morning taxi and I head for bed.
Saturday 10th March(A day I was in for 30 hours)
We all made it to the airport in 3 different taxis in plenty time for the plane. The flight to Heathrow was uneventful. A balance of coffee, sobriety and awakeness meant the boredom was already starting to set in at Heathrow. We’re all excited about a big adventure! It’s so cool!! Let’s all sit outside an overpriced WH smith for a few hours just to take it in.
By 2pm, we’ve been awake 7 hours; dragged around a lot of baggage and answered some probing questions to American people in some sort of “pre-immigration” process. It’s a relief to sit down on a big fancy plane and finally feel like you are involved in something a bit special. Like the seasoned travellers we all are we are all like kids on Christmas day playing with the in flight entertainment system despite all our phones generally having better options. Amy sends unicode tits - ( . )( . ) - to everyone’s monitor on the plane when she only meant to send them to Morgan. She’s sitting in my allocated seat, so if I ever get put on a no fly list. I’m blaming her. On the upside, if you ever find yourself in the third act of an adventure movie that requires someone to get you out of imminent danger by getting high scores at Tetris - Amy’s the person you want on your team!
I can’t sleep on planes. I get a few 20 minute stints with the aid of melatonin, but long flights turn me into a ball of bitterness at being too big for the seats and having to watch everyone else snore away oblivious. I’m genetically made for 1st class despite my socialist snobbery not believing in it. The flight out isn’t so bad. It’s still within normal awake hours for a UK body clock.
We arrive at JFK and Gary and I don’t have the credentials to use the computer version of the immigration process that everyone else uses. We are going in separate directions, we have an hour to get through immigration, reclaim our baggage and then declaim our baggage for the next flight. Nae chance!!!
The whole thing passes without incident. My bundle of colour coded paperclipped and expertly highlighted documentation never needs to be used. My heavily Italian New York accented border guard doesn’t say much and I avoid making awkward jokes about the Sopranos. All that stress and making sure we didn’t write anything dodgy on Facebook for nothing! To the next flight!!
People are weary. It’s midnight in our body clocks and we’ve been awake since 6am on rations of meal deals, aeroplane food and munchies and we still have 4 and a half hour flight to Austin. We’re running on autopilot. There’s some excitement as we fly out over New York. The unmistakable skyline looking majestic by night during the take off. Everyone starts snoring. I sit awake uncomfortable and bitter. There’s some mild excitement when I realise I have internet for the whole flight. The excitement diminishes when I discover that not only have no celebrities died in mysterious and bizarre circumstances in the news, even the most hellraisery of hellraisers back home are now in bed and not available to interact with. I take solace in counting the hours till I can lie down.
Austin airport is small. There’s an official SXSW merchandise shop. Lots of people with beards, guitars, extensive hat wear and generally you can smell the whole experience in a cocktail that we don’t know the ingredients of yet. The excitement is oozing out of me. It’s really not. It should be. I’ve been awake 24 hours. The vending machine refuses to accept my notes, my coins or my cards as we reluctantly reclaim our bags which seem to have increased in weight during transit.
The promotors for our third gig have been wonderful and picked us up from the airport. We trundle along Texan freeway bleary eyed. The conversation is minimal. Everyone’s gubbed. The vista out the window is so foreign yet so familiar. Strip malls and lots of backdrops from films flash past and there’s a small sense of achievement at getting here shining through the need for bed.
The airbnb is lovely. We all open doors and cupboards and find light switches and what not. I lay my running stuff out for the next morning and finally crash out. 2am Texas time. 8am UK time. Alarm set for 8am Texas time.
Sunday 11th March. Day 1. Sleep since Scotland: 6 hours. Bands Seen: 0
I wake up for a run to reset my mind and body clock into Texas. Everyone else is bright eyed and bushy tailed. The tunes are pumping. It’s been decided that 4 of us are going a run. Some of us are even going a run in Doc Martens. I’m not really into running fashion at the best of time, but we set off looking like the footballing scenes from Trainspotting. We have no idea where we are going, so we just find a straight road and keep running. We see very little other than the same American houses over and over again.
“little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky”
Despite this, there’s still quite a lot of character within some of the urban landscape. Vintage battered cars. Dilapidated houses that look like something out of a horror film. It appears to be a pretty good area. I smile at the name of a sports ground we pass. The North Austin Optimists. My phone refuses to work in foreign countries, so after it feels like about half a 5km, we turn round and run back the way we came.
Back at the airbnb, our reconnaissance mission has discovered a pawn shop, a pretty useless strip mall with laundrettes and insurance specialists and not much else. Google has told someone that the best way to get to downtown to claim our passes is via the tram. We head into town after the several hours that it takes 6 people to collectively use 2 showers I’ve got my mouth shaped for a “shitty american diner” with unlimited refills of bad coffee and people in the next booth planning a heist. I’ve seen plenty films. I know they are all over the place in this country.
The metro system is clean and new, but leaves a lot to be desired compared to just about every other city I’ve been in. The “next train” board is wrong. It advertises trains for several hours ago. The only way to buy a ticket is to use the ticket machine which doesn’t accept card or coins. Only notes, and it doesn’t give change. Trams appear to be once every 30-45 minutes. During the 20 minutes that we have to wait, we all go and get some reassuringly expensive coffee.
The tram ride is pretty cool. When you are travelling faster than you are running, the streets of houses are interrupted by more interesting things like warehouses and mechanics and more industrial activities. This stuff is “used”. Austin has character, its not as new as some of my other American experiences.
Downtown Austin is clean and skyscrapery. We find out from the convention center that we can’t get our artist wristbands till 3pm. We head off to find some breakfast. It’s early afternoon. No one has had a decent meal since UK airports and everyone’s cranky. After taking in the pre-SXSW calm before the storm on East 6th Street, we settle on Eureka! on the corner of Brazos and East 6th. Jamie gets his phone stolen which puts a damper on the great food and wonderful looking bloody Mary’s that I opt to avoid.
East 6th and Red River
East 6th street is a touristy stretch of music bars and party bars that is kind of the overblown Sauchiehall street of SXSW. From Monday onwards, it will be rammed with punters, street musicians, food vendors and hipsters 24/7. For us, it’s more of a through route for all the streets that are off it where the venues are.
The conference centre is like any conference centre in the world. Massive. Characterless. I stopped counting after my 50th conference. The queue for passes is a familiar one. None of them ever held the promise of as much cool stuff as this pass though. In possession of a ‘SXSW exclusive and super cool showcasing artist’s wristband’, there’s a small sense of relief that they have heard of us and we’re on the list. We are genuinely meant to be here :)
One of the biggest stresses of SXSW was how to get instruments there. We looked at various options. Rent instruments. Buy instruments cheap from music shops(cheap guitars aren’t cool) and then sell them later. Scour the local pawnshops(presumably a well mined seam during the festival). Fly them over(expensive, risk of loss, change of pressure not good). My role is relatively simple. My trumpet was my hand luggage and Basses are never cool. I need a bass with at least 2 strings that doesn’t crackle or failing that a bass with two strings that does crackle that comes with a soldering iron. The biggest complication is that we have the Sunday before the festival to sort all that out and our soundcheck starts at 19:30.
Enter Wade.
When they make the action figures, this one will be called ‘Leopard Skin Wade’.
Wade was a contact Jamie made from a cousin of a friend or a friend of a cousin(I can’t remember which and it’s not important). Wade is an Austinite(albeit Montana born) who not only has agreed to lend us a myriad of instruments. He also has a rather wonderful alter ego known as Earl ‘Pottymouth’ Arbuckle. This results in him performing in cerise pink cowboy suits. Where there’s a guitar we are interested in(or an amp or an effects pedal) there’s also a pink version. I’m voted down in opting for a three quarter length pink bass which matches not only my flamingo shirt, but also my ‘SXSW exclusive and super cool showcasing artist’s wristband’ in preference to the more mature decision of the far more musically appropriate and versatile ‘proper’ Bass. Who says I’m always the responsible adult? I’m rather pleased that the moonlight blue bass does however come in a rather fetching pink leopard skin case.
We choose our instruments and agree to meet him later that night at our gig. The only remaining business at hand is to choose which suit we’d like him to wear during his attendance. We opt for the leopard print one.
We have a slow walk back to our Airbnb. We stop at a garage to try and stock up on a mixture of healthy foods we need for breakfast(there aren’t any) the next day and a variety of things that we’ve heard of in films over the years but weren’t quite sure what they were. Twinkies, Babe Ruth’s and Slim Jims(they are like dog treats. they might be dog treats). We avoid picking from the array of “dill pickles in a bag”.
Once back at the airbnb, I regretfully leave my pink bass case in the charge of the rest of the group while Gary and I take a taxi to who knows where to pick up a Nord keyboard from another friend of a cousin or cousin of a friend. It’s quite a trek in the taxi, but the taxi driver is playing a radio station that has super cool underground music of yesteryear. We’re treated to Dinosaur jr, Husker du, The replacements etc. If you know what I mean, you’d probably have been really cool at SXSW in about 1989. It makes me quite excited for the week ahead and I’m staring out the window at the scenery wondering what bands we’ll come across. There’s slight hilarity with the driver when I tell him that that we are returning to the venue which is on San Jacinto Blvd. Which I pronounce as “Jack Into”
The British Music Embassy at Latitude 30 is a well lit decent sized room. We are the staff’s first band of the festival. There’s nerves, but they are generally a pretty jolly lot. The monitor engineer quotes the Hector Bizerk song ‘Columbus’ and tells us the Glasgow bands are always a highlight for him.
The rest of the group arrive. The soundcheck is nice an relaxed. No issues. The coke from behind the bar tastes like the drains at a public swimming pool. Nele, a Danish friend I know from my Amsterdam days has come along with a colleague. They were at the technology bit of the conference. So there’s even a friendly face in the crowd.
The gig is great. We relax into it really quick. The crowd fills up wonderfully and they are all really into it. The practicing has finally paid off, and we’ve done it. Played SXSW!
After the gig we mill around. We watch Wyldest and LIFE. Both are great. There’s not really any bands here that aren’t worth their salt in some way. It makes for a tough environment to stand out and be seen as unique. Every band we see would be at the top of the game back in Glasgow.
Life - British Music Embassy
After the gig we have the complication of trying to work out what do with 3 guitars, a bag of cables, a Nord keyboard and a keyboard stand. Between germanic level cattle herding of Nele and more favours from Wade, we eventually take it all to his car. The car is parked in a car park a few blocks over. The security guard in the car park messages the band page on facebook, so we must have stood out or seemed unique to him.
Our post gig venue of choice is a pop up club on East 6th Street. We are going to a rooftop techno gig that someone has recommended. A cool people techno gig(Gramatik and Mosie) is generally the stuff of nightmares for me. This one has a free bar(normally my favourite kind of bar). There are PR girls wandering around ensuring the compulsary wearing of black baseball caps. In retrospect I’m amazed I agreed to go. I must have been basking in post-gig glory and just glad to see the back of the instruments. Turns out it was absolutely great. The music was at a manageable volume level(i’m so old). There was wonderful views over the city. There was loads of folk with great chat. I was a little disappointed at 3am when the whole thing started to wind down. No drink. No coffee. I don’t even remember drinking water in the place, so I must have had some amount of excitement and adrenaline in me.
We got our first street food(a gyro wrap for about $14) and took a taxi home.
Monday 12th March. Day 2. Total Sleep: 11 hours. Musical Artists Seen: 4
I woke up about 9am expecting to get a few hours of internetting and such before everyone rises. I’m even considering heading in on my own if no one is up early enough. Half the house is already awake. I make an abortive attempt at swimming enough lengths of the pool to count as a work out. I stopped cos my face got numb.
It seems that the quickest way of getting breakfast is to head into the conference. Jamie’s phone has appeared on the ‘find my phone’ tracker. He’s not quite sure what he’s going to do with that information, but we head into town on the tram and take a walk towards the area that it is.(There’s a phone shop near where it is pinging, so there’s a sort of plan to head there and then come up with some sort of plan).
We wander from Downtown to Rainey street and then head along the river. We stop at the corner of Rainy/Cummings for a photo cos we are childish. The only river we can name in the south is the Mississippi(this is the Colorado river. We’re roughly the length of Britain away from the Mississippi). We agree to tip our hats to the role that the Mississippi has played in Blues music over history and work out the geography later.
While stopping for a photo, a bird(i now know is a Grackle) starts making the strangest noises I’ve ever heard a bird make. I assume that it’s a mynah bird and that it nests near a hipster who is using a 56k modem to connect to the internet because it has warmer mids than broadband cos this bird sounds like an old school modem or an 80’s printer when it’s pissed off with you. In the space of about 10 minutes, I’ve proved that geography and ornithology are not my strong points. Mynah birds are native to Asia.
The common East Asian Texan mynah modem Grackle
We breakfast on pizza at a restaurant where the staff are all grumpy. It’s quite a good feed. We use it to plan what we’re going to say to the phone shop. The planning clearly works, cos it results in me trying my best to look tough, walking into the phone shop with a dominating walk and a deep voice and discovering from the young girl behind the counter that the phone is pinging from an apartment block across the road. Beyond going and chapping doors and politely asking to not be shot, Jamie admits defeat and we take a taxi to Hotel Vegas.
Hotel Vegas is one of the key hubs of SXSW. It has 4 stages. Twice as many bars and a queue at every toilet. It feels like all of Sauchiehall street’s music venues have been combined in one badly designed complex. It’s only 3pm though, so it’s fairly manageable at the moment. We are there to see Lucia and Catholic Action. We also catch up with the newly arrived Tijuana Bibles who entertain us with their stories of getting an “advanced search” at the border. Apparently they were one click down from the rubber glove treatment. I pray the border guards get a better reception if they ever try and enter Coatbridge.
LUCIA sounds great. Today’s the first day I’ve really felt the heat and the grungey guitars sit well with the dingy indoor stage of Hotel Vegas. For a country where I complain it’s all bit new, they do dingy music club so much better than us. Maybe it’s a ‘fuck you’ to the establishment of clean streets and geometric urban planning. As much as it doesn’t sound like a compliment, it’s meant as one. Lucia’s music should be heard in venues that have toilets that look like this:
Straight after the Lucia set, we all head out and see Catholic Action. They are a well oiled machine. Several career clicks above the other Scottish bands playing the festival. They are SXSW veterans. I’m less of a fan of the outdoor stage at Hotel Vegas. You can hear another 2(soon to be 3) stages with bands either sound checking or playing. At this time of day it’s in the baking heat and I didn’t bring a hat. To ease change overs, the band alternate between squashed to the left of the stage and squashed to the right of the stage. It makes photo taking annoying. I will ponder this several times as I stand sober listening to 4 bands play simultaneously at several points as the week goes on.
My lack of hat is now a pertinent issue. Jamie has loaned me a wooly hat. It’s functional, but I don’t possess his photogeniality and ability to make clothes look natural, so I’m stoating about looking like a fat lookalike of Edge for U2.
We have a quick swatch at the other bands playing. There’s a female fronted country band in the Volstead and a punk band indoors at hotel vegas. We decide to take a wander back to downtown.
In the quest for some suitable hatwear, we pop into a vintage shop. I thought there was a vaguely passable straw hat. It was $48. It stopped being vaguely passable.
We had a wee trip into Empire Records, but there’s no conceivable way to take vinyl back in my fit to bursting luggage, so I make more adult decisions and don’t buy anything. The only head protection is red baseball caps. I decline.
Back on East 6th street(Hotel Vegas is also on East 6th street, but you know what I mean) we take in the sights, sounds and smells of SXSW in full flow. There’s buskers of every style, genre and persuasion. Every establishment is a venue. Many of them are pumping out cover bands. Most of the cover bands are awful. There’s so much to take in. Everywhere. All the time. I think I’m slowly sowing the seed of not having much ambition to do much specific while we are here. Just wander about and take in as much as possible.
Me and headgear have never had a great relationship. I can get away with flat caps, but they tend to be wrong for hot weather. My foray into rooftop techno parties with free bars last night reminded me how much I hate baseball caps. Eventually I decide I’m going to get one of the tourist cowboy hats from one of the tourist shops which are no less ridiculous than the millinery that’s not intended to look ridiculous until I wear it. They are around $10-12, so I feel it’s a decision I can make that isn’t too committal. Eventually I find the largest one they have at $9. Go big or go home:
I feel relatively self conscious of wearing a hat with a brim close to a metre in diameter. This soon passes. Since I got here, people have been stopping me in the street to admire everything from my footwear to my choice of shirts. This continues while I wear my comedy hat. No one bats an eyelid about the comedy hat. They just assume I’m a local. Only my fellow scots find hilarity in it.
Our next destination is back to Latitude 30 for more Scottish bands. Breakfast Muff, Boniface(Not Scottish despite the name) and Catholic Action. I discover a weakness in my head protection. I cannot wear it in crowds. To do so would be to obscure the view of at least 3 people behind me rather than just the traditional one. Instead I have to carry it around like a tumshie.
Breakfast Muff are fun. It’s the first time I’ve seen them. My teenage years were one long obsession with Seattle grunge, and it doesn’t take long for some of the more deep cuts of that genre to take you to Portland and DIY and Twee. Songs shorter than a firework. Needless instrument swapping. Non-traditional levels of musical ability proudly on sleeves. It’s almost as much fun watching the some of the audience wonder why they are funded and hyped.
We’ve still not fully caught up with the travel and the lack of sleep, so the group collectively choose to make the adult decision of taking the last tram home to see how Morgan has enjoyed her day at home away from the bustle. The tram isn’t the smooth clean clarity of the morning trips. Everyone is a kind of jolly drunk from day drinking. They are loud and pretty entertaining. The journey is slightly too long to make it enjoyable, but this is the first of many evenings travelling home and conversing with random drunk people.
We’re back at the metro station early enough to take advantage of the over priced convenience store on the way home. I buy Bacon and Eggs. Tomorrow will be the first day that I get to eat before we leave the house.
The evenings back at the house roll into one. I think this is the one where Jamie and I sat up trying to find merit in slim jims. I still think you are meant to unwrap them some how. I also still think the ones we bought might be dog treats.
Tuesday 13th March. Day 3. Sleep : 17 hours. Musical Artists Seen: 11
I wake up and cook some bacon and eggs for everyone. 2 of the 6 are vegan, but it’s the thought that counts. Having finally found bread. It turns out it’s so sweet it would count as a cake in the UK for VAT classification. I sit down to my first breakfast in 4 days. Morgan has supported my sobriety by spiking my coffee with vodka.
Today we have specific business tasks and bands that we want to see. The whole group is up, out and getting off the tram at downtown for about half 11. There’s a sync networking session at 12 in the Marriott. We’re not sure what that is, but we head along. It turns out it’s an empty function suite with “sync networking session” written above the door. It’s one in one out. Eventually Morgan and I are in there, cos no one else has got the wherewithal to walk up to random strangers in the hope that there’s some sort of meaningful collision geometry.
It’s a pretty inefficient means of networking. You mill around the room and introduce yourself to random strangers. It’s quite daunting, but the trick is to remember that Americans are taught the skill of the ‘elevator pitch’ from birth. You walk up to them; hold out your hand out. They shake it and then talk until you know enough about them to enter into a conversation. The inefficiency comes from not separating plugs from sockets. When you meet fellow musicians looking for sync opportunities you awkwardly agree to take each others cards and go to each other’s shows in the hope that you your next catch is an opportunity rather than a competitor.
Eventually I meet a woman from google who is responsible for encouraging musicians to verify their contact details and such for google. I take her over to Morgan and we agree to visit their stand in the media lounge.
We give the whole thing a decent 20 minutes effort and speak to plenty of people that might or might not bear fruit in the future. The rest of the crowd are gone onto something else when we get out. We decide now is as good a time as any to visit the media lounge.
It’s pretty swanky and we have to wait a wee while. We drink some free coffee and take some complimentary colouring books. There’s complimentary Ramen pots, but I have no space to put one.
The google verifying team are a fun bunch and we become the first UK band to get a blue verification tick. The photographer(Dylan O’Connor - @projectonyx - www.slabphoto.com) in the next booth has had a cancellation, so we pause for a photo:
It feels like a productive morning so far, so we head for some food. Morgan’s been pretty unimpressed by the vegan food so far, so she googles for some recommendations. This takes us to Arlo's which in turn takes us to Cheer Up Charlies on Red River. It’s a complex similar to Hotel Vegas, but it’s a bit more chilled. Morgan gets some food. I get some delicious tacos. We converse with some locals. We see a few bands. Morgan speaks to the promoter to give them a card in the hope of some extra gigs.
We head back along Red river, stopping at the DC Comics stand to admire the batmobiles.
We drop into all the venues and speak to various people about leaving a phone number and email if they need any bands. I catch a band called Super Doppler at Swan Dive. They are right up Jamie’s street. a combination of ELO and post-Beatles McCartney. We marvel at the first major crowd we see. There’s people already blocking the street waiting to see PussyRiot.
The rest of the group have been schmoozing it up at the Vevo lounge and are all quite merry when we catch up with them. We catch up with them over a drink and hear various tales while we tell them about google verification and photography and venues and bands.
I head off on my own cos I want to catch Starcrawler at The Main(another multi stage complex). They played the TENEMENT TV stage of Electric Fields last year and were one of my highlights of the festival. This is where I first discovered the joys of SXSW’s pass system for more popular events. There’s two queues. One for people with conference badges and one for “others”. Others are Joe Public and people on ‘SXSW exclusive and super cool showcasing artist’s wristbands’. The people on conference badges get priority and it’s one in one out. So you can stand in Queue 2 while Queue 1 is empty waiting on someone to leave, but if someone joins queue 1 before someone leaves, they take precedence. Your entry pass only counts when queue 1 is empty AND someone leaves. I eventually get in having stood for 20 minutes at an empty Queue 1 six times before it was empty at the same time as the venue not being at capacity. Rant over.
The band are phenomenal. I could argue that it’s derivative of The Stooges, but it’s a very fun derivative and Arrow de Wilde is a phenomenal front woman. She throws her Joey Ramone-esque body into a series of bizarre shapes. It’s a photographer’s dream. I caught some lucky photos at Electric Fields, but the lighting at this show puts decent photography beyond my skillbase. The show ends with a theatrically violent strop into the adoring crowd. Lucia and band are in seeing the show. I catch another few bands with Hamish, but nothing tickles my pickle. The SXSW app on my phone tells me that the next band I want to see are at 12:30, so I head back to meet up with the others who are in Valhalla. I catch a band called Strawberry Runners, then take to an empty booth at the bar and have a well deserved seat with Jamie and Gary while Anna Burch plays.
I split with the group. They are all heading home. I have Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats at the The Gatsby at 12:30 and then Thunderpussy at B. D. Riley's Irish Pub - Downtown’s at 1am. It’s currently around 11. A quick swatch at The Gatsby shows that there’s a good 1000 people with the correct badges queuing. I ask the doorman if there’s a queue I should join. After a bit of goading, he confirms that the only way I’m getting in on my pass is if I know someone. With no relevant favours to trade, I have the option of waiting around on my own for 2 hours for Thunderpussy on the off-chance Mike MCCready joins them and getting a $40 taxi home or running for the last tram and using my day pass. Good sense wins out against Pearl Jam fanboyism. Thunderpussy are playing another few times across the week anyway.
I catch the rest of the team on the tram and make it home at a relatively sensible hour. I celebrate my good sense by sitting up to the early hours discussing existentialism and quantum physics with Luke and Gary.
Wednesday 14th March. Day 4. Sleep: 22 hours. Musical Artists Seen: 20
Another slow start. I opted to stay in bed instead of getting up at 7am to go to a studio to listen to Morgan do a radio interview with The Afternoon Show with Janice Forsyth & Grant Stott back home. I’ve worked out that if you just kind of float around the pool rather than try to exert yourself, your body isn’t knackered, its able to regulate the temperature and your face doesn’t go numb.
The boys head into town on the metro. Luke and I have agreed to go to a meeting that Morgan was meant to be at. It was a contact for a multi-venue festival in LA. We arrive early enough that we can go to the artist gifting area. There’s various rumours about various freebies getting given out for the artists. This morning I manage to get a rather fetching pink backpack. We have our morning catchup with Hamish and Lucia and may or may not have caught up with Tijuana Bibles rhythm section. Memories are getting blurry.
There’s a daily magazine which is published on the conference. It’s like a big list of all the stuff you should have done. “I didn’t know Steven Spielberg was here” etc. The front cover is the Starcrawler gig(their photo is far better than mine). I feel some sense of achievement in having seen a highlight.
After spending a meeting discussing with the promotor for a multi-venue festival in LA how good it would have been if Morgan had come, Luke and I head back to the artist area where Amy and Morgan have arrived. Today is mostly about our gig later at Iron Bear. We’re not on till midnight though, so we head to Hotel Vegas to catch some more Glasgow bands first. Hotel Vegas is in full flow. A fourth stage area has opened up since the last time I was there and now there truly is something for everyone cos crabbit old me can hear 4 bands play at once.
The bibles absolutely smashed it. It’s a decent sized crowd. It looks great and their energy is top notch. It can be hard turning a marquee in the afternoon heat into a dark dingy venue you feel comfortable in, but the crowd are lapping it up.
Once they are done we head over to Rainey street to catch a bit of the The Teskey Brothers. Morgan, Luke and Gary go ahead and get in. The rest of us end up in double queue hell and give up and sit at the bar across the road(Icenhauer’s) and listen from there while recharging our batteries. The band sound amazing. They are playing King tuts on the 12th of May and I think I’m busy!
After that it’s time to make it to The Iron Bear for gig number 2. The venue is a little out of the way from where we’ve been so far. We pass some interesting looking cinemas on Congress. Wade is a hero. He’s already there with all our stuff. There’s various locals milling around what is basically a gay sports bar for bears. I’m am by far the most popular in our crowd with various bearded men flirting with me or playing some sort of beard comparison power game that I don’t know the rules of. I’ve finally found a bar with non-alcoholic beer!
Whether it’s the long days, the jet lag or the craft beers, we don’t have the same energy that we had at Latitude 30. There’s some bodies, but not in the volume from Sunday’s gig. The other Scottish bands are all gigging, so we can’t fall back on them. The american’s do a very good job of making you feel like you are wonderfully interesting and important to them when you are networking and pressing the flesh. Of the 100 or so randoms that we have spoken to and felt like we’ve impressed, none of them have translated to prioritising attendance at our gig and we’re basically playing to 5 confused locals and Wade. We’ve been quite lucky as a band to have a really high batting average at gigs. This was below average and despite the fabulous nature of some of our audience we don’t achieve the party atmosphere of Sunday.
Morgan takes the knock pretty badly and band politics are fraught.
Thursday 15th March. Day 5. Sleep since Scotland: 28 hours. Musical Artists Seen: 24
The day starts with a trip to an Irish bar for a Scottish Networking session. The bands are all there and we get a well needed injection of Irn Bru. After that we head somewhere for breakfast that does salads. It’s my first fresh vitamins in days and it feels like magic nectar for the soul. I’m aware how much I’m sounding like a spiritual yoga lover, but eating out of petrol garages and food wagons has starved us of normal food.
We’ve learned at the Scottish networking session that White Denim are throwing a party at their studio that Scottish band Lylo are playing. There’s apparently free drinks. We make our way over there. It’s our furthest walk yet, but we don’t really have other plans so we go for the wander. It takes us past thrift stores and pawn shops and the highlight of the holiday - a Mexican meat supermarket. There’s an aisle with only dried chillies in it. An entire wall of meat, and a pork scratching that’s bigger than me. I can only assume that it’s a hippo scratching. I resist the urge to spend the day there hanging around trying to convince a Mexican granny to take me home and cook for me and instead continue with the group dynamic of making it to this party.
We initially pop into a cool looking place called Kitty Cohen's and make sure to leave our name for future gigs. They tell us to check out a house party round the corner, so we find a makeshift outdoor gig round the corner. A band called Faux Ferocious are just finishing. The whole thing feels like the film Dazed and Confused. I later learn that the film was set and filmed in Austin and Linklater lives in Austin(or nearby) so it pretty much was Dazed and Confused as far as I’m concerned.
White Denim’s studio is lovely. Everything is new and tasteful. It’s a pretty small space but there’s a lovely atmosphere. Barrow Brewing Company are giving out free craft beers and there’s kids running around. We get to chill in the sun on the grass between bands and generally have a pretty chilled day. LYLO are the second band soon after we get there. I did sound for them at the Roxy on Great Western Road a few times way back when. My memory is that they were teenagers starting out. They must have been good enough for me to remember their name though. They are now pretty established with an album out on El Rancho records. To my ear it’s a slightly spacier version of Roxy Music. Or am I just saying that cos they are smartly dressed and have a sax? Who knows! They are pretty tight and everyone enjoys it anyway. Bands come and go with Andy Pickett a highlight with some kind of wonderful lounge funk.
The only sustenance options are free beer of various varieties and water. I’m fed up drinking water, so I go a wander along the street to track down a coffee and some food. There’s a rock bar(The Lost Well) 3 doors down doing the same thing as us but with metal bands with Witch and War and Black in the title. They are holding a ‘hot sauce and stomp box showcase’. I make my escape periodically and check out various metal bands while enjoying tacos featuring various hot sauces which promise different levels of ring sting.
During SXSW there’s pretty much always somewhere cooler that you could have been. There’s even the magazine to remind you of it. You relax into it. We’re here to play. Everything else is a bonus. Today we seem to have struck it lucky with the White Denim party and I can’t imagine anything to trump it. The bands sound excellent and the live sound is as good as you would expect while you are standing leaning against the wall of a vintage studio.
The bibles head along with their manager Pat and everyone gets quietly merry on the 9% beers. Darkness falls and White Denim take to the stage. As good as the sound is, there’s no lighting so photography is impossible. It makes the gig even more intimate. White Denim have a complexity verging on jazz but with the respect for noise and indie/alternative timbre’s that it’s described as psychedelic or experimental.
After White Denim the party finishes up. Everyone gravitates towards the ubiquitous Hotel Vegas stopping only about 8 times to rescue a very drunken Morgan from fates such as playing chicken in the middle roads and fighting with dodgy looking Mexicans.
As we get there, one of the bands from the party are setting up - Uni. We’ve just walked for 45 minutes to see a band we’ve just seen. Word on the street is that the Bass player from Uni is John Lennon’s Son’s Girlfriend. Morgan has repeatedly asked her what it was like to meet JohnLennon in a drunken slur despite the woman being less than 5 years older than her.
You know you are in for a treat when someone’s bass player is two degrees of separation from someone whose music you like. Never missing an opportunity to be cynical and sarcastic, I tell people that I can’t wait for David Bowie’s postman’s brother’s Techno project, cos I always loved the Ziggy stardust album. When I try and make the joke, people just ask me where and when the techno project is playing.
I must have been in a comical mood. She’s dressed in a skintight catsuit, 12 inch glitter platforms and a blue wig with a silver Hofner bass. The girl next to me leaned over and said "do you know this artist?".... I acted angry and said "know her?!?! She stole my look!! I was dressing like that for years and then she came to one of my gigs and stole it verbatim. She wears it better though" the girl took it in hook line and sinker. I could never live in this country. All my humour is ironic and sarcastic.
The band are fine, but it feels like style over substance. My judgement is probably unfair, but it keeps on getting presented as something cool via her boyfriend’s 37 year dead father. It’s all a bit instagram for me. The band on the main Hotel Vegas stage consists of two guys painted silver and wearing granny’s glaucoma specs called Drab Majesty whose synth act involves them eating flowers. It’s contrary to my mood enough that I opt to leave the rest of them to lose and find a drunken Morgan repeatedly while waiting for Sunflower Bean. Sobriety and the cacophony of Hotel Vegas aren’t good bedfellows after 11pm.
I’ve just missed a tram at Plaza Saltillo, so I head off to the Brooklyn Bowl Family Reunion at the Historic Scoot Inn cos it’s a venue I’ve not checked out. I catch Whyte Oak. The place is winding up for night so I head towards downtown to see what I can find to entertain my stinging eyes and blistered feet rather that waiting 40 mins for a tram. There’s a girl called Courtney Marie Andrews that I did sound for years ago(probably roughly the same time as Lylo). I catch the tail end of her set. It’s far too country for me, but the audience love it. The band after her is Durand Jones & The Indications. They are much more up my street. They sound amazing, but I’ve got nothing left in me. After the second song, I pick up an ill advised coffee and a taco for the tram home and head for bed.
As i drift off to sleep around 3am, I hear everyone else come in. My leaving early gained me about 15 mins extra sleep.
Friday 16th March. Day 6. Sleep since Scotland: 33 hours. Musical Artists Seen: 34(this number is getting highly approximate)
If we stay for much longer, my early rises are going to kill me. Luke is also awake, so we head into town with the two pronged aim of getting some of the swag Gary has managed to get at the Roadie Lounge and also to get the fabled diner breakfast with unlimited shitty coffee and people planning a heist in the next booth. We fail on the first count and then the closest thing I can find to a diner - iHop - has got a 30 minute waiting list for a table. It’s not a great start.
The morning picks up with a breakfast at Iron Works BBQ on the corner of Red River and Cesar Chavez. It’s like some sort of army mess cafe. I can’t decide from the 40 different meat options on the menu, so I opt for the sampler plate. The server loads up a plastic dinner tray with a mountain of various meats. The intention was to go and see Joshua Burnside at BD Riley’s cos I know his brother that plays drums for him, but once we sit down with a plate of food, I realise it might be my third sit down meal in about a week and we sit for an hour or so discussing our experiences so far and just life in general. As the newest member of the band, Luke is still finding his feet in the frustrations of working with Morgan.
Eventually we’ve exhausted either the conversation or the meat supply and we head off to the convention centre to see if there’s any swag. The Burnside brother’s got upstaged by a beef rib. We get there and it turns out that the entire ground floor of the convention centre has been given up to a concert poster exhibition called Flatstock 65 Poster Show. I’m in heaven. I warn Luke that I might go all fanboy and break my selfie with famous people rule if Emek or Justin Hampton are there. Luckily they aren’t and I’m able to maintain my cool. I think Luke is pretty impressed, so I am one person closer on my quest to normalise screen printed concert posters in Glasgow.
We wander round and Charles Moran from Horrorprints tells us he was on a drunken train with us. We tell him he’ll have to narrow it down. He had been on a tram home with us a few nights previous when the train was delayed and all the local SXSW punters were quite jolly. A drunk man had been squaring up to Gary and I had used my size to get him to back down before remembering they have guns in Texas and quietly retreating. All while wearing the ‘Glasgow as Fuck’ T-shirt.
Charle Moran’s stuff is great and there’s an impressive range of clients that include Mudhoney and The Melvins. One day I’ll buy a disused used school or something and have the wall space I need to go poster shopping at somewhere this vast.
In the next booth along, I recognise a poster from my own living room. I introduce myself to the artist John Howard. He was pretty chuffed when I told him that the poster he made for the 2008 Queens of the Stone Age gig in Amsterdam had pride of place in my living room; first in Amsterdam and now in Glasgow. Weird to meet the person whose signature and artwork are on your wall for a decade. Much of his work is 3D and Luke buys a poster:
Amy and Jamie are now in town, so we head off to meet them. Gary is off doing drummer things. Morgan is taking another day off. Sans Vegans, we arrange to meet at Franklin Barbecue. It’s on all the recommendation lists. When we arrive we find out that Franklins are closing because they’ve finished all the brisket they have made for the day. I’m disappointed that I don’t get to try this place. Anywhere that sells their food until it’s done and then shuts must be good!
We meet at the artist area of the Sheraton instead and then head off to Stubb's Austin for some BBQ. Given that it’s barely 3 hours since my last BBQ, I probably don’t need more meat, but I’m a tourism ambassador for Scotland and I feel that it’s my civic duty to tick off as many places as possible. Stubbs is an institution. You can buy their BBQ sauce in supermarkets in the UK. This is their flagship restaurant and venue. Metallica and the Foo Fighters have played. Willie Nelson is playing the following week.
I go in saying I’m not going to have anything, but it’s quite non-commital. You can just order the number of meats and sides you want. It’s actually surprisingly easy to avoid a carb fest in Texas when the focus is on meat. I’m not hungry so I opt for 2 meats and 3 sides as the minimal I can get while still ticking off the various things I really want to try on the menu.
I have a theory that the people making the menu just put together three words they like and decide later what it actually is. Cheddar Jalepeno Sausage. Seranno Cheese Spinach. It’s all delicious, especially the fried okra.
We head back to the convention centre to show Amy the poster exhibition. She has the same Stendhal syndrome that we did. Pretty sure her and Jamie bought a poster, but there was so many maybes that I can’t remember which one.
Today’s first musical offering is at Shangri-La’s. It’s a band called The Velveteers from Colorado who we met at the White Denim party. We’re a bit early, so we make the inevitable daily visit to Hotel Vegas. I don’t remember who the bands were. We posed for a few photos and presumably stayed for a drink before moving on.
Shangri-La is a lovely venue. It’s outdoor in the back of the bar. There’s non-alcoholic beer. There’s more than one toilet. The sound is excellent and it has a great atmosphere. The Velveteers are a brother and sister who I think are from Boulder, but live in Denver, or vice versa. John plays the drums while Demi sings and plays guitar. John also plays guitar and sings with his other sister in a band called Pink Fuzz. I think they should release a join E.P. called sibling rivalry, but that’s just me. I didn’t get a chance to see Pink Fuzz, but the Velveteers are great. They’d be high up the league tables in Glasgow. It’s scuzzy and grungey just how I like it.
I split from the group to see Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats. I’ve missed him twice in Glasgow. Once cos I was working and once cos I was ill. I missed him at T in the park cos I needed to film someone else(I can’t remember who) and I’ve missed him early at SXSW because my ‘SXSW exclusive and super cool showcasing artist’s wristband’ wasn’t good enough. As a result, I head nice and early to see them at the big outdoor closing show of the festival.
It turns out, it’s a good 40 minute walk. I pass a group of tourists on the bridge looking for bats, but I don’t see any bats. As you cross the bridge you start to see the skyline of Austin. It’s a lovely back drop to an outdoor concert.
As I arrive, Albert Hammond Jr is playing his last chord. It’s a great last chord. He obviously appreciates me being there, cos he says thanks and heads off stage. The whole thing is about the size of TRNSMT in Glasgow. It’s free entry with no passes needed as a kind of thank you to the city for the disruption of SXSW. It’s a lovely atmosphere and I have a wander round the place while Shakey Graves plays. It’s just like any big festival stage really. Although i’d generally say I prefer energetic band in scuzzy club with badly mixed sound through inadequate PA; this is a nice respite.
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats finally come on after lots of really loud really american adverts about going to Las Vegas with MGM resorts. I guess it’s an inevitability that our big shows will eventually have this level of advertising.
The show is amazing. Their debut album is one of my favourites of recent times and I know all the songs well. Everyone is singing along. There’s kids dancing about. It feels like a wonderful closure to the festival(Which won’t be over for me for another 4 days)
From the big show, I head up to Red River to the tiny sweaty 720 club to catch Tijuana Bibles. On the way my phone connects to some internet and I find out Nele is at the Sheraton watching Peach Pit. 720 is on the way, so I poke my head in the door to see the bibles do their thing. Peach Pit are quite good. There’s not much of a crowd. I think they have the same problem we did at Iron Bear. Suffering from being off the main drag. They are playing the G2 in Glasgow on the 23rd of May.
The next band are Little Destroyer. They are female fronted relatively accessible industrial Electronica with real drums and guitars. Their latest release is mixed by Dave Ogilvie which gives it some industrial kudos. There’s only a handful of people watching, but it doesn’t phase the front woman who is giving it her all.
The Danes head home and I aim to do the same myself, heading back via 720 to see if the bibles are are still playing. I help Pat with moving some of the equipment and then head homewards. I catch the rest of the guys who have just found out Starcrawler at Barracuda is too rammed to get in with our passes. We instead sit out the back of a bar with no music. Everyone’s knackered. I think I’ve passed the 15 mile mark today in my combined walking. My feet are on fire. We head down to the tram and then get a taxi cos it’s either too busy or is going to take too long. I can’t remember.
Saturday 17th March. Day 7. Sleep since Scotland: 38 hours. Musical Artists Seen: 45 -
Last gig day! There’s a UK networking breakfast at Latitude 30. to ease my project manager stress of waiting for 6 people to shower before we leave, I head in on the tram on my own with a bass and a trumpet. The aggression of my ‘Glasgow as Fuck’ T-shirt is perfectly offset by my pink leopard skin bass case. I don’t have room for a camera.
The rest of them are quicker to get showered than I expected and arrive 30 mins later in a taxi.
Once we’ve chinwagged with some brits and had lots of free coffee, we head to the venue for today’s gig. It’s at Lustre Pearl East. Confusingly, there’s another Lustre Pearl on Rainey Street where I’m hoping to see Night Beats later tonight.
We’re on at 15:45. Afternoon gigs are infinitely preferable to late gigs for me. The green room is a whole house. It has a ice cold ice coffee, breakfast burritos and free massage for artists. The whole venue is lovely. There’s great pub food(chicken wings and loaded fries) and the weather is roasting.
Lucia is up first. They sound great. It’s an outdoor stage in a concrete garden, so everything sounds thrashy and present. The baking heat seems to work well with the heavy music. I have fantasies that this is what desert rock feels like in the palm desert scene.
We take to the stage and it’s obvious that this is our first time in the direct sunlight. We thought it was hot in the shade. It was nothing compared to this. Sunglasses are falling off sweaty noses and you can hear us turning red over the music. Once we start playing there’s an instant relaxation. This being or last gig we feel we can enjoy it a little more. The crowds are in good spirits and it’s a good gig that feels like the audience are digging it. It’s St Paddy’s day so many of the Scots have shown up draped in green finery.
Post gig we all flop into jolly day drinking mode. The gigs are done and the sense of relief is palpable. Our new found Coloradan friends have come along to the gig and there’s a big team of us crisping in the sun and exchanging banter while an endless stream of well curated bands play. They all sound in this heat like they are playing through a desert rock prism. Highlights included High Waisted and Pleasure Venom.
There’s some sort of painting competition being run by the bar. A contestant has pulled out and Amy reluctantly joins at the last minute. She then goes on to win it. She has won some sort of Holiday in the states. At time of writing, they were still crossing the t’s and dotting the lower case j’s on whether they could use it or not.
I feel like we are sitting on our arses for the first time in the trip. The timing back home is such that friends back home are in the midst of their Saturday night. There’s video chat which gives us the opportunity to remind ourselves how cool what we are doing is.
After a long afternoon in the Texan sun we, we head off to try and see Night Beats and Albert Hammond jr on Rainey Street. Night Beats were one of my favourite(and loudest) Tenement TV sessions. My memory is that it was early on a Sunday morning and everyone was hungover and then the band played super loud psych music absolutely dripping with Reverb. They are from Austin and have been playing throughout the week, but I’ve never been in the right place at the right time to catch them. Tonight is no different and we arrive at Lustre Pearl Not East just after they finish. The queue has already begun for Albert Hammond Jr.
There’s frustrations and arguments about what we should do. Eventually we join the queue. It’s sobering to think how long ago Albert Hammond’s hey day is. We could hear him from the queue. A drunken Morgan can’t work out why someone would use their SXSW slot to play Strokes covers.
We finally make it in and he strums his last chord. I’ve now seen Albert Hammond Jr play that chord live twice. It’s a great chord. I nip to the toilet and come back to the collective decision that we’re off to Hotel Vegas. We opt to walk. Everyone’s drunk, hungry, sunburnt and foot weary. I don’t know if I can handle another night at Hotel Vegas. I check what bands are on. Nick Oliveri is playing bass with the Dwarves. They are about to start. I decide it would be rude not to be completist in my Queens of the stone age fanboyism.
Nick Oliveri played with Kyuss and Queens of the stone age. The first time I saw him live was between the two as Bass player for Mark Lanegan’s band. I’ve also seen him countless times with Kyuss lives, Mondo Generator and Queens of the stone age. He often plays naked. In fact I think I’ve seen his penis in the flesh more than anyone’s except my own. If he finds that thought awkward, he doesn’t show it from the stage. He’s been arrested for domestic abuse and kicked out of QOTSA, so despite our history, he’s kind of fallen off my radar.
Dwarves are a punk band from the Californian hardcore punk scene of the late 80’s/early 90’s. I probably owned their sub pop release at some point. They are awful. They do nothing but convince me that if I ever get a go in a time machine, the Californian hardcore punk scene of the late 80’s should be high up on my list of destinations. There’s a small group of hardcore hardcore fans down the front singing along to every word, so I suppose it’s horses for courses. I’ve seen enough.
I perform my now standard midnight exit from Hotel Vegas before Guantanamo Baywatch take to the stage(the name alone is almost enough to convince me to stay).
I make short trip to Shangri-La but there’s not a lot shaking. Certainly nothing that shouts to me louder than the pain coming from my well worn Doc Martened feet. I get a coffee and head for the tram. On the tram, my ‘Glasgow as Fuck’ t-shirt has resulted in me acting as a travel advisor for a number of local couples wanting to visit Europe. Maybe we should have applied to Visit Scotland for funding to cover our SXSW costs(or at least to print us more Glasgow as Fuck T-shirts)
Sunday 18th March. Day 8. Sleep since Scotland: 46 hours. Musical Artists Seen: 57
My first day off. I awake to be regaled with tales of Castles and schmoozing with record execs. They’ve all been out till daylight at some super cool, super exclusive party. I balance my #fomo by reminding myself how crabbit I would have been at 6am sober at a pool party.
Today is going to be a day round the pool. The day is a non-day. The only official SXSW activity is the Softball BBQ. It’s an annual institution. I’m disappointed not to go to it, but I’ve got nothing left in the tank.
We have a rough plan of having a BBQ at night.
I head out late morning for a fancy coffee, cos there’s none left in the house. A new supermarket has opened up quite near the house. It’s Asian, so isn’t much use for classic American junk food that we’ve heard of in films, but it’s a lot cheaper than the convenience store. I buy stuff for a salad and check out the meat options for the BBQ later.
Jamie and Amy have headed into town to do coupley touristy things. Their energy after what was close to an all nighter is admirable. Early evening I meet them at the supermarket. We buy various bits and pieces for a BBQ. The avocados are far from guacamole ready so we find ourselves at a convenience store further down the road for some squishier ones. It’s very Jay and Silent Bob, but I think I’m the only person that appreciates it.
Wade comes over and we sit eating great food and talking nonsense about monty python and various forgotten subjects. He finally performs a few tunes for us and we make plans to show him round Scotland. Possibly for the Edinburgh festival. The late rises have shortened the day and before we know it, it’s the early hours again.
Monday 19th March. Day 9. Sleep since Scotland: 51 hours. Musical Artists Seen: 58
Our final day. It’s a Lonely Planet type of a day of going to see stuff that we haven’t seen yet but feel that we should. We all head into town with a Nord Keyboard in tow. Luke and Morgan head off to deal with that and Amy, Jamie, Gary and myself head to the capitol building. There’s a still emptiness to the city without SXSW.
The Capitol building is grandiose in stature. the city streets seem to be designed around it looking good. The complex features lots of statues commemorating different aspects of Texan history. It’s really picturesque and lends itself to photos. Gary heads off to do his own thing and we stop for a pee in the foyer of the Texan State Museum. All the architecture in this area if colossal and reminds me of Russia and Fascism.
We’ve reminded ourselves that we’ve not had Fried Chicken yet. Google tells us that the combined recommendation of the internet is Lucy's Fried Chicken. This is really lucky, cos it’s in the South Congress area and Jamie and Amy want to show off what they discovered the day before. We get some absolutely glorious Frozen Yogurt for the bus. We avoid #Fomo by having #FroYo in #SoCo because #Yolo. I’m so down with the kids.
The bus trundles along South Congress and there’s loads of great shops and restaurants. The bus is far cheaper and better for people watching than the tram. It’s a disappointment to discover it on the last day.
We read the guidebook which tells us that Lucy’s was named after the founder’s grandmother and daughter. The sign features a go go girl with a neon kicking leg. It’s not clear to me whether this is his grannie, or his daughter or some sort of cross-generational combination of both.
Lucy’s is full of character. It’s $1 for a can of beer or $4.50 for a bottle of non-alcoholic beer. We get a big bucket of fried chicken and some more fried okra, corn bread with tequila butter and slaw. There’s a glorious selection of hot sauces and the music is a wonderful combination of southern rock and Californian mid 70’s. They had live music during the festival and I’l definitely be spending some time here if I’m back at SXSW.
From Lucy’s we need to visit enough shops to kill enough time that we can have some homeslice pizza before heading home and seem like pioneers of culinary tourism rather than absolute gluttons.
The shops are great. Lot’s of vintage and curiosities. Allen’s boots. Shelves and shelves of over priced cowboy boots. More impressive were the “Country star signature cowboy hats”. There’s even a shop that primarily sells screen print posters. They are all pretty cheap. I’d have to have an extra room to keep my “unwalled art” if I lived here. I resist the urge to buy a screen print of Fezzik from The Princess Bride.
We make it down to Homeslice and pretend it’s not been less than 2 hours since our fried chicken feast. When you get inside and see the sights and smells and classic decor, it’s not hard to convince yourself. We sit outside enjoying our slice while we wait for the bus. It’s glorious and wonderfully garlicky.
We get off the bus early and try out a natural supermarket. It’s expensive, but we get some munchies and food for an evening of bag packing.
Goodbye Austin I hope to be back.
The rest of the trip is a horrible trek as part of the cattle management of long haul travel. We don’t have the excitement of going somewhere new. We’re bleary of eye and sore of feet and everyone’s scunnered with Morgan. I’m travelling in my swimming shorts and summery shirt because I care more about comfort than suitability for Scottish weather.
My final tallies for the trip are:
3 gigs played at SXSW
about 60 bands seen in about 20 venues
Average of 5 hours sleep a night
About 100 miles walked in unsuitable footwear
no alcohol
The whole festival is an impossible to manage behemoth. This is it’s best and worst quality. You can randomly walk around and discover some amazing things. You have to very quickly accept that there’s almost always somewhere better to be and you will never be there. If you are the coolest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. Every time you meet a friend or a colleague, their greatest hits of the past hour, day or week give you instant #fomo. It gives you a lovely feeling of acceptance of your own experience. I’m proud to say I couldn’t have been up earlier, I couldn’t have slept less and I couldn’t have walked more.
I’d recommend it to any musician, in fact I can’t recommend it highly enough. It gives you a pretty good perspective on the “good bands back home” and you can make contacts with other scenes and cities and generally top up your brain with creative ideas. I wouldn’t worry about playing or possibly even having a pass. Events like the White Denim party, the Dazed and confused party, the metal head hotsauce and pedal party, the Cosmic Clash stuff(our last gig) many of the gigs at Hotel Vegas, many of the gigs at Shangri-La represent a tiny percentage of stuff that just happens to be going on in Austin during SXSW. I could have filled days ten times over with free gigs which don’t need a pass. The stuff at SXSW that folks back home will be impressed by are pretty inaccessible. You could choose one a day, make sure you queue and plan your day around it. That’s just not for me. I prefer to walk around discovering random experiences and complain about my feet hurting.
From a band’s perspective it’s really hard to measure it’s worth. There’s things we did two years ago which are only giving us benefits now. SXSW may be the same. I can tick “play SXSW” off my bucket list. There is so much going on that I think it must be impossible to have much of a targeted agenda. At our level, I don’t think successes can really be planned to that much of an extent. We agreed early on to see it as an expensive holiday that we really wanted to go on. Anything additional will be a bonus.
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