I know a lot of people bitch about SXSW. “It’s too hipster! It’s too commercial! It’s too much work! Austin sucks! The People suck!” Blah Blah Blah! I say FIE unto ye naysayers!
Look, I ain’t saying that there isn’t stuff to bitch about and all that but if you take SXSW on its own terms, it can still be fun…a lot of work but a lot of fun. Trust me, if I could have fun at this last SXSW, anyone can. I honestly had a lot of personal misgivings about returning to SXSW when we were asked to showcase again (our 4th time). I won’t get into any specifics but they have nothing to do with having had a bad time previously – quite the opposite. To make matters worse, I arrived much later on Thursday because the maid of one of the tenants in my 8-plex (yes, someone hires a maid for a one bedroom apartment) decided to take out my laundry and replace mine with his. Then finally, by the end of the day a chicken sandwich from Buc-ee’s made me ill. So let’s wrap that up as emo, cranky, and violently ill. You’d think that would be a recipe for a bad SXSW but no, it wasn’t and that’s my point in bringing all that up – SXSW is fun if you can somehow get past being a jaded, uptight, snob and just have fun.
In SXSW, you roll or you don’t. We rolled.
The show itself went great. We had a good-sized, energetic crowd and we returned the favor with an equally enthusiastic and energetic set. I’m pretty critical of our performances but I walked away pretty damn happy even with all the mishaps. And there were a lot of those. For example, the band before us, Austin’s Boy + Kite, played over its time which is a pretty self-absorbed and dick move on their part but I don’t think it was intentional. I have to assume that this was their first festival and maybe they just didn’t think beyond themselves at that moment. If you play enough festivals, you learn pretty quickly that it’s not just about you and that you have to consider the bands as well. Whatever the case, they cut easily into our set and we nixed “Cannonball” but I knew we’d lose at least one more and, as it turned out, we lost 3 songs (about half of our 40 minute 8-song set). Half of that was the other band running over, the other half was setting up our gear (which we hauled down from a flight of steps onto an 9X9 stage) with an already reduced set-up time. The epic fail came when we forgot to turn on our lights! Yes, after all that hassle of bringing them and setting them up, we totally forgot in the frenzy of setting up gear to just plug it in and had a pretty good laugh over it after. Oh yes, and we started getting all these phone calls and messages from people not being able to get in. Turns out that the legendary Steve Earle was playing upstairs and this was a badge only event or some such thing and the doormen were just turning away people. Eventually we got that cleared-up but if you tried to get in and were turned away, sorry. Just one of those SXSW things.
So no trippy light show, a truncated set, people being turned away in error, us playing on the ground with our cases and crap haphazardly strewn in front of us, and you know what? We still played with a joyful abandon until our brains were literally reduced to a gray, pulpy goo from playing so damn loud! I broke a string on the first song, I fell of the edge of the stage, and I’m sure we fucked-up a note here or there but we took that shit down… “Assault”, “Waiting for the Axe”, “She did not Know”, and “Crom” just plowed through in a way that would do Rowdy Roddy Piper proud and then to cap it off Mlee came on stage and sang “Rust” and blew us into outer space. Then we asked how we were doing on time and the soundman made the “cut-it” gesture. OK, Done!
Of course, the crowd expressed their displeasure vocally about the short set and asked us to play more but when people came up to me and asked us to play more I just had to explain that we had to be considerate to the bands that followed and they understood. I for one would have loved to have played on. There was a new song we were going to play and, given the subject matter, SXSW would have been THE prefect place to debut it. Then of course, the energy in the room was such that “Stonebringer” would have been an awesome coda but in the end, closing with “Rust” was no less a great way to close and leaving people wanting more is a nice way to end matters. So it was a great experience and I can’t say we had a bad time in any way. In fact, this may have been our best SXSW experience as a showcasing band.
Thanks to all who came to see us and kudos to the excellent SXSW crew at the Parish Underground as well as Audible Treats, who were hosting the festival (super awesome as always). Turns out that Gavin of Audible Treats has this band Lightouts who were playing. I was too sick to stick around but the rest of the guys caught them and came back with thumbs way up on their live show. Those of us that weren’t sick were able to catch some other shows like ST37 but being under the weather, I headed back to the cabin to rest up for the next day.
As for the rest of my SXSW?… Well, like I said earlier, I was kind of ill so I missed out on a lot but I soldiered through and I’ll just sum it up how it turned out with this image below.
Party Hard, my friends.
