I'm still in the middle of sorting through my SXSW pics with an edit that feels as big as Texas, and Texas is as big as France. And then there's all of the video footage, some of which was shot on two cameras! Meanwhile, here's a top ten favourite things/moments/whatevers from my time in the Lone Star State.
1) First off is the hour I spent in the Hoot County Bar in Houston on St.Patrick's day when the only other people in the bar were a woman who announced before she put money in the jukebox that she was going to find the most depressing country record she could find, three blokes who drove off individually in station wagons after spending their time in there talking to the barmaid about her 'hooters', a small group of Emos with their id's in hand and a man who was half Hell's Angel, half Leprechaun with a ZZ Top beard, both arms 100% tattooed, a green waistcoat and big plastic ears. He didn't look very happy so I didn't ask if I could take his photo. My last night in the country was also spent in Houston so I had to go back in for a last beer and this time I noticed more than anything that everyone was smoking which didn't seem to be allowed anywhere else. Even the Daisy Duke cut offs wearing barmaid was smoking behind the bar though she always joins whoever's just bought her a drink, on the drinkers side of the counter, and tonight she's drinking shots of Red Bull and Jagermeister! The soundtrack has also changed from last week's country top ten and 'All My Exs' Live In Texas' to a rock night with Thin Lizzy being the one that got them all nodding along, including the 70 year old sitting next to me smoking cigars, wearing the finest rodeo wear and playing Texas Hold 'Em on the games machine.
2) 6th Street in Austin which is the main drag and hub of all things SXSW. The convention centre is where all the panels are that I never went to and 6th Street is two minutes walk away. For SXSW the roads are temporarily pedestrianised and just about every venue on or off the street has bands playing between 11am and 6pm and then from 8 'til 2am and then there's all of the bands that set up on the street, rappers doing freestyle performances and every type of busker and music themed street entertainment you can imagine including a Japanese rock band that spent each night miming to the same track! And whilst most of the street is made up of live music venues, and it's a fairly long street, the rest of the buildings house tattoos parlours, music themed gift shops and all kinds of other businesses that sit alongside nicely including The Midnight Cowboy Massage Parlour and the Death Metal Pizza Co!
3) Keep Austin Weird is a slogan that seems to get banded about a lot in the city on t-shirts, postcards and other tourist tat but the thing that stands out most about the people, even though I did come across a good few weirdos, was how ridiculously friendly people were which was nice after being shouted at in Houston by check in clerks and baggage handlers at the airport. I arrived in Austin to be greeted by the cab driver with 'Welcome to Austin, hope you enjoy your stay' before getting a rundown about how great the city was and I got dropped off at the airport at the end of my stay by another driver saying 'Please come back' after running through numerous radio stations along the way and giving me the low down on accordian music from different U.S. cities. In Liverpool I got welcomed by the usual moaning about the road works.
4) SoCo is an area of Austin across the river and it's based around a street called South Congress. The area is the hip part of Austin and features great bars, more tattoo parlours, shops selling clothes from rodeo to retro, cowboy and folk art galleries and a massive never ending shop called The Shop Of Uncommon Objects. I spent Sunday afternoon at Gueros, after SXSW had ended, in the garden watching all kinds of blues and country acts and then on Monday discovered some of the back streets of SoCo including a gallery shop that sold renovated highway furniture and neon sculptures and they had an amazing yard full of petrol pumps and a big fifteen foot chicken!
5) One of the tourist highlights in Austin is the fact that 1.5 million bats live under South Congress bridge and at dusk they do a spectacular exit to feed through the night so, having heard about this, I dragged most of the people who I was with out of the bar and away from their Margaritas to see the black exodus only to find a pale grey trickle of the little creatures leaving their daytime home. Everyone took it well, and it was time to leave anyway, but apparently they only start the exodus in March and the peak of batness is on a hot August night. The wildlife inside the city itself was also constantly reminding me that we were never that far from the country as Austin's not the biggest of cities. In Zilker Park I saw a bright red parrot looking bird which apparently is called a Scarlet Tanager and the city is fall of these really noisy squawking blackbird/crow hybrid looking things which are called Grackles but, if that's not wild western enough for you, I also saw some sort of Eagle or Hawk encircling the State Capitol building and a snake on the sidewalk.
6) On the Saturday night after the Liverpool Sound City Showcase, I got taken by Mike Badger up to the house of some friends of new friends that he'd met whilst performing his own gig the night before. I'm in the process of working on a film about the blues, country and folk scene in Liverpool and going out to Austin seemed to be a good way of getting some content so the intention was to do some filming at this house where we met these amazing people who gave us beer and rum and food and then sang for us! Mike loved it and I filmed some of his songs before they got stuck into Dirty Old Town and then a singer called Emily Grace, along with Mike and Matthew Gardner and everyone else, sang the most amazing version of The Weight I've ever heard. For one of the best memories of Austin you could imagine I need to thank our hosts Kevin and Cathy and their house which had a flashing rope light map of Texas on one of it's outside walls with a flashing peace symbol in the middle. I then headed back into town watching a firworks display over the city before walking 6th Street twice, once with a video and the second time with a camera and I'll be posting some of the video on here at some point. Keep Austin Weird.
7) A venue called Latitude 30 on San Jacinto off 6th Street was 'the' place to catch the best of some of the British bands and the banner for these daily events was the British Embassy. My first event after arriving was the Belfast meets Nashville event and the final one of the week, and by far the best, was the Liverpool Sound City showcase on the Saturday afternoon which featured the Hot Melts, The Whip, Wave Machines, Lost Brothers and Polly Mackey & The Pleasure Principle. First up was Polly Mackey who’s like 17 years old or something, has done 8 gigs in 4 days at SXSW and is on the verge of losing her voice but she copes with it, does a great show and everyone’s happy that they queued around the block for the last hour or so! And from rock it turns to folk as The Lost Brothers take to the stage and perform tracks from their debut album ‘The Trials Of The Lonely (Parts I And III)’ and this pair are another band that have been doing a silly amount of gigs during Liverpool Sound City before heading up and across to Oregon to record album number two! Next up are Wave Machines who are one of those bands that I’ve been very much aware of but never actually got around to seeing yet and then I get to see them twice in one week which is a bonus as they’re great, and the crowd agreed, and things start to hot up. And then after that it all turns to madness as The Whip take to the stage and everybody forgets their in a bar in the middle of the afternoon in 80 degrees of heat and suddenly it feels like Saturday night and those who’ve got room to dance are dancing whilst the rest are punching the air. You sort of expect daytime showcase gigs to be sedate affairs where people concentrate and possibly even talk about the music that they’re listening to but the Liverpool Sound City event brings the atmosphere of the city into an afternoon bar in Austin and suddenly there’s a big big party going on. And then last, but by no means least, it’s the turn of The Hot Melts to finish the day off and send everyone back out into the sunshine with the knowledge that Liverpool Sound City knows how to deliver with both the music and a great atmosphere.
8) Aside from the Liverpool Sound City event, I’ve got lots of other musical highlights from SXSW and a favourite new band which is Black Lips who are another lot that have passed me by but their performance at the Cedar Street Courtyard was my personal favourite of the week whilst others included a midnight hotel bar show by Howard Eliott Payne, the TV show recording that Juliette Lewis did, The Grates playing an amazingly energetic daytime set in a marquee, Ten Out Of Tenn who I need to go and listen to on My Space, The Sonics singing Psycho and The Bunnymen’s outdoor gig at Stubbs where McCulloch was still wearing a coat in silly degrees of heat and Tricky was in the audience.
9) Free stuff is always a bonus and at SXSW there seems to be loads of it with everybody wanting to give you either music (free cds) or free food and drink so that you listen to music! The temptation is not to be swayed by the lure of all things free and try and plan an itinery based around what you really want to watch and see the food and drink as a bonus and taking that notion in hand we got to see The Grates at the Aussie BBQ, a bit of country rock along with a great breakfast and a Stax themed goody bag at the Memphis Music event and a nice boat trip along the river courtesy of the irish contingent. However, I also found myself at an afternoon Kerrang party where the heat was unbearable and the only thing that held us in there were free beers and Frozen Margaritas.
10) As well as all of the official events, there’s also a stack of unaffiliated gigs going on and we spent one afternoon at the Levis Fader Party which is where I got to finally see the Hot Melts for the first time as well as an appalling American band before leaving during Late Of The Pier’s set due to sound problems. But The Hot Melts were great, there was a free bar, the set up was amazing with a bloggers lounge, a Levis shop and loads of other things going on and it was all set in this purpose built ‘fort’ that was put up across the freeway and outside of the main area acting like some sort of festival at a festival. There was also another local music festival going on down by the river that had like another 20,000 people attending so it was pretty difficult getting away from music during SXSW’s 4 day run and even at the airport on the way out there was a jazz combo playing in the bar.
