A VISIT TO SXSW 2000

by Michael Pemberton

 

[Michael sent this to a small mailing list of our friends, describing his fabulous time at the South by Southwest Music Festival, and egging us on to go with him next year...)

Yowza, it's been quite a week. I'm probably going to use overstatements like "amazing" and "unbelievably great" in this note even more then I usually do.

First off, there isn't a single one of us out there who wouldn't love SXSW; everybody has to go to SXSW next year. The good stuff is amazingly good, and the bad stuff (mainly big crowds) is for the most part easily avoided because there's so much amazingly good stuff. We can pile in a few hotel rooms and eat and drink for free at the daytime parties and do it on the cheap. I'm serious; we should definitely do this.

I have two regrets, though neither really matter all that much. First, I didn't do nearly as much club hopping as I would have liked. No big deal because the clubs where I plopped myself had amazing bills. Second, and this is the one that really bugs me, I ended up not seeing much of anything other then the alt.country/roots rock folks. That was mostly due to the whims of the people I was hanging out with, but also because I was a bit lazy.

Anyway, here's what I did:

Wednesday: I got in town late and the only show I caught was the Road Kings, Damnations TX, and The Gourds at Stubbs, which is a big outdoor venue in the yard of a BBQ restaurant. The Road Kings are a hard rockin' rockabilly/punk/jazz three-piece led by Jesse Dayton, and they were really good. Damnations TX were even better, much harder rockin' then I thought, and the harmonies were beautiful. The Gourds... well, I have to admit that I'm still trying to "get" the Gourds. I got myself good and drunk before their set, which seemed to be the proper way to get in the mood, but I still found them to be pretty boring. There were probably 1500 people there who loved them, so what do I know?

Thursday highlights: Calexico and the Ranchero Brothers at the P2 BBQ, The Mekons at Schuba's party (first of five times I saw Jon Langford perform, even though I never set out to see him), Slobberbone at the Doolittle Records party (one highlight was a super-hard rocking cover of the Car's "Just What I Needed"). The big highlight for me was the Bottle Rockets, who ended the Doolittle party with a 90-minute acoustic set, with Audley Freed from the Black Crowes sitting in. As one friend of mine said, Brian should turn those acoustic sets into a late night TV show, they are about as much fun as can possibly be had. He was drunk and happy and funny and the show was everything that all Bottle Rockets shows should be. We then braved a massive thunderstorm (nothing like driving rain and 40 degree temperatures to sober you up) to see Marah friggin' rock at Stubbs. Those guys are the real deal; I'm definitely a convert.

The spot on the bill after Marah had just been listed as "special guest," so a bunch of people showed up hoping for Neil Young or some such, but what they got was Ryan Adams (of Whiskeytown) doing an acoustic set accompanied by Kim Richey on harmony vocals. Their voices sounded great together, but a huge outdoor venue, which by that time was a nearly frozen mudpuddle, wasn't exactly the best situation for that kind of thing. I continue to be amazed at how damn prolific Ryan is; these were almost all new songs with very little overlap with his solo shows from last October.

Steve Earle was up next, and I really wanted to leave to see Bevis Frond or John Doe or the Backyard Babies or any number of other cool things going on, but the friend from Austin I was staying with and some other people we had met convinced me to hang there. Steve played with a new version of the Dukes and played mainly new songs. With a couple of exceptions I thought he was pretty boring, but then I was bored at his show at the Carolina Theater in '98 and other friends of mine loved it. Maybe it's just me. We hit the wall about half-way through and went home, which was a mistake since he apparently encored with a great version of Nirvana's "Breed." Staying for Steve Earle when there were so many great shows going on is my only real regret from the weekend. I guess that statement shows how great SXSW really is.

Friday's highlights: Calexico, Kelly Hogan, and the Waco Brothers at the Bloodshot party, Marah (again) at Waterloo Records, and a really great meal with Rick at a dumpy place called Taqueria el Borrego de Oro. I had Puerco en Chile Verde, which was a very simple dish of pork that had been stewed in an amazingly flavorful green chile sauce, along with fresh and creamy chile con queso and an avocado taco. The one kind of food that is sorely lacking in New Orleans is Mexican food, so that was really a treat.

That night my Austin friend and I went to the Broken Spoke, which is an old roadhouse/honkytonk a bit south of downtown. It was definitely the most atmospheric club I went to in Austin, from the crumbling 7-1/2 foot ceiling to all the memorabilia on the walls to the old jukebox filled with country 45s. My favorite bit was a signup sheet by the door for an all-star tribute to Lefty Frizzell that is coming up. There was a list of about 50 Austin-based musicians ranging from Willie Nelson to Damon Bramblett, and next to each name there were boxes where they could check "Yes" or "No," as well as a place for explanations if they couldn't make it. That killed me.

Anyway, the bill was Tish Hinojosa, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Candye Kane, and Joe Ely (we were late getting there and missed Slaid Cleaves, who was first on the bill). Jimmie Dale was wonderful, I definitely need to get his new record. I looked to my right at one point during his set and realized I was standing almost right next to Neil Young! Unfortunately a bunch of other people realized it at about the same time and they started walking over towards him, and he retreated to the back. Candye Kane is a very entertaining 200-pound ex-stripper from LA who mainly sang songs about how great fat women are in bed. She really was pretty entertaining in an NC-17 Big Sandy type of way. Joe Ely was amazing as well, he did all my favorites and rocked mightily. I was starting to feel a little bad at that point that I wasn't club hopping and seeing different types of bands, but when Joe and his bands are absolutely ripping through "Road Hog" at 2:30am at the Broken Spoke it is hard to wish you are anywhere else.

Saturday: Spent most of the day drinking free beer at the Hideout party (the Hideout is a bar/honky tonk in Chicago), highlights were Red Star Belgrade, Trigger Gospel, Kelly Hogan, a very rockin' band I'd never heard of called ZuZu, and Jon Langford. After Jon's set we stumbled over to Alejandro Escovedo's party in the yard of a little taqueria, and were amused to see none other then Jon Langford onstage when we got there. He and Sally Timms did a couple of acoustic songs, which was really neat. After a fantastic dinner of huevos rancheros and veggie enchiladas, we settled in for an equally fantastic set from Alejandro and his rock band. Alejandro's wife was there with their baby daughter, and they were sitting right down front with Chris Stamey, his wife, and their baby girl. Both of the kids were dancing up a storm, which was about the sweetest damn thing I've ever seen. Al was as better than ever, which is really saying something. The crowd was basically a Who's Who list of Austin and alt.country musicians, and most of them ended up on the stage at some point.

That night we squeezed into Antone's to see Neko Case, who had unfortunately cancelled her set at the Hideout party that afternoon. Wow, does that woman have a voice! Rick was nice enough to give me an extra copy of her new record, and it's every bit as good as he's been saying. She was great, but we lost patience with the crush of the crowd after about a half-hour, so we headed up the street to see Tift Merritt and the Carbines. They totally killed, it was definitely one of the highlights of the weekend for me. The current Carbines lineup sounds great, and Tift is an absolute force of nature. There was this drunk guy next to me in the front of the crowd, swaying slowly with his eyes closed. About half-way through the set he turned around and said, to nobody in particular, "If there is a single guy here who says he's not in love right now, he's either lying or he doesn't know what love is." I didn't hear anybody try to refute him. It was the perfect way to end the festival.

So yesterday morning I flew home and tried to shake a very nasty hangover to get ready for Springsteen at the New Orleans Arena. I met up with a friend of a friend during the afternoon, and he upgraded me to the 11th row! I suddenly felt much better. The show was stupendously amazingly unbelievably mind-bogglingly great. The setlist was pretty different then last time I saw him, with the principal additions being a nearly punk-rock "Adam Raised a Cain," a great "Because the Night" with a fantastic guitar solo from Bruce, a very powerful "Backstreets," and a super-fun "Spirit in the Night." Everything sounded better then the DC show, Bruce and band are in prime form right now. Bruce remains an absolute fucking monster of a live performer, and being up close were you can see the veins popping in his neck and the sweat flying off was really a treat for a life-long Bruce freak like me. Not a perfect show, but I'm not going to nit-pick about this one. The final song was an extended romp through "Ramrod," which ended with Bruce tearing open his shirt, sprinting across the stage into a diving, full-speed somersault which ended with him on his feet cutting off the band. A perfect ending to a nearly perfect long weekend.

-- Michael Pemberton   (slightly edited by Chuck)

 

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