I can’t go to SXSW. And while I’ll probably read some online media coverage, you never really know when you’re getting the straight story. Everyone’s got an axe to grind, a favorite band to hype, or a party they are co-hosting. What will be all the rage this year? Who knows and who cares? I really only care about a certain select group of artists anyway.
So to get the straight story I asked the artists themselves to record their thoughts and send them back to me in Chicago to post on Songs:Illinois and Swedesplease. I’m thrilled with all the bands that said they’d participate, even accounting for some flakeage, it’s a great lineup. Check back several times a day all week long for the best SXSW coverage. I’ll try to post everything I get to Songs:Illinois, as well as putting all the Swedish performer’s thoughts up on Swedesplease (where today we have the first ever guest post).
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The first one to submit something is Austinite Danny Schmidt with his eloquent pre-festival thoughts and advice for all the bands converging on his hometown. Danny’s the consumate traveling troubodour. I wrote about his 2005 album, Parables and Primes, here. These two songs still reverberate around my head giving me pause. Danny’s SXSW info is as follows:
3/16 Fri Austin, TX SXSW Official Showcase – 11pm Creekside EMC at Hilton Garden Inn
3/17 Sat Austin, TX Afternoon Concert Extravaganza! Details email – houseconcert@dannyschmidt.com. Confirmed performers: Me, David Olney, AJ Roach, Nels Andrews, Noelle Hampton.
Beggars and Mules
This Too Shall Pass
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“Maybe it’s too early to start posting SXSW impressions since, after all, the music conference hasn’t even started yet. But unofficially, it started for me last night.
The film & media conference precedes the music conference, and started last week. And last night, when I was driving to Polvo’s for dinner with my buddy, and we had to screech to a stop, mid-traffic, to let four hipsters cross the road against the light — and my buddy hollered out the window to get their fucking badges out of the road. That moment, to me, is the unofficial beginning of the SXSW music conference every year . . . when a local yells, in frustration, at an out-of-town guest for the first time.
And it brought back a flood of previous SXSW impressions for me. And I thought I’d share a few of them, cause once things get in full swing, I won’t have much time to sit at my computer.
And I have a different perspective, perhaps, than a lot of conference-goers, cause I’m actually from Austin. Born and raised, and fairly rare.
When you’re from Austin, SXSW is less a yearly pilgrimage to Mecca than it is a yearly invasion of the body snatchers. It started for me, as a teenager, as this wonderful celebration of an embarrassingly rich local music scene that lacked national industry infrastructure, and so every year we invited the infrastructure to come to town and see what we’ve been raving about. It really did feel like a celebration for a couple years, before falling victim to its own success, and everyone from every corner of the world wanted a piece of the action.
That’s when SXSW began to feel like a betrayal. It wasn’t about Austin music anymore. Local artists were no longer featured, really. And Austin music lovers — like me — couldn’t even get into our favorite clubs to see our favorite bands kick all the New Yorker’s asses. Even when we shelled out for a wristband.
A couple years of that — and a couple years of bitter sentiments — and then I came to terms with the fact that this, indeed, had become an industry conference, and no longer a celebration of my favorite music and local pride. And then I never attended again for about ten years. Not pissed anymore — just not interested. I think that’s a pretty common sentiment among Austinites here.
Two years ago, I started attending the conference again, as a musician and a participant, now, instead of as a fan. And my impressions are obviously different, as someone involved in the industry, now.
Tomorrow, I’ll be picking up my first out-of-town friend at the airport, and begin the process of turning my house into a campground for wayward folksingers.
The airport itself can give you a pretty poignant and heartbreaking first impression of the conference. Just in the span of idling through in your car at 5mph, looking for your friend outside of baggage . . . starting the Monday or Tuesday before the conference . . . as you enter the covered drive, you’ll pass four guys from Lincoln, NE — two will be sitting on their flight crates, one will be opening the guitar cases and making sure nothing got destroyed by Delta Airlines, and one will be pacing at the curb, antsily, looking up the drive for a glimpse of their friend’s van.
They’ll all be smoking. They’ll all be impeccably tattered with ironic truckstop tshirts. And they’ll all be touting the free-est looking expensive porcupine haircuts that money can buy. They’ll be presenting to the world the most ridiculously rockstarringest rockstars in Lincoln, NE. Which they are. Good for them.
The heartbreaking part is this. . .
In the span of my first drive-through at baggage, I’ll see ten more little piles of the rockstarringest rockstars you’ve ever seen in your life — from Little Rock and Fort Collins and St Cloud and Savannah and other small ponds. And you really can honestly see the glitz drain from their faces, as they look around at all the other groups, just like them — each dressed to separate themselves from their non-rockstar community back at home.
And it reminds me of my freshman year of college, when I took astronomy, and had my first few moments of realization that the Earth is one planet in a solar system around one star, in a galaxy of a billion stars, among billions of galaxies of billions of stars — and not only was the universe unfathomably huge, but that I was unimaginably inconsequential.
And wait til these guys get down to Sixth St. They’ll be thousands more of themselves walking around demoralized, like the whole town was one big funnyhouse of mirrors.
And from this, I have maybe my only single piece of advice and insight for first time conference attendees . . .
You will not differentiate yourself from all the other artists or bands. You will not get noticed or discovered. Your stardom will not ignite here. But what can happen is this . . .
You can make some good friends, develop some meaningful relationships, and build some valuable allies here in Austin at SXSW . . . because the whole town will be filled with people just like you — artists who are so committed to their art that they’re willing to shuffle around, demoralized, begging to be heard. And everyone of them, like you, is truly a genuine rock star back in the corner of the world that has had the time to listen to them more thoroughly and lovingly. Just like you. And from your time together, sipping margaritas over sunken hearts, you will make a friend, who will become a comrade, who will become a collaborator and a contact, and eventually a shared gig for you in Lincoln, NE — and a shared gig in your home town for them. And their fans will love you, and your fans will love them. And Geffen can kiss all our asses.
And, honestly, that’s not a fuck you to SXSW. That’s SXSW doing it’s job beautifully. It’s just not the job most first-timers come in expecting. So do yourself a favor, and expect very little from the industry, but enjoy yourself and your company and the beautiful laid back town of Austin, TX with it’s bazillion clubs and restaurants, and parks and walking trails, and the immersion amongst thousands of your real peers.”
right on Danny….i agree wholeheartedly…especially the last 2 paragraphs