On Music/South by Southwest

Going Quietly

2006-03-19T00:58:00.000-08:00

Rather than go see New Zealands' Die! Die! Die!, I opted to close out Saturday on a positive note. The folk-friendly Hootenanny at the Central Presbyterian Church served as a showcase for the iconoclastic Anti- label. Intriguing cast: country torch singer Jolie Holland, sly roots-music shaman Tim Fite, Brit political foghorn Billy Bragg, Greg Graffin of punk band Bad Religion, Madonna's brother-in-law Joe Henry, and folk legend Ramblin' Jack Elliot. Such alignments of the minor stars are what SXSW is made for, but this one never quite gelled. There were early fireworks from Fite and sweet duets between Bragg and Holland on Gram Parsons' "Sin City" and Bragg and Henry on "Tupelo Honey," but the Elliot and friends Woody Guthrie tribute failed to generate electrcity, and my fest, anyway, ended with a whimper, not a bang.

Boss Preview

2006-03-19T00:30:00.000-08:00

For the second year running, a new Bruce Springsteen album had its world premiere listening party at Austin's Waterloo Records during SXSW. In 2005, it was "Devils & Dust"; this go round, "We Shall Overcome: The Songs of Pete Seeger," due April 25. Springsteen fans with seriously diminished expectations for two reasonable reasons -- no new Bruce songs, no E Street Band -- take note: the Waterloo sampling of the album and the acompanying DualDisc DVD showed the Seeger Sessions to be not a solemn "Ghost of Tom Joad"-style bitter pill, but a live-in-the-studio affair, with fiddles, banjos, mandolins and horns, well suited for a scheduled live debut at the New Orlean Jazz & Heritage Festival next month.

Move to Philly ... If You Can Find It (with audio)

2006-03-18T18:13:00.000-08:00

Call the iron-fisted SXSW organizers fascists if you like, accuse them of exploiting bands by giving them a choice between a $150 payday or wristbands that are supposed to get you into shows, except the 11,000 laminated badge holders, who pay upwards of $500 a pop always get first dibs. But say this about those alleged Mussolinis: They make the trains run on time. The music festival is a massive event that marches ahead, with rare exceptions, like clockwork.

Festival goers come to depend on that efficiency because they're in a hurry: there's lots to do and little time to get there to do it. So it was too bad that the Move To Philly party, which took place on Friday afternoon and showcased seven worthwhile Philadelphia bands that had traveled to Texas, was such a fiasco. Located in a remote area of east Austin and organized by the good folks at Philebrity.com and Arthur magazine, I had no trouble finding it, once I enlisted a team of bellmen, a concierge, a taxi driver, a helpful directory assistance operator and a nice lady who worked at a nearby bakery. Maybe that's because the address on the press release was wrong, the name of the venue given didn't actually exist and there was no phone number. And on top of that, the party ran two hours behind schedule. C'mon guys: Get it together.

The two bands I did see both delivered: the awkward, adenoidal rappers in Yah Mos Def are a super-geeky acquired taste for sure, but they're frequently hilarious and will impress historians with their references to the MOVE bombing and former Villanova head basketball coach Rollie Massimino. And the Teeth, the band fronted by Bethlehem-bred brothers Aaron and Peter MoDavis, are the real deal, marrying catchy, jerky melodies with a touch of the music hall to driving indie rock. Too bad there were only a handful of people there to see them, mostly from other bands on the bill.

Most of the Move to Philly bands had successful official SXSW showcases, though, as did Dr. Dog and National Eye, who packed a party Thursday for local label Park the Van, along with the Teeth, and Quentin Stoltzfus' terrific indie pop band Mazarin, which filled up Buffalo Billiards, also Thursday. And plenty of other Philadelphia bands -- a whopping 21 in all, itself an argument that the independent rock scene is healthier than ever -- also represented, like the Tom Waits-ian collective Man Man who filled the Velvet Spade on Thursday, and rip-roaring instrumental trio the Notekillers, who played outdoors at that venue on Saturday. Between that and all the former Philadelphians about - ska punkers Stiffed, roots rockers Marah, Nick Drake-ish singer-songwriter Bill Ricchini - you could almost feel like you never left home. Almost.

AUDIO: Listen to the Teeth

New Media vs. Norah Jones

2006-03-18T11:40:00.000-08:00

I was planning on spending Saturday afternoon blogging from a panel of bloggers talking about the growing influence of music blogs. I mean, c'mon: Can you get any more new media than that? Music blogs are a hot topic at SXSW, what with the impact of sites like saidthegramophone.com and the imprimatur of online magazine pitchforkmedia.com becoming the most sought-after seal of approval in indie music, and the industry desperate to find some way, any way, to hock their wares. But inside the convention center door, I ran into my colleague, Inquirer freelancer Keith Harris, bless him. He's one of several thousand bloggers here, it seems, and he's doing his online journal for Minnesota Public Radio: www.publicradio.org/columns/minnesota/special/2006/sxsw/. And having just come from the panels, he assured me that it was a deathly dull self-congratulatory discussion about how difficult it is to post three times a day and how cool it is to work without the interference of an editor. (Okay, I'll concede that point...)

Thanks, Keith. I'll go see honey-voiced cutie pie Norah Jones sing with the Little Willies at Waterloo Records instead. The right decision, I'd say. Crammed onto a tiny stage in Austin's best record store, there was nothing the slightest bit new media about the Willies. With Jones on keyboards and Richard Julian on guitar, with the two sharing vocal duties, they kept it old timey, a bit twangy, decidedly soulful. Johnny Cash's "Tennessee Stud," Hank Wiliams' "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive," and "Love Sick Blues," all but a capella, sweet and sad, though too bad the security alarm on a shoplifting detector went off at an inopportune moment. Think I'll stick around for Rosanne Cash, who's up next.

Yo, Homeslice (with audio)

2006-03-18T08:40:00.000-08:00

SXSW is not a hip-hop conference by any stretch, but every year there's more rhyming about town, particularly since the Houston rap scene blew up in 2005. This year, there were plenty more Southern contenders like Young Bleed and GRiTBOYS, as well as alt-rappers Atmosphere and Jean Grae, Wu Tang MC Ghostface and pint-sized U.K. grime sensation Lady Sovereign.

It seemed as if the Caucasian rappers were multiplying, too, from the Beastie Boys on down to the Yah Mos Def, the spastic Philadelphia duo who were busy referencing Jeffrey Lurie and Wilson Goode at the Move to Philly party on Friday afternoon. (More on that later.) None were more amusing than Vehicular, who I caught in the backyard of Homeslice Pizza. The Austin fab foursome dress like busboys and, in their own words, combine "live bass, King Kong beats and Einstein-doing-whipits-at-your-house-party lyrics," courtesy of oh-so-droll rappers Jason Fuller and John Vonletcher, each of whom look 16 but are in their early '20s and are equally hilarious on the subject of their active libidos and feelings about the former Czechoslovakia. www.myspace.com/vehicularmusic.

And no rapper brought the hyper-kinetic electro-funk like Spank Rock, the nom de rap of Baltimore club music hero Naeem Juwan, who was backed by two DJs and his laptop-playing sidekick Darko at the Austin dance club Oslo on Friday night. With booming bass beats and an electric stage presence that's one part Dizzee Rascal and one part Jimmy "Dyn-O-Mite" Walker, Spank Rock is the kind of guy who can make a lyric like "If you keep f- around, I'm going to get my gun" sound like an invitation to party. His debut album, "YoYoYoYoYo," hits on April 18. www.spankrock.net.

AUDIO: Listen to Vehicular

Fashion Statements

2006-03-18T08:33:00.000-08:00

Most obnoxious T-shirt indicative of rampant rock snobbery at SXSW: "Everything You Like I Liked 5 Years Ago."

Most amusing Bush-bashing shirt featuring a black cowboy-hatted Dubya looking like Alfred E. Neuman: "Not Eavesdropping: Freedom Listening."

Disco divas and grizzled troubadours

2006-03-17T09:45:00.000-08:00

Two sides of the SXSW coin, closing out Thursday night at oversized clubs on the west side of downtown: At the Austin Music Hall, it was Goldfrapp, the Brit band fronted by blonde bombshell and high-camp chanteuse Alison Goldfrapp, who followed Morrissey (but not the Kinks' Ray Davies, whose "surprise" appearance was a last-minute cancellation) at an all-U.K. showcase that drew a large gay audience. Backed by a quartet that included an electric violinist and mixed glam rock excess and throbbing dance beat, Goldfrapp let her pink cape billow in the wind and banged on a tambourine shaped like the star she is, while showing off her principal assets, so rare in the electronica world: actual pop songs, with choruses, that stick in your head. www.goldfrap.co.uk

Across the way at La Zona Rosa, it was a less glamorous affair. Sixty-nine-year-old Kris Kristofferson reminding the world that he's done more in his career than write "Me & Bobby McGee" and star alongside Wesley Snipes in the "Blade" trilogy. Backed by Stephen Bruton on guitar, KK -- who plays the Keswick Theatre on April 2 with his old buddy Johnny Cash's daughter, Roseanne -- served up a sample of his new Don Was-produced "This Old Road," sang perhaps the greatest hangover song known to man in "Sunday Morning Coming Down," and talked trash at George W. Bush about the war in Iraq in "Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down." The old coot never could sing a lick, but he sure knows how to write a song.

And Kristofferson was followed on stage by an epic guitar army from the Dirty South: the Drive By Truckers, the sextet jointly fronted by Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell, who didn't take the stage until 1:40 a.m., then cranked it up and barreled past the alleged 2 a.m. closing time with an impudent swig from a bottle of Jack Daniels. Look for the Alabama-bred band's fine new "A Blessing And A Curse" in April.

6th Street Serendipity (with audio)

2006-03-17T09:18:00.000-08:00

Closed to traffic but not to drunkards, 6th Street is where the human carnival is to be found. A pair of African American acoustic guitarists singing Nirvana covers here, two out-of-shape dudes in tights and Mexican wrestling masks promoting Jack Black's film "Nacho Libre" there. And on Thursday, blessedly, the Hot 8 Brass Band, straight out of New Orleans but dispersed around the country by Katrina, pumping out the Second Line rhythm with cacophonous passion on a street corner outside a tattoo parlor. As the trumpet case tip jar filled up with Lincolns and Hamiltons, the band lifted a couple hundred souls, joyously reworking Michael Jackson's "Rock With You." "It's been tough," said manager Lee Arnold, doing a brisk business moving "Rock with the Hot 8" CDs. "Guys are all over. One's in New York. Houston. Baton Rouge. But we've got to come together like this and play. It's a family."

www.hot8brassband.com

AUDIO: Listen to the Hot 8 Brass Band

No Sleep Till ... Austin

2006-03-16T19:58:00.000-08:00

Once word was out that the Beasties Boys were screeening their "Awesome: I F**kin' Shot That" concert movie at SXSW, and coming to the festival to meet the press, everybody assumed that a surprise show was in the works. And sure enough MCA, Ad Rock and Mike D. (along with DJ Mixmaster Mike) turned the outdoor venue at Stubb's barbecue joint into the wisecracking old school party place-to-be early Thursday after word of the show was announced in the afternoon. The trio weren't quite in mid-tour form but, still, to paraphrase Mike D. in "Sure Shot," pretty much everything they did was funky, like Lee Dorsey, and the crowd went bananas on their greatest hits like "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" and "Intergalactic."

Ice Cream Social (with audio)

2006-03-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

I went to Roky Erickson's Ice Cream Social at Threadgill's looking for Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5. Found him, in fact, turning in a ripping mid-afternoon set drawn mostly from the 5's sinister self-titled new album (the one with the gun on the cover), backed by his buddy Peter Buck from R.E.M. on bass. But to read more about that, you're going to have to wait and pick up the paper when the 5 come to town to play the World Cafe Live on March 29.

But the big news was that Roky was playing at his own party. A little background: Erickson is an Austin legend if ever there were one, the leader of '60s psychedelic rock pioneers the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, a wailing banshee of a singer and a master of raging garage rock freakouts, well documented on last year's double-disc, Shout Factory compilation "I Have Always Been Here Before." But Roky is also a drug abuse, mental illness and shock therapy casualty. On many occasions since I started coming to Austin in 2003, there have been tributes and occasional Roky performances that have always been sadly touching affairs, not least because he's so loved in the town's music community.

A couple years back, Erickson's brother Sumner (a former tubaist in the Pittsburgh Symphony) started organizing the Ice Cream Socials, a throwback to counterculture Austin (when mind-expanding substances would be consumed along with dessert) at SXSW to raise money for a trust fund to get Erickson proper medical treatment. This year, bands like We Are Scientists played and Amy's ice cream was served by an army of elementary school-age volunteers, including a nine-year-old girl in a "Too Young For Ashton" shirt who handed me my chocolate-and-vanilla.

And Roky was in remarkable shape. He didn't talk much, and he's sporting a badly dyed mullet, but whatever they're giving him now, it's working: it's as if his musical gifts have returned in full, from the full range of the howling voice on "You're Gonna Miss Me," "Two Headed Dog" and of course, "I Walked With A Zombie" to the several wickedly bluesy leads he squeezed out to the delight of the four generations of Austinites in the house. It was uncanny to watch, and inspiring to think that even one so damged as Erickson can come back from the brink.

Roky Erickson website

Listen to Roky Erickson performing "Starry Eyes" at the social

The Mozzer

2006-03-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

Few sights are more familiar at SXSW than that of denim-jacketed Joey Ramone lookalike Rolling Stone writer David Fricke -- once a scribe for long-gone Philadelphia alt-paper The Drummer -- banging his head at all of the hardest-rocking shows in town. And few sights are rarer than that of Morrissey, the professionally dejected, widely adored and usually tight-lipped former leader of the Smiths, who's here to launch his April release Ringleader of the Tormentors, opening up before a packed house of fans.

But here the 46-year-old melancholy Mozzer is -- www.morrisseymusic.com - sitting in a comfy chair and taking Fricke's questions on the same Convention Center stage where Neil Young and Jonathan Demme chatted earlier in the day.

Natty in a blue blazer and sweeping pompadour, Morrissey was thoughtful and dry witted, on the subjects of why he's never been on the cover of Rolling Stone ("I'm too real"), his one-time declaration of celibacy ("Everyone goes through dry spells") , his love for the New York Dolls, his collaboration with Johnny Marr in the Smiths ("It was maybe, the best of both of us ... but he wanted it to end, and that was that") and the $5 million they turned down to re-form the band at this year's Coachella Festival ("Becasue money doesn't enter into it"). As well as making a particularly pertinent point at the band-crazy SXSW about musicians that make music though they have nothing to say: "You go to a gig, and it's abysmal, and you get angry. You buy a CD and it's atrocious, and you get angry. I think maybe there are too many people making music."

Osama, I Hardly Knew You

2006-03-16T10:26:00.000-08:00

Despite the oft heard mantra --"It's all about the music, man" -- SXSW is not ultimately about hearing music, or making music. It's about selling music. And along with the barbecue and tequila shots, industry mahoffs spend a lot of time on their late winter retreat wringing hands over how they're going to continue to make money when the teenagers of the world would rather acquire their intellectual property gratis on the Internet.

Some of these discussions are more creative than most. I come to you live, dear reader, from the Austin Convention Center from a panel called Uploads/Downloads hosted by Tony Wilson, the founder of Manchester, England's Factory Records in the 1980s, who was played by Steve Coogan in the brilliant po-mo music movie 24 Hour Party People (rent it).

It's a hypothetical role-play discussion about a band called the Fat Americans who used Internet viral marketing to be labeled "the coolest band in the world" on the basis of their debut album Cheese With Everything. But now, just as they're releasing their new album Weapons of Mass Instruction and new single "Osama, I Hardly Knew You," they're getting plenty po'd at the pimply pipsqueaks who are keeping them from maximizing their earning potential by ignoring the 11th commandment Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai: "Thou shall not (illegally) download." Not sure if these guys will come to any meaningful conclusions, other than that the music industry is screwed, but it sure makes for a lively conversation.

Breakfast Boasting

2006-03-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

As the Beastie Boys themselves say: 'I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast, but I'm intercontinental when I each French toast.' And SXSW is all about breakfast boasting. That is, if you can shake though the margarita and Shiner Bock fog, and make it out to Las Manitas for some huevos and beans and rice.

The music festival is an enormous beast, and nobody has the same experience. So it becomes a competition: see the most buzz bands, find the cool act nobody's ever heard of before, and hopefully, don't spend to much of your time trying to get across town to one of the 55 official venues, and waiting when you get there. Because, you know something totally awesome is happening some where else while you're standing in line. Sometimes it turns into a debacle, and sometimes it all comes together.

I got off to a good start on Wednesday with Dao Strom, a Vietnamese-American alt-country singer and novelist - check her at www.daostrom.com - who's based in Austin. She was playing at a lousy venue, noisy B.D. Riley's on the 6th Street strip, with plenty of ambient bar noise competing with her quietly composed, sweetly mournful songs, backed by an upright bass, cello and her own electric guitar. Then it was over to the Hideout, a coffehouse on Congress, for Jad Fair, the great experimental art-punk primitive, and his current collaborator, human beat boxer Lumberob. It was all a cappella and looped beats, a Daniel Johnston cover and the strangest version of "The Sunny Side of the Street" you ever heard. Austin can still be friendly to weirdos, and Fair fit right in.

Later, I was not so lucky: Decided to go see how Philadelphia was representing itself and check out Jedi Mind Tricks at the Red Eyed Fly, but it was not to be. Too long a line. So around the corner to Carribean Lights for Seattle geologist-turned-rocker Laura Veirs. Caught two at-times-entrancing songs, with Veirs coming off like a spunkier Suzanne Vega in pigtails and a Sufjan Stevens t-shirt.

Then, what to do in the high profile 1 a.m. slot? K-Os? Chamillionaire? The Go! Team? Philly's own Capitol Years? Instead, opted for Art Brut, the cheeky Brit punks coming to the First Unitarian Church on April 7. Glad I did: singer Eddie Argus is a fabulously funny odd duck of a front man, like Ricky Gervais of The Office with a horrendous mustache. Tight three-chord meta-punk with grabby melodies, a sampling of good new tunes not on the import-only Bang Bang Rock n Roll. I bought not one, but two T-shirts. Indeed, "Modern Art" does make me want to rock out.

Then, a bonus: Walked out onto 6th at 1:45 to find the Go! Team at Exodus, two doors down and with three songs left to play. I had my doubts as to whether the sample-crazy, Brit Up-With-People dance rock collective, who are at the Starlight Ballroom next Thursday, could bring it off live, but let me tell you, they were dispensed with. "Huddle Formation" and "Ladyflash" were incredibly kinetic while retaining a DIY charm, and the Brighton, England, band's lead singer/rapper, a diminutive spitfire named Ninja, is like a fascistic aerobics instructor who won't stop until everybody's on board with the party. With the evening brought to a fitting, exhausting conclusion, I staggered back to the hotel to rest up for Day 2.

South Congress, Take One

2006-03-15T20:51:00.000-08:00

The first thing any sensible SXSW goer does after grabbing their credentials at the convention center - a much less arduous and time consuming process this year than last - is to get away from all the black-clad pale-faced music business types and get out into the Texas springtime to hear some music. There are so many industry parties going on down here it can make your head spin: bands play a showcase at night, and then work it as hard as possible, in as many bars and backyards as possible, all day long. The well deserving Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3, for example, are playing not one, but ten gigs down here in the space of four days.

One relatively safe haven from the bizzers is the art gallery and taco joint scene on south Congress avenue, away from the giant state Capitol building where George W. Bush used to go to work that looms, Texas sized, over downtown. The bohemian spirit that makes Austin unique to the Lone Star State shows its face proudly on south Congress, even as the city has become as well known for being the home of Dell computer as Willie Nelson.

Anyway, it didn't take long for me to be reminded what's wonderful about Austin when I caught Elizabeth McQueen, the bespectacled local rocker, be still my heart, who's an ardent fan of the great British pub-rock acts of the punk rock era, and started her free outdoor set outside Guero's with Nick Lowe's "When I Write The Book About My Love." Followed that up with a stroll down to Yard Dog, the folk art gallery that sells works by musicians like Jon Langford and Tom Russell. Leggy New Orleans pianist Marcia Ball was wandering the gallery (she's playing hear on Saturday as part of a New Orleans tribute) , and a gray-ponytailed guy from Tampa named Ronny Eliot was playing out back, talking smack to Dubya, and turning in a right purty version of Arthur Alexander's "Every Day I Have To Cry Some" with the singing assistance of Rebekah Pulley.

Greetings from Austin

2006-03-15T20:15:00.000-08:00

Hey there, music lovers. This is Dan DeLuca from the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I'm going to be down in Austin, Texas this week trying my hand at this blog business from the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, hereafter known as SXSW.

This is the ever-larger music industry confab's 20th year, and there are over 1300 acts playing offical SXSW showcases, starting today - it's Wednesday as I write - and running through Sunday. And that's not to mention the hordes of acts that come to town without an offical SXSW gig, ranging from the likes of DJ King Britt, who's spinning at club called Barcelona tonight, and who I ran into on my morning flight out of Philadelphia at an hour that neither music critics nor DJs should be required to be out of bed, to the Georgia dudes in the Parkway Handle band, who I caught breaking down some righteous bluesgrass and gospel tunes for tips outside Coyote Ugly at 6th and Nueces this afternoon.

There are scads of Philadelphia bands making the trip - singer songwriter soul man Amos Lee, indie rockers The Teeeth and Mazarin, alt-hip hoppers Jedi Mind Tricks. I'll be catching some of them as the week goes on, while trying not to get too distracted by the passel of superstar-heavy hitters - the Beatie Boys, Neil Young, Morrissey - whose stature as artists of integrity fits in with SXSW's self image as a haven for mavericks.

Any way, anybody who's down here and catches anything great, feel free to chime in, because I'm only going to be able to catch a fraction of the music. Or if you've got any questions about what SXSW is, fire away. I'll try to post updates a few times a day.