SXSW Austin Texas
Two flights and we arrived in Austin, Texas at half 8 in the evening. Chad, our host for the week, greeted us at the airport he’s a lovely guy with a great knowledge of music. We also met ‘Eno’ chad’s little dog, then since we’d been up since 6am we decided to have an early night and prepare ourselves for the festival.
Tuesday morning came and we headed downtown to collect our wristbands and explore Austin city centre. Austin is really nice with it’s big wide streets, we walked round in t-shirts and sandals, the grass in sun-scorched in places and it’s still only spring! We made our way over to our first day party - a half hour uphill walk in heat and sun past the Texas Longhorns football stadium - at a pizzeria. The gig was outside under a canopy and we could smell pizza while we played. The soundguy/organiser was really enthusiastic and we enjoyed playing despite not playing our best. We then got a lift back to Chad’s and got ready to go see some bands downtown. We saw a great line up of You Say Party We Say Die (Ace!), The Muffs (brilliant energetic punk) and The Veils (a really emotional and crazy performance).
Yesterday we got up and went to a nice little studio tucked away in a part of town full of car part shops and high pressure canister warehouses. It overlooked a green valley with a huge river flowing in the bottom. We recorded four songs from our album for a video on a website. Highlights from the evening downtown include an Athlete acoustic performance (Dan & Andy met Joel the singer afterwards), Barcelona, Yellow Fever and Estelle! We all stayed out pretty late and the boys came home pretty drunk!
Today we visited a cool vintage clothes shop on the way to play our second day party, it was a gig outside a bicycle shop, we played just before Allo Darlin’ who were fantastic as usual :) it was a nice crowd who seemed to enjoy listening to us play in the afternoon sun. We’re back at the house now, getting ready to head downtown to play our showcase gig at a venue called Mowhawk, it’s looked nice and busy other nights when we’ve been past so we’re really looking forward to playing.
