SXSW weekend
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008We packed up the guitars and went to Austin, TX last weekend for the annual South By Southwest music conference. We played Saturday night at the Invasion of the GoGirls showcase put on by GoGirlsMusic.com, which is always a great show. GoGirls founder, Madalyn Sklar, does a great job of putting together the showcase and packing the place out (Thanks, Madalyn, for everything!).
We showcase hopped all weekend, checking out bands and enjoying the fest. We caught a great band, Scattered Tress, on Friday night, who are actually from Chicago and we didnt even know it. Saturday we hung at the “South By San Jose” show next to the San Jose hotel passing out fliers for our show and saw Amy Cook and Uh Huh Her. Hanging out at this showcase was probably the best part of the weekend…we hung out, listened to great music, passed out fliers for our show and met some really cool people. Handing out fliers at these types of festivals where there are 100 bands playing at any given time and 100 bands handing out fliers to every person walking down the street is usually a very unmotivating experience. I know personally that I get so sick of having postcards, stickers and fliers forced upon me that I will do almost anything to avoid the situation, including naked cart wheels down the middle of the street just to bypass the whole situation. That being said, I’m very sympathetic towards the people involved, but a bands gotta promote and I must poke and prod you with my flier just as much as the next guy. Mentally prepared for flier rejection, I was pleasantly surprised by everyone at the South By San Jose showcase. Not only did people take fliers, they stopped to talk to us about our music, the festival, music in general, etc… Some people actually came up to me unsolicited and asked if they could have a flier. We met some great people, new friends and had some really cool conversations about music and life in general. I’m still trying to get over the shock of the whole experience! It was such a great community of people, who just love music and wanted to have a good time.
After the South By San Jose showcase we headed up the street to Trophy’s Bar, where we played. It was a great show and the place was packed. Thanks again to Madalyn and GoGirlsMusic for inviting us down and asking us to play. We had a blast.
Sunday the streets of Austin were dead…it was like the whole thing had been erased. Showcases ended Sunday at 2am and by 10am that same day everyone vanished. We had breakfast and then hopped back in the rental car, equipped with our GPS, who we affectionately named “Amy” and headed back to the airport. Having “Amy the GPS” with us was a trip in itself. We decided to invite her along after we saw the “drive like The Locals” GPS advertisement at the Thrifty rent a car office. Apparently we needed a GPS to drive like us. Some things we swore Amy said:
“take Grandpa’s head” (turns out she was trying to say “take ramp ahead”)
“Take a right, I mean left” (no clue what she actually said)
We even sold a CD to Danny, the coolest Thrifty Rent A Car shuttle bus driver ever.
