sxsw ...

There are no available flights out of Austin tomorrow, so alas I'm leaving today. I'm not even going to look at the nights showcases to see what I'm going to miss. As it is, I'm glutted on sound, and started to be spoilt for it. On a meandering 60-minute stroll from Radio's Mike's taping to 6th street yesterday, I managed to catch a song or two and/or walk by performances by the Austin Lounge Lizards, a Next Big Nashville Showcase, The Shout Out Louds, and Chuck Prophet before arriving at a very long and exasperating sound check by SHE and HIM (when it got to be 40 minutes after their scheduled performance, we left to catch a bit of Limbeck). It was hot, I was cooked and eventually found myself at the Paste/Stereogum lounge for air conditioning as much as the sets by We Still Love You Boris Yeltsin and Liam Finn (the latter was ok, but I was glad to finally see what he was about-right now, mostly a lot of urgent drumming) before unplugging from the music free-for-all and escaping to South Congress on my way to Trophy's for the Go Girls gig. Hanging out at Guero's, eating tamales with an animator from LA and catching a bit of the Radar Brothers on the patio was more my speed & I was very relaxed by the time I got to Trophy's, which was emptying out from a rock/metal showcase of some sort. Kudos to the Green Bracelet crew for handling sound so I had that much more a satisfying turn on stage (photo left ©GoGirlsMusic). Playing then meant I was missing Shelby Lynne but the sad part of SXSW is ya simply can't see it all. I hung around long enough to catch four more acts, a highlight being Treva Blomstock and her band from Nashville, before heading back downtown for Rogue Wave and Dr. Dog. I was in line for the former and Dr. Dog was fun and enthusiastic but the night was winding down for me. I once again ran into some of the Scissors for Lefty crew on 6th St. so we stuck around a bit longer to catch a couple of songs of their packed 1am gig at Thirsty Nickel.