Austin Redux
BOOKS READ: The World Is Flat (Mike), Water For Elephants (Mike), Empire Falls (Jason), The Things They Carried (Mike and Jason), Blood Meridian (Jon), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (Beth), Kill Your Idols (Mike and Jason), Deep Survival (Mike), Final Days of Dead Celebrities (Beth)
MILES TRAVELED: Too damn tired to go and look at the odometer.
CURRENT CITY: Durham, NC
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We’ve been sleeping in the van a lot. Here’s the crazy part: I not only don’t mind but a part of me likes it. In Austin, our choice spot was by the Capitol building. Kinda close to hotels to use the bathrooms. Didn’t have to negotiate the traffic coming in to Austin. In the morning, families were passing by the van on the way to the Capitol tours. Jon said that he felt like we were an exhibit:
PLEASE DON’T FEED THE STRUGGLING ROCK BAND
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Austin.
Austin.
I hate it there.
I love it there.
I hate it there during South By Southwest.
I bet I’d love it there any other time of the year.
It’s the reason we’re doing this trip. It’s a really dumb reason but sometimes you just need a reason and it’ll do. It’s been two years since the last time we were there. You can read about the 2007 experience here if you’d like. Honestly, it’s a lot of reading. For those of you who are fairly new to reading these blogs o’ mine, it might give perspective. Shit, I don’t even know if Jon read these. I’ve met a lot of you the past two years and I’m not even sure if you’re aware that we were there in 2007:
SXSW 2007 Part 1: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Pee
SXSW 2007 Part 3: Irony Mullet
SXSW 2007: A Tale of Not Fitting Into Anything
SXSW 2007 Part 4: South by South Pissed
SXSW 2007 Part 5: Valient Fav and the Shit Fishsticks
SXSW 2007 Part 7: A Good Van Is Hard To Find
SXSW 2007 Part 8: The Long Goodbye and even Longer Hello
And if I didn’t feel pretty much exactly the same way, I wouldn’t even post these. The biggest difference is that it seems the new thing wasn’t so much skinny jeans and irony mullets but neon Ray Bans.
Way back in the fall, Beth asked me if we’re submitting to South By Southwest this year.
“No. I have contributed to the SXSW scholarship fund for the past couple of years and I think it’s worthless”
Our manager Pat asked if I therefore objected to playing at SXSW.
“No. I don’t object at all to playing. I’ll play wherever we get a gig. I don’t care. If there’s a PA and a microphone, I’ll play. I don’t care where. I’m just not submitting anymore”
We played at a place called Headhunters. It wasn’t part of any official SXSW show. It was essentially us and a bunch of metal/punk bands. We played well. Not too many people, mind you, but that’s the way it goes. I think part of this whole trip is to find out if we’re built for this: Do we get along? Do we play well? Consistently? Do we play well after driving six hours? Seven hours? Eight hours? Can we still do this when we play to nobody? Again? It’s also a question of endurance. Austin was our seventh show in a row, which we’ve never done before.
Let me get this out of the way: I think South By Southwest would be awesome if it weren’t for the music. It’s everywhere. And it’s pretty annoying. Beth had a great observation that you start to feel like you are hearing Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood ALL THE TIME. I really believe that it’s true. A lot of the alternative festivals to SXSW going on at the same time are more hard rock driven and you really do start to hear Dr. Feelgood ALL THE TIME. At one point, Beth and I just got in the van and drove. We drove a few miles outside of the city to a Borders. We just wanted to sit down and have some coffee. Read a little bit. Relax. Get away from the noise.
Guess what?
We walked into a Borders holding a SXSW Songwriting Competition. I’m not shitting you. Some things I will not necessarily shit you about but I will just exaggerate the shit just a tad.
Not this.
We could not escape shitty music.
NOTE: I do not have a Motley Crue bias. In fact I love them. That’s just the song Beth happened to say but it could’ve easily worked with Youth Gone Wild or Paradise City.
Maybe I’m wrong about this but you have to accept something about SXSW: it’s not for normal people. I was going to write that it’s not for fans of music but that’s not true. It’s for fans of music - that do music for a living. Big, big difference. It’s for critics. It’s for booking agents. It’s for managers. It’s for the bloggers. It’s for the media. It’s for labels. It’s for people that hear Dr. Feelgood all the time and still find it in their souls to still love music and to write/promote/whatever it. But there is a big difference between those people, the ones that have to listen to a lot of crappy music for a living and probably like Pet Sounds a little too much, and the rest of us: people that only listen to crappy music if you are innocent or dumb (or both) enough to watch American Idol or listen to commercial rock, country and rap.
Are all those people needed? It would be awfully fun and punk rock to say “No man! Book your own fucking life!”. But it wouldn’t be true for all or even most bands and most people that say that statement in the 21st Century haven’t actually done booking. For some bands, these industry people aren’t needed and the bands do their own publicity and booking and own their label. Certainly it’s possible to have success and do it that way. For others, like us, it’s not the case. We generally take the approach of trying to do things ourselves. If it becomes too burdensome or if we’ve reached too many brick walls, then we look for help elsewhere. If it weren’t for some of these industry people, I would’ve went back to teaching a long time ago and played out once every few months with Red Collar which effectively would’ve broken us up. The managers? Some bands don’t need them. We do. The publicity people? Maybe not but ours was necessary for the EP. We tried doing it ourselves and it didn’t work. We met a lot of people, a lot of great people, who never would’ve heard of us if it weren’t for a publicity company working it. Then again, I know people that had some really shitty experiences with publicity companies. We’re going to try someone out for our touring and see how that goes. What about the booking people? Dear Santa Claus…that’s all I want for Christmas because booking ain’t no picnic and has never, ever gotten easier. Then again, I know some bands that had a horrible time with their booking agents. Labels? Nowadays Labels are effectively managers. Andrew started his own to release the Hands Up EP. Lots of people have released their own stuff and done well. French Kiss Records, Merge, Dischord…all artist founded labels. Then again, you and I would’ve never heard of a majority of bands if it weren’t for a label including the ones I just mentioned. We don’t have one now. Some bands yes. Some bands no. Is it going to be necessary for us? I don’t know.
I think that this industry is incredibly confusing. I honestly can’t figure it out for the life of me. It would be nice to say that all you have to do is play and eventually you get a crowd but that isn’t the case unless you’re a hippy band. I don’t know how many times we’ve played Charlotte and we still don’t have a consistent crowd there. I think a lot of those industry folks do have it figured out to at least a small degree. How else can you account for the success of Fiery Furnaces?
I’m certainly not trying to convince anyone out there to do it one way or the other. I think every band should try and be self-sufficient and for the things that aren’t working, if you can get someone else to do it then you should. These industry people obviously have some value and SXSW is where they get to work and have some fun though their idea of fun and mine are two different things.
Once you accept whom SXSW is for and don’t argue with it and just accept it, you’ll have a better time of it.
I did.
Jason
