Willo O'Brien

After sleeping in, enjoying our delicious morning breakfast, coffee & laptop/work sessions, we headed over to the Convention Center to check out some of the Trade show. Much eye candy to be seen there… and free {guitar} picks galore… Oh! And free beer!! There’s a lot of free beer at this ol’ SXSW thing!!

Then we headed over to the Caucus club where we saw the end of The Rosebuds (who were good!) and then had the distinct pleasure of watching Britt Daniel (lead singer from Spoon) play a solo acoustic set. So fantastic!!!

After that we cruised over to the Lucky Lounge where Lane was, and the Decemberists were playing. We saw them several months back and they’ve been a band I hardly even listen to anymore, but I didn’t mind seeing them again. Afterwards we all went to grab something to eat. Tantek & Matt met up with us too and we enjoyed a quick meal at some place called Paradise (I think it was called) on 6th St. A fairly basic quick eats kinda place, but I had these really yummy Bar-BQ chicken tacos… only in Texas :)

That night we had a lot to choose from, but we decided to first hit the StellaStarr*show at The Red Eyed Fly… however shortly after getting there & getting in the door, we realized we didn’t get there early enough, and we had to stand in this tricky (aka sucky) second line to get into the back. Bummer! This rarely happened as with the pass you’re in most every show with an ID and a flash of the badge, and it’s especially rock star when there’s a long line of wristband peeps waiting and you just get to go right to the front and in the door! sweeeeet. But like I said, this instance sucked – and we could barely see or hear StellaStarr* as they finished up their set. We got in right after that & watched The French Kicks… who I saw open for Hot, Hot, Heat in Sept 03, and as much as I love their CD, I STILL can’t get into them live. Next up on the lineup was supposed to be The Unicorns, but apparently they had some kind of visa/border problems coming here from Canada, so they replaced their set with The Dears. I had wanted to check them out, so we stayed for a few songs – and I even bought one of their CD’s!

At this point it was about 12:30, so we headed over to a bar called Friends to watch The Wrens play their 1am show. It was PACKED!!! But we stuck it out and enjoyed possibly the BEST show we saw the entire time!! OH MY GAWD ARE THEY AWESOME LIVE!!!! I had no IDEA they were going to rock so hard, but I was absolutely blown away. They were incredible!!

Wednesday, March 17 – St Patties Day!!

After standing in a super long line to pick up our badges at the convention center and then picking up our huge shwag bag o goodies, Rick & I headed out to dinner at Kinichi. We were hungry for sushi & this place looked amazing… and it was!! We had the yummiest meal, with some tasty sake and saporro too! yumm!

OH! And on the way there we ran into Matt Nathanson! He’s *such* a cutie and I still swear we were meant to be married in another life. *sigh* :) hahaaa – but seriously it was great to run into eachother and chat w/ him about everything. He’s awesome!

Alright, so after eating we headed over to Stubbs where we caught The Division of Laura Lee (couldn’t get into them), The Von Bondies (ROCKED live!!) and the beginning of International Noise Consipiracy (Who song by song, revealed they were all wearing matching black & red striped shirts). They were alright, but we weren’t that into them – and knowing the badges around our neck were a sure ticket into about 50 other shows, we decided to hop out and check out some other shows. This also meant taking off before Joan Jett & The Blackhearts went on… but we did see her walking down the street the next day :) I have no idea how her show went.

We left & stopped in Elysium down the street to see a little bit of I am The World Trade Center, who is a local SF band and we’d heard about forever… they were a fun little girl/guy duo – very upbeat and fun to watch. It made us miss Jason & Lisa of the Lovemakers :) Lisa of which we coincedentally ran into on Friday & said hello to!! I’m going to see them play this Tuesday night, toO!

So anyway – after that we basically hopped around for about an hour or so, stopping in bars here & there to see what was going on… One band called Saturday’s Radar was actually pretty good… and another bar had this solo guy w/ guitar belting out a mighty “No Woman, No Cry” in his own unique way… but sadly behind him the bar had this huge screen that just played TV commercial after TV commercial and since the guy’s back is to the screen he has no idea what the entire bar is looking at. Hilariously I got a couple shots of the most classic one, him playing right in front of the commercial that had this old man jumping for joy, and the Viagra logo over it. Poor guy.

We finished up the night at Blender Bar at the Ritz for Polyvinyl’s (label home of Rainer Maria, Red Hot Valentines, Owen, etc) “Decibully” and “Volcano, I’m Still Excited” < who I’d been wanting to check out. Their set was really fun – and the 3 guys that make up the band were really cool and fun to watch. I enjoyed their set a lot and Rick and I were having a great time after the first full night of SXSW music madness.

We finished up the night with a tasty slice of pizza from this crazy metalhead pizza joint.

Now, lemme give you a little run down here of the scene if you’ve never been to Austin or SXSW. Downtown’s 6th Street is insane!! There’s bar after bar – and granted this is a little more insane cuz it’s SXSW – but *every single bar* is set up to hold a band playing music – which is so awesome!! I mean, we’re talkin we saw bands in the airport – they’re at coffeeshops, everywhere! Combine that with the fact they close the streets off on the weekends and there’s pizza by the slice everywhere, we were about ready to pack our bags & move here!! :p Oh! And another thing that’s so awesome is that it’s such amazing weather!! Granted in the summer I think it probably gets insanely hot – as even with the 85 degree + humidity weather we were getting, I was dying at times – but the thing that nice weather means in a city is that there’s tons of places that are outdoors!! Bars all have rooftops to hang out & have drinks out in the warm evening air. Dreamy!

Everyone is also really nice there, too. The only thing I didn’t like was that they of course can still smoke in bars. blech!! I hate cigarette smoke! The outdoor venues were better for this cuz atleast we weren’t trapped in a small room with all that smoke – but never the less, it sucks when someone next to us would light up and submit us to their smelly, toxic smoke. That’s one thing that makes me feel like I can never leave San Francisco… I love it that smoking is banned in bars here. I also think I might miss the liberal and open conciousness of San Francisco, too. I mean, Austin is heads above the rest of Texas, but there’s no avoiding the fact you’re still smack in the middle of a very conservative, homophobic, Bush-lovin’ state.

Anyway – besides those last few things – Austin is awesome!! :) I can’t wait to go back next year.