As you know, for the last week The Bay Bridged has been out in Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest Music Festival. This year we were able to catch over 40 bands, comedians, and performers over this four day event. We were also very fortunate to check out a few of the events with good friends and local SF musicians Sholi, Finest Dearest, and Nick from Love is Chemicals.
Early on in the festival we caught The Dodos at the Peacock Lounge for an early afternoon day show performance. Meric and Logan brought along some friends to sing some songs and definitely took the crowd with their guitar picking and intense drum sounds.
One of the events we were most looking forward to was the SF Underground Showacasethat we posted about last week. Complete with gift bags from Good Vibrations and copies of the SF Weekly, it was in many ways as if we hadn’t left the city. We arrived just as Thee More Shallows started their set that included a couple of great-sounding new songs off of their upcoming album that will be released by Anticon Records in the coming months.
San Francisco based Sugar and Gold played a fun set of disco-pop which was all the more appreciated when we were told that they had left San Francisco in their van right after their March 13th show to make it to Austin for this party. Black Fiction took the stage shortly afterwards and got our feet moving to their psych-pop mix of steady beats and falsetto vocals.
Capping the event was Bart Davenport performing solo on his acoustic guitar. As always, Davenport swooned the crowd with his great pop melodies and exuberant stage presence. This performance came only hours after he performed with Honeycut earlier that day (an apparent first) which was quite impressive.
Later in the festival we headed on over to the NY2LON party over at Habana Calle 6 to check out San Francisco’s Trainwreck Riders. Their intricate songwriting and country-rock-with-hints-of-punk sound got people dancing, which is a feat in and of itself at SXSW.
Even though we strictly focus on the Bay Area music scene here on the site, South by Southwest afforded us the opportunity to check out some of what’s going on in the rest of the indie music scene, both present and past. Now reunited, The Smoking Popes played Metro’s 25th Anniversary party over at Emo’s Main Stage, offering up a bunch of their punk-pop classics as well as a few new songs off their next album to be released later this year.
Austin’s own Ghostland Observatory blew the crowd away at the Playboy Rock the Rabbit SXSW Afterparty. This invite-only event also featured performances by Monsters are Waiting… and Illinois, and DJs Omar (Popscene SF) and Kele Okereke (Bloc Party) spinning in between sets. With wandering Playboy Bunnies, elaborate decorations, and free top-shelf booze and Stubb’s Bar-B-Que, this was one of the more surreal events we’ve ever had the pleasure of attending.
Well, we’re now back in the city, a little hung over and a little sore, but newly energized and excited about some new projects we’ll be unveiling in the coming months!
