SXSW Recap and Recovery

As Mitch said last night, it sure is great to get away, and it sure is great to be back.

30+ hours in a van end-capped 2 days of amazing music in a beautiful city with perfect weather. Even the bad bands were pretty good. I'll be posting a full selection of pics and video soon enough, but for now here's a few of the high points:



Here's a better look at our street corner kids - I think they were called AM (at least that's what the free sticker I got says).

Through a chance encounter with a local lunatic, we found out about this amazing Daniel Lanois show at the convention center. He was playing in a duo config with drummer Brian Blade, and it was straight-up church. Haunting guitar textures and the tastiest rhythms you've ever heard served as the setting for Lanois' aching voice and elegant songcraft. This show was a spiritual experience that in itself would have justified the whole trip.

The last party of the trip was probably the most fun. AJC writer Shane Harrison was at our show at Touche (more later), and he told us about a gathering of Atlanta bands happening later. We soon found ourselves - where else? - at a seedy gay bar a few blocks south of 6th Street called Chain Drive. It was a quintesentially Atlanta event, as if the entire East Atlanta / Little FIve Points scene had been loaded onto a flatbed and driven to Austin, with performances by such luminaries as Tiger Tiger (who we just missed), Anna Kramer, who was amazing (best rhythm section in town), and the Pendletons, an Athens band who brought the power-pop in a huge way. Plus also there was a hula hoop contest.

Here's Anna with The Lost Cause: Shannon Mulvaney on bass and Adam Renshaw on drums. Calling Adam a drummer is like calling the Saturn 5 a rocket. Doesn't quite get at it.
We were at Chain Drive rocking to the Pendletons when we got word that downtown Atlanta had been rocked by a tornado. Watching hometown bands, reading CNN on your celly that your hometown is being blown away - it was a surreal moment in a weekend of surreal moments, a peaceful respite in a musical oasis surrounded by like-minded fellow travellers, misfits, tourists, Jesus freaks, and Korean marching bands. Now that I've a shower and some sleep, I'm ready to go back.