[Si] TV

• ‹ previous
• 8 of 11
• next ›

SXSW always proves to be an adventure. This time around was no exception! We've been on the road over 2 months now and rolled into Austin after playing Dallas the night before.

What are some fun/ funny stories?

-Friday night was the night after our showcases and the 8 week anninversary of leaving LA for tour so... we had a little too much fun! It was the first time in two months we had a few days off in a row so we took advantage. One cool part about playing SXSW is all the free booze. There are all these "parties" to go to; the Gibson party where we saw Moby play and got free booze, the Hunnypot party where we played an acoustic set and got free booze, Spin party where we saw a bunch of people who thought they were "awesome" and drank up the open bar... you get the idea. Boozefest. We went to Mardi Gras earlier in the tour and it has a similar spirit of debauchery but it's all about music (religion for some) instead of religion, culture and history. So yeah. We ended up swimming in a little cold creek behind Jovina's where we later watched Girl In A Coma rock it. Yes. There are pictures somewhere. Oh next to that little creek is where we later found Chris fast asleep.

Gee, which one is Moby?

What went wrong?

-Our showcase seemed like it was going to go wrong... not our part of it but the details. You would think the BMI showcase at Club De Ville would be managed pretty well but no. Our stage manager was nowhere to be found, they switched our set time AND were running about 45 minutes behind! We were a little concerned BUT... see below, "What went right?"

-Another funny/wrong thing happened at a punk rock showcase at Red Seven (The Cute Lepers, The Horrorpops, G. G. Elvis). We strangely had to deal with a serious case of mistaken identity. Apparently some guy thought Luis was the dude who had sex with his tranny wife in the ladies room. It came to fisticuffs. Good thing we were traveling in a posse! The weird thing is I actually did see a dude in the ladies room... maybe thats what they were doing!

What went right?

-Our showcase ended up going better than we could've imagined! Everyone we expected to see and more! SXSW is a funny thing because it's a strange mix of the business/corporate people in the music business AND the most serious music loving hardcore fans. We saw the guy responsible for getting us the
commercial, a fan from Germany and our friend Johnny who has NEVER missed a show we've played in Austin in 3 years watching the show side-by-side. A surreal and cool merging of worlds for us. The actual performance was short, it was almost 1:30 when we started, but it ended up being one of the most energy and emotion packed shows of the tour. I was so happy. So relieved!

-We also got really lucky getting our friends (The Sweethearts, Sean & Julia and Shannon) into shows and sneaking them around! We had wristbands that got us into a lot of the shows and parties but our friends had to sneak along. We would stack ourselves up so every other person had a wrist band and the ones who didn't just walked fast and acted distracted. We would also have them pretend to be us if we were on a guest list! Hey... gotta do what we gotta do.

Who did you get to meet/see that you were excited about?

- Kim Fowley - "creater" of The Runaways (Joan Jett's first band). He plays us a lot on Sirius Underground Garage but we hadn't met him yet. He had us pose for a bunch of funny photos with him.

- Janeane Garofalo - she was doing some comedy stuff for SXSW and Mess With Texas Party. She's actually Luis' distant cousin so he had a good excuse to walk up and talk to her! She was just as we expected. So cool, so sweet.

- Steve Buscemi - he's such a neat actor! I actually physically ran into him accidentally as we were leaving The Ritz where we watched a couple episodes from the new NOFX show on FUSE that our pal Jeff worked on. Yeah. That meant we got to talk to NOFX again too.

Any other quirky highlights...

-The acoustic set we played at the Hunnypot party was really really neat! Luis and I write almost everything on acoustic guitars so when we can perform the songs like that it's really special. I think the audience likes it because it's totally different and they can actually hear and understand what I'm saying!

-That taco place 3 meals in a row! Yeah. There was this taco stand called Alamo or something downstairs from the Ritz and we ate tacos there 3 meals in a row! Fast, cheap, yum!

Show highlights, in no particular order included:

G.G. Elvis

NOFX

Girl In A Coma

Lucero

Beat Union

Be Your Own Pet

Teenage Bottlerocket

The Breeders