Austin space
When you're drunk on the street in Austin for South by Southwest, seeing people from Nashville you could bump into any night is something of a novelty. We reeled with excitement that we were seeing fellow Nashvillians in rock clubs and at bars — in a whole different city! From there, things dissolved into a cacophony of every band in the world playing at the same time, with potent doses of awesome interspersed throughout.
Catching Nashville's former best-kept secret Caitlin Rose at an away game — in this case, the American Songwriter showcase on Wednesday — isn't that much different from the ones on her home turf. The crowd is just as a big, the audience is just as (if not more) appreciative, and Rose doesn't skimp on that trademark sassy charm. On the back patio, our chat with Theory 8 honcho Aaron Hartley was cut short by the thumping sounds of some electroclash-y hipster-hop drifting over the fence from next door. Turns out it was MC Dominique Young Unique — "Show My Ass" was a standout number, if only for the hilarious contrast it provided: Nashville's The Civil Wars were playing an earnest, harmony-laden version of "You Are My Sunshine" inside, and thus an inadvertent live mashup — which we're going to call "You Are My Ass"/"Show My Sunshine" — was born.
At that point, we finally drifted over to the Third Man Rolling Record Store at Fourth and Congress, but not before bumping into Jack White himself standing stoically on the front steps of the Driskoll Hotel. Nice dude. Busy dude. Third Man's Ben Swank told us he'd played "Dead Leaves" and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," at the truck earlier.
After catching Tristen and The Ringers at The Phoenix, we saw OFF! at Emo's. If you're not up on OFF!, it's former Circle Jerks/Black Flag frontman Keith Morris, with guitarist Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), bassist Steven Shane McDonald (Redd Kross) and drummer Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket From the Crypt/Hot Snakes). With Rubalcaba driving the whole apparatus with unbelievable force and precision, Coats and McDonald just go off with a delectable fury. But what really makes OFF! great is Morris, who is the band's mouth but, more importantly, its heart. Plenty of dudes can scream their heads off, but you can feel that Morris is living it up there. OFF! rip through classic LA hardcore the way only a bunch of crusty old vets know how to do it.
Opening with "Attitude," the classic from their 1982 self-titled debut, the legendary Bad Brains gave us comfort immediately that they weren't going to skimp on the old shit. But the now-elderly H.R. isn't the frontman he used to be — he's a rather stoic figure onstage who stands with his hands folded. His trademark angsty growl is more of a whimpering yodel now, and as much as it hurts to say, Bad Brains didn't quite blow our mind as much as we'd hoped.
We took off for the Brooklyn Vegan showcase up the street at Swan Dive to catch Sharon Van Etten. A bit of a gear-shift going from the pit at Emo's, but no regrets. All the touring has only made SVE better, and the packed-in crowd loved her. Van Etten told us afterward that Jon Hamm was at the show, and we were like, "Oh, really?" and nodded like we knew who she was talking about. Then she said helpfully, "You know, Don Draper."
Being asked to step aside so Duran Duran could access the stage at Stubb's, and watching the crowd part to make way for Simon Le Bon, was singularly bizarre. Anyhow, Raphael Saadiq was, as per usual, a stellar showman, with a world-class backing band that's worth seeing on any occasion. The crowd seemed restless, though, and the second Le Bon began singing the opening strains of "A View to a Kill," fortysomethings and irony-embracing hipsters alike were all too happy to dance into the fire, as it were. People predictably lost their shit over "Hungry Like the Wolf," and "Notorious" was delightful, but we were particularly surprised to not hear "Rio." Time to sleep it off.
Thursday started out with lots of free beer and lots of free stuff we'll never use. We caught Those Darlins at Swan Dive — they've come a hell of a long way since their tap-dancing coffee-shop gigs. With vivacity to burn, the Darlins have mostly abandoned their Carter Fam homages in favor of punky psychedelic barn burners, and this Austin crowd couldn't have been more impressed.
Then it was the Pitchfork party for The Dodos, who played a set riddled with dexterous finger-picking and superb vocal melodies, and later, a J. Mascis solo set. He covered Edie Brickell's "Circle," which made perfect sense as a J. Mascis song, but it was all downhill from there, with a boring, noodly performance full of noodly guitar noodles. We took off and soon came across Eminem signee YelaWolf, slated to open for Wu-Tang later in the evening, popping ollies on a skateboard outside an office building.
Despite what was widely reported, there was no "riot" at The Strokes' massive outdoor free concert at Auditorium Shores. More a momentary charge of gate-crashers who managed to take out a sizable enough chunk of the surrounding chain-link fence and overwhelm unwitting security and police. Soon after, with the backdrop of city lights sparkling off the river as the sun set in the distance, 2001's saviors of rock ripped into "What Ever Happened?" from Room on Fire. Save for five selections off their fourth release, Angles, the band mainly stuck to staples from their first two records, turning in a set that was short, to the point, and great. The biggest moment, and easily the grandest of the festival, came when a fall-of-Saigon-worthy fireworks show shot off from a barge behind the stage as the band closed with "Last Nite" as 30,000-plus people sang along. We may have shed a tear.
High on entitlement and in search of more free shit, we ventured up to the Noisey.com launch party on Friday, which was to feature performances from Bun B, Ariel Pink and JEFF later. We turned up a bit early and thus just snacked and boozed heavily, though the website — described by its creators as "a video-driven music discovery platform [curated by Vice], documenting the most talented emerging musicians from around the world" — seems intriguing. We ended up talking during the official presentation, however, and were soundly shushed by a very serious young man. Pardon our buzz-induced discourtesy, but we couldn't hear anything! Anyway, site looks cool, no hard feelings, blah blah.
At the Merge Records showcase at The Parish, we caught exemplary sets by Versus, Wye Oak, American Music Club and Telekinesis, all leading up to Wild Flag, who absolutely blew the place apart: Carrie Brownstein leaping and mid-air kicking into chord changes, Mary Timony finger-tapping and playing her Jazzmaster behind her head, Brownstein and Timony crossing swords mid-song and nearly crashing into each other during dense, spiraling psychedelic noise-rock passages that segue into pop-harmony breakdowns and rough-and-tumble classic-rock chord riffs — all that, and completely UFW.
What ensued as OMD hit the stage at Stubb's, however, seemed like a surreal nightmare: Just after 1 a.m., a camera boom (reportedly weighing 350 pounds) plummeted from its position onto several fans near the stage. Barricades were moved to block off the crowd, and emergency workers tended to the injured. Two of the victims — one man and one woman — appeared to at least initially lose consciousness and were eventually carried out on stretchers, and one appeared to require serious medical attention. Each individual exited to a respective round of applause, blood was washed from the gravel, and the barricades were moved back in place.
The set may have been truncated due to curfew restrictions — whittled down to seven songs — but when that sum includes "Tesla Girls" and three-card-punch of "If You Leave" — which the band described as their "Hollywood moment" — synth-pop's greatest song, "Enola Gay," and "Electricity" played in rapid succession, it almost makes you glad they were left with no choice but to give you 25 minutes of all-killer. And that wasn't even the best part: Seeing frontman Andy McCluskey ham it up to 11 with his victory-laden, interpretive dance moves at age 51 must be seen to be believed.
As panel discussions go, Saturday's "Nashville Now" was pretty lively, and by the end there were about 40 people (not all from Nashville!) there to hear some real talk — via Next Big Nashville's Jason Moon Wilkins, Third Man Records' Ben Swank, Turbo Fruits' Jonas Stein, Claritas Capital's Mark Montgomery, Ditto Music's Lee Parsons and Grimey's' Mike Grimes — about Nashville's musical diversity, our industry infrastructure, our tech infrastructure, our publishing, recording and sound reinforcement infrastructure, and also our talent infrastructure. Grimey especially loves the word "infrastructure," so be sure to mention it when you see him. (Thanks to Jonas for a nice shout-out to the Scene.) Fun talk, actually, and the first indication of the day that people are noticing Nashville in new ways.
We made it to District 301 for a quick-fire set from Dee Goodz. There wasn't a big crowd, but the people who were there had all moved up to the front by the time he dropped "Bananas," and everyone seemed to know the hook. He ended with a long, a cappella rap that changed speeds several times and had everybody's attention. Not bad for a Nashville kid playing his first SXSW.
The Panache showcase at Mohawk felt more like a continuation of the Freakin' Weekend than it did part of SXSW — which is fucking great! Natural Child, PUJOL and Turbo Fruits were all top-notch, and JEFF the Brotherhood still put on the best show Nashville rock has to offer — they put a serious charge into the packed patio crowd, and Jake Orrall both climbed the speaker tower and jumped into the audience, though not in the same sequence. Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber was on hand, and at one point we told him, rather immodestly, "There's a lot of cool shit going on in Nashville right now." Without hesitating, he replied: "Definitely." We give that response a 9.2.
We'd heard talk of a 1 a.m. set from the recently reunited Death From Above 1979 at Beauty Bar, but so had way more than the 200 people who could actually fit inside. We slipped around back, where scores of restless fans had begun to scale and rock the fence of Beauty Bar's back yard, as DFA played out of sight beneath a tent. Some attendees climbed atop a parked car — another watched from a rooftop across the alley — and the crowd eventually pulled down the Beauty Bar's back fence, sending staff and security into scramble mode. At one point, the fence was righted, but mounted police still showed up to control the crowd. We heard reports of both pepper spray and either stun guns or Tasers, and while we remained just outside the fray, we did in fact hear the telltale "ZZZZAP!" of some sort of electroshock weapon. Hearing DFA's "Black History Month" set to a scene of such unbridled chaos ... well, there's no other way to hear it, really. We slipped away and headed back to the hotel, closing out another SXSW on a weird but high note.
For even more of The Spin — including Cheer Up Charlie Daniels' victorious Road to Bonnaroo set at Mercy Lounge, Queens of the Stone Age at The Ryman and more SXSW photos and hijinks — go to www.nashvillecream.com. And as always, email thespin@nashvillescene.com with your late-night taxi-hailing tips.
