SxSW: The Final Frontier

So as Saturday night draws to a close there's little left to do but set a mean, cruel, and merciless alarm clock to rouse me out of bed for a long flight home tomorrow morning. And PS since when is Chicago between Austin and NYC? Someone get me whoever runs American Airlines on the phone stat. But I digress.

Anyways, well if a picture is worth a thousand words this post may put us close to five figures. Let's get started.

This morning I met up with Justin Nozuka to tape his one hour special for DirectTV's Blaze music programming with exclusives from SxSW. I'm not sure what I was expecting but it definitely exceeded that. With amazing production (it must have taken about 10 eighteen wheelers to get all that gear into the convention center), pristine audio and video, and a star studded lineup of performers including Daniel Lanois, Dizzie Rascal, Sia, Tift Merrit, and many more, it was an honor to be a part of it. Here's Justin doing the interview portion of the special:


Here's Justin playing for broadcast and a large and enthusiastic in-studio crowd...


...and hanging post-show with the show's booker Siobhan Schanda:


The afternoon was full of highlights (among them a blazing set by Eli "Paperboy" Reed at my favoritely-named-bar Mean Eyed Cat) but I have to say the day's true highlight was when we somehow carved enough time from the schedule to drive out to Lockhart, Texas for a dinner at the legendary -- frankly world renowned -- BBQ establishment Kreutz' Market:


It's hard to do justice to the spectacle that greeted us there. About an acre of hardwood, stacked high. Probably two dozen smokers, giant slabs of extremely moist and well seasoned meat, some really sharp knives to serve us with, brown paper wrapping, and signs informing us that utensils were for the weak. Behold:


Not too many minutes later the assembled crowd was suitably meat-drunk. Here's SFM's Matt Hanks, right, and my brother Chris kicking back after demolishing a few armloads of smoked meat:


Once the beefness wore off enough to venture out into the downtown melee, I stopped in to join up with one of my favorite people in the world -- Marc Connor, manager of Jamie Cullum among others -- and his compatriots from Air, and head out to catch a few things I'd been meaning to see, including Crystal Castles, and a predictably raucous (and great) night-closing set by British Sea Power:


It's time to close out yet another great year at SxSW. I'll probably be hurting a little in the morning, but I'll be buzzing about it for weeks to come.