SxSW In Full Swing, And Rock.

It looks like perfect wide open clear Texas skies for the third day in a row now in Austin, as SxSW delivers its usual intoxicating blend of good food, seeing lots of old friends and meeting new ones, and of course more great music packed into one place then you can get your head around. Though this year, the trip started off in pitch black darkness, as my colleague Matt Hanks and I both caught the same pre-dawn flight out of New York.


Thanks to some crack on-time work by the folks at American, I was able to turn an 11:00am landing into an just barely on-time arrival for my noon "Promotions, Publicity, and Press" panel at the convention center. It was a new format for me, instead of the traditional panel with a moderator, the room was set up as a series of round table discussions with attendees, arranged in a "speed dating" format where each of us stopped in to chat with a new group every 10 minutes and share some insights and answer some questions on getting started with music publicity.


It was well timed -- we've been spending a lot of time on the topic lately with the launch of Shore Fire D.I.Y., a one-on-one educational program for the music community designed to help new and up and coming artists learn to do their own publicity and online marketing. Take a look, we're excited about it.

Next up were some musical highlights from artists of our own, starting with a blazing mid-day set from London's Sons Of Albion. Here's (from left) bassist Gones, drummer Francisco De Sousa, frontman Logan Plant, and guitarist Nuno Miguel. They're playing Friday and Saturday night too, followed by a three night stand in New York next week.


Equally hard-working is the lovely and talented "incendiary Telecaster-wielder" (so says the Statesman) Sarah Borges and her band The Broken Singles, who are performing an incredible eight times this week in Austin. I had the pleasure of catching them twice in one night, first as they joined an all star cast including Jimmy Vaughan and a host of Texas Tornados veterans for the Doug Sahm tribute at Antones, and then as they brought they house down for their show at Mother Eagans. Sorry it's a little blurry, they move pretty fast when they get going:



Meanwhile, Tina Dico was having a busy day of interviews and live performances of songs from her "stunning" new release before her showcase set. Here's Tina and bandmate Helgi Jonsson practicing a little harmony on the piano bench:


Later on, I got a chance to catch up with Rocco Deluca, who followed up a scorching performance on Leno last week with a powerful duo set at La Zona Rosa.


And it's only Friday morning, with a whole slate of interesting shows and appearances still to come. I haven't even had time to dig into some BBQ yet -- we must be just getting started.

She's About A Mover

I'm not at SXSW this year, so I'm living vicariously through the Twitter posts of the ShoreFire-ians who are (two Wavy Gravy sightings!). But when I saw in Billboard that there'd been a couple of Doug Sahm tributes in Austin, one starring former client Alejandro Escovedo and the other featuring current clients Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles, I knew I had to post this video of the Sir Douglas Quintet playing "She's About A Mover," one of the greatest happy-dance songs ever - and dig those shiny suits!

SxSW: Body Of War

In an interesting convergence, a plethora of Shore Fire clients came together last night in support of a project called 'Body Of War.' Both an amazing documentary and accompanying soundtrack, the project centers around the story of soldier Tomas Young, paralyzed in Iraq. Here's the trailer:



Last night at Stubbs an incredible group of artists came together to support the project. Kicking off the evening was Brendan James solo on the piano, playing the moving "Hero's Song," which was chosen by Tomas as the lead off track for the soundtrack. Brendan was just the first of several Shore Fire artists to perform, a group also including Brett Dennen (whose video for "Ain't No Reason" is a chilling must watch), Billy Bragg, and Tom Morello.

This morning, Brendan was up early for an interview and performance with Andy Langer on KGSR, where he performed again and talked with Tomas on air. Here's Brendan and Tomas in the hallway at the Four Seasons just after getting off the air.

SXSW Day 2.5

I had the pleasure, make that honor, of seeing Billy Bragg perform twice yesterday. He may be a national treasure in the UK, but he's deeply loved in Texas too. He got a standing-o when he played the convention center daystage, and the crowd was packed to the rafters, literally, at the Cedar Street Courtyard or Billy's official SXSW set last night.

Billy played plenty of songs from the new album "Mr. Love & Justice" (Anti-, April 22) plus one brand new one which, he explained, doesn't have a title, but is inspired by a character he calls Johnny Clash. The song's a brilliant tirade against the status quo, and one line in particular "George Bush will soon be gone!" generated a wave of cheers both times he performed it.

Thanks to the kick-ass zoom on my camera (which I'm actually borrowing from my daughter - thanks Emma!) I was able to snap Billy's set list from above the stage.

And here's a shot of, L-R, me, Shore Fire's Brendan Gilmartin, Billy, and SF's Carrie Tolles after the show. By the time we said our goodbyes, it was 2:30am. Brendan, Carrie and I hopped in a pedicab, breathed in the beautiful Austin night, and talked about how cool Billy Bragg is.

SxSW Day Two

The evening kicked off with a bluesy powerhouse set from Brandi Shearer, who's been adding her formidable electric guitar skills to recent shows to great effect...


...and ended with another show from Justin Nozuka, seen below just before he ditched his microphone and spot on the stage to regale the assembled crowd with a whisper quiet encore, fearless and unamplified, sitting on a stage in the middle of the crowded venue.



Tomorrow has much more in store, including the incomparable songwriter (not to mention great writer) Paul Thorn.

And Matt and I have been working up plans for a serious BBQ expedition. Fingers crossed.

SXSW Day 2

You snooze, you lose! It was well worth the early call time this morning to see Eli "Paperboy" Reed serve up a soul breakfast on Austin radio KGSR, live from the lobby of the Four Seasons.

Lyle Lovett co-hosted the broadcast with Austin's own Andy Langer. Here's a shot of Lyle and Eli, with members of his band The True Loves, right after the show.

With more performances from Eli, Billy Bragg, and Liam Finn on the docket for later today, I'll report back soon.

SXSW Day One, or "if you look around the table and don't see a moderator...

...then it's probably you." That's a paraphrase of the famous line about poker of course, and as it turns out also applicable to the world of SxSW panel events. But we'll get to that later. Have you ever seen Laguardia airport at about 4:10am? Me neither, but no need to die wondering:


After a leisurely flight down, first on the agenda was the panel discussion "Crash Course - Press & Publicity" in the convention hall. As it turned out, it was not so much a discussion, but as advertised a crash course in PR hosted just with myself and the esteemed writer Kandia Crazy Horse, who was also surprised to find out that they'd decided to skip the agenda/moderator thing this time around. Here's a recap of the green room scene:


As it turned out it was a great discussion with a packed room, aided by some smart questions from the audience and a lot of talk about the role of the media and new media in music these days. I was even able to sneak my mom in, who was in town to see the premiere of a film my brother Chris has been working on for many months called 'Second Skin' that just debuted to raves during the film portion of the festival.

Then it was on to drinks with friends at the Driskill Hotel bar, which Matt has already ably documented below, followed by a leisurely stroll down sixth street and a stop in to visit with friends at iLike and catch a few minutes of a living room set by Moby:


That was about it for the night. Today kicked off with a noon set by the very talented Canadian songwriter Justin Nozuka (below) and next up is a whirlwind night including Brendan James, Brett Dennen, Tom Morello, Brandi Shearer, Sonya Kitchell, and most likely quite a bit more. But that'll have to wait for "Day Two."