SxSW Memories

All the hubbub about SxSW this year made really jealous of all the people that get to go because it was sooo much fun last year. Since i'm not going i went back and read some stuff i wrote about our adventures in Austin last year and i thought i'd share some with you all. So here you go!

(March 18th, 2009 SXSW Austin, Maggie Mae's and Dirty Dogs)

Our first morning of SxSW, we went and had breakfast at Denny’s (which was surprisingly better than any Denny's i'd had before) where I found a plastic green token that had a shamrock on one side and said “good luck” on the other. I took this as a good sign and kept it with me the whole of SxSW. The first show was a Maggie Mae’s, which had a three level stage and provided some interesting playing and staging ideas. And by interesting I mean weird and difficult but still really fun. Right after we finished our first show we grabbed our gear and carried it two blocks down to the Dirty Dog for our next show later that day. We had a good chunk of time between load in and when the show actually started so we wandered around 6th st for the next couple hours taking in all the sights and insanity.

We ended up seeing two bands that we were all really excited to see, Ladyhawke and Late of the Pier. We saw Ladyhawke at Stubbs (which was an awesome out door venue with a huge stage and good food. Mettalica ended up playing there at some point though none of us cared to go) and Late of the Pier at La Zona Rosa (which was also awesome). La Zona Rosa was in my top three venues at SxSW. It feels like a huge dimly lit dance club that actually has two stages so there is barely any time between bands. We had to run back from Late of the Pier so we could make sure we made it back to our own show in time. It ended up being packed and may have been one of, if not, our best show of SxSW. Sleep came about 20 seconds after I hit the bed that night.

- David