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Archive Sunday #18

Added 2023-10-08 16:00:05 +0000 UTC

AK: SXSW, baby! Things were getting wild and we were set to play 10 shows in 5 days. 2 a day! The sets were short but the heat was strong and the chaotic nature of SXSW really takes it out of you. Musicians (at least at our level at the time and below) were treated like prize ponies; moved from one venue to another in tight shifts where curious onlookers would wait. The green rooms were small, the backline gear was minimal and shoddy at best. I remember seeing one drummer miss a hailed cab on the street and throwing his stick bag and kick pedal on the ground out of frustration. That was probably his 5th show that week and he was burned out. But even so, I remember it being such an exciting experience. Because we were started to turn heads there were a ton of advertisers looking to give us freebies. As pictured above you can see we got laser engraved shoes from Converse (I opted for "O'Doyle Rules", a nod to Billy Madison. We got to hang out and do a radio interview on SiriusXM and at other vendors got free shirts, jackets, etc. It felt like we were dare I say, FAMOUS? We weren't really. Maybe Will was a little bit, but SXSW makes you feel a lot bigger than you are for a week. And it feels good. I remember one show Ed Sheeran and the singer Ryan Tedder (from One Republic) came to one of our tiny club shows. The sound was terrible and they never talked to us after probably because they hated us, BUT it felt good that they even showed up.

SD: In mid March 2016, We headed down to Texas to play a run of shows at South by Southwest. We arrived in the Austin scene and promptly took an uber to the house where we were staying the week. One fender-bender later, we pulled up to this small three-room house across from the cemetery. Our host greeted us outside and explained he worked as a pedicab, and since SXSW was the busiest time of year he opted for just renting us his place for the extra cash. I remember sweating my butt off the first night on the living room couch because only one of the bedrooms had A.C.

I believe our first show was at Barracuda at the back-yard stage. This show revealed the festival's ad-hoc style when the venue realized they had only one drum throne for two different stages. So they quickly found a speaker for Andrew to sit on a few minutes before we went on. I remember laughing looking back at him swaying on the uneven stage as he tried his best not to fall over. After the show, I remember watching Beach Slang and Into It Over It play their sets before we headed out.

I think we ended up playing 9 or 10 shows over the 5 days we were there. We all walked from venue to venue carrying our gear in the Texas sun, but thankfully they were all fairly close together. We ended up meeting Alex G and Julien Baker in the green rooms before a couple of our shows, and they were all super nice. I think I remember seeing some Matador people check out Julien's set because they were interested in signing her. She geeked out with us a bit and showed us her pedalboard as we all looked on in awe before we played.

Overall it was a great experience and we got to check out tons of music including Tijuana Panthers, Dilly Dally, Hinds, Mothers, Nap Eyes, Whitney, and Eleanor Friedberger. Pretty sure we all lost 5 or so pounds from sweating in all these cramped venues and walking around all the time, but it was well worth it.

WT: We were definitely a "buzz band" by this point. People would look at us and start buzzing. There were a lot of backstage drinks and VIP goodies going on, but we were so busy we didn't partake much in it. I did get a nice custom pair of Converses which I still have, quite beat up now. Short set lengths allowed us to average 2 shows a day. I think one show consisted entirely of "Ending of Dramamine" and "Vincent". One of our sets is preserved on our "Spotify Sessions" EP.