I decided to broaden my SXSW experience on the last day and take in the Flatstock and Guitar Show at the Austin Convention Center. I saw several really innovative rock posters on display and for sale by many artists. A couple that would be particularly good for album art, in my opinion, were Dan Grzeca and Eric Luplow. They both had very unique, bright and colorful posters for sale. One vendor displayed some books by gigposter.com, who also offer a couple of coloring books. I wonder how often these are used to introduce young ones to rock poster art and how many are used to edify the child in the rock poster artist.
Over at the guitar show I saw some amazing guitars, like the custom works of the Keokuk, IA vendor Jon Kammerer Guitars. Their acoustic guitars are quite beautiful. I came across a great little gadget for those one-man-showmen (and women) out there. It was the Porchboard Bass, which is a small metal bar mounted on an earth-friendly composite that attaches to a heal stand to keep it in place and make it ergonomically pleasant to play, too. Basically, it thumps a nice, deep bass tone to each tap of your toe. It’s a completely passive instrument, which means it needs no power source other than plugging into your amp or sound system. With three adjustable settings (Low, Mix and High) you can alter the sound between the fat subwoofer to the less-neighbors-complaining stompbox slap. Ideal for a solo artist that wants to fill out their sound. Pretty cool, but not cheap at $299.
Velvet Blue Music artist Telegraph Canyon was chosen to showcase at SXSW by their local newspaper, Ft. Worth Weekly. At the end of their set their frontman Chris Johnson told the audience, “Thanks for coming out tonight. We’re Telegraph Canyon and we’re from Fort Worth, Texas.” Several people hooted and hollered, to which Johnson responded, “If I knew you were going to respond like that, I would’ve said ‘Fort Worth’ several more times during the set.” With 7 people on the crowded stage, they didn’t have a lot of room to move around, but they filled the small room with plenty of sound – with a singer/banjo player/guitarist, violinist, drummer, bassist, mandolin and keyboard player, another keyboard player, and another guitarist. The drummer introduced one song by hammering his tom-tom drum with a mallet. The tom was covered with a towel, so it really muffled the sound in a flat way. Cool, innovative trick. He also slid the top of his drumstick across the beads of the cymbal to create another cool sound.
I Am Empire played the Dirty Dog Bar with an odd pairing of some biker rock type bands. They came on and punched the air with their energetic post-hardcore melodic rock. Two guitar players banged their heads and churned out the riffage while the curly-haired frontman expressed himself like a vocalist in a music video. They were very much a performance band, not keeping still for a single second. While the crowd wasn’t huge (it wasn’t too small, either), the band gave it their all. They introduced the song “Hammer and Anvils” as being about “…finding joy in all different times.” The song’s lyrics talked about a “God that won’t forsake me.” Meeting up with the band after-wards, they turned out to be really friendly and outgoing.
Lovedrug loaded their own instruments on stage and prepared for its set at Emo’s with a crowded room watching and waiting. They jumped right into impassioned vocals and urgent guitar sounds as soon as they were green-lighted to go. They looked and sounded like someone that wanted to unload whatever was all pent up inside them and couldn’t wait to get it out. Their second song sounded like they’d ripped a page out of the Bends-era Radiohead songbook. They tried a new one out, called “Head Down,” which was really good. They pulled out “Happy Apple Poison” from their Everything Starts Where It Ends (2007) album, which sounded great as well. The whispy, soft yeah-eah’s added a nice touch.
The band announced that it was releasing a series of EP’s – the first of which was already available online to download. They encouraged the audience “…to let us know what you think, because your feedback will help determine what will be on our next (full-length) record.” The bass player snarled a bit when playing purposeful, aggressive notes on the leading edge of the groove and the two guitar players had some good interaction with each other sonically. “Pink Champagne” was a nice song.
Athlete performed an acoustic set at a small venue called Creekside at Hilton Garden Inn, which was run by legendary UK music man Tony Moore. It sounded like they were recording each set live that night. Being just above freezing outside I came in early and caught the prolific singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania, Dawn Kinnard. Athlete later performed an acoustic set. Stripping a band’s music down to just two acoustic guitars is certainly a good test for the strength of a song and a voice (or, in this case, two voices, as Joel Pott was joined by Carey Willetts). Joel aborted the first song after a few measures, vowing to “try it again … where I leave the (guitar) tuner off this time!” They were quite fun and witty throughout the hour-long set. They played “The Outsiders” (from Beyond The Neighbourhood) and “Wires.” Many in the crowd went “Oww!” and Pott asked the audience, “Can we have a few more of those from the Americans … cuz you’re way better at those than we are.” They played “You’ve Got The Style” (from Vehicles and Animals), which blended their voices and instruments just right, sounding quite full and showing that these two together, even without the rest of the band, are greater than the sum of their parts. They wrapped things up with an encore of “Love Come Rescue” (from Black Swan).
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