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* SXSW: the rest of the story....

Please understand the inevitable delays of Monday travel and Tuesday recuperation (not to mention mail-catchup) in finishing this particular SXSW report as viewed through the eye of one needle in the haystack of bands and fans that walked the streets of Austin last weekend. What follows are some scattershot final observations about Friday, Saturday and Sunday:

Best Single Set: Chuck Prophet at the Ale House, 11 p.m. Friday. That the room was about two sizes too small for the crowd -- and for the increasingly ambitous scale and scope of Prophet's music -- only served to amplify and intensify the glorious performance turned in by Prophet and his four-piece band. While he's always been a compelling live performer, Prophet seems to be stretching beyond himself these days, reaching heights he's never quite hit before. The vocal balance between him and keyboardist Stephanie Finch is precisely on target, while the rest of the crew just keeps driving all the dramatics and dynamics and grooves of Prophet's songs to tighter and trippier end-results. The peak moment: "Let's Do Something Wrong", a mission-statement for breaking the daily grind that had the crowd chanting along by song's end: "Let's do something wrong, let's do something stupid!"

Longest Drive To SXSW: The Whipsaws. No one can claim to have burned more rubber on the way to Austin than the Whipsaws, who drove their van down the Al-Can Highway all the way from their hometown of Anchorage, Alaska. A righteously roots-rockin' foursome, the Whipsaws played nearly a dozen sets during the week, either under their own name or backing up Tim Easton. (Lucinda Williams joined Easton and the boys onstage for a song at the Continental Club on Sunday night.) Having lived in Anchorage for one long and lonely summer in 1987, I can only say I wish there had been a band as good as the Whipsaws on the local scene back then. They made their town proud, and had the time of their lives doing it.

Best Match Of Artist And Venue: Abra Moore at the 18th Floor Hilton Garden, midnight Friday. Many years I've gone to see Abra at SXSW only to be disappointed; the exquisitely delicate beauty of her music just doesn't work on the noisy Sixth-Street corridor that is the heart of SXSW's venue-plan. The answer: Move her up -- 18 floors off the ground, to be specific. At the top of the Hilton Garden hotel is a bar/lounge area that has been used as a venue for SXSW in previous years, though it always seemed to feel too much like a converted conference room. This year they got it right, removing a wall between the stage and the bar, hanging much warmer lights from the ceiling, and re-orienting the stage north, toward the "old Austin" beauty of the Capitol and the UT Tower (as opposed to the increasingly and alarmingly crowded new-downtown skyline). Finally, Abra could feel at home -- and the result was mesmerizingly magical, thanks to her sweet and soaring vocal flights and the terrific jazzy accompaniment of guitarist Will Sexton and trumpeter Ephraim Owens. All those people down below us were lost awash in a sea of screech and skronk; up on the 18th Floor, we floated somewhere nearer to heaven, for 40 precious minutes.

Best Off-The-SXSW-Path Detour: My response to what seemed a weaker-than-normal Saturday-night lineup in the downtown core was to stop looking for a great band and instead just go to a great club: the Cactus Cafe. Tucked into a corner of the University of Texas Student Union building, the Cactus is usually a sleepy place during SXSW; Longhorn students are away on spring break, and often the Cactus is closed for the entire week. Occasionally, proprietor Griff Luneburg opens the place up for a private party or a special event; on this night, though, it was simpler, more like the club's long-standing open mikes, with a dozen or so singer-songwriters playing four or five songs to a modest but appreciative audience.

There were a few semi-well-known folks (Darden Smith, Gurf Morlix, Tommy Womack, Caroline Herring) and some up-and-coming locals largely unknown outside of Austin (Graham Weber, Abi Tapia, Leatherbag), but what really made the night was just kicking back at the Cactus, the place Townes Van Zandt called "my home club" -- he signed a poster attesting to that, right there on the back wall behind the stage. When considering the great Austin venues over the decades, the Armadillo and Antone's and the Continental and Liberty Lunch are frequently mentioned...but the Cactus has fully earned its place alongside those legendary haunts. Just check out the dozens of posters adorning the walls of the lounge outside the entrance -- which, as it happens, are arranged much like I've long had them on the wall of my home:

SXSW Serendipitous Moment: Friday's 9 p.m. slot started out like one of those occasional festival misadventures, hiking from place to place searching for something and ending up with nothing. Turned away from the overcrowded Antone's (where the marvelous Basia Bulat was holding court), I took a look at the schedule and noticed that an old-school Seattle punk band, the Fall-Outs, was playing just around the corner. I quickly shuffled over to their venue, managing to catch the tail end of their set -- and was rewarded with a full-on euphoric epiphany when they launched into their final number. Immediately I found myself almost involuntarily bounding right up to the front of the crowd and singing along.

The song was "Sleep", a tune so infectious and punk-perfect that it belongs up there with Mudhoney's "Touch Me I'm Sick" in the annals of great Seattle singles, even if the Fall-Outs never really resonated beyond the Northwest. "Sleep" sure resonated with me, though: The reason I could sing along was because I'd actually recorded an acoustic interpretation (the band would probably say "abomination") of this very song many years ago. I'd even performed it at SXSW in 1995, during an afternoon show at Hole In The Wall that featured a bunch of Seattle bands. Heck, I can actually offer up the evidence -- though if either the Fall-Outs (or Barry Manilow) write in to object, I'll gladly remove it. Meanwhile, feel free to listen, but be warned...and then head over to eMusic and download the real, original Fall-Outs version....

http://www.myspace.com/wallynford

The Grand Finale: Longtime SXSW veterans who can somehow stick around through Sunday night learned many years ago that it's well worth the stayover to see Alejandro Escovedo's traditional unofficial closing-night gig at the Continental Club. While in some ways his 1990s Sunday shows at La Zona Rosa will never be surpassed -- those "Orchestra" gigs frequently featured more than a dozen band members, and the larger venue accommodated more than twice what can fit in the Continental, where many folks inevitably get stuck waiting in line outside -- it's equally true that the Continental is Alejandro's home turf; he plays there with a sense of comfort and confidence that cannot be captured anywhere else.

This year's gig was a semi-revelation, thanks to Chuck Prophet (remember him from the "Best Single Set" category back up-top?) sitting in on guitar. Freed from the need to fill in the six-string licks on the new material that he and Prophet wrote and recorded together for Escovedo's upcoming album Real Animal (due June 10 on Back Porch/EMI), Alejandro threw himself into his stage performance and vocal delivery with a passion and vigor unlike any other show I've ever seen him put on -- and keep in mind I've seen this guy play well over 100 times in the past 20-odd years. First and foremost, Alejandro has never really been a musician as much as he's a galvanizing bandleader and an emotional singer; both of those qualities were brought even further to the fore on this night, especially on the opening number, "Always A Friend", which may well be the best "single" Escovedo has ever recorded.

In a perfect world, Escovedo could perform like this every night, with Prophet and cellist Brian Standefer and violinist Susan Voelz fleshing out the sound while he sets the room afire as the frontman. In the real world, touring economics intervene. But for this one night, we didn't have to worry about that. Alejandro was as alive as he's ever been, and this little corner of the world was perfect, for a couple of hours.

adios,
peter

Posted by peter on March 18, 2008 8:20 PM | Permalink