Looking Back at Austin Bat Cave's Okkervil River Workshop

Okkervil River songwriting workshop at Austin Bat Cave from Austin Bat Cave on Vimeo.

What does the Bat Cave have planned for the future? Any more songwriting workshops?

We definitely intend to do more songwriting workshops, and we welcome bands to approach us about that. We don’t have any scheduled now, but we have some on the horizon that will happen this summer or afterwards. We’re running a couple of summer camps, and dates will be up on our website soon. We’ll be having a one-week workshop in Clarksville, where our space is located. I’ve been told that Clarksville is the first free African-American neighborhood west of the Mississippi, and we will be running an oral history workshop involving the Clarksville Community Development Corporation in finding people for the kids to interview to create a published project on the neighborhood. We’ll also be doing a second summer camp at the Blanton Museum of Art on the theme “What is Art?”

What do you think the kids got out of the Okkervil workshop?

A lot of the kids are just starting out, and I think some of them had played their songs for many people, if anyone. And I think for them it was so important to hear encouragement from a songwriter that many of them idolize or are a big fan of. And we did have some trouble initially getting the kids to share, and I think that boost and a lot of what Will was talking about - getting out there, trying things - it’s a good lesson for a beginning writer in any field, including songwriting.