We don't remember much of SXSW but of what we can remember, we think we had a pretty kickass time. During the week of March 13th to the 17th, we were out surviving on what little we had time to consume (usually free, alcoholic or "containing artificial flavors"), catching every bit of sanctioned and unsanctioned SXSW goodness.

While we were out on the streets and bars of Austin, we began to realize a lot about our city, the people who live in it and the people who come visit. We gained bits of confidence everyday answering the simplest questions--treating each query from a confused out-of-towner as a mini trivia quiz to see how much we really did know about this city. We got lots of compliments on how pretty Austin was, right along side how crazy our weather is. We utilized our knowledge of venue secrets and venue shortfalls, like informing only the people we liked that flanking stage left at La Zona Rosa is by far the best spot in the house.

And then there were the shows. We all saw the "best show of the entire festival," while somehow missing everyone else's "best show of the entire festival." The musicians and actors/directors gave it their all, performing in the hopes of gaining greater audiences across the world. They gave it their all off the stage too, many of the performers could be seen getting plastered at any given bar, at any given night, regardless of what time of day their performance was.

Put aside the bureaucracy, the controversy and the debates about how it works, SXSW is here to stay. Whoever should be in the crowd, it is a week long gathering of progress and contemporary arts so immense that we should all be proud. Proud to host that no name high school kid inviting all of his friends to watch his five-minute short playing at 2am at Dobie. Or proud to host a gathering of the minds of the world who talk about things most of us can't understand, yet those are things we depend on everyday. Or that no name grunge band from New Jersey who rented an old bus, crammed in their shitty equipment, drove dozens of hours and slept on carpet just to say, "We went to Austin and played SXSW."

We had a good festival and we hope you did too. Since SXSW is often an individualized experience of likes and dislikes, we split up for the time being to give you just some of our individual favorites of the 2007 spring ritual that is SXSW.

1. Girl Talk at The Diesel Party - Friday night's Diesel show turned into something special the minute Girl Talk began mixing Beyonce's "Ring The Alarm" with Foghat. He invited 50 people onstage, and bedlam ensued. The crowd wasn't huge, but damn, were they excited. As Hot Chip mixed into Oasis and Dee-Lite, everyone danced until they literally fell over on the candy and beer scattered throughout the floor. This was the dance party you've always dreamed about.

2. Peter, Bjorn, and John at La Zona Rosa - In the indie-blog world, one expects bands to be a bit rough-hewn. Thus, it was a pleasant shocker to see P,B,and J fill La Zona Rosa with both their musical talent and their showmanship. The closing show Wednesday night showed a polished, tuneful, and confident band getting ready for the bigger stages that they deserve. The young folks loved it, and so did everyone else.

3. Malajube at Maggie Mae's - When you hear "Canadian indie-pop in French" as a descriptor, it leads you to guess that a band will be very arty and inaccessible. But wow, are Malajube catchy as hell. The tiny Maggie Mae's rooftop was literally teeming with hundreds of swaying fans in love with the fast, pretty, and danceworthy sounds Malajube threw at them. We may not understand them, but they know how to move our spirits and rock a party.

4. Pete Townshend w/ Alexi Murdoch, Joe Purdy, and Martha Wainwright at La Zona Rosa - Townshend's been doing this rock racket for 45 years. But he still obviously loves the job, as evidenced by his sideman role during this songwriter set at La Zona Rosa. Townshend pulled out songs from Quadrophenia and Endless Wire for solo turns, but threw "Let My Love Open The Door" in as a duet and played beautiful acoustic rhythm guitar on everyone else's numbers. The pure joy one saw in Townshend's eyes as
he flirted with Wainwright and sang with Murdoch turned an song swap into an event.

5. Sloan - After hearing loads of obscure bands play songs you don't know, sometimes you need to see a group that has a greatest-hits album. Sloan's powerful turn at the Jane party showed why they're the forefathers of New Pornographers and loads of other Canadian indie-rockers. The riffs were instantly in your head, the hockey hair was not messing around, and everyone's day got better in 30 minutes. We may not know much about Sloan, but after this gig, we're going to take the time to find out.

Half the fun of South by Southwest is checking out what the visiting hipsters of the world are wearing. This year we interviewed more than a dozen stylish musicians, tourists and local fashionistas about their personal style as they made the rounds from show to show. We chose the ones that stood out the most for this video.

This film was made possible by Christopher Franks, Kris Hernandez, Anna Su, Maxx Eaton, Christina Shoto, Ben Price, Matthew Michel and Clarisa Ramirez.

Let's be honest: everyone loves SXSW week, but when it ends, you are secretly very ready to move on. Before we do, let's take a look at some of the isolated, crazy, and wonderful moments that make SXSW such an over-the-top sensory experience.

– The dude at Girl Talk dancing with a broken pinata on his head. Then passing said pinata to someone else to dance with.

– Isaac Hayes talking in his famous voice on his cell next to us @ the Convention Center Saturday afternoon.

– The hipster douchebag quotient at the Fader Fort and the Nylon/Diesel parties – off the charts!

– The parking garages (cough, AMLI) that charged $5 on Wednesday but got greedy and were at $10-12 by Saturday.

– The actor kiddos from Friday Night Lights wandering around the day parties.

– Rick Rubin (or his twin) backstage at Menomena @ Mohawk.

- Hanson showing up at the Nylon / Diesel party @ Super Alright on Friday night. The video will be up on YouTube soon. And yes, they covered “Crazy”.

- Also at Nylon/Diesel, James Iha, making SX even more like a night on the Lower East Side than it already was. And Danny Masterson of That 70’s Show DJ’ed, playing “Dick in a Box” among other gems.

- Henry Rollins wandering down Red River by himself on Saturday afternoon.

- What’s with the tight jeans/LA Gear boat sneaker fashion craze? Stop it.

- Why can't someone besides Pabst or Lone Star be the beer sponsor at these parties? Guinness, please help next year. We're begging you.

- Pete Wylie hanging at the Liverpool SoundCity Showcase.

- Discussing the Cricket World Cup with numerous “foreigners” including the Architecture In Helsinki drummer. Yeah, that India cricket jersey works like a charm for conversation starters.

- Slash, Perry Farrell and Tom Morello hard rocking out at the Parish.

- Rod Stewart t-shirts everywhere. We think they're ironic, but we're not sure.

- Locals taking full advantage of Congress Avenue happy hour dinner deals. That $6 burger at Roaring Fork soaks up lots of booze.

- The free SoCo lime and juice drink at Fader Fort replacing the free Philips Union Whiskey Sour as this year's alcoholic downfall for everyone.

What did you see at SX that was, well, out of the ordinary? Let us know in the comments.

Girl Talk photo from the Diesel-U-Music event via thejoeyway on Flickr. Item contributions for this piece are from Paige Maguire, Adi Anand, and Tom Thornton.

The following is a letter written by Le and Thomas Popov, owners of South Congress boutique FactoryPeople.

As life-long independent music lovers and long-time Austinites (at least one of has lived here since 1989), we have come to love mid-March when the SXSW Music Festival brings Austin to life. After the events of this year's fest, it’s unlikely we’ll ever feel the same affection for SXSW. On Thursday, March 15th, an inspector of the City of Austin’s Fire Marshal’s Office shut down the FactoryPeople after-party within an hour of the doors opening. He held in his hand a list of 19 other events he would visit that night. Friday night saw a rumoured 26 parties targeted while Saturday saw even more confusion.

In the three years that we have had our S. Congress retail store open, we have hosted numerous parties the largest during SXSW and ACL Fest. We have always gone out of our way to create a safe environment that is also law abiding. As such, we employ two off-duty APD officers to monitor such things as crowd control, noise levels, as well as to provide a level of service to our guests like flagging taxis at the end of the night (which we sometimes pay for if the guests have had too much to drink and can’t afford the fare). Two weeks before our most recent event, Officer Tankaksinanukij set up a time to visit us and discuss details. On the day of the event, two other officers stopped by get more information as well. We were never asked once if we were in possession of the public assembly permit. This new ordinance was news not only to us, but to the very professional and informed officers that we hired for our event. Would we have known about this new ordinance if we had been in communication with the Fire Department? We’re not so confident.

We're back in New York where people are trying to recover from SXSW, here's the last entry of Nate from My Brightest Diamond's Austin tour diary he kept for us. Read the first part here. Over at Gothamist we've got Pela's tour diary...we totally snuck in to their hotel room and found it under their pillow.

SXSW DAY 2: A DAY, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

In contrast to my first 24 hours here at the SXSW festival, last night's activities proved genuinely debaucherous and entirely amusing. Whereas Thursday night found me wandering the closed down streets in somewhat of a daze, Friday brought a different attitude with it.

I ended up in downtown by around 11am, free to roam for a good 7 hours before the My Brightest Diamond load in. Shara had an interview near the convention center and James had to pick up our drummer at the airport, so I was on my own. My first order of business was a short walk, placing me in the middle of a party thrown by the Australian Music Council. For some reason, walking into a location filled with Aussies makes me a bit uncomfortable. It's not really the accent, or the attitude, but something about Australians in the US seems offputting to me; like they're spies for some secret subversive organization. Plus, there was a lot of leather jacket action happening, and I'm suspicious of anyone wearing leather on the middle of a relatively hot day in the middle of Texas. At this party, the booze was free as was the food, but I found myself short of appetite on accounts of the blaring guitars and the gratuitous leather.

I walked in just as a band was finishing, and helped myself to a free beer. It's funny walking into a party and not knowing a single person there. I'd even go so far as to call it liberating. I stood solitary behind a long-bearded fellow with blue-blocker sunglasses and a Wolfmother hat (of course) and watched the band finish. After the set I sat down for a bit and took mental notes on the scene. The next band to play was
called "Children Collide." Now, I haven't enjoyed a punk show in years; in NYC bad punk music is about as common as pidgeon poo. But this trio had something special. It was a combination of Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and Nirvana - a blend which proved both fun to watch and appealing to my ear. I helped myself to another beer and departed, somewhat satisfied with my taste into what Aussie rock has to offer.

With no less than three of the biggest afterparties at this year's SXSW abruptly shut down, it's no wonder that we've been hearing all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories. But much as we'd love to blame this year's spate of buzzkilling closures on curmudgeonly old muckety-mucks, the evidence seems to point to something far less interesting: lack of permits.

At least that was the case with FactoryPeople's Thursday night rager, "La Chic Disco Boum," and the IHeartComix/Triple 5 Soul Friday night "Blow Out," both of which were shut down by fire marshals not long after they began. Vice Magazine's end-of-SXSW-orgy, on the other hand, succumbed under the collective weight of its hard-partying hipster clientèle -- literally, as pieces of the main balcony at the Elks Lodge collapsed. Miraculously, no one was injured.

It took only a few days for some hipster doofus in Brooklyn (Gawker: "obvs") to start peddling chunks of this "historic pile of rubble":

I returned to the scene later in the morning and retrieved pieces of this historic pile of rubble. Here is your chance to own a piece for yourself. I am pictured below retrieving the pieces from the scene, so you know they're real and authentic. Also comes with a copy of the most recent issue of Vice Magazine.

Read More:
[A Hipster Never Misses A Money-Making Opportunity]

Photo credits unknown

Hey Austin, Jen from Gothamist here again. Your mayor is pretty cool:

That was his speech from our show on Wednesday. No sports! More rock! Yay!

Sure, there are billions of day parties going down tomorrow, but how many of them are going to be a setting as intimate as Whisky Bar, eh? That’s right. Not many. In fact, one has to wonder, how exactly are they going to fit all this goodness IN there? Will there be room for you AND your lover’s crippling hang over?

The answer is yes. And the method is magic. The magic of SxSW at it’s daytime finest.

Shout It Out Loud Music and those crazy kids from Houston, Boys & Girls Club, are joining forces with a host of other hosts to bring David Vandervelde, Datarock, Dandi Wind, Shout Out Out Out Out, Walter Meego, O’Death, and Spain Colored Orange (that was a really random order, so don’t assume we’re picking favorites here), along with 16 DJs from every corner of wherever, just for you and your ears to enjoy.

RSVP to get in for free:

dayfornightparty@gmail.com

Day For Night Day Party
Presented by Shout It Out Loud, Boys & Girls Club
Saturday, March 17th
Whisky Bar, 303 W 5th St [ map ]
12 – 6pm

Over at Gothamist we have a thing called Tourist, where bands from New York keep tour diaries for us. My Brightest Diamond is one of the bands doing this for us throughout SXSW, check out Nate from MBD's first entry here. And here's an excerpt.

Three days before flying out from NY to Austin for the South by Southwest music conference, I had a rather ominous dream. It was the sort of dream you wake up from panicked and not quite sure of your surroundings, perhaps in a cold sweat and a bit disheveled. I dreamt that when I arrived at the festival, the location had been switched from Austin, Texas, to Iraq. Yes, Iraq - that little blip on the radar screen of world affairs.

I asked my colleagues sheepishly, "This is South by Southwest, right? But I thought it was in Texas....this looks more like....IRAQ? Or am I just in the wrong place?" Around me were roadblocks, bombed out buildings and skeletons of charred cars, and hundreds of hipsters walking the streets as if everything was completely normal.

I arrived here in Austin yesterday to find that my dream was not really that far off. Of course, I'm yet to see a car bomb go off; there has been no sign of an AK-47 or a rocket-propelled grenade (even though I have seen my fair share of NRA bumper stickers). And as far as I know, Austin is free from any pesky insurgency standing in the way of normalcy and order. But this place is undoubtedly what I would call the Mecca (excuse the Islamic imagery) of hipsterdom. The streets have been closed to traffic, allowing throngs of punks, indie chicks, metal dudes, and acoustic-guitar toting troubadours to run free and unmolested through this beautiful city.

My Brightest Diamond will play tonight at 10pm at Antone's.

Tony from LAist letting you know that you have a hell of a town here. Not only did we get to see Slash last night in an amazingly intimate setting, but we also ran into some Oxfam kids who were spreading the good news while everyone was getting plastered. Now that's sacrifice.

Below are some LA bands that we think you might like if you wanna check out what the West Coast has to offer and after the jump is a list of non-LA bands who are pretty rad too. Don't forget to hydrate, party people.

5:45pm: X Clan @ Auditorium Shores
6:30pm: Ozomatli @ Auditorium Shores
9pm: Michelle Shocked @ Molotov Lounge
9pm: Watson Twins @ Central Presbyterian Church
10pm: Pigeon John @ Austin Music Hall Ballroom
10:30pm: Perry Farrell's Satellite Party @ Stubb's
11:30pm: dios @ Red Eye Fly
1am: Ariel Pink @ The Ale House
1am: The Blood Arm @ Club de Ville
1:15am: Youth Brigade @ Emo's Jr.

Next to free beer, free bbq, and checking out great bands, there's nothing we like better than interviewing people on the street to see what's going down. Over the last few days during SXSW we have had the pleasure of meeting some super cool kids. No, literally, kids.

How do we know they're kids? Let's just say the braces tipped us off.

Please enjoy these three short interviews all mashed up into one. And if you want to see the "good Christians" from the first interview, Anti Product, they are playing this afternoon at Trophy's on Congress.

Ah, SXSW. One minute you're walking down Sixth to catch a bus, the next you're watching Wayne Coyne, lead singer of the Flaming Lips, interview some weirdo for a bit on The Tonight Show. Don't worry, this video won't bring the FCC calling. Those are some kind of gag underwear that have a plastic genatalia-esque accessory on the outside.

Coyne and crew were first spotted wandering down the street until this producer (we assume), who was kind of running around the whole scene like a puppy on a mission, suddenly led everyone to this interview. Coyne just looked baffled the whole time, his expression saying "What do you want me to do with this?"

I think the dude's band was about to play. Their big song was called something like "Shit Love," maybe? We really couldn't hear over the ambient noise and, honestly, how much more comprehensible would it've been if we could?

Apologies for the horrible video and audio quality. Need to upgrade the pocket digital.

We'll be publishing photos from each day of SXSW Music, and we'd love to include your snapshots from day parties, showcases, in-stores, and afterparties! Simply send 'em over (in JPG or GIF format) to photos@austinist.com, with a brief description and any photo credits, and we'll do our best to include them in our new slideshow feature.

This entry has a slideshow. To view the slideshow your browser must have the Flash Player. (If you are using a newsreader that doesn't support Flash click here to launch the slideshow.)

Austinist and Gothamist's second annual SXSW day party (co-hosted this year with Gorilla Vs Bear) was a resounding success, drawing a capacity crowd by the early afternoon. Austin Mayor Will Wynn made a surprise visit during Earl Greyhound's set, articulating the importance of cornerstone venues like The Mohawk on our city's live music scene and suggesting that Austin musicians need better access to healthcare. His speech garnered tremendous applause from the audience, which consisted equally of SXSW Music Festival goers and Austinites.

Austinist would like to thank everyone who came out to this kickoff party, as well as the folks who made this possible:

• Sponsors BMI, Yaris, TuneCore, and The Musebox
• The Mohawk staff
• Emcee Laurie Gallardo of KUT
• DJ Markus Diffee
• Mayor Will Wynn, Rich Bailey, and Thelma Barraza
• Rudy's BBQ and Tamale House
• Stage manager Aaron
• Izze Beverage Company and Red Bull
• Miller Pro Audio
• Rosa Madriz of Green Potato Ventures
• And, most importantly, the bands: Architecture in Helsinki, Headlights, Nicole Atkins, Peter and the Wolf, Tom Brosseau, Apes and Androids, The Shivers, Hello Stranger, The Forms, Sparrow House, Teitur, Earl Greyhound, Stars of Track and Field, Loney Dear, The Hourly Radio, and Loxsly

Enjoy the rest of SXSW, folks, and we'll see you out there!

More: Austin360's The A-List photo and blog coverage

Seems like all the -ist sites are here for SXSW this week, and we've all hacked our way in to Austinist! Gothamist arts & entertainment editor Jen here, live from somewhere off I-35 and still recovering from our Austinist, Gothamist, Gorilla vs Bear show yesterday.

There are of course plenty of great shows to catch today and tonight, and thanks to this map and directory - you should be able to find the right one for you! One we're sad to be missing is the Quack!Media and FOUND Magazine Party featuring Okkervil River, Tally Hall, Great Lakes Myth Society and The Walkmen. It's today from 1 to 5:30pm and free. You needed to rsvp, but you know - they may just let you in anyway. If not, find us and we'll give you our laminate!

We need your help though, Austin. For the past three years we've enjoyed queso at Curra's, yet the other day we were told that El Chile has the best queso. We tried, and politely disagreed. Please settle this for us: who has the best queso in town?

Tony from LAist, here again to give you some choice picks of some of the bands that LA is very proud of.

Tonight is one of those nights where you really wish you could split yourself up into several you's to check out all the bands that are rocking your fine town. The pick of the day has got to be Dengue Fever which is a multicultural group starring Cambodian pop star Ch’hom Nimol. Trust me when I say this is going to be the most exotic, foot-tapping music you will hear all week.

Also on tap for tonight is X legend, John Doe, and up n coming stars The Bird and the Bee.

4pm: Ozomatli @ Austin Convention Center
8pm: The Chairs of Perception (formerly Urinals) @ Soho Lounge
10pm: Dengue Fever @ Emo's
10pm: Midnight Movies @ Beauty Bar
10pm: Cold War Kids @ La Zona Rosa
Midnight: John Doe @ Continental Club
1am: Pop Levi @ The Ale House
1am: The Bird and the Bee @ Opal Divine's Freehouse

After the jump check out the amazingly difficult choices you will have to make if you decide to ignore LA bands completely, including two chances to see guitar virtuoso Kaki King...

We realize that you have many options for delicious food here in Austin, and coming from LA home of some great Mexican food we were very happy to run into Aurelio's on 6th Street.

They've only been open for a few months (taking over the location from a previous Mexican place that reportedly was ousted due to drug issues, allegedly) but Aurelio's has been one of our regular haunts as we make our way to Red River.

We like that it's fast, flavorful, and authentic. In LA you can get some sketchy chicken, so we like the fact that if you order a taco or a burrito they pull out a whole chicken breast and chop it up right in front of you. But we were shocked that they fearlessly break the mold of typical Mexican fare by proudly offering burgers(!) for those of you who are bored with the south-of-the-border fare.

We also like that lettuce is something you don't have to ask for in your burrito - something almost unheard of in taqueria style joints (normally you'd see that only in sit-down family style restaurants). Maybe that's a Texas thing but we like it!

My name is Tony Pierce, I'm the Editor of LAist, here in your fine town for SXSW. This is my third year doing the 9-day marathon of Interactive, Film, and Rock and I've gotta say that this is the best week-and-a-half that I get to spend each year.

Although no one argues that Austin is the live music capital of the world, LA has been known to be home of some pretty decent bands, so may I invite you to drop by some of these shows tonight if you happen to be strolling by:

8pm: Sea Wolf @ Blender Bar
9pm: Division Day @ Blender Bar
10pm: Monsters Are Waiting @ Friends
11pm: Joe Purdy @ The Rio or Great Northern @ Soho Lounge
Midnight: The Broken West @ Antone's
1am: Har Mar Superstar @ The Flamingo Cantina

And if you want to totally ignore all things LA, follow us after the jump for our recommendations...

Rain or shine, our day party is definitely happening today, over at the Mohawk.

We're also pleased to announce that Austin Mayor Will Wynn will be delivering a brief welcome address at approximately 1:30pm.

Flyer by Justin Cox.

Austinist, Gothamist, and Gorilla Vs Bear
Proudly Present
Gonna Gonna Get, Get Down! 2

Inside

(11:50am) The Shivers
(12:35pm) Tom Brosseau
(1:20pm) Sparrow House
(2:05pm) Teitur
(2:50pm) Peter and the Wolf
(3:35pm) Stars of Track and Field
(4:20pm) Hourly Radio
(5:05pm) Loney, Dear

Outside

(Noon) Hello Stranger
(12:35pm) Loxsly
(1:10pm) Earl Greyhound
(1:40pm) Mayor Will Wynn
(1:55pm) The Forms
(2:35pm) Headlights
(3:15pm) Nicole Atkins
(4pm) Apes & Androids
(4:45pm) Architecture in Helsinki

Plus

DJ sets by Ceeplus Bad Knives, Markus Diffee
Hosted by Laurie Gallardo (KUT)
Sponsored by BMI, Yaris, TuneCore, and the MuseBox

"Gonna Gonna Get, Get Down! 2"
Wednesday, March 14th
The Mohawk [map]
11am-6pm
Free! Rain or Shine!

We hope you'll join us.

Andrew Bird's Armchair Apocrypha arrives officially on March 20, and after his performances here for SXSW, he'll embark on an international tour to support it. The Suzuki method-trained violinist, whistler and multi-instrumentalist is known for heart-stoppingly impressive live sets, and his use of Line 6 DL4 Delay Modelers for live phrase samples has prompted a wave of innovative live acts, as artists like Feist and Final Fantasy make use of similar modelers during their shows. Recently we had a chance to talk to Andrew about bloody ass-spankings, margaritas and Armchairs.

Which songs are you most excited to play live?

"Plasticities" and "Dear Dirty" (Fingerlings 3) "Scythian Empires", "Armchairs" - pretty much the whole record, but these songs in particular can reach an ecstatic otherness where I might wake up inside the bass drum when its over.

Andrew Bird will perform on Thursday @ the Onion, AV Club and Tag Team Media party at Emo's. Check our Interactive Guide for details

The buzzkillers at the National Weather Service just issued a severe thunderstorm watch for almost 75 counties in Central Texas, with flash floods in Travis and Williamson Counties likely at least until 6pm. The storms are moving northeast at roughly 20 miles per hour, bringing with them the possibility of "small hail and damaging winds," plus an estimated 3 inches of total rainfall.

Tomorrow's forecast calls for scattered storms in the morning but mostly cloudy conditions in the afternoon.

Photo credits unknown

Little-known outside the experimental guitar scene, the immensely talented Japanese guitar-slinger Tetuzi Akiyama has been perfecting his improvisational rockabilly style for the better part of 20 years now. Due to play several shows during SXSW and a smattering of shows in Texas and elsewhere, Tetuzi kindly extrapolated on his singular talents for us:

You started playing guitar when you were 13. What sort of music were you listening to at the time that drew you to the instrument?

Like almost of all others in that time, some kind of hard rock music, like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, then moved to focus on more guitar players like Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, or whoever they called "super guitarists" [at] that time in 70's. But by the time when Van Halen came on the scene, I had already shifted my interest on more like Pink Floyd. Almost no influence by the punk/new wave scene.

San Francisco rockabilly-Americana outfit Trainwreck Riders are coming for their SXSW ever, and they're doing it in grand style: apart from their Wednesday night showcase at Dirty Dog Bar, they'll be playing the free +1 House Party and NY2LON's private Saturday evening afterparty. The following are responses from three of the four lads -- Andrew (lead guitar, vocals), Pete (lead vocals, guitar), and Garritt (bass, vocals).

[The Trainwreck Riders on Myspace]
[The Trainwreck Riders Homepage]

Share a story about a previous trip to Austin or SXSW.

Pete: We played a show on the Lamar pedestrian bridge where we just plugged right into the bridge. The train went by while we were playing our set and it sounded really cool. One of my favorite shows that we've ever played.

Rocket, Quiet Company, Blackholicus, and Golden AX squared off at Room 710 last night in a friendly LA versus Austin Battle-of-the-Bands, and Austin you came out on top.

LAist held their SXSW party at the Red River mainstay and brought two bands to "compete" against a pair of local groups for a free Sunday night show that started with the My Morning Jacket-esque Quiet Company (who should change their names because they're anything but Quiet).

The Austin trio featured no bass, two guitars, and a ton of nerdy energy that epitomized all the good things about "emo". Singer Taylor Muse spazzed out during his guitar solos, hunched over his keyboards for the piano intros of his slower songs, and led his group through a short, upbeat, rockin' set that left the audience asking for more MORE!

Next up, from Hollywood were the LAist contest winners, Golden AX, who were punk rock ala early Black Flag mixed with a sprinkle of thrash metal. Their energy was as wild as their attitude as their singer Mikey jumped around with a sweaty gusto, definitely keeping the competition close.

But then Blackholicus showed up and stole the freaking show.

For the first time in its two-decades-plus history, SXSW is getting an official break from the City of Austin, after the city council last Thursday approved over $90,000 in fee waivers for this year's festival. According to the Statesman, most of this covers the cops and barricades needed for street closures (much of 6th Street and Red River Street will be shut down to car traffic).

SXSW co-founder and Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black alluded to the city's lack of past support in his Page Two column just two weeks ago, saying, "the city caused many of the most difficult situations and biggest problems SXSW faced each year... Not only did the city not provide any kind of support or aid, but they aggressively created problems. SXSW is very much Austin, but it exists despite, not because of, the city government."

With the Interactive, Film, and Music portions combined, SXSW brings in an estimated $38 million in economic impact to the city.

Photo by emilychang on flickr

The 10th annual SXSW Interactive Web Awards were handed out last night at the Austin Hilton's Grand Ballroom, honoring 18 of the internet's top developers, designers, and websites. Comedian and video blogging phenom Ze Frank emceed the ceremony.

"It's amazing how this event has grown in the seven years I've worked with the Interactive Festival," said Shawn O'Keefe, SXSW Web Awards Coordinator. "This year is our biggest year ever in terms of attendance and entries, and a real testament to the growing online community that continues to push the limits of the Web and make it such an amazing place."

The full list of winners:

Amusement: Exopolis Valentine's Day Mixtape
Art: Smithsonian Photography Initiative
Blog: Twitter
Business: For-Profit: Resn 2B2
Business: Green/Non-Profit: OwnYourC
CSS: The Horizontal Way
Classic: Computerlove
Community: Squidoo
Educational Resource: Vitamin
Experimental: The Fallen Alternate Reality Game
Film/TV: TimeTrumpet
Motion Graphics: Hungry Suitcase
Music: Just for the F of It
Personal Portfolio: Jonathan Yuen
Student: How Do I Say This?
Technical Achievement: Stikkit
People's Choice Award: Social Saga
OwnYourC (Judges' Favorite): OwnYourC

For those of you brave enough to drive into downtown this week, Austin Police Department wants to warn you about fakester parking attendants:

The Downtown Area Command would like to advise the public that there are subjects wearing “safety glow vests” and pretending to be valet parking attendants for the entertainment district. Vehicles are parked on public streets in marked spaces and drivers are being charged a parking fee. Individuals who come to the entertainment district should park in parking lots that are identified as public parking lots and pay the appropriate fee to the parking attendants. Individuals should not park at meters that are bagged; these spaces can be tow-away spaces or they can be reserved for valet parking for businesses that have worked with the city to obtain the appropriate permits.

To reduce the possibility of vehicles being burglarized, APD recommends that individuals park in a well lit area and lock the vehicle. Do not leave valuables in the vehicle; lock all valuables in the trunk if you must leave them. Take your keys with you and if you see a crime taking place or a suspicious person in the area, call 9-1-1. To report a burglary of a vehicle, please call 3-1-1 to file a report.

Photo by Dan Taylor on flickr

We first ran into The Small Stakes at The Flatstock Poster Show during SXSW 2006. The three-day concert poster convention features works by today's premiere screenprinters and artists. Sifting through the field of amazing choices, we kept finding ourselves returning to The Small Stakes before making our final purchases. We grabbed up a number of their posters that day; now, their business card is the only one we still have.

Behind The Small Stakes is Jason Munn. Working out of his studio in Oakland, California, Munn has consistently produced gorgeous posters for clients that include Asthmatic Kitty, Barsuk, Polyvinyl, and bands such as American Analog Set, Nada Surf, Death Cab and Wilco. As digital designs grow and pop art eagerly catches up with it, artists are producing busier graphics that tend to ruin the art. Jason Munn's designs—on t-shirts, books and album covers—are affirmation that less is most definitely more.

We recently got the chance to ask Munn a few questions about poster design, working with musicians and the current state of art in music. At this year's Flatstock, be sure to swing by The Small Stakes booth—Munn's art only gets better in real life. His website has most of the prints available for purchase (if they aren't already sold out).

With the current state of music—digital music and CD burning, where some of today's kids will grow up never having touched cover art or liner notes—where do you think concert art or pop art and music stands?

Obviously to me the art and music go hand in hand. I think posters are helping to fill that void because of so much downloading of music going on. I also think a lot of labels are doing great packaging and stepping it up a bit as of late to create packaging that you want to hold onto and accompanies the albums very well.

Over the past six weeks, Austinist's music writers have spoken with dozens of bands playing this year's SXSW festival. In case you're just now joining us, here's a link-filled list of all Austinist SX07 band interviews:

Albert Hammond, Jr.
Alexi Murdoch
Annuals
Aqueduct
Architecture in Helsinki
Car Stereo (Wars)
Evangelicals
Girl In A Coma
Girl Talk
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter
Ladyhawk
Lions in the Street
Lovedrug
Luminous Orange
Menomena
My Latest Novel
Peel
Popup
Prosser
Rob Crow
Sondre Lerche
The Besnard Lakes
The Cassettes
The Gentle Good
The Glass Family
The Hot Puppies
The Hourly Radio
The Hylozoists
The Rosebuds
The Trucks
Thomas Dolby
Tiny Vipers
Uncut
Wildhearts
YACHT

For additional SXSW coverage, check out both our interactive guide and our SXSW 2007 archives featuring festival news, showcase previews, and more.

Cortney Tidwell may be from Nashville, but her music seems to be the product of an entirely different world. Her debut album, Don't Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up, makes you struggle to keep up with comparisons and references to other bands you might admire (our list included Hope Sandoval, Mogwai, St. Etienne, and Bjork.) This is all quite wonderful, because the parts all meld into a style that is dreamy, catchy, and quietly epic. Tidwell has already become a media darling in the UK, but is just beginning to get attention here at home.

Tidwell makes her Austin debut this week at The Ale House during SXSW. We recently spoke with her about England, heartbreak, and influences.

Even more so than Austin, hailing from Nashville puts a clichéd "sound" on one's initial view of an artist. Do you ever feel you've surprised some audiences or critics that expect strictly country/ Americana material?

Sure. Given my upbringing, I am heavily influenced by country music. Nashville is known as the home of country, so I can understand why people want to pigeonhole me. But I love all kinds of music. I'm the product of too much Tammy Wynette, Morrissey, and Black Sabbath as a teenager.

It's always interesting talking to mascots or spokespeople dressed up in outfits, especially when they don't seem to know too much about the products they are representing. It makes you wonder what they say to people all day.

Yesterday we met the Miller Lite girls who claim to be in town to help support live music, but when asked which bands they recommend, have an interesting response.

We also met the Podcast Pickle who had fascinating answers when we asked him what the most famous or best podcasts were on PodcastPickle.com. But the best was when we asked the Pickle's green-braces-wearing buddy what his role was in the situation.

Looks like the lesson is, brush up on your product before you put on the colors, and prepare for simple questions.

In what might be the best example of both SXSW Interactive & Film comes "The Weathered Underground", a film that allows you to choose the direction that the main character, Eric (played by Michael Ciriaco), gets to experience.

Wanna see Eric trip out on mushrooms? Wanna see him go to a club instead of working? Or would you rather see him work instead of drinking? The control is literally in your hands in this movie that you will soon be able to play on your iPod or PSP, or try out today at the Austin Convention Center either upstairs or downstairs (see how many choices you have?).

We were lucky enough to meet Ciriaco and the writer/director of the film, David Donihue, yesterday who explained some of the plot, and described how on Earth they were able to make the interactive bits work in front of an audience of 100 in a screening room.

Anyone can do man-on-the-street interviews, but you know you're up to something special when you can get a dog-on-the-street interview.

This is Samurai the mellowest, sleepiest, most-laid back dog of SXSW and his buddy Jameson. We met them outside of Buffalo Billiards on 6th.

Jameson says that Samurai wears sunglasses because so many people take pictures of him using flash photography, which is frowned upon at art galleries and apparently also by dog owners.

Samurai's mellowness is due to the sweet vibes given off during this festival, Jameson said, which means that since the fest has just begun, prepare to see this beautiful puppy on a hammock once the fest really gets hoppin'.

The jet lag had just started to wear off (or the booze just started to kick in) when most of the filmmakers, actors and bloggers who are showcasing work during The 2007 SXSW Film Festival & Conference met at Buffalo Billiards Thursday night.

Film gets kicked off today, with Scott Frank's directorial debut, The Lookout debuting at The Paramount tonight at 9:00pm.

L to R: Dan Cox, director of Running With Arnold & Reginald Harkema, director of Monkey Warfare.

Of all the awesome-looking films playing at SXSW this year, Frownland initially caught our eye because, well, any reference to Captain Beefheart is awesome. And after checking out some clips on the film's website, we immediately added it to our schedule. This kind of film scratches us right where we itch-- it's that sort of bleak, acerbic comedy that makes you laugh while simultaneously making you feel weird about laughing.

Director Ronald Bronstein has described the film to us as "a miserablist sort of comedy about an excruciatingly irritating and inarticulate young man, chronicling several days in his life as he pingpongs from one damaged rapport to the next". Bronstein went on to say, "The goal of the movie, I guess, is to sort of keep the audience disoriented in terms of how they feel about him...encouraging disdain but then leaving just enough room to question it and wonder whether sympathy might be appropriate. It both wants you to laugh at him and then feel uneasy about it."

Bronstein also suggested to us that the film will resonate with fans of early Mike Leigh films, so if you're into that kind of questionably misanthropic comedy (which we definitely are), you should check Frownland out.

[Add Frownland to Your Calendar on our (Unofficial) SXSW Film Other Side Guide]
[Add Frownland as a friend on Myspace]

The following is a brief interview with Chris "Arch" Archibald, frontman of Bucks County, Pennsylvania indie rockers Illinois. Having just released their latest album, What the Hell Do I Know?, they'll be playing a slew of shows during SXSW, including the +1 House Party, Ace Fu showcase at Beauty Bar, and Playboy's Rock the Rabbit. Check their myspace for more info.

[mp3] Illinois - "Alone Again"

Share a story about a visit to Austin or a previous trip to SXSW.

Last year we saw a mountain lion!! That was exciting. We stopped along the road fer a piss and there it was.

The Austin Chronicle is offering up tickets to a series of free day shows this year, over at the newly-created SXSW Live space inside the Austin Convention Center. A limited number of space-available passes will be distributed at Cheapo Discs next Wednesday, March 14th, from 2-5pm. Badges and wristbands are not required.

The lineup:

Michael Tully came of age at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he made friends with such latter-day indie stars as director David Gordon Green and songwriter Dave Berman. His documentary, Silver Jew, about Berman's band The Silver Jews and their recent tour in Israel, is set to screen during SXSW. We caught up with him via email to ask the tough questions:

So the documentary is only 51 minutes long. Does that even count as a feature? Any plans to sell the film to, say, IFC or PBS as an hour Hannukah special?

These days--at least for festival purposes--over forty minutes is considered a feature. When we went to Israel, we had no idea what we were gonna end up with, though my stomach always told me an hour was just about right. For a film like this, our chances of a television sale increase exponentially by having a running time of just under an hour. That said, of course we're hoping to make a TV sale to someone like IFC or PBS! The film doesn't address Hannukah specifically, though it is a hopeful story about faith so I'd love to see it aired during Hannukah, or Christmas, or Kwanzaa for that matter.

One of the films we're really excited about seeing at this year's SXSW Film Festival is A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar..., a broad, lighthearted look at America's obsession with (and simultaneous hatred of) lawyers and lawsuits. The film follows six law students as they prepare for the notoriously difficult California Bar Exam, but it also features stories and commentary from several notable lawyers, comedians and personalities including Eddie Griffin, Robert Shapiro (counsel to O.J. Simpson), Senator John Cornyn and one of our favorite comedians ever, Michael Ian Black.

We recently had a chance to talk to director Eric Chaikin about lawyers, perseverance and moral responsibility.

The film follows six people who are trying to pass the California Bar Exam. But is the film a character study, or is it about something more broad?

It weaves two elements together. It’s probably best described as an overall look at our kind of love/hate relationship with Lawyers and with suing each other in America. And the kind of character thread of that—let’s say half the film, or more than half, does follow these people who are trying to be lawyers, and you learn about their motivations and their situations and what they have to go though to pass this test, and it’s a pretty straightforward character study. You hook onto sympathetic or unsympathetic things about them, and you wind up really rooting for them.

But it’s framed in the context of the media images of lawyers that we see, and of lawyer jokes, and of what people say about lawyers though man-on-the-street interviews. And so we kind of interplay America’s perception of lawyers with the, just kind of real people trying to get to be lawyers.

I’m interested to see it, because I often wonder why anyone would want to be a lawyer. I mean, it’s a job where you have to work incredibly hard, but there isn’t the same social reward as, say, if you were to become a doctor. People don’t generally respect lawyers the way they respect other professions on that same level.

That’s the “necessary evil” component of the whole Lawyer discussion. One of the things that motivated the project was that there are all of these stats out there about how sort of “in distress” lawyers are. Overall, the statistics for things like depression and alcoholism and divorce are much higher for lawyers.

Now, a lot of times when we say “lawyers”, we really mean corporate lawyers. And the characters don’t necessarily…I mean, we’ve got a character who’s going to be a corporate lawyer, we’ve got a character who’s going to be an activist, we’ve got a guy trying to be a public defender—so there are lots of different types of lawyers. But a lot of the stress people talk about is among corporate lawyers, and that negative perception.

After a six-month wait since the UK release, Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr.'s solo debut Yours To Keep finally arrived in US record stores this week. We reviewed the disc back in October, saying: "On his quick, punchy solo disc, Hammond does a slightly poppy variation on The Strokes' first album. This is meant as a compliment, because while most side projects are self-indulgent and weird, this one is concise, fun, and really catchy." So there you are.

Hammond obviously subscribes to a minimalist ethos, as his answers are short and to the point. But he does love both Frank Black and G.I. Joe, so who can complain?

The Strokes played the official SXSW pre-party at Stubb's last year. Did you stick around to catch any shows?

No, but I came back on the Eagles Of Death Metal bus and I saw them and The Flaming Lips.

The Rosebuds may be your best hour of SXSW 2007. The North Carolina-based duo has been on the Merge (Spoon, The Arcade Fire) roster for several years, and new album Night Of The Furies may just be the record that breaks them to the larger audience they deserve. The album is a notable departure from both the New Pornographers power pop of debut The Rosebuds Make Out and the more somber, Pitchfork-lauded Birds Make Good Neighbors. The band seems to have somehow mined forgotten songs from the Factory Records vault for the new, synth and bass-heavy material.

People will be dancing with abandon at these shows, but none more so than Rosebuds co-founder, guitarist and vocalist Ivan Howard. Howard tells us about tea, shooting things in Austin, and BBQ wars in our SXSW preview.

You guys have played SXSW before. Do you look forward to it, or is it just chaos for a band perspective?

We look forward to going down there and visiting Kelly's Uncle Clyde. He manages a firing range right outside of Austin where you can actually get into tanks and shoot things up. It is cool seeing all the [SXSW] haircuts, too.

We should probably preface this whole thing by saying that we absolutely love Don McKellar. And not in a cute, innocent, forgivable way—in a nerdy, fawning, obsessive kind of way. And so while much of the following interview does relate directly to Reg Harkema’s new film Monkey Warfare (which Don is in, and which will be screening at SXSW), we also couldn’t resist occasionally veering way off topic, randomly blurting out years worth of pent-up questions, and unsuccessfully trying to convince Don to move to Austin. Please forgive us.

For those of you who don’t know, Don McKellar is one of Canada’s most well-respected director/writer/actors. The multi-talented McKellar has written, directed or acted in countless award-winning films including Last Night, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould and The Red Violin. But he’s also found success outside the film world, hosting a radio show on Canada’s CBC Radio, co-writing the Tony Award winning musical The Drowsy Chaperone and starring in the cult TV series Twitch City (a brilliant anti-sitcom about an agoraphobic television addict named Curtis).

In Monkey Warfare (named after a term Abbie Hoffman used in Steal This Book), Don stars along with his real-life girlfriend Tracy Wright as a pair of ex-revolutionaries living an underground existence in Toronto’s Parkdale neighborhood. The pair—who survive by selling garage sale treasures on the internet—meet a feisty young radical named Susan whose own revolutionary tendencies begin to threaten their safety.

We recently had a chance to chat with Don about Monkey Warfare, Twitch City and the indestructibility of television.

So the film is about a group of revolutionaries…

It’s not so much a group as a couple—me and my girlfriend, who is played by Tracy Wright. It’s sort of unclear, but we were sort of radicals who are living off the grid now in Toronto. Radicals, activists who are sort of “on the lam”.

Is it ever made clear what sort of activists you are?

Kind of, yeah. But that’s why I’m being so coy. It’s sort of revealed later on. I don’t want to give away too much. But at the beginning, all that you know is that we’re sort of living a strange life, off the grid, making money selling things on eBay, without a phone and without any connections to the civilized world. Well, we have a house and everything, but you know.

I ask because it seems like there isn’t a lot of that sort of 60s and 70s-style guerrilla activism any more.

Well, definitely not. I guess there is, but it’s definitely not as apparent as it was when I was in university. People are shy about being organised now, that’s for sure. And I think that they’ve been cowed, you know, beaten down a fair bit. Activists, they don’t want to seem like Angelina Jolie or Bono or…

We've gotten our hands on a bunch of tickets, guestlist spots, and assorted swag for several excellent parties happening during SXSW, and over the course of today we'll be giving these away. Check back every hour for the newest giveaway contest -- each will only run until the next one is posted, so your chances at winning are pretty damn good.

Congrats to the winner of our last contest, who'll be announced at the end of the day.

Next up: two guestlist spots

What: Playboy Rock the Rabbit Party, Presented by Playboy and Charles Attal
Where: 3001 East 2nd Street at Tillery
Who: Ghostland Observatory, Illinois, Monsters Are Waiting, Stars Align and as well as DJ sets by Bloc Party and DJ Omar of Popscene SF
When: Thursday, March 15th, 11pm-"Late"
Details: Private party, invite only.

[Austinist's Interactive Guide to SXSW Parties]

Update: all contests are now closed! Check back later for winners' names.

This weekend, first-time directors Brian Cassidy, Jennifer Loeber and (ex-Austinite) Aaron Hillis will bring their unusual but fantastic new documentary Fish Kill Flea to Austin for its world premiere at SXSW. Strange and funny and sad by turns, Fish Kill Flea is an honest, close-up portrait of a decaying mall in upstate New York that has become home to a popular (though shabby) flea market.

Though the subject seems fairly specific at first, the film eventually forces viewers to ask themselves some fairly weighty questions: Who is controlling our progress as a culture? Can good things be born out of failures? Will abandoning our history destroy our future?

We recently had a chance to ask the filmmakers about malls, filmmaking, and the importance of preserving our past.

Assuming you're all my age, we grew up near the peak of America's Mall obsession. We practically lived in those things—eating there, socializing there, and shopping there. Why have we begun to abandon malls as social centers, and what is taking their place, if anything?

AARON: The social aspects of shopping malls are dying out because the internet is swallowing all mall culture, period. Amazon.com gives you a department store in your living room, eBay is the ultimate garage sale, and these are just the household names. If people can buy goods faster, cheaper and easier online, are business owners going to keep their stores open just for teenagers to hook up on a Saturday night? I don't believe Second Life or MySpace is going to replace the need for concerts, coffee shops, museums, or anywhere else you'd ever meet someone, though it's also true I first met my wife through her blog. What technology has done that malls couldn't is centralize a global community instead of a regional one, but hopefully, people won't mistake these social tools as alternatives to live human interaction. I don't go for virtual hugs.

Throughout the film, you've interspersed shots of the mall both in its heyday and during its second life as a flea market. Is there a particular version of the mall you're more attached to? The shiny, happy, thriving mall, or the run-down but noble flea market?

BRIAN: I think the mall in its flea-market state is a more honest mall, not necessarily noble. It was as if the Dutchess Mall had finally become what she always intended to be. When you look at those old black-and-white photos, it's like somebody was pushing for this image of the mall as a vibrant social hub; I'm not sure that was ever true. The flea market was very bleak in some ways, but there was still a palpable sense that people were making the best of a situation and hoping to make a connection. I don't think anyone leaves the house in the morning because they need a Phyllis Diller backpack.

We've gotten our hands on a bunch of tickets, guestlist spots, and assorted swag for several excellent parties happening during SXSW, and over the course of today we'll be giving these away. Check back every hour for the newest giveaway contest -- each will only run until the next one is posted, so your chances at winning are pretty damn good.

Congrats to the winner of our last contest, who'll be announced at the end of the day.

Next up: several pairs of guaranteed general admission tickets, which gets you in before the space available line

What: Austin City Limits (ACL) Taping by Paolo Nutini
Where: ACL Studios
Who: Paolo Nutini and you
When: Sunday, March 18th, 8pm
Details: Space available ticket giveaway will be held on Wednesday, March 14, from 11am-Noon or until all tickets are gone at Waterloo Records. These tickets are given out on a first-come, first-served basis and they do not guarantee admission.

[Austinist's Interactive Guide to SXSW Parties]

We've gotten our hands on a bunch of tickets, guestlist spots, and assorted swag for several excellent parties happening during SXSW, and over the course of today we'll be giving these away. Check back every hour for the newest giveaway contest -- each will only run until the next one is posted, so your chances at winning are pretty damn good.

Congrats to the winner of our last contest, who'll be announced at the end of the day.

Next up: two guestlist spots -- "priority 'must get in because they're really super duper special' list"

What: Diesel-U-Music Party, presented by Diesel
Where: Saengerrunde Hall (1607 San Jacinto)
Who: Girl Talk, Tokyo Police Club, Matt & Kim, Illinois, David Vandervelde, The Epochs and back room DJs by Glitterworld, Open Bar, Midnight Bowling (???)
When: Friday, March 16th, 7pm-3am
Details: Private Party, Invite Only

[Austinist's Interactive Guide to SXSW Parties]

We've gotten our hands on a bunch of tickets, guestlist spots, and assorted swag for several excellent parties happening during SXSW, and over the course of today we'll be giving these away. Check back every hour for the newest giveaway contest -- each will only run until the next one is posted, so your chances at winning are pretty damn good.

Congrats to the winner of our last contest, who'll be announced at the end of the day.

Next up: two guestlist spots -- "priority 'must get in because they're really super duper special' list"

What: NY2LON (New York to London) Party, presented by Le Tigre
Where: Habana Calle (709 E. 6th Street)
Who: Amy Winehouse, Antibalas, Malajube, The Fratellis, Datarock, Monsters Are Waiting, Trainwreck Riders, Johnossi, Takka Takka, Ferraby Lionheart, We Are Wolves, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. and Comedy by Human Giant (Aziz Ansari, Paul Scheer, and Rob Huebel)
When: Saturday, March 17th, 11am-6pm
Details: Private Party, Try RSVPing here.

[Austinist's Interactive Guide to SXSW Parties]

Gallery Lombardi, vanguard art institution and perennial party host, makes its triumphant return to Austin this month. Hot on the heels of their well-received debut of Mobile Art Place last month (in collaboration with the event organizers at We Manage Stuff), Lombardi will inaugurate their new digs at West 7th and Rio Grande with an opening party tomorrow night.

Their newest exhibit, "DRAW," is touted as a "tribute to the often-underrated but fundamental building-block of visual and graphic art: the drawing," and features works by an exhaustive list of artists, including Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers), Rusty Mills (Pinky & The Brain), and Conrad Keely (Trail of the Dead).

During SXSW, the gallery will be curating a series of excellent parties and panel discussions -- we're pretty excited to check out next Wednesday's "MyToons Mixer," with live graffiti art by street artists Sloke, Mez One, and Saint.

Check out the proper flyer with all events through March plus all "DRAW" artists, after the jump.

[Gallery Lombardi Homepage]

Gallery Lombardi Grand Opening Party
Tunes by DJ Subspace Frequency
Friday, March 9th
604 West 7th St [map]
8pm-11pm
Free, Refreshments Provided

We've gotten our hands on a bunch of tickets, guestlist spots, and assorted swag for several excellent parties happening during SXSW, and over the course of today we'll be giving these away. Check back every hour for the newest giveaway contest -- each will only run until the next one is posted, so your chances at winning are pretty damn good.

Congrats to the winner of our last contest, who'll be announced at the end of the day.

Next up: no tickets to this one, but in conjunction with the New Line SXSW Showcase, the winner scores copies of the new Albert Hammond Jr CD, Robbers on High Street EP, and Midnight Movies' upcoming 7-inch.

What: New Line & Scratchie Records official SXSW showcase
Where: Blender Bar at the Ritz (320 E. 6th Street) 7pm-2am
Who: Albert Hammond Jr,, Robbers on High Street, Midnight Movies, Office, Eugene, and The Sights
When: Thursday, March 15th, 7pm-2am
Details: SXSW Badge or Wristband Required

[Austinist's Interactive Guide to SXSW Parties]

We've gotten our hands on a bunch of tickets, guestlist spots, and assorted swag for several excellent parties happening during SXSW, and over the course of today we'll be giving these away. Check back every two hours hour for the newest giveaway contest -- each will only run until the next one is posted, so your chances at winning are pretty damn good.

First up: two guestlist spots on the private balcony at our Austinist+Gothamist+Gorilla Vs Bear day party, with free BBQ, snacks, and beer!

What: "Gonna Gonna Get, Get Down! 2," presented by Austinist, Gothamist, and Gorilla vs Bear, sponsored by BMI, Yaris, TuneCore, and the Musebox
Where: The Mohawk (912 Red River)
Who: Architecture in Helsinki, Headlights, Nicole Atkins, Peter and the Wolf, Tom Brosseau, Apes and Androids, Shivers, Hello Stranger, Forms, Sparrow House, Teitur, Earl Greyhound, Stars of Track and Field, Loney Dear, Hourly Radio, Ceeplus Bad Knives
When: Wednesday, March 14th, 11am-6pm
Details: Free!

Also, please note that our FactoryPeople giveaway contest is open until tomorrow at 6pm.

Seattle's Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter drew raves in alt.country circles for their 2004 album Oh, My Girl. They opened gigs for similar artists like Neko Case and Richard Buckner and seemed to have found a niche. That made listening to Sykes' newest Barsuk album Life, Love, Lust & The Open Halls Of The Soul awfully surprising. The twang is mostly gone, replaced by grittier singing, a dark but loose vibe reminiscent of Neil Young, and a more rock-oriented sensibility.

After a recent trek across the US with Sparklehorse, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter return to Austin next week for several SXSW-related shows. We spoke with Sykes this week about the Godfather of Grunge, music execs, and keeping the magic alive.

Your new record seems to have more folk and rock influences than Oh, My Girl, which felt like more of an alt.country album. Was the change intentional?

I never had any conscious idea about this record on the front end in terms of how it was going to pan out. I just tried to pay attention and allow myself to follow through with what was coming from me at the time. It wasn't until I was in the thick of the writing process that I started to realize that it was going to be quite a departure from the others. I’m glad, because as a band I think we would have dried up if we hadn’t attempted to leave our comfort zone.

This Sunday, the SXSW Film Festival will host the world premiere of Jennifer Venditti's much buzzed-about documentary Billy The Kid. The film follows Billy Price, a fifteen-year-old boy who overcomes obstacles with courage and wisdom to spare.

This one looks really interesting—apparently, Venditti is a casting agent who's famous for her "street scouting", where she travels around finding real people (as opposed to, you know, actors) for advertising, fashion and film roles. She encountered Price while on a casting trip in Maine, and became so intrigued that she decided to make a documentary about him.

After the screening, head over to the after party at FactoryPeople, featuring a celebrity DJ (TBD) and imagery on the outside rooftop (running the trailer and additional footage from the documentary). The party is free and open to the public.

Billy the Kid Screening
Sunday, March 11th
Austin Convention Ctr
9pm
[Add Billy the Kid to Your Calendar on our (Unofficial) SXSW Film Other Side Guide]

After Party
Sunday, March 11th
FactoryPeople
11pm-2am, Free

Sure--we already told you about our amazing Other Side Guide to the South by Southwest Film Festival. But we're posting again to let you know how excited we are about this thing!

Not only can you effortlessly browse the huge list of amazing films playing at SXSW this year (by title, theatre, category or day), you can also rate movies, read and write reviews, keep a festival blog (maybe even a hilarious festival blog), get directions to the venues and plan out your entire schedule on a handy web-based calendar.

I know what you're thinking-- "That's all well and good, but what about the panels?" You're in luck, my friend, because now you can do all that stuff with the panels too! You can even search the schedule by the panelists you want to see.

And one of the great things about these nifty B-Side Entertainment sites is that your account works on any of them. So when the Austin Film Festival or Fantastic Fest or the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival rolls around later in the year, you'll already be set up.

Austin filmmaker Bob Ray's Hell on Wheels tells the story of Austin's roller derby revival, following a group of hard-hitting Texas women who pulled the sport from the brink of obscurity and into the international spotlight. Five years in the making, this rock-meets-rollerskates doc will be premiering at this years' South by Southwest film festival.

We recently had a chance to talk to Bob about Roller Derby, filmmaking and one-man bands.

How did Hell on Wheels get started?

Werner [Campbell, the film’s producer] and I had worked together in another capacity on some short films that I’d done, and we were trying to get a project together where he would produce. We were talking to this dude named Hasil Adkins, who was, like, the godfather of one-man bands; he lives out in Virginia out in some Podunk-ass holler out there, and he’s like a like a legend in the hillbilly, one-man band world—which is, granted, probably a very small world. But there are quite a few one-man bands here in town, so we were going to book a tour for him to Austin, where we would have a one-man band showcase with him as the headliner. So the project would be sort of a road doc thing, because he doesn’t fly or anything. The problem was, he is actually as crazy as his rep, and it ended up being more problematic than anything.

And so we were down at Emo’s—because this local band Honky that we like was playing—and we saw a bunch of girls on skates. And an old friend of mine, who was like the valedictorian at my high school, Crokett High in South Austin, she was there on skates. So I was like, “why are you on skates? What’s the deal?” And it turned out it was a benefit for the roller derby that was being organized. I’d heard about it before, but I just thought it was a bunch of hot air and lip service, as many, many, many things in this town are. But once I saw that my friend Jennifer was involved, I knew something was actually happening.

Earlier that day, the Hasil Adkins project was kind of falling apart, and so we thought, “let’s not do that, let’s do something else”. And then we thought, “hey-- this [roller derby] is happening right in the music scene that both Werner and I grew up in, involving a lot of the women from the music scene and the sort of 6th and Red River punk rock scene that was going on”. And so it just made sense.

We asked, “Is anybody filming this?” Nobody was, but they wanted someone to, and they’d seen or heard of Rock Opera, which was my first feature film, as well as some of the music videos that I’d done for bands like Nashville Pussy and Fuckemos… you know, kind of rock n’ roll punk rock bands. So I had some credibility, and they were really pleased to see someone who wasn’t just going to come in and spew hot air, hoping to pick up girls and get laid and maybe or maybe not make a movie. The realized that wasn’t the case with us, so we immediately started filming.

We hung around and filmed everything at first, and just kind of figured out where the story was, which is how it works with documentaries of this nature. Like with Spellbound, for example, or with Murderball, there’s a competition that becomes the third act, and then there’s an aftermath. But that wasn’t the case with us, and we though maybe it would be the case if—and this was a huge, huge if—if they ever even had a game. And if they managed to have a complete season, then maybe we could structure our film around that and have some sort of momentum build to a conclusion. Turns out it got way more insane than that, and that became completely secondary to what the real story was.

The good people of Austin realize that SXSW is a time to capitalize on the teeming hoards of dirty musicians rolling in to town in vans and pulling trailers. Especially those good people who own parking spaces. Finding a parking spot during the week is like discovering the purple diamond the old lady dropped into the ocean at the end of Titanic. Ohio's Lovedrug is one such band who has encountered this parking problem. Singer/guitarist Michael Shepard and guitarist David Thomas Owen IV share the story and their hope for finding bbq tacos.

How do your parents describe your music to people?

David: I just told them I was still in the marching band ... I mean they don't go to games anymore, so I'm good.

It's been nearly five years since an appearance on KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" rocketed Alexi Murdoch's songs into Honda commercials,The O.C., and Garden State. The teen drama association doesn't do justice to the careful and serious tone of Murdoch's music, which he recorded and released independently despite multiple offers from the major labels.

After a long silence since his Four Songs EP, Murdoch's 2006 full-length debut Time Without Consequence didn't pander to casual fans. The album is tough to navigate on first listen, with dark folk, somber lyrics, and very subtle hooks that only reveal themselves after you've spent some time with the songs. The overall effect is that Murdoch challenges listeners to come to him, and the patient are rewarded with something quite special. We recently had an amiable and spirited conversation with Alexi Murdoch about the merits of television, ACL Fest, and tequila mixers.

There was quite a gap between your popular debut EP and the full album. Was the delay due to your schedule, or from finding the inspiration to write?

I was clear that the record needed to be made a certain way. I wanted to do it all on tape and record the songs live. This meant having to find the right studio, and getting the musicians in at the same time, and getting the songs down in single takes...which when you're producing on your own can be a little challenging. Also, I'm just really fucking anal.

Aside from being an accomplished documentary filmmaker (and Guggenheim, Rockefeller, NEA and AFI Fellowship award recipient), Third Ward TX director Andrew Garrison is also an associate professor at the University of Texas, and the founder of East Austin Stories, an ongoing student documentary program that focuses on East Austin neighborhoods.

We recently had a chance to talk to Andrew about Third Ward, East Austin Stories and South by Southwest.

Tell us a little bit about the film and what it’s about.

Well, it’s about an inner-city neighborhood in Houston that had gone into decline since the 60s. It had been left for dead—abandoned, basically, by the city of Houston—and a group of seven African-American artists decided that they wanted to do some art that would draw attention to the issues there. But they got their awakening when they asked people, “what do you need?” and the people in the neighborhood said, “what we need is this placed cleaned up. We need the junkies out of here”. So the artists decided to take that on as their art.

One of the first things they did was to take two blocks of housing—shotgun houses that had been abandoned for thirty years, used as shooting galleries and for prostitution—they boarded them up and painted on the boards, over the windows and doors, and made a “drive by” exhibition. And then they actually bought those houses with an NEA grant, which is kind of remarkable. The bought twenty-two houses on two blocks, and they started to rehab them. They made eight houses into exhibition spaces for artists to show work for six months at a time. They had international art stars and locals—all kinds of different artists.

Another issue was that there were a lot of single mothers going to college who had no place to stay, so they dedicated another eight houses to single mothers. Six of them are residencies where single mothers can stay for up to two years rent-free, and the others are meeting houses and so on.

And as they kept doing art, it brought more people into the neighborhood and pushed the junkies away, and the neighborhood once again became a safe and lively place to be. They started an after-school program for kids; they had a summer program and a cultural center. But all of that, while making it a better place, brought the attention of developers. And so now they’ve got this great neighborhood, but the market force of gentrification might just scatter everyone. And so their new challenge is, “what do we do about that?”

SXSW has truly built a strong reputation around the world, and every year various countries send their top-notch artists to Austin to display their nation’s talent. Scandinavia is one such area with a booming music scene. Danish band Mew and Sverige’s own Loney, Dear (Emil Svanängen) will bring their best to the festival this year. Finland, too, is doing its bit, with the Finnish Moosic Tour. Featuring punk rock from Disco Ensemble and electro-pop from 22-Pistepirkko, the night of Finnish delights also includes KTU and Lodger. Can’t forget about our friends from Norway Bigband, who will be peddling their wares at numerous gigs around town throughout the week.

The Austinist has already done some justice to Asia with our Japan Nite showcase preview as well as an interview with Luminous Orange. China will deliver their goods in the form of Lonely China Day (a “Chinese Sigur Rós”) and Re-TROS (Rebuilding the Rights of Statues). Both bands are scheduled to play Spiro’s on March 14th. We’ve always felt that India has had a sparse representation over the years at SXSW. This year, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations remedies that, and presents Menwhopause at Red 7 on the 15th at 8pm sharp.

The south of the Equator is not to be denied either. South Africa presents Harris Tweed on the 18th at the Hilton Garden Inn, while the Australian Music Collective hosts their annual Bar-B-Q at Brush Square Park on the 16th (RSVP Required). Featuring the likes of Wolf & Cub and Beasts of Bourbon, mixed in with delightful sausage wraps (if last year’s shindig is any indication), this promises to be the big day out for the Aussies in Austin. No broadcast of the Australia vs. New Zealand World Cup match probably, but the New Zealand Industry Commission showcase their country’s finest, including Die! Die! Die! and Cut Off Your Hands at the same venue on the 15th.

We’d like to finnish this international preview by offering two tickets to the Finnish Moosic Tour.

Congratulations to our winners!

Finnish Moosic Tour
Wednesday, March 14th
Uncle Flirty’s Loft (Upstairs at the Drink)

Poster Art courtesy of Finnish Moosic Tour and Menwhopause.

Mad scientists with Victorian flair, lend us your ears: next week is your week to sail your rocketships to the moon -- or at least dock them at a SXSW steampunk party.

And for the rest of you who don't regularly don goggles and ride penny-farthings: about steampunk. Steampunk refers to a brand of creative science fiction that weds modern technophilia with the sweet trappings of railroads, air balloons, top hats and all-around steam engine-ness, drawing inspiration from writers like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Mary Shelley. (A great example of the deliciously wacky steampunk flavor? Back to the Future III.)

You can experience more of said flavor next Monday, March 12th at Scholz Garten. The oldest little pub in Texas will host an interactive showcase called, "Futures of the Past: A Steampunk Adventure." Austin's White Ghost Shivers will share their musical talents, and so will a local vaudeville troupe. Oo-la-la! But the evening's highlight sounds like the Modern Marvels exhibit, "...which will hold visual and interactive artworks from local and national artists who specialize in Steampunk styles. Included works involve hand-made shadow boxes, a time machine booth, and candles that spin under their own steam power."

One of the films we're most excited about seeing at this year's South By Southwest Film Festival is Laura Dunn's The Unforeseen, a documentary look at the controversy surrounding Austin's real estate development and its impact on the Edwards Aquifer and on Barton Springs. Co-executive-produced by Terrence Malik and Robert Redford (who reportedly learned to swim at Barton Springs), the film explores the unseen relationships between our natural environment and our urge to destroy it.

A graduate of UT Film School, director Laura Dunn is an award-winning filmmaker, as well as the Founder and Executive Director of the Austin-based production company Two Birds Film. We recently had a chance to talk to Laura about the creative process, the documentary backlash and the American Dream.

Tell us a little bit about the film and what it’s about.

Basically, the film looks at the growth wars in Austin—the battle over Barton Springs and the land and the environment. The battle between developers and environmentalists that’s been going on in Austin since the early 70s. So it’s really sort of a 30-year trajectory. What I’m trying to do is use the battle in Austin as a microcosm for what communities all over the country are dealing with. As we “grow” (and that word is debatable in terms of what it means in my opinion), we threaten the very natural resources that brought us here to begin with.

Barton Springs is a symbol in our community of the natural environment and of our precious natural resources. It’s also been a real icon of the community, and a catalyst for a lot of the debate in the growth wars. So though I’ve focused on Barton Springs for the film, it addresses a lot more than just Barton Springs.

There are a handful of key characters I selected, one of which may be a little controversial—Gary Bradley, who has been one of the more notorious developers over the [Edwards] Aquifer, and is sort of the arch nemesis of the environmental movement. I really wanted to try to see it all through his eyes, and so he’s a key character in the film, as is Barton Springs and several people who speak for Barton Springs. In a nutshell, that’s what the film is about.

You’re a local, so obviously this topic is important to you. Was the impetus for making this movie because you wanted to tell this particular story, or was it that you’re a filmmaker, and you need to make films?

It’s an interesting question—the impetus for the film actually came from Terrence Malick, who approached me about the project. He put the idea on the table for me to do, and he’d executive produce and sort of mentor me though the process. So in this case, the reason I did it was to work for Terrence.

I personally am driven equally by the need to make art just as a matter of self-expression, and to try to kind of find a language to communicate with. As well as that I’m very concerned about the state of the environment, and I find a lot of peace in the natural world, and that it’s disappearing before our eyes is of great concern to me personally. So I wouldn’t really say that it’s one more than the other—it’s both for me.

Since moving to Austin in the early 90s to attend film school at UT, Bryan Poyser has become a fixture in the local film scene. A co-founder of the Cinematexas Film Festival, Bryan has also spent time as a producer at SXSW Film, and is currently Director of Artist Services for the Austin Film Society.

And on top of all that, he makes movies. With two shorts and two features under his belt (one of which earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination in 2004), Bryan is set to premiere his newest short, Grammy's, at this year's South By Southwest Film Festival.

We recently had a chance to talk to Bryan about his new film, South By Southwest, and the rise of Rusty Kelley.

Tell me a little bit about what Grammy’s is about, and how the project got started.

Basically, I’ve been friends with Joe Swanberg for a long time—he’s a Chicago filmmaker who’s already made like four features, and he’s only 26. Joe sent me his first movie, which he’s in, and as I was watching it I was thinking that I really wanted to try to cast him in something with Rusty Kelley, who’s the star of Dear Pillow, the first feature that I did. I wanted to cast them as brothers because I thought they had these really great, similar sort of mannerisms and they sort of looked the same. So I was obsessed with the idea of putting them together in some sort of story for about a year, and I finally came up with the idea of them going on a fishing trip and meeting this strange sort of guy, played by another Austin actor that I really like, Chris Doubek.

So we ended up doing a fundraiser to raise money for the film. I talked to the folks at the Alamo, and they let us do a double feature of Dear Pillow and Joe’s first movie, Kissing on the Mouth. We also did a raffle—I’ve been part of the Austin film community for a while, so I was able to call in favors from places like SXSW and the Austin Film Festival and the Austin Gay & Lesbian Film Festival to give away badges or memberships.

We did that on June 15th, and we started shooting on June 16th, so it gave the whole shooting process a sort of frantic air. We were trying to do it really fast and be excited about the process rather than obsessing over the details.

How different is it showing a short film as opposed to a feature?

Well, short films are always going to be the sort of “neglected step-cousin” to the features. And I didn’t really know that until I’d gone through the process of showing one; a short film that I did called Pleasureland played at about 25 film festivals both here and in Europe. I had a great time showing the film and having people react to it and meeting other filmmakers, but I didn’t get much press or industry attention out of it.

That kind of changed when Dear Pillow started the festival circuit though. Even though we still haven’t gotten distribution for the movie, it got nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and won some festival awards and got some great reviews and basically set things up so that we could do The Cassidy Kids, which was a feature with a real budget. And noticing that difference was pretty interesting and pretty stark.

But now that I’ve made a short film and I’m about to show it at SXSW, I’m totally okay with the idea of not getting much press. And if people end up liking it and connecting to it then that’s great.

Now in his fourth year as producer for the South By Southwest Film Festival, Matt Dentler might just be the busiest guy in the Austin film community. In addition to his year-round duties at SXSW Film, he's also a programmer for the mega-awesome Fantastic Fest, a curator for two national film distributors, an active blogger, television show host and occasional film festival panelist, judge and lecturer. And as if that weren't enough to keep him busy, he also sits on the Board of Directors at the Austin Film Society (and as far as we can tell is the youngest current Board Member).

We recently had a chance to chat with Dentler about film programming, Austin audiences, and the upcoming South By Southwest Film Festival.

You spend a lot of the year traveling to other film festivals looking for films to show at South By Southwest, right?

Yeah, I definitely do. Programming, looking for things, figuring out what works for us and what we can bring to the festival.

Being a guy who has a lot of experience attending film festivals, what makes South By Southwest different?

I think the audiences. By and large, Austin has some of the best audiences in the world, and I think that a lot of the filmmakers and the industry people who come into town for the festival are really excited by our audiences—there’s a tangible feeling in the air with the screenings here that you may not get at a lot of the other festivals. Austin is a film lover’s town, and it’s really exciting to be able to host an event that caters to that.

How has the festival changed since you came on as Producer?

It’s definitely gotten bigger. There are more films now than there were before, and I think the scope of the attendees has grown. We’re getting a lot more audience and industry from all corners of the globe. And I’d say that as a result, the quality of the films has really grown over the years. We have a really great staff of programmers and a really great team of people working year-round. The chemistry of the staff has been very successful in achieving a bigger and hopefully better event.

Obviously your job entails a lot of movie watching. Do you ever get burned out on watching films?

Well, not really. Obviously it’s a very busy job, but the great thing about working in a business like this is that every year there are new films and filmmakers to discover, and that keeps things vital and fresh year after year. It’s certainly not a job that finds you getting complacent or sluggish or in any sort of groove. And for whatever reason, I’m of the mindset that I’m always thirsty and willing for more films to watch.

Dallas’ The Hourly Radio has garnered some top-notch buzz lately. Rolling Stone and Filter magazines both named History Will Never Hold Me in recent “Top 5” listings, while their guitar-centric, post new-wave musical stylings are a hit in NYC, among other cities. We, too, have enjoyed their Texas shows, be it last year’s non-SXSW the rich girls are weeping bash during, well, SXSW, or their opening gig for Stellastarr* at the Parish a few years back. Everyone gets their Hourly Radio fix at Austinist’s free day show at the Mohawk on the 14th.

If you could open for any artist living or dead, in any era of their career, who would it be?

The Depeche Mode/Primal Scream tour after which both bands and crew had to check into rehab.

Friend of Austinist and the dude responsible for last fall's wicked Ghostface Killah-Ghostland Observatory mashup (download it here), Chris Rose is half of DJ duo Car Stereo (Wars), with whom we've partnered to throw many a get-down in the past months. CS(W) is making its SXSW debut as a proper showcasing artist this year -- check 'em out at the Beauty Bar on Wednesday, March 14th, at 11pm.

[mp3] Car Stereo (Wars) - SXSW Mixtape Preview

Is it still fun to play live if the audience is 95% industry?
I'll just be really excited about an audience!

Tacos or burritos? Margaritas or beer?
Tacos is the obvious choice, and I think the better one. I wish I knew where my favorites were, but the fish tacos at Trudy's are pretty close to the top. Margaritas, unless it's a Michelata from El Chile. The goblet they serve it in makes me feel like I'm in Indiana Jones.

Photo by Chad Wadsworth, originally part of a photoshoot for SPIN magazine

For those of you keeping up with casual SXSW events that don't require badges or (hopefully) redonkulous lines, we've got an update on local in-store events from End of an Ear record store on S. 1st. For more information on all of the artists scheduled to perform, head over to the Instore information page on End of an Ear's site and follow the links. All of the events are free, so mark your calendar. We're excited to see Rob Crow, Ola Podrida & Benjy Ferree. For more tips on unofficial SXSW events that are free or hella cheap, check out our tipsheet from last week. For a more comprehensive list of happenings better suited for those of us who obsess a bit, bookmark our Interactive Guide.

Thursday - March 15th

Suishou No Fune (Holy Mountain / Japan) - noon
Benjy Ferree (Domino) - 1pm
Dirty Projectors (Dead Oceans / Secretly Canadian) - 2pm
David & the Citizens (Friendly Fire / Sweden) - 4pm
Oppenheimer (Bar/None / Belfast, N. Ireland) - 5pm

Friday - March 16th

Danny Saul (Machester UK) - noon
Rob Crow (of Pinback) 1pm
Arbouretum (Thrill Jockey) - 2 pm
Peter Walker (Tompkins Square) - 3pm
Cyann & Ben (Ever Records / France) @ 4pm
Ola Podrida (Plug Research) - 5pm

Saturday - March 17th
Kid Harpoon (XL, UK) - noon
Blacklist (NY) - 1pm
Ecstatic Peace 2 to 4
Matt Valentine & EE
Thurston Moore
Tall Firs

End of an Ear
2209 South 1st
(512) 462-6008
[map]

Canadian natives The Hylozoists play vibraphone-led instrumental pop with a leaning towards minimalism and a penchant for BBQ. 2006's La Fin Du Monde wowed critics and brought the band to the forefront of the not-boring instrumental music scene with sweeping instrumentation and admirable orchestration. If you like film scores, Reich or anything vibe-related, you'll enjoy The Hylozoists. You can also catch them twice during SXSW, check our Interactive SXSW Guide for more details.

We recently had a chance to talk to the band's vibe, glock and drum player, Paul Aucoin about Austin, A Love Supreme and yes, BBQ.

Share a story about a visit to Austin or a previous trip to SXSW.

I love Austin and have gotten to play there many times. My first trip was for a SXSW and played 7 times in four days while the most memorable show was having 150 inside the club (kept very strictly to capacity by very zealous fire Inspectors) and having a good two hundred people outside the windows watching back into the club.

Photo courtesy the band's MySpace

Hylozoists Myspace
Hylozoists Official

Our interviews with SXSW bands have been appearing fast and furious on the site lately. From Girl Talk to My Latest Novel, we’ve been blessed with some great responses. Justin Harris, bass and sax player for Portland’s Menomena might now be our favorite interviewee. Menomena specializes in experimental pop-rock, with no clear formula, but plenty of invigorating innovation (thanks to band member Brent Knopf’s Deeler, short for Digital Looping Recorder). We caught up with Harris recently, and found him a bit obsessed with harmful insects, be it the Vespula Vulagaris, W.A.S.P., or simply Sting.

Share a story about a visit to Austin or a previous trip to SXSW.

Well, we played SXSW in 2005 and it was the first time that any of us had been to Austin. As we were driving in, I was amazed and astounded by the life and energy displayed before me on the over-crowded streets. I mean I have never seen so many people who look just like me and my cohorts concentrated into one place like that. Simply amazing!

So anyway, as you can imagine, the excitement was building more and more with each block passed until finally we had reached our destination...The Red Eyed Fly. I think I said something to the effect of, "well boys, here we are. Austin, the city that pulses music through its veins, and blood through it's streets..." which, you know, really makes no sense, but I meant it! Big time! I mean, at that moment, I was Hemingway, you know?

For some of you, SXSW is an obsession. For others...not so much. While we're rather immersed in the whole SXSW experience at Austinist, we know that many of you just want to take in a free or cheap event or two during the festival to experience the thing. No problem. Here's a list of events featuring local merchants, community organizations, and radio stations that will allow you to casually dip a toe in the SX waters without waiting in wristband lines or staying out until 2am.

Waterloo Records: Waterloo again features an amazing lineup of free in-store performances coupled with free St. Arnold's beer. Thursday features Sparklehorse (2pm), Lily Allen (3pm), and Albert Hammond, Jr. (6pm). Friday's line-up includes Peter, Bjorn, and John (3pm), Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly. (4pm), and The Stooges (6pm). Arrive early, because that Stooges showcase will be mobbed. Saturday's finale has Money Mark (2pm), Amy Winehouse (3pm), and Rosie Thomas (5pm). More acts and details can be found on Waterloo's site.

KGSR at the Four Seasons: From 3/12 to 3/16, KGSR will bring their morning show to the lobby of the Four Seasons from 6-10am. A $5 charity donation will get you a breakfast taco, a cup of coffee, and the chance to see bands such as Grupo Fantasma, What Made Milwaukee Famous, Mofro, and Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly. play acoustic sets.

BookPeople: There's a genre approach at BookPeople this year. On 3/15, country singer Johnny Bush signs Whiskey River (1pm). Later that evening, punk photographer Suzie J. Horgan presents her new book Punk Love (7pm). Finally, there's some indie-rock Friday, as John Sellers showcases his Guided By Voices/indie scene memoir Perfect From Now On (7pm). All events are free.

SXSW at Auditorium Shores: The big freebie of the festival, SXSW presents some bigger names free to the public in an outdoor setting. Friday the 16th, Ozomatli (6:45pm) and Public Enemy (8pm) headline a bill that truly fights the power. On Saturday the 17th, a wildly eclectic line-up features children's bands like The Sippy Cups and Daddy A Go-Go from 11am to 2pm, then transitions to Japanese indie-rockers Boris (5pm), Austin punks The Riverboat Gamblers (6pm), folky-punk from Against Me! (7pm), and indie-metal icons Mastodon (8pm). These events are always crowded and quite fun.

Austin Rock 'n' Romp: A special SXSW edition of the monthly indie-parent event on Sunday, 3/11 features Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater, who made headlines recently by signing to Matador Records. Author Neal Pollack will also appear and read selections from his new book AlternaDad. It takes place on that patio at The Mohawk on Red River.

For more SXSW event information, visit Austinist's Interactive Guide to SXSW.

As they've managed to do for the past few years, South Congress boutique FactoryPeople will again host a killer SXSW afterparty, this time on Thursday, March 15th.

Hosted by FactoryPeople and Anthem Magazine, "La Chic Disco Boum" will feature DJ sets by Simian Mobile Disco (UK), Druzzi & Mattie (of The Rapture/new record label Throne of Blood), and Peaches, plus proper dance party ambience courtesy of Austin's own Boom Chica Boom GoGo girls, who always rock our casbahs. There's also the requisite open bar.

Unlike most of the other stuff happening around town (including our day party), this one's strictly invite-only, but we'd like to help you out. Enter below for your chance to win one of three pairs of tickets that we're giving away: