It’s not at all strange how Austin, Texas calls to us like a siren, every second week in March. By us, we mean everyone — everyone with a camera, a tour van, a blog, a website, a radio station, a brand, a name, a tendency to sing into microphones and play through amps, a cowboy hat, a burning creative desire and a need to escape the last few weeks of winter. This city and SXSW turn us all wide-eyed and slack-jawed with just how far some talent and gumption can get you. Once again, we here at Daytrotter partnered up with our old friends and great minds at Seagate to take part in overrunning the city for the seventh year.
We tend to get down to SXSW after much stressing and planning — scouring through lists of who else is going to be joining you in town — and then just letting it all unfold as it chooses. We have those long lists of bands and artists that we want to see and then it gets reconfigured when you bump into someone on some littered and loud part of 6th Street, who says something like, “You’ve got to see…,” throwing in a name that is just a bit of enticing gibberish. You are led by these pied pipers and gut feelings. You’re led by an ear and hunches.
Once again this year, we posted up at Good Danny’s in downtown Austin and invited some of the folks that we most wanted to tape sessions with — legends and young bucks. We brought Billy Bragg and The Zombies by, the latter of which downed some PBRs and put smiles on everyone crammed into the living room and kitchen of the studio, playing songs that are more than beloved — heard there in a very new way, in that intimate way that will never happen again. We taped young artists such as Jake Bugg, The Lone Bellow, Highasakite, High Highs, Mac DeMarco, Wardell, PAPA, Feathers, Flatbush Zombies, Flume, Mikhael Paskalev, Paloma Faith,TEEN, Half Moon Run, Hunter Hunted and established entities such as Josh Ritter, City & Colour, Frank Turner, Olafur Arnalds, Big Harp and one of the best exports Canada has ever had in Ron Sexsmith.
Placed in the setting that we like to place people in — a warm environment that encourages the feel of the creative process — everyone through the doors came alive there amongst the creaking floors and the killer microphones. Being crammed into an intimate space like this and being put at ease allows for the magical parts of songwriting and performing to happen. Many of these people spent a few minutes to speak about their processes, how they write, what they like to use when they write and record and how it all gets into and out of them. If there’s a better place than Austin to be inspired by the vastness and variety of the muse, we haven’t found it yet. We share what we captured here and on Daytrotter, daily.
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