Chapter 5: Arka-blog-ia and beyond….Finally at the TX border! As told by Oren and Doug
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Awaking to the shittiest cup of rest stop coffee, I take the wheel and drive us from wherever the hell we are into Austin. No rain, no flooding, no spectacular light show over the horizon, just traffic through Waco (W.e A.int C.omin O.ut) and DFW. We see we’re going to have just enough time to swing by the PA rental place and put down our deposit. I call the hotel to confirm we have a ground floor room – much easier than carrying gear up hotel stairs – to which I’m told we need to come wait on line as they’re 100% booked, rooms first come first serve even though we’ve had our reservation for a month. Line forms at noon, the rush begins. We have plenty of time, but as we get within Austin city limits close to the rental place, bang! Morning traffic! The way to the rental place is clear, but it’s past the hotel and the way back is fucked on the highway. Tension begins… Interim Doug screams his mantra STARBUCKS – we swear he owns stock, if not he should – to which we respond NO TIME! 1130am arrive at the rental place…
“Hi, my name is Oren; I called you 35 hours ago before we got into the van outside about a PA?” Yes…, “Well I just got out and we’re here to put down our deposit”… The place is teaming with everyone and their mother renting gear for their gigs, its SXSW after all. “Damn you guys drove….”, “Yes, we’re like Energizer, take my money so we can go get our room and we’ll be back for the PA”. Fucking credit card declined again, mastercard fraud protection – they accept the deposit hold for $600, but decline the actual payment of $10.83. Idiots, protect me against having to call you again, not from me fraudulently using my own credit card dammit! Back on the road and into traffic, the AC is out, sweat drips like a faucet…this is how bands live and die, 105 degrees in the van, a deadline and traffic…slap your soul on your sleeve and deal with it…we get to the hotel at 11:58, 2 mins to spare, Schedule Tyrant Oren is pleased…he loves it when a plan comes together. Well, close to together anyhow…we get our 3rd floor room and start lugging our crap up the stairs. 2 mins in the room, 2 people left behind to fight for a shower, Oren, Doug and fearless roadie Craig get back into the van and go right back to the rental place to load the PA into a now empty van. STARBUCKS!!!! There really is one on every corner. We drop Doug off telling him we’ll pick his caffeinated ass up on the way back and go forth to get the PA. 10 mins later, Doug scooped up, PA in the back; we go back into traffic on our way to the hotel.
First thing we noticed at the hotel was all the no smoking signs when Ed confirmed like 3 times that we had a smoking room Oh well – its 80 fucking degrees out.
Chapter 6 – SXSW the great indie conspiracy as told by Oren and Doug
Here are a couple of things to remember if your ever promoting at a large conference: Dress your best, Dr Scholl’s, drink lots of coffee, bring a sharpie in case someone takes their boob out, and beware of scary men on stilts who look like transformers.
Fuck me if it aint 5pm-ish by the time we’re all showered and fed. Off to downtown 6th street, let SXSW begin.
The streets are teaming as we whip out all the promo shit we brought and start attacking the masses. We visit our host club Spill and on the way pass all the venues we’ve played before all the while thinking, man it’s good to be back. The club is nice and the people are nicer. Alexia from MusicGorilla.com is on hand but missing a husband who she says will come later. They are the nicest people in the world and part of the reason we’re down here. Two Mohawks with muscles at the front door (super nice guys too we’d find out later in the weekend) a friendly bartender named Kim, an angel armed with Seagram’s 7. The sky starts to dim and we know we’re gonna be in for a hell of a time…
Chapter 7: Friday afternoon -An in-store performance at the FYE store, Lakline Mall, Cedar Park TX as told by Doug
So we show up to the mall for the in-store at FYE. I decide to start my promoting here to get in the groove. As I was setting up, I saw a father and daughter shopping for CDs in the store. I said “Hey, there will be live music starting here in 10 minutes, stick around and check us out”. As they walked away, the dad turned and said “I don’t want to hear your devils music.” For once in my life I had no idea what to say. All this time we’ve been playing music for the devil and I never once cashed in? I want to know when and where to go to get my payout. Oh well - it’s nice to know we have earned a cozy place in the heart of the man downstairs. We played our set, sold our discs, met our new friends Paisley and Tsuchi, shook hands with a very helpful store manager named Drew and hauled ass back to the rental place to return our rental.
Chapter 8: Friday Night – The greatest party on earth As told by Doug
Parking of course was a nightmare; Tiny Elvis ain’t so tiny, so garages were out. Suffice it to say we did a lot of walking. (Gellin like Magellen baby- yeah.). While walking we noticed the occasional vehicle being let through the crowd. You never know who might be in those cars so it may be prudent to fire a demo in their window as they drive by (nice work Eduardo!) just try not to cause a car accident. Gotta say – people outside NY are really friendly. I never ventured far from NY myself, except to Ireland so I was excited about the response I got from people at the conference. You can strike up a conversation with most strangers and they’re happy to talk with you. The food down in Austin was great too. Imagine a place where you can have Mexican and Barbeque and not have to worry about where the nearest restroom was. There was of course Ironworks….yes Ironworks – where they serve ribs worthy of tipping over Fred Flintstones car. I did not think it possible to consume so much decimated cattle carcass in one sitting however Pat’s epic inhalation of the ribs is worth noting. I think he has a worm. I enjoyed a much safer and smaller brisket with the best BBQ sauce I had ever tasted. After dinner we greased up the door and rolled Pat out.
Promoting was fun as hell as usual. 6th street was shut down in both directions farther than the eye could see. There were street musicians all over the place, thousands of people going from club to club, the Captain Morgan hotties, people on stilts, Japanese girls in bikini’s with trombones, drum circles, horse drawn carriages. It reminded me of the village in NYC. We brought about a million stickers with us so if you were to go to Austin today you could probably track our route just from them.
We passed by one club and were like – who the fuck is covering Metallica at a conference when there are A&R reps looking for original acts, only to find out the next day that Metallica showed up and decided to play a set. When we were done breaking through the massive crowd that had gathered for Metallica, we headed back to the hotel.
Back at the hotel, Pat spent some time following a cat around the parking lot. Some guy yelled down from the fourth floor balcony, “Hey, if you catch that thing are you gonna cook it?” I couldn’t help but think that this was some kind of foreshadowing of what we would have to do to survive on the road…
Chapter 9 – Saturday night’s alright, alright, alright! As told by Doug
Here’s another thing to know about promoting – know the drink specials. $3 any beer!. Finespun = awesome. Finespun + drink specials = packed fucking house, and it was. I’d like to be humble about this, but there’s no way I can. People had printed their itineraries off their computers and when I saw our name on those lists, in my head I was like- fuck yeah. Opening with Hourglass in front of a large crowd is always a good idea because it starts with Pat playing the hook before the rest of us come in. You could hear the roar of the crowd over the intro and that always gets me amped. Our first single 4 walls one window was well received and of course there was Against the Fallout which made me long for a simpler time when the crowd was happy to burn their thumbs on their lighters (not that I didn’t appreciate all the cell phones being waved around.) There were a lot of other great bands on our show as well; you can check them out on musicgorilla.com.
We hung around for quite a while after our set, giving away the rest of our promo and merch, selling CDs and talking with the people we had the pleasure of meeting at the club during our time there. Oren spent a while talking to a couple of A&R people and shaking hands with Alexia and Lawrence, thanking them once again for inviting us down to SXSW. As we loaded the gear up around midnight, carrying it uphill through crowds of Saturday night SXSW’ers – if you didn’t know, Austin IS uphill both ways – we made it back to the van, where Craig and Ed did a great job of dropping the bag that holds all the drum stands on Ed’s knee. Off to the hotel for a quick shower and on the road. A quick stop at a super Wal-Mart to stock up on food and drinks, and we were off and driving while visions of southern hospitality occupied our heads for the next 35 hours to come…
