SXSW Local News: The Aftermath, featuring Ludo, So Many Dynamos, Magnolia Summer, Earthworms, Gentleman Auction House

At 05:00pm Mar 18, 2008

Guess what? This is the last SXSW post. I promise. Here's a quick run-down of future happenings/SXSW positives for some of the locals hanging in Austin.

*Pitchfork wrote up So Many Dynamos' show at the Twangfest/KDHX party (with pictures!) Here's also a video stream of the Jovita's set.

*The Undertow showcase was markedly better-attended than last year's edition. (I'm saving observations for a story, so stay tuned for more in the future!) Magnolia Summer enlisted the help of a violin player for the set, and it added beautiful, haunting dimensions to songs such as "These Days." The band will play a rare gig in town on Saturday, March 22, at Off Broadway with the Cush.

*Mathias of Earthworms met both Fab 5 Freddy and Perry Farrell. He was ecstatic (even via text message). The 'Worms will be playing the Bluebird on April 12 with their full band; Nato Caliph (who was also at SXSW) will also be there.

*I ran into three-fifths of Ludo, thanks to Dave Grelle of the Feed (who also played). Although I missed Ludo's showcase because of other conflicts, Tim Convy tells me the band's video for "Love Me Dead" is going to be played on TRL on MTV tomorrow. The show airs at 3:30 p.m. here in St. Louis; via MySpace, the band says you can tell MTV to play it again by clicking here.

*Gentleman Auction House found a booking agent -- which should equal more tours.

-- Annie Zaleski

Tags: so many dynamos, gentleman auction house, music, ludo, the feed, earthworms, bluebird, off broadway, st. louis, magnolia summer, undertow

SXSW From a First-Timer's Perspective: R.E.M., Undertow, Dead Confederate, Thurston Moore, J Mascis, more

At 02:45am Mar 18, 2008

(All photos and video by Annie Zaleski; click on photos for larger versions. Text by Shae Moseley)

As a first-timer this year at SXSW, I attempted to check my own preconceptions and the critiques of hardened festival veterans at the airport and just try to take in all that the four days could offer (sans important person all-access badge or the somewhat-less-expensive-but-probably-still-not-worth-it wristband).
Upon taking my first step through the airport sliding doors into the intoxicating spring air, I immediately realized that I could probably be perfectly content to spend the following four days sitting outside the terminal counting blades of cool green grass while listening to smooth jazz versions of Barry Manilow songs. It’s hard to imagine having a bad time when greeted with eighty degree, sunny weather after the schizo-winter we’ve experienced this year in St. Louis.

But, alas there were bands to be seen. So. Many. Bands. I mean, I was seriously pretty conservative and planned to save energy, trying not to over-extend myself too much on any one day -- and I still managed to see nearly 50 bands over the course of the festival. This didn’t mean I caught one or two songs by 50 bands: I’m talking that I ordered a Lone Star tallboy, a Shiner Bock, or whatever was free (usually Southern Comfort, a liquor that I’m pretty sure no one has ever paid money for), found a good sightline and absorbed the entire set of at least 50 bands.

Rolling to SXSW without any credentials for gaining admittance to the official nighttime showcases had me a bit concerned going in. But the free day parties gave me the chance to see nearly every band I was excited about -- and a few lucky breaks, connections and several unsanctioned free night-time events never left me outside in the evening crying to the curb. I mean, I’m sure that I missed out on some really great shows at night; however, most of the lines I saw outside of those clubs led me to believe that most would have turned out be one of those “at least I can say I was there” situations more than being something I would have actually enjoyed.

Here’s a rundown of some highlights from each of my four days mooching free concerts in beautiful Austin, Texas:

Wednesday: My first day in Austin ended up being the biggest surprise of the four days. Thanks to what amounted to a miracle, I was able to gain access to the VIP area at Stubb’s for the big first night kick-off show featuring R.E.M. The Athens, Georgia, college-rock godfathers tore through a set favoring up-tempo numbers from its new album Accelerate but also handled back-catalog selections like “Fall On Me” and “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” with precision. Michael Stipe’s voice was in great shape, and he immediately connected with the shoulder-to-shoulder sea of fans, hipsters and industry types as he would occasionally stand on the vocal monitors near the edge of the stage and launch a confetti of set lists into the crowd. (First two pictures of Stipe.)

Also definitely worth noting is Dead Confederate, a bit more of a novice Athens band that had no trouble warming up the crowd immediately before R.E.M.’s headlining set. I can’t recommend these guys’ live show enough; it was the perfect combination of mystery and familiarity. Bringing more genuine energy than any other band I saw the entire weekend, they sold me on a brand of heavy, bombastic loud/quiet rock that I had resigned myself to thinking I would never be interested in buying again. If you’re a fan of Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Failure and Nirvana, you’ll like Dead Confederate.

Thursday: Rain threatened but never came on day two as the skies cleared in the afternoon and the temperature found its way into the upper ‘80s. We took a cab away from the downtown madness to an authentic Mexican restaurant and music venue called Jovita’s for the KDHX/Billiken Club Day Party. It’s always exciting to see people from your hometown when you’re traveling, as it always feels like you’re a group of bandits who split up after a big score and planned a rendezvous south of the border.
So Many Dynamos vocalist Aaron Stovall:

Locals Gentleman Auction House and So Many Dynamos proved that they belonged among the showcasing talent in Austin. Both brought tight, high-energy sets to the sun-drenched outdoor patio that had the crowds chattering and trying to wrap their heads around the idea that these awesome bands could actually come from St. Louis. (Picture of GAH vocalist Eric Enger below.)

Thursday night found me back downtown for the Undertow Music showcase at the lovely Habana Calle Patio, a venue situated a little below street level, across a bridge with a stage embedded in a formation of giant boulders. The solitary and romantic setting was a perfect backdrop for Caleb Engstrom’s set of gently emotive acoustic indie-folk. Joined by the once semi-local and now Chicago group Berry as a backing band, Engstrom held the small crowd at attention with tender vocals chants and solemn acoustic strums.

Later in the evening the Murfreesboro, Tennessee, sextet Glossary laid down a very solid set of soulful Americana. With a rotating cast of lead vocalists it almost felt like a Nashville songwriting circle that decided to become a band but with more honky-tonk barroom grit.

The last band I caught at Undertow was Austin’s Monahans. The only tag I can use to describe this mysterious trio is goth-twang. Singer Greg Vanderpool’s deep, throaty vocal style painted cinematic, noir-like pictures that called to mind lonely desert landscapes; simple, trancelike arrangements and the occasional pop hook kept me enthralled.

Friday: The temperature rocketed into the ‘90s on Friday and the sun’s rays felt intense on my pasty Midwest skin. The afternoon was spent at La Zona Rosa for the Village Voice Media day party. (The food was great at this place and the drinks were free so I can’t complain in that department either.) I missed the first two bands (Health and the Cribs), which was disappointing because the other bands on the bill I had either already seen (…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and Soundtrack of Our Lives) or I didn’t have much interest in (The Black Keys). Overall though, it was a fun party and the air-conditioning provided a nice sanctuary from the heat for a few hours (and probably saved me from a sunburn).

The Soundtrack of Our Lives were about how I remembered them, a high-energy blend of ‘60s psychedelic blues and power-pop hookiness. But I was unsure why the band made the trip to Austin, considering it doesn’t seem to be doing anything new and has no new record to promote. …Trail of Dead were loud, bombastic and muscular (as usual), but would have done better to stick with its more raucous material, like the set’s opener from 2002’s Source Tags and Codes. The band tends to get stuck in the epic, overdramatic piano ballad realm all-too-often these days and loses its audience’s attention as a result.

After a pedi-cab ride back down to the Sixth Street action I stopped off at Emo’s and stood in line for a bit to have my face melted off by A Place to Bury Strangers. (Video here.) I missed the band’s set here in St. Louis at the Bluebird last Monday because I was sick, but I’m glad I made it a point to work them into my SXSW itinerary. The combination of thick smoke machine fogginess, strobe lights and mysterious back-wall video projections perfectly set the mood for the band’s goth-industrial shoegaze onslaught of enveloping noise bursts.

Later in the evening I was lucky enough to get on the guest list for the official Smallstone Records showcase at 710 Red River which featured local riff-rock preservationists and face-melters in their own right, Shame Club. The band seemed to be even louder than I’ve ever seen them in St. Louis; you could tell they were there to turn some heads and make an impression. But the set didn’t seem forced or contrived, as the band ripped through several numbers from its new full-length Come On making a pretty damn convincing case that the guitar solo is in fact not dead. (See our other coverage, with video, here.)

Saturday: It’s always bittersweet to face the final day of an excursion from the toil of everyday life, but I started my Saturday with plenty of energy to spare, determined to make the most of my last day of shows. The weather was the best of the week with sunny skies and a high in the mid-‘80s, and I ended up in a perfect place to spend the afternoon: a garden party at the French Legation Museum thrown by Press Here Publicity. This historic setting was east of I-35, a bit removed from the intensity of the downtown clubs.

Sons and Daughters @ French Legation:


After securing a couple of one dollar PBRs, I was just in time to catch the beginning of Sons and Daughters’ ambitious set of rockabilly-infused, crunchy Britpop highlighted by Adele Bethel’s skill as a front-woman, as she succeeded in bringing the crowd’s energy level up despite the laid-back surroundings.

After Sons and Daughters I was lucky enough to have a great spot near the stage for an acoustic set by grunge innovator J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. (See pic above.) The silver-haired guitar legend, known for sheer decibel level and ear-piercing, fuzzed-out guitar solos, showed that he could hold his own with just an acoustic guitar a loop pedal and his instantly recognizable warbly croon.

Following Mascis, another seminal figure in alternative rock -- Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore (pictured above) -- took the stage performing an enthralling set of solo material with his band the New Wave Bandits. With drummer Steve Shelley behind the kit it felt like a pseudo-Sonic Youth set, but with a more stripped-down feel. Two acoustic guitars, a violin and bass filled out the instrumentation and showed that Moore’s musical style doesn’t rely on volume or ethereal guitar effects but stands on its own by continually redefining “melody” and challenging the accepted standards of pop song arrangements.

Although the event could have used more drink vendors and more bathrooms -- and some people were very rude about crowding into the tent and blocking people’s views later in the afternoon -- overall it was a great place to spend the majority of my final full day in Austin.

Tags: music, dinosaur jr, j mascis, sonic youth, thurston moore, r.e.m., dead confederate, undertow, so many dynamos, gentleman auction house, caleb engstrom, monahans, glossary

This Band Could Be Your Life, Part III: So Many Dynamos Tours to SXSW

At 07:24pm Mar 13, 2008

[In weeks leading up to and after SXSW, bands route their tours toward and away from Austin. One of these groups is St. Louis' own So Many Dynamos, a band whose spiky keyboard-rock, gnarled riffs and complex time signatures call to mind everyone from Q and Not U and Pattern Is Movement to Battles and Broken Social Scene. The quartet is playing house parties over the next two days; message 'em on MySpace to get more info. Guitarist/Riverfront Times freelancer Ryan Wasoba was kind enough to keep a diary of the band's first few weeks on the road to Austin. Here's the final installment.]


(photo by Jaime Lees)

"Search Party," from Flashlights


Visalia, California, is as close to the Midwest as you can get in California. There is nothing intrinsically cool about Visalia, but there's a pizza place and a bar and a promoter with the ingenuity to bring indie rock bands there. People like us more than they should in Visalia, and I will never understand why, unless we are appealing to their secret Midwesternhood. We play two shows, one at the aforementioned pizza place and one at the aforementioned bar, and they are both fun and are both free and are both filled with very good people and very good beer.

We are set to play two shows in Los Angeles. One is at the Knitting Factory, a reputable venue that we have played before, and one is at a place called the Purple Loft, which we know nothing about and were invited on by another band. The Purple Loft show is a private party thrown by a girl who plays drum machine party girl music (see: M.I.A., Fannypack). There are DJ's, kegs, a VIP room, bands, security, and port-a-potties. It is, as far as my perception goes, a very blatant attempt at L.A. cool. The bands are intended to be more trophy-like background music than attention-deserving performances, more "check out how cool I am for knowing these bands" than "check out how cool these bands are." Eventually two girls dance for us out of either pity or the influence of ecstasy (or perhaps both).

Earlier in the evening, a car and a van pulled up with ten mostly Asian kids in it, driven by two of their parents. They run up to our van, we roll down the windows, and they say "So Many Dynamos? We drove two hours to see you guys!" The show is 21+ and they can't get in. We feel bad, so we invite them to get food with us. We end up at a fried chicken restaurant, hanging out with these kids and eating Yuca fries. It's the fifteenth birthday of one of the kids, so his mom (who works for fucking NASA) drove him and his friends down to see us. These kids are cooler than anybody we met at the very-L.A. party we played later.

Today is our day off. We will play the Knitting Factory tomorrow and will travel to Austin for South By Southwest and will continue our tour. We are staying with Michael Davis, a former St. Louisan who now has an apartment in the Fairfax District. It's Saturday night, and we're tourists in Los Angeles. I think we should be partying or barhopping or trying to climb up the "W" on the Hollywood sign on meth or something like that, but we're not. We're sitting in an apartment, drinking Tecate, watching Saturday Night Live, discussing albums and eating pasta. We're being our little Midwestern selves, and I am very cool with that.

(posted by Annie Zaleski)

Tags: so many dynamos, ryan wasoba, sxsw, music, billiken club, st. louis bands

This Band Could Be Your Life, Part II: So Many Dynamos Tours to SXSW

At 02:06pm Mar 12, 2008

[In weeks leading up to and after SXSW, bands route their tours toward and away from Austin. One of these groups is St. Louis' own So Many Dynamos, a band whose spiky keyboard-rock, gnarled riffs and complex time signatures call to mind everyone from Q and Not U and Pattern Is Movement to Battles and Broken Social Scene. The quartet is playing a house party on Wednesday, March 12, and at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 13, at the Billiken Club's stage at the Twangfest/KDHX party at Jovita's (1619 South First). Guitarist/Riverfront Times freelancer Ryan Wasoba was kind enough to keep a diary of the band's first few weeks on the road to Austin. Stay tuned for one more installment of his observations in the coming days.]



"Progress," from Flashlights


If the cops break up your house show in Laramie, Wyoming and some guy says "FUCK IT! Let's move the show to my house!" that means you pack your shit up and play at that dude's house. When the cops come to that show and break it up, the show is officially over.

There are at least three dogs at our show in Billings, Montana, and one of them is a total badass at fetch. He actually THROWS the fetched item back at you. We play an early show at a brewery that must be over at 8 and nobody can drink more than three beers. By following these rules, they don't have to get an actual liquor license. Montana people are like Colorado people with a heightened sense of Midwestern self-necessitated cool.

Missoula, Montana, is a strange college town nestled in between some mountains. It's beautiful, and they take much pride in some glossy magazine calling them a "top ten party town" in our country. We play with a band called Sharktopus, and unfortunately, they don't have shirts.

My favorite dog of all time is Miles, a shih-tzu that lives in an apartment in Spokane, WA. His roommate is a show promoter, lucky for me. I think we play shows there just to hang out with this dog. We are dog people. Spokane people are exactly like Montana people. Spokane and Missoula are also 2.5 hours away from each other across treacherous Idaho mountains. Everything in Idaho is somehow treacherous.

We play a shed in Bellingham, Washington, with mattresses all over the walls and a balcony. It looks like a place that Jimmy Eat World would shoot a music video in for cred. The cops almost bust this show due to a noise complaint. Apparently, the noise complaint was not for the show but for some kids drinking in their car and listening to metal very loudly. After the show, I witness a drunken disaster that involves V8. This is a first for me.

Seattle didn't intend to be cool, coolness just kind of landed on them twenty years ago and they've been trying to cope with it ever since. We play with Mahjongg, a band we love, and Calvin Johnson, who I had a hard time paying attention to. Our friend Robbie, who put out our last two albums and has subsequently wasted more money on us than anyone else, gives us the gift of a night in a Holiday Inn Express. Perhaps this makes me a bit of a hypocrite.

I hear Portland is cool, from cool people, but I have yet to see it. We eat fondue and drink beer with Rachel Demy, tour manager extraordinaire and ladyfriend of Chris Walla, which makes her our former babysitter. We spend the most money we've ever spent on the least amount of food. I take a quiz for my online Macroeconomics class, which I wish was a joke. Our show is very "eh," and we're constantly distracted by this fact: We must immediately leave our show and drive to San Francisco for a 10 a.m. load in. We must defy logic of time and distance to make this happen. Oregon is very foggy at night.

San Francisco is like a more overt version of Seattle; perhaps it's Seattle-meets New York. It's undeniably cool, but people tend to try slightly harder to achieve this level of cool. Perhaps it's more "cool upkeep" than anything else. We play a day show with the Mountain Goats for the Noise Pop Festival. As the room fills up, I realize that I should know way more about the Mountain Goats than I actually do. Yenie Ra is at the show. She is our good friend, and recently became our manager. It's nice seeing her in person.

We stay in Oakland with Sam Pura. He runs a studio and is recording Heavy Heavy Low Low, a band we once toured with. They want Aaron to sing on their record, so we spend a few hours writing a vocal part and recording it for the song. The record credit will read "Aaron Stovall appears courtesy of So Many Dynamos, LLC", because we're a business now. That's why we keep our receipts. On our way to the beach, I drive our van with the gas pump still in it, damaging the connecting hose, but that's old news now.

The next day we play a college show to college kids at the college coffee shop on a college campus. It's very college, and it makes us feel very old. We were college-aged when we started doing what we do, and now I feel very disconnected from these people. I am 24, sitting in a cafeteria that I snuck into, eating mashed potatoes and feeling very uncool.

(posted by Annie Zaleski)

Tags: so many dynamos, ryan wasoba, sxsw, music, mahjongg, seattle, chris walla, death cab for cutie, heavy heavy low low

This Band Could Be Your Life, Part I: So Many Dynamos Tours to SXSW

At 07:06pm Mar 11, 2008

[In weeks leading up to and after SXSW, bands route their tours toward and away from Austin. One of these groups is St. Louis' own So Many Dynamos, a band whose spiky keyboard-rock, gnarled riffs and complex time signatures call to mind everyone from Q and Not U and Pattern Is Movement to Battles and Broken Social Scene. The quartet will be playing a house party on Wednesday, March 12, and at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 13, at the Billiken Club's stage at the Twangfest/KDHX party at Jovita's (1619 South First). Guitarist/Riverfront Times freelancer Ryan Wasoba was kind enough to keep a diary of the band's first few weeks on the road to Austin. Stay tuned for two more installments of his observations in the coming days.]



"We Vibrate, We Do":


"Cool" is a relative term -- and its perception varies by geography. New
York is cool for thousands of legitimate reasons. Los Angeles is cool because it’s where they make movies, and tall buildings that house failing record companies live there. Seattle is cool because some dudes wore flannel, broke guitars and knocked Michael Jackson’s Dangerous down to No. 2 on Billboard in 1992.

The Midwest has not contributed as much to American culture and is not generally considered cool. But this lack of coolness grounds the people of the Midwest; the area isn't cool, so the people that live there have to be cool to make up for it. This, along with my hometown pride, is why I think people in the Midwest have less of a tendency to completely suck.

The tour begins in Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha's claim to coolness is Saddle Creek Records: Bright Eyes, the Faint, Cursive, etc. We are playing at Slowdown, a venue recently opened by the folks at Saddle Creek. The Show is the Rainbow, our friend Darren Keen's multimedia one-man band, plays with us. Everybody is very kind and there is very little pretension. A band called UUVVWWZ (pronounced Double-U, Double-V, Double-W, Z) plays and they are rad and certainly into cooler music than I.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota is a similarly uncool-and-therefore-really-cool Midwestern town. There is a tour bus outside of the show, which is odd because we are headlining. We play the 6 to 9 p.m. early show along with We All Have Hooks For Hands, the resident ten-piece/two-drummer band with horns. The late show (and tour bus owners) are called Cinder Road. They have two techs, a tour manager, and a traveling soundman. Their two merch girls sell shirts, CDs, panties, customized guitar picks and 8x10 glossy photos. They are L.A.-cool, which is Midwestern for "trying to hard to be cool and therefore not cool at all." I think they played to eleven people and they probably stayed in a Holiday Inn Express.

We take backroads from Sioux Falls to Denver because a British woman's voice on our GPS told us to. This means we don't have to drive past the spot on I-80 where our van flipped over last year. Two hours outside of Denver, we pass a white Dodge Sprinter with a trailer driven by and filled with dudes. With a sharpie and a notebook, we ask them what band they are. They are Finch. This is funny to us at the time, and still is now.

Finch is an emo band. Emo, despite its many incarnations, was a highly Midwest movement, and the late-'90s Midwestern touring-machine emo band is a model that we've followed for years. This is why I think So Many Dynamos has more in common with the Get Up Kids and Braid than most of the bands we share stylistic comparisons to. Modern emo, in all of its guyliner/combover glory, is a bastardized, sloppy conglomeration of Midwest angst and L.A. cool.

At a standard house show, people drink beer and sneak off to smoke pot. In Denver, at the house we played at, people openly smoke weed and sneak off to (apparently) do other drugs and (we suspect) have threesomes. The Photo Atlas plays after us, people dance, and all is well. People in Colorado are not so much "cool" as they are "chill," which makes them somewhere between 40 to 110% hippies.

We wake up in a mountain. We play at a college in Boulder and the opening band is very young. It is their first show. We debate the gender of the keyboardist; either a girl going through his awkward phase or a boy going through his very awkward phase. We play the college because they pay us more money than they should to play there, and we are bummed because they're sending a check to our house. This is a good thing in the long run, because two weeks from now in Oakland I will drive our van with the gas pump still in it, damage the gas station's hose, and we will have to pay the damages. These damages are the same price as our payment for the show, which is comfortably sitting on our coffee table 900 miles way.

(posted by Annie Zaleski)

Tags: music, so many dynamos, ryan wasoba, touring, on the road again, st. louis, the show is the rainbow, the photo atlas

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