Music

SXSW: Slow Club at the Barbarella on Red River

by Michael Joffe

There’s no better place to defuse the myth of the rock star than SxSW. All the typical accouterments of the touring lifestyle – the tour bus, the green room, the riders, and the extensive soundchecks – are out the window. Of course, most of these are things of fantasy for the majority of the showcasing artists the other 51 weeks of the year, anyways, but even for them the down and dirty pace of SxSW takes some adjustments.

An informal poll had many bands playing an average of eight shows or more over the four days – Toronto’s DD/MM/YYYY were hoping to set a record with 20 shows during the week – and most if not all would be a tour manager’s worst nightmare. Seeing bands running through downtown Austin as quickly as the tonnes of gear they were hauling would allow was not an uncommon sight. And once they got to whatever hole in the wall they’d been booked into, either they’d find things running horribly behind or, if on time, half of their allotted set time would be devoted to trying to get their gear working or hunting down feedback or otherwise doing anything but actually performing. And once the technical bugs are mitigated to the point of being tolerable, there’d be a grand total of maybe 20 minutes in which to impress the assemblage, many of whom are probably more interested in the free beer than whomever is on stage.

Adding to the general lack of glamour is that on top of the actual performing schedule, there needs to be time for meetings, interviews, food if they’re lucky, sleep if they’re unbelievably lucky, and of course partying. And there’s always a party worth attending. The net result is that by Saturday, artists don’t swagger so much as stagger and anyone trend-spotting on 6th St is likely to think that looking unbelievably dirty and haggard is the next big thing in fashion. So accepting that the SxSW circus is a business necessity, performers have one of two choices – enter into it grudgingly and get bogged down with focusing on the frustrating, exhausting aspects of it all or look at is as a unique opportunity to do things on a small (or tiny) scale, get right in there with the fans – for despite all the industry folks roaming the streets, there’s still infinitely more people there for the music – and just have fun with it. Knowing in a few days, it’ll be over.

Sheffield, England’s Slow Club chose the latter route. They entered SxSW with a not unusual but still arduous itinerary of nine shows, including two official showcases, to try and reproduce the domestic success of their album “Yeah, So?” in North America. The second-last of these was a late-afternoon show at the decidedly un-posh Barbarella club on Red River on an unseasonably cold final day of festival and despite being visibly worn and faced with a mess of a makeshift stage to work with (and for Rebecca Taylor, the problem of the bitter wind blowing up her dress whenever anyone opened the door), the drum-and-guitar duo still pulled it together for one (almost) last party for their fans, many of whom looked almost as worn out. It helped that their adorable and upbeat folk-pop is inherently heartwarming, even on the coldest of days, and after calling almost-as-cute Swedish sister duo First Aid Kit on stage for a singalong number, they took it into the audience for an up-close-and-personal finale with their fans. Everyone was cold, tired and probably filthy but at that moment, I doubt there was anywhere anyone there would rather be.

Photo and words by: Frank Yang