Live Blogging the SXSW Music Festival

SXSW: Record Label Goes Green

Zach Pentel — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:03:45 EDT

Green Owl Records is trying to do business in an environmentally conscious way - even if it means driving halfway across the country in a bus fueled by vegetable oil.

SXSWhat's Next?

Kriston Capps — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:15:00 EDT

Today the Wall Street Journal reports on efforts by Swiss bankers UBS to attract a buyer for its mortgage portfolio. There's absolutely no intersection between this article and the SXSW festival, except, perhaps, that the big acts everyone looks to for the future come from Nothern Europe. At one point during the festival, however, I did notice a UBS building—quiet and closed, its three-key logo suggesting that the bank was very truly locked while the rest of downtown stayed open—and it got me thinking about the festival in (very rough) financial terms.

The UBS logo, you see, can often be spied at other sorts of art conferences. The bank is a major sponsor of Art Basel Miami Beach and has contributed to museums in advance of various major art exhibitions. The stakes at SXSW are significantly lower. Contemporary art is a commodity and its market has been buoyed lately by the hedge-fund managers who are the subject of so much financial distress right now. Whatever the market's future is, art is a luxury good associated with the best in luxury goods, as companies like BMW and Bulgari prove with ads and promotions at Art Basel.

The corporate sponsors attracted by SXSW are, of course, not luxury goods but they are fashionable. The 1,700 bands that come to SXSW attract studio execs and fans but also corporate giveaways from companies like Levi's jeans and Dentyne gum—any company that hopes to find some purchase among the hippest tastemakers America can gather. Every energy drink that can be bought at a local convenience store, for example, has a prominent presence in the festival.

I figure that the festival itself must make a significant share of its money through corporate sponsorships. Badges cost an incredible amount of money—hundreds of dollars for a four-day music conference; wristbands, which offer somewhat less access, cost somewhat less. But those badges and wristbands come at the cost of keeping venue doors open for four days and nights at no cover (to conference attendees), and the number of venues involved is huge.

How anyone makes money at SXSW, in fact, seems up to question—in particular, the music industry. How much money is there to be made finding and signing acts in an environment that increasingly boosts touring and merchandise sales as a way for bands to support themselves and small labels—excluding the bloated majors? And at any show I saw, merch tables had very little presence. With as many acts as there are playing SXSW, it's possible to attend a full schedule of shows of bands whose stuff you already own.

As far as liquor and restaurant sales go, it seems like a wash: The event takes place during spring break, so festival-goers fill in for the displaced students downtown; locals stay far away from the madness. Hotel attendance is undoubtedly at its highest during Southby—but traffic is at its worst. The cleanup each morning is not unlike what's involved after a typical spring Saturday night, except that it happens many more times a week. Still, the tourist dollars must be appreciable, since the festival is only expanding: Film and Interactive SXSW are big and growing bigger.

It is definitely a great advertisement for Austin, a chance to show out-of-towners the Live Music Capital of the World. With home sales in Texas relatively protected from the real-estate crisis that has plagued other growth cities (like Phoenix, for example), there seems to be a clearer and presenter danger to Austin's lifestyle. It's a threat that longtime Austinites have always dreaded, voiced by the singular motto: "Keep Austin Weird."

It's those damn bohos. Luxury condominiums have sprouted all over Austin, a Texas city that is not alone in seeing growth despite recession. The growth is especially apparent around downtown. For example, right across the street from two great venues—Club deVille and the Mohawk, bars that hosted shows day and night throughout the festival—is a new five- or six-story condo building. The building is so close to the bars I can't imagine anyone but the deaf and the devoted would buy units—a buyer would have to be oblivious not to realize he was getting some of the loudest real estate available in town. It's not the only example, either.

It's the sort of development that SXSW augurs, augmented by real-estate refugees from more expensive coastal cities. Who knows whether it will continue to hold, but if it does, one wonders whether luxury condo ticket holders will for long tolerate the decibel-density culture of downtown Austin. Southby is interdependent on the live-music culture—I don't see the festival taking place every year if music doesn't happen every night in every bar. Austin will probably survive its own growth, which can't go on forever if other gentrifying cities have been any example. Whether Southby can afford the changes to the music industry seems much less certain.

As Austin changes, so will Southby. It's hard to say whether Southby is a strong enough tourist draw to also protect Austinite culture from the changes that take place the other 50 weeks out of the year.

SXSW: Campesinos?

Kriston Capps — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:59:31 EDT

Try as we might, Zach and I just couldn't quite make our Southby schedules jibe. A flurry of text message found us trailing one another around Sixth Street on the last night of the festival. As I was watching Los Campesinos! crowd the state at the Parrish, Zach was lining up to see the Autumns, whom he says are most excellent. He stuck around to see British Sea Power play, and though I wanted to join, the line was far too impressive by the time Campesinos! let out. BSP might have been one of the last big shows playing late on SXSW.

I wasn't too pleased with my decision to see Los Campesinos!—in fact, for the sake of this brief report, I'm going to drop that exclamation point. The Welsh eleventy-or-so piece was tight, I'll admit. But that's practically their whole shtick: A ton of kids playing a ton of instruments on songs that are, at root, three-chord songs that could be done as well by a four-piece rock band. It's a pop band with all the frills. When Aleksandra Campesinos steps to the mic, Gareth Campesinos steps back, picking up a xylophone or a keyboard or whatever else is handy.

If the band name as last name isn't indication enough, the band is twee. Off-the-charts twee. Los Campesinos makes Belle and Sebastian sound like a drone metal band doing a tribute to the Kronos Quartet. From lyrics to instrumentation to stage presence, the band (which in fact has seven members) projects as much self-aware irony as it does pure-pop enthusiasm. "International Tweexcore Underground" is one of the band's biggest hits, where the band sings about its place in the pantheon of ideological indie rock groups. Namely, they name-check other performers or institutions—Ian MacKaye, Sarah Records—who staked out political ground or struck DIY poses that today, in the age of post-history, seem perhaps naive or contrived. "Ooh, this city is run by fucking pigs, and though you say you're my friend, you're not, you're one of them," sings Los Campesinos, mocking the anti-, us-against-them punk ethos.

Fair enough—but in place of politics, Los Campesinos offers only ironic posturing. For example, the band couldn't help but note that "International Tweexcore Underground" was their biggest hit. Gareth kept mentioning the fact to the crowd, semi-joking that they play it last so people won't leave, seemingly in response to requests for the song (which this writer didn't hear). "Death to Los Campesinos" is another popular number. If it's possible, they're smarmier than Art Brut, wordier than Jens Lekman, and standing on the shoulders of dozens, maybe hundreds, of pop bands who have defined every element of the sound they have to offer.

I was sorry to miss British Sea Power, but I think I found an even better antidote to LCs!, an Austinite peformer named Davíd Garza. I'm tempted to use the word "authentic," a word that shouldn't carry so much weight as it does in discussions about art. I will say that Garza rocked harder, put forward a stage show that was more than self-aware banter, and played songs from a catalog of works that has never found much of a commercial foothold but is treasured by Austin locals.

SXSW: Newsflash—Torngat

Kriston Capps — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:09:14 EDT

A SXSW-versed friend complained to me about the lack of real news or exciting gossip to come out of this year's festival. It's hard to say whether that's accurate when you're stuck in a media blackout—that is, standing in lines or watching shows, not frantically checking the blogs and dailies. But the bright light of day seems to confirm my friend's belief. Last year, when Tom Morello took the stage to play a solo performance he was joined by a crowd of who's-who performers: Wayne Kramer, Perry Farrell, Slash, even actor Breckin Meyer joined up. Of course, these kind of impromptu collaborations with celebrities and celebrity-musicians nearly always sound like garbage, but they generate a lot of discussion. While Pete Townshend was in town busy not playing any shows this year, the biggest music news didn't even come out of SXSW: Sheryl Crow is joining Fleetwood Mac. All I Want To Do Is Have Some Fun, Which You Make Loving.

News to me in Austin this year? Torngat. The Brooklyn Vegan's been up on the Montreal trio since the group played Pop Montreal, the annual festival/survey of one of Canada's liveliest indie scenes. Torngat played the downstairs stage at Maggie Mae's, where I tried but failed to see Lykke Li, who canceled. Far from a loss, that night proved one of the best finds of the whole festival.

A band that describes its sound as "French horn, keyboards, and drums" is quite a bit more. Everyone in the band appears to play the trumpet, for example; at the very least there was enough instrument switching going on during one song that it appeared that everyone picked up a trumpet at least once. The bound's low-key and melodic compositions bring to mind some more traditional pop ensembles—American Analog Set or Manitoba/Caribou being two. The comparison can be drawn to all-instrumental acts like Tortoise, though Torngat doesn't play . While Torngat doesn't appear to deviate from scripted music, those compositions weave in and out and across instruments.

As the BV notes, Torngat's Pietro Amato plays occasionally with Arcade Fire and Islands, two Montreal notables, and also appears in Bell Orchestre, an Arcade Fire–spinoff. It's only fitting in an everyone-knows-everyone scene like Montreal's. Some of Torngat's songs speak to that recombinant Canadian sound—Mathieu Charbonneau's accordion in particular. Something about the band's synth sound, too, hails from the rock sound rather than any free-jazz, Tortoise-inspired instrumental tradition. And live, Torngat has the kind of energy you might expect from one of their Montreal stadium-anthem peers. For writing laid-back instrumentals, the band is pretty loud and rocking.

SXSW: Yeasayer—Hear, Hear

Kriston Capps — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:31:24 EDT

Pitchfork called Yeasayer "the latest entry to this group of Byrne disciples, and one of the better bands to put a new spin on his polyrhythmic convulsing," summarizing a sound that's been dominated by artists indebted to the Talking Head. That's certainly true, but Yeasayer doesn't fit that bill—the band pays tribute to different sources. The brooklyn quartet was the only band I saw twice during the festival and I spent a good chunk of time between their shows thinking about their sound. Their shows were some of the strongest performances I saw at the festival. The late show at Emo's IV was pitch-perfect; and while the outdoor concert at Waterloo Park found the band completely exhausted from a grueling SXSW schedule (the final lap of a long tour), even the band at its worst pulled off a compelling set.

The band's gained a following for its choral song style. Singer Chris Keating, guitarist Anand Wilder, and bassist Ira Wolf Tuton all contribute vocals, and the band's heavy use of reverb makes three singers sound like six. The minor harmonies and syncopated choruses pay tribute to metal rather than pop. And frankly, the band owes little to the postpunk roots that inform so many of their Brooklyn peers.

Keating's lyrics sound like they might have been penned by Neil Young or even, it occurred to me, Genesis: socially conscious, imagistic, trenchant, with an especial appeal to nature. The frequent invocation of summer, moon, night, etc., speaks vaguely to native or Western life. Lyrics to the band's hit single, "2080," couch political protest in the comforts of rural retreat—the problems facing society are massive and outstanding, but they'll pass, while the Good Life is enduring, to summarize. The instrumentals, on the other hand—in particular Wilder's synths and guitar stylings—seem to draw from a mixture of Eastern or Native American sounds. In general Yeasayer's sound bears a similarity to The Knife, and live, in fact, Yeasayer indulges in longer, dancier breakdowns than appear in the band's recordings. It's a formula that rocks, even Yeasayer's audience doesn't quite know how to dance along.

As the last song of the band's last set wound to a close, Keating lept offstage and ran off into the park. He'd said as the band began its outdoor set that his voice was nearly shot and the band's energy was certainly waning. I expect that the band's touring schedules are only going to grow more grueling.

SXSW: Sustainable?

Zach Pentel — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:19:21 EDT

This year, SXSW went green... or tried to, anyway.

Festival organizers partnered with Green Mountain Energy and Ecology Action of Austin to cut down on carbon emissions where it could. All waste generated from outdoor events at the festival was to be recycled. Generators and production trucks all ran on biodiesel. Of course, not all emissions could be cut out. So for the remaining parts, SXSW purchased carbon offset credits to make up the difference.

And all of that is well and good for a festival hosting over one thousand bands (and the 1000 vans, cars, and tour busses that those bands bring, not to mention countless others driven by the fans attending the festival). But they're not doing all they can, according to Carbon Crusaders.

"They are purchasing renewable energy credits to offset the conference’s emissions – now standard for any conference wanting to brand itself as “sustainable”. They are also however, consuming the equivalent of acres and acres of trees in useless promotional materials - the life blood of sponsorship commerce that drives these events."

So while the festival may have paid close attention to their own waste, they clearly didn't extend the favor on to the hundreds (if not thousands) of sponsors. The convention center down here is littered with piles of promotional material, some piles literally three feet high. A quick scan of the flyers, magazines, stickers, and postcards yielded very few that identified the use of post-consumer waste.

If SXSW is so serious about making their festival sustainable, they should encourage -if not force - their sponsors to do the same. Companies are vying for access to the music fans who perenially descend into Austin for these ten fateful days in March, and a little bit of prodding in the name of the environment wouldn't hurt anybody.

SXSW: Can't Fader Me

Kriston Capps — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:45:54 EDT

I felt my heart break at SXSW last night. Lykke Li—whose first single, "Little Bit," frankly inspired this writer's trip to Austin this year—canceled her show. Granted, it was her third show of the evening, and she is only 21. But all was forgiven the next day, when a short set by Li at the Fader Fort party electrified the crowd.

Last month, the Swedish ingenue released Youth Novels, a full-length record on her own LL Recordings label. She's recently signed to Delores but has yet to find a true foothold on U.S. shores. No question—it's only a matter of time. The artist's single will be filling up both rock clubs and discotheques, following on the footsteps of fellow Swedish rockers Peter, Bjorn, and John.

Their hit song, "Young Folks," was an inevitable smash that whistled its way along radio waves and through dancehalls. Li's "Little Bit" is similarly irresistible: catchy, down-tempo dance, even a bit sultry. And Li's live performance was sultry to match. Despite all the comparisons Li is bound to draw with Lily Allen, another out-of-the-box sensation, Li's live performance is nothing like Allen's. Allen, live, seems flippant and bored; she smacks gum and delivers meandering asides. Li's livelier, and, well, with her furrowed brow, projects sexy even in candid performances. Live, Li is looking to make the show a party.

The chances of that happening at the Fader Fort party were slim. The outdoor tent wasn't exactly set up to support a disco, but free Stella Artois and half-price "happy hour" Levi's jeans are the sort of giveaways that smooth out rough edges. The intolerable DJ sets in between, however, are the sort that can put a stop to a dancefloor faster than a skip in the vinyl. I'm not sure which of the DJs on the schedule were to blame, and I didn't want to find out. (It's as if I were shot by a firing squadron: I don't want to know who fired the actual bullet that did it.) It's truly too bad that the Cool Kids didn't hop in for a set or four—especially after they sold short their performance last night at Whisky Bar, where fans waited through hours of bad hip-hop in order to see them merely spin a twenty-minute set.

David Banner, however, was an especially worthy followup to Li. Minutes into his set, he hushed a fairly roaring crowd to silence. He said that rock music and rap music faced the same problem: cookie-cutter bullshit. He explained that SXSW was an antidote to that, a place where he could plays the songs that Universal Records doesn't want him to play—the songs he likes from his own album. Barely pausing to shift gears he explained that he'd gone through a depression and that, yes, black people get depressed, too. (They just can't afford psychiatrists, says Banner.) He praised Fender for hyping his album with a cover article at a lowpoint in his career. But gratitude is easy come, easy go: Banner teasingly slammed Fader in the next breath for not including his cover in its 50 greatest covers list. After that, the things he had to say and sing were mostly punctuated by shouts of "David Banner!" and the occasional fountain of bubbling Stella springing forth from the moshing crowd.

SXSW: Employment Figures

Kriston Capps — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:39:16 EDT

How appropriate that a band named Parts & Labor faces both turnover and new hires before it arrives at SXSW. Last year, the noise-fi notables lost their drummer of three years, Christopher Weingarten, who left the band to pursue writing (with Paper Thin Walls among other outlets). Temporarily a two-piece, P&L found new drummer TK in September 2007. Then, shortly before embarking on a tour from the band's home of Brooklyn to Austin for the festival, the band brought on Sarah Lipstate (of Noveller). "We're now a four piece band trying to sound like a six piece instead of three piece band trying to sound like a five piece," the band's Web site declares.

Do more with less: an important directive for any venture, and one that P&L has internalized. Supported by the new guitarist and drummer, founding members Dan Friel (vox, keys, noisy stuff) and BJ Warshaw (vox, bass, noisy stuff) manages an impressive wall-of-sound effect. When the fuzz kicks in on "Fractured Skies," the opener for the band's indoor set opposite Jens Lekman, you might be listening to a half-dozen pedal-enabled GIbsons and twice as many Marshall stacks supporting them.

Does it make any sense to say that a noise band sounds a little bit raw? Warshaw plays his electric bass with a slide, not a pick. There are more chords connecting Friel's synth set up than most bands use for an entire show. The music was heavy enough, for sure, but the group traded energy for precision—and guitarist Lipstate didn't seem to be entirely integrated into the sound yet. And while the monotone vox work on P&L's recordings, live, Friel and Warshaw's voices fall in the range between an enthusiastic public rally speech and a throat-scream. I kept hoping that Lipstate might step up to a mic to add some higher-register pitch to the group's sound, but it wasn't going to happen.

Wishful thinking. To be sure, the band took to the small stage on a night chock full of performances and created that thick, unrelenting noise, the kind of heavy focused sound that seems to fill up the space between stage and audience like a lead weight. Then, as he was playing the third song, Warshaw beckoned everyone to press the stage—bringing a small crowd right into the sound.

SXSW: The Music of "Body of War"

Zach Pentel — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:13:11 EDT

Amid the sea of noisy rock and indie pop, the music at SXSW took a decidedly more serious note on Thursday night when an A-list set of musicians gathered to celebrate the release of album filled with songs inspired by the film "Body of War."

The movie follows the life of Iraq war veteran Tomas Young, who was paralyzed from the waist down in his first week of duty in Iraq. It is an incredibly moving film; and the soundtrack is no less impactful. Thursday's performers included Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave), Ben Harper, Billy Bragg, Mason Jennings, and Serj Tankian (System of a Down).

The crowd reached a fever pitch at the end of the set, when Tom Morello sang an often-censored verse from the Woody Guthrie song "This Land is Your Land" (audio slightly distorted on video):

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office, I saw my people
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering
If this land's still made for you and me

Not the version you learned in elementary school, to say the least.

SXSW: House of Sweden

Kriston Capps — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:30:48 EDT

"The knowledge of future clarity makes my voice tremble with greater dignity," crooned Jens Lekman, launching into an hour-long set last night highlighting the best in Swedish twee. It's more than a sound: preciousness is a lifestyle. Consider that every member of the band was wearing keys. As in, a single key, tied on a string and hung around the neck, as if the group's den-mother had ensured that they're all able to make their way home after a night of rocking. Adorable!

Lekman himself—who could be the older, slighter, more upbeat brother of Billy Corgan—puts on a rather unapologetic show for a sound that's so pat. His ensemble surely draws comparisons to the reigning lords of twee, Belle & Sebastian, but at the live show, those comparisons fall away. Lekman's band doesn't strive to re-create the orchestral feel of the album, whereas at (say) a B&S show, nearly every instrument on the album is represented live.

The Mohawk outdoor patio was easily the happiest place on Earth when Lekman launched into "The Opposite of Hallelujah," a sweet and wordy ode to familial estrangement—specifically the awkward responsibility older siblings feel to pass on whatever bit of wisdom they've received to their younger siblings. (Before the urge to criticize takes over.) The lyrics, which couldn't be wordier or more aggressively earnest, distinguish Lekman's act. In fact, his closest lyrical cousin might be The Fall's Mark E. Smith—whose wordy ironic punk schtick was recently adopted by Art Brut. Perhaps it's the stage's close quarters or the stripped-down presentation that performance after performance from one side of town to the other calls for, but something about Lekman's show rocked in an unexpected way. There were the violin and viola, which sound like pop-orchestral flourishes in recordings—live, though, they sounded like a guitar solo over the bridge. The drums were live, loud, and synchopated. Mellower performances benefit when the tempo rises and the drums get frisky at the live shows—even the most twee routine in rock knows this score.

It seemed last night as though more than a few fans saw a good show coming. The line out the door was impressive, and the half-hour wait to enter (even for folks with credentials) was only salvaged by the sounds of Bon Iver, a fantastic and forceful singer/songwriter who performed earlier.

SXSW: Where's the Party Panel at?

Kriston Capps — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:32:57 EDT

When Le Loup took the stage for DC Does SXSW at Cream—a vintage clothing store that, like every commercial outlet in Austin, puts together a juryrigged stage for the festival, in this case on the back parking lot—about 15 people were watching. But by the time the District-based eight-piece had finished its surprisingly tight-sounding outdoor set, an audience of 60 people or so had assembled. Even some tough-looking, bleary-eyed banditos from the notorious Hole in the Wall next door had ventured out on the backyard patio to cross their arms, tap their boots, and nod their heads.

The party was sponsored in part by the Digital Freedom Campaign, an organization that advocates for "the rights of artists, innovators and consumers to use digital technology free of unreasonable government restrictions." I'm pleased as punch to drink a free Lone Star tallboy and see some great bands from the District represent—but wouldn't the Digital Freedom message be better served through the participation in the various panels surrounding Southby?

"It's just music industry people going to the panels, whereas here we're reaching out to the consumer," says Nancy Tarr-Wager, the group's artists and label outreach liaison. Reaching out to the consumer—or preaching to the choir?

It seems that any successful advocacy for artists' rights will involve striking an agreement with the music industry or, barring that, appealing to legislators. After all, there is already a massive base that uses new technology for the dissemination of music and other digital media. It's the widespread appeal of the message Digital Freedom supports that drew the attention of government and industry in the first place. Artists and fans have absorbed the message.

Meanwhile a quick glance at the panels schedule reveals any number of topics that would seem to tie in to support for open digital borders. Two subjects up for discussion over the next 24 hours are performance royalties and webcasting fees. There's a real opportunity in my mind to connect those topics with a broader understanding of the music industry as having shifted from product-oriented to service-oriented. It's a tectonic shift, and making it work for artists involves convincing legislators and lobbies it's a tectonic shift that's already taking place. Appealing to artists and fans seems to suggest that musicians need to organize for this looming shift when, in fact, it's a done deal and major labels are merely recalcitrant holdouts. (Albeit powerful holdouts.)

I, for one, am abundantly sympathetic to seeing free performances by great District bands while soaking up the sun (and the free Lone Star tallboys). Southby's all about these sorts of day parties, the message notwithstanding. Meanwhile there's also a convention going on that offers significant opportunities for networking and message crafting. Sometimes the DIY ethic that drives so many innovative musicians really doesn't translate so well into successful political action.

SXSW: The Circus Comes to Town

Kriston Capps — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:41:16 EDT

As a University of Texas alumnus and a native Texan, it's a little unnerving to come back to town for Southby. That's the time when Austinites clear out of town, as American Apparel–clad hipsters descend like a swarm of locusts on the capital, which is to say nothing of the plague of A&R execs that follows. After all, Austin's the Live Music Capital of the World; shows at every club every night is nothing new.

But it was a different circus that was the subject of complaint at Gonna Gonna Get Down 3, the party hosted at the Mohawk by Justin Cox and the folks at Austinist. In attendance were Catherine Andrews of Washingtonian magazine, as well as Reihan Salam of The American Scene. (Whose interpretive take on Samantha Powers's "monster" gaffe will gain new context if he follows through on plans to see R.E.M. perform tonight at Stubb's.) At the party, I met Dan Grant, a candidate for Congress who recently lost his contest for the Texas 10th District in the March 4 Texas primacaucus. Grant says that the hubbub that surrounded the Democratic presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had consequences beyond the contest itself—particularly for down-ballot contests.

The contest attracted an unprecedented number of new voters and Democratic Party registratants. However, the hype didn't do much to enlighten the issues surrounding the other twenty contests on the ballot. The lack of information, he says, was astonishing. Grant—who lost the primary to Larry Joe Doherty—explains that new voters who showed up at polls to affirm their support for either Clinton or Obama were not necessarily aware that other contests were even at stake. Those new voters ticked off the first name to appear in each of the nonpresidential contests, claims Grant, lending weight to candidates whose names appear first in the alphabet. And in the end, D comes before G. Alpha-deficient Grant explains that there was a striking difference between results at those polls where the Doherty and Grant campaigns supplied literature and those that went unstaffed.

The Texas 10th isn't an easy district to field. Midwived by former Republican representative (and one-time House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay during the Texas redistricting fiasco, the Texas 10th was once represented by Lyndon Johnson. As the Austin Chronicle explains, until the Austin district was carved up by DeLay et al., it was fortress to Rep. Lloyd Doggett (who is now castled in one of the three districts that comprises Austin, the Texas 25th.) Today, the Texas 10th stretches from Austin all the way to Houston. "I put 26,000 miles on a car I bought in June," says Grant, describing his campaign along the vast stretch of highway 290.

Grant's predicament falls in line with an issue that's an increasing point of media scrutiny: the situation of down-ballot contests as the Clinton/Obama race goes on. The opportunity cost to the continuing campaign, it has been said, is the lack of a presumptive Democratic nominee to speak on behalf of (and fundraise for) down-ballot contestants. (Like Larry Joe Doherty.) My conversation with Grant also came before Shearwater's set and during a party at which free barbecue and Miller High Life were being offered, prompting at least one observer to hint that DC visitors are a circus in and of themselves.

CP at SXSW Music Festival

Zach Pentel — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 08:29:43 EDT

This week, Campus Progress will be traveling down to Austin, Texas for the annual South by Southwest music festival - and we'll be live blogging everything!

Well OK, not everything. With over 1,000 bands in attendance and five whole days of music, films, and events, there's a lot to see.

We'll be talking with Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, creators of the film Body of War. We'll discuss net neutrality with Franz Nicolay from The Hold Steady. We'll talk to Green Owl Records about ways that the music business is reducing its carbon footprint.

And of course, we will feature coverage on the best up-and-coming new bands making their mark at the festival.

Coverage begins Wednesday, March 12th. Headed to the festival? Let us know so we can stop by and say hello.