SXSW is great for making new discoveries and searching out something you’ve never heard before, but it also makes for a good opportunity to see old favourites in a different setting. With that in mind, I ventured out on Saturday afternoon to check out Basia Bulat’s set at The Ginger Man.
With Bulat easily able to sell out venues back home (as she did recently at The Mod Club), it was nice to see her perform in the confines of the Ginger Man’s small outdoor stage. She seemed to be enjoying it too, musing on the possibility of bringing an Elton John-esque riser for herself and her piano (“But that’s for next year.”), roaming out into the audience from time to time and even sitting down next to some guy seated up front and serenading him. She took the time to introduce her bandmates, all of them mainstays of the Toronto music scene, and also made a point of hyping up backing vocalist Tamara Lindeman’s set later that night performing as part of Lavender Country (Lindeman was also playing a few shows as The Weather Station during SXSW).
In addition to playing some tunes off of her Jim James produced Good Advice album, Bulat closed out her set without her band, playing a cover of Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You In The End” as a nod to Austin, adding that true love could maybe even find us all at South By Southwest.
Every year at SXSW, alongside the many up and comers, there’s a strong contingent of established acts looking to promote their new releases and generally remind us that they’re still a going concern. Among those acts were Deftones, promoting their upcoming album Gore and playing a show at Stubb’s for SPIN magazine’s annual afternoon party. Though they played a few from the new album, they stuck mostly to the hits during their set, including Change (In the House of Flies) and My Own Summer (Shove It). (The Deftones really do seem to like using brackets in their song titles, don’t they?) The band also tossed a snippet of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” into one of their songs and, in one of those “this could only happen at SouthBy” moments, were joined by Bushwick Bill during “Digital Bath” to do his verse from “Mind Playing Tricks On Me.”
Earlier that afternoon on the same stage, Vince Staples played an impressive set, though you could tell he was feeling a little awkward and outside of his comfort zone. “How many here know who I am?” he asked and when he got some cheers, he decided it was a decent margin. It’s likely that a lot of people were there to see Deftones or CHVRCHES rather than him, but Staples made the most out of his time there regardless. The most memorable moment of his set wasn’t one of his songs, however, but a moment when Staples made reference to Black Lives Matter and then went on to mock those who say “all lives matter” for missing the point. His DJ/hype man added, “That’s like going to the cancer rally and talking about AIDS.” He also made a few sarcastic references to Spin Magazine (“a fine publication”), Reader’s Digest, and Spotify (who he dissed earlier in the week at a Spotify sponsored event). Overall, Vince Staples’ stage banter was on point.
In my experience, Cedar is always crazy at night during SXSW. During the day it hosts great gatherings of music lovers, most of whom listen peaceably (not that a fight has never broken out during the day at Cedar…) But when the sun goes down it really starts to attract the die-hard fans with a list of established acts from completely distinct genres that leaves one wonder how they wrote the venue’s advert. It’s not like The Sanctuary or The Church, where there is a set stereotype of people who visit. The crazy doesn’t occur spontaneously, either, but from the explosive mixture of determined drunk-jocks and die-hards. A few years ago I saw Trampled by Turtles there, and fights broke out. At a bluegrass concert? How the hell is that even possible? So when I learned that I would not be allowed onto the upper balcony where I’ve spent so much of my sheltered SXSW life, I hesitated, and not with a small level of trepidation went down into “the front”. What awaits me there when a 10+ piece jazz act starts playing?
Snarky Puppy is a jazz collective that started in Denton, TX in 2004 and is now based in Brooklyn. I won’t pretend to be a long-time fan and give a history lesson from regurgitated Wiki, but I think their size lends easily to a huge variety and flexibility, and they can change the balance between instruments easily from piano, brass, to even choirs and strings when they play opposite to orchestras. This night started with Snarky family members like Bill Laurence and Cory Henry taking the stage for their own, more keyboard oriented jaunts, assisted by the rest of the collective. Banda Magda (photo above), a Greek/French act, also showcased her crowd-control talents with Snarky Puppy’s help through songs full of quirky joie de vivre. All-the-while that crowd grew larger and my personal bubble diminished until people were basically joined at the hips. I could barely lift my camera and had to hold it by my neck for most of the concert. But as soon as the composer and bassist Michael League started arranging his fuzz-enhanced cranium through the air, I knew that this was going to be a fight/mosh-pit free show. The audience was devoid of bottled tension and undercurrents. Throughout the whole concert, people shrugged off being pushed around by the late-arrivals and their girlfriends, who were always holding 3 beers and on the verge of drenching your camera while they tried on Moses’ guise in attempts to part the crowd and reach the promised front row spot. Perhaps this was the jazz music at work, or perhaps the genre have selectively bred a docile following. But that’s a egg/chicken circle that we don’t need to chase here.
They went through some of their most popular tunes: Thing of Gold (with sing-alongs), Shofukan, and What about me. The band was playful and as emotive as any an emoji, clearly oblivious to the fact that it was 3AM in New York. Less of a pedestrian stroll through a fairground and rather a detailed, guided tour for a storied castle, Snarky Puppy hit all of the landmarks and managed to still sound great to my ears, which in instrumental terms is trained to more classical music. But this is, in case one forgets, jazz. Improvisation, solos and punctuated paused abound, unlike classical music where one typically listened for the pace/tempo, key changes and intonation/clarity in the concert master or pianist. With so much fresh fare on the menu, the crowd ate it all up like sumo wrestlers at a steak dinner. I never knew one could head-bang to jazz music and still look reasonably respectable. The band finished with Lingus, which I can only guess is a portmanteau of “long” and “Mingus”. At 10 minutes (and far more during this session), it’s the longest piece in the whole set. It’s a masterful yet entertaining ride that you should try and sit/jog through if you have the chance. The improvised keyboard section (which was around 3 minutes itself), followed by what I describe as a heated argument between the brass and keyboard (that would make the angry man of jazz proud) is so interesting yet melodically sound that it left my face with a type of botox smile for a long while after, as I walked back to the hotel at 2AM. In conclusion – yes, it was the best decision I’ve made on a Saturday night in SXSW, ever.
She’s the Coal Miner’s Daughter. She’s a legend of country music. She’s been at it for more than 50 years. When you get a chance to see Loretta Lynn, you take it.
The 83 year old just recently released Full Circle, her 47th studio album and she was playing the BBC’s showcase at Stubb’s in support of it. Not that Lynn cared that much about playing the new songs. “Whatever you want to hear, just holler it out and if I don’t know it, get up here and sing it yourself.” she said and when she later asked the crowd what they wanted to hear after playing her version of Patsy Cline’s “She’s Got You,” her son and guitarist Ernie offered up a suggestion.
“Miss Loretta? That new record you mentioned that’s selling so well? Why don’t we play one off of that?” And even though she decided that the crowd didn’t really want to hear that, the band launched into it anyways. Loretta wasn’t having any of that and shut the band down, choosing to play another song instead. While she may not be in her prime anymore, Loretta Lynn stiil sounds great, she’s still a consummate performer and that incident with her band proves that you don’t want to mess around with Loretta.
