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Tuesday/introduction
It seems that with the coming of each South By Southwest I find myself
in a different situation. This year, there would only be myself and
one other writer from hybrid magazine attending the festival…
Check out Rachel Fredrickson's great commentary on her week
in lovely Austin elsewhere in hybrid… as for me, it seems I spent
a good portion of the week, not only during SXSW but before and after,
running sound and setting up drumkits for my good buddies in Zookeeper.
The following is a recounting of the events that took place around
the nine Zookeeper shows in which I took part, and seems to be a bit
jumbled in places… please bear with me, and let me have my ramble.
I will say that I was excited because I found out the week before
leaving for Austin that Van Morrison would be playing in town
Tuesday night. I was even more excited when I found out he'd also
be playing a showcase on Wednesday night to kick the actual festival
off… A couple friends and I decided on Tuesday night that we
would take our meager cash and head down to the newly remodeled Austin
Music Hall and see if we could score some last minute cheap seats.
We lucked out and scored a couple from a gent on the street and went
on in to see Van play. It was everything we could have hoped for,
a twelve-piece band, plenty of jazzy bits and even some old school
country. The woman who played pedal steel and dobro was awesome…
I'd marry her if I could, simply to hear her play. Van was energetic
and seemed to be having a great time as he blasted through his hour
and a half set of music that featured, much to the dismay of some
folks around us, only one of his "greatest hits", the indomitable
"Moondance." While it was nice to hear this jazzed up re-working
of the classic I was much more enthralled by the new tracks from his
forthcoming record Keep It Simple, as well as some of the fine
cuts from his Pay The Devil release. All in all, if this was
what Austin held for me in 2008, I was set to have a great week…
although with a hundred less dollars in my wallet. Well worth the
outlay, as Van was the last remaining guy on my must-see list.
As an after-show treat I started the unofficial week out just the
way that I like to… with an impromptu rush to catch Zykos
play. I've not heard much from Mike Booher and company over
the past year, but they sounded incredible as they blasted through
an energetic and quick set plagued with sound problems and no monitors.
This new batch of songs that the band has put together is really solid,
and definitely worth some label checking out. I know if I had a label
going right now I'd pick them up and get them heard… the news
is that the band has just self-released a four song EP, which I'll
have to get my hands on sometime this week.
-David DeVoe
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