It’s taken a little while— a month in fact— but here it finally is: the South By Southwest special. First things first, a huge thank you to everybody reading this who came to our fundraiser show or contributed to our crowd-funder, or supported our bid to get out to Austin in any way. We are not exaggerating when we say that we could not have done it without you. SXSW is the biggest showcasing festival in the world, and every year bands from all over the globe descend on the city of Austin to play in bars, clubs, hotel lobbies, in carparks and pretty much anywhere else that will take the weight of a band and their backline.
Almost all of the British bands that come out to Austin are brought over by an organisation of some sort; this might be a label doing a showcase, PRS, the BBC, a magazine, or anything else along those lines. In this sense we were something of a wildcard: as far as we could tell we were one of the only bands to be simply… booked! So whoever in Austin decided to book us, thank you as well! The four of us (that is, with our drummer Oli Middleton), were also lucky to be invited to play a set in Dallas the day before our official slot, and did another daytime set at a label party in Austin before hightailing it over to The Green Jay for our official showcase. The Green Jay is a little off the beaten path as far as we could tell, so after wondering if we’d be playing the graveyard shift we were stunned by how many people came to the show— and by how many people had travelled just to see us. It was a great introduction to playing live in the US and we can’t wait to go back again. Although, after taking off in a tornado, safe to say we were pretty happy to be back in England. Here are a few photos from the trip:
