2023 SXSW Recap: All Under One Roof Raving (Part Five)

Saturday:

I woke up Saturday at 7 AM. I had been on the move since Sunday, but for some reason, my body told me I was not going to be able to go back to sleep. With 5 hours in the tank, I made it back to downtown Austin for my final days. I had soreness in both of my legs and walking had begun to feel miserable. A venti americano and a croissant later, and I was back in action. My first stop was the LaCroix event where they had free swag and fruit and LaCroix-based mocktails free flowing. These were some of the best mocktails I had ever tasted. I also have a LaCroix hat now. I’m cool!

One of Andrew’s favorite artists is the late John Prine, and his record label Oh Boy Records was putting on a free country music event with the support of the Nashville chain Hattie B’s Chicken. I blessed my tastebuds with free chicken and dug for some records from the Oh Boy Road Show where I got my hands on the hard-to-find pressing of Zach Bryan’s American Heartbreak and the second volume of the John Prine cover album Broken Heats and Dirty Windows pressed on an exclusive but glorious blue for Andrew’s sake. For my own sake, I got the yellow variant of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising. After that was all said and done, I enjoyed the great curation of music that they provided for the weekend. 

Crumbsnatchers

Crumbsnatchers were not a country band but had roots in that Nashvillem sound while focusing on more artsy and funkier songs. Their groovy guitar licks echoed across the venue, but right as they really got going, their 20-minute set ended. They made a fan out of me in those 20 minutes and I hope to catch them again one day.

Izzy Heltai

Izzy was next with his singer-songwriter country sound and he delivered a powerfully personal but awesome set in his 20-minute slot. I was just as impressed with him as I was with the Crumbsnatchers

Emily Nenni

• 

• 

I got the opportunity to see and meet Emily Nenni as she opened for Charley Crockett at Buddy Holly Hall last fall, and I got to see her again doing a solo acoustic set with just her and her guitar. She was lovely then and she was just as lovely now. My day started with me not even knowing she was performing to me singing along to her 20-minute set.

Gabe Lee

• 

• 

They should have shut the show down after Gabe Lee walked on stage because that man deserved to play for two hours at ACL Live for a sold-out show. Andrew told me that Gabe Lee was a must-see from the minute I stepped into the venue, and though I was only partly familiar with his work, I became a superfan in mere minutes. Something about his charisma, his voice, his lyrics, and his storytelling added up to be one of my favorite performances from the entire week. If someone answers my prayers, I hope he can one day make a trip to Lubbock and burn the Blue Light down. I cannot recommend you check him out. I love Gabe Lee now. He also swiped up on the KTXT story and told me I took a great video of him.

Riley Downing

Up next was the husky-voiced wisdom of Riley Downing who sat in a lawn chair as he performed to the crowd with a Lone Star beer right next to him. His slow acoustic set was nice.

Tommy Prine

Tommy has a huge legacy to live up to, but with his dad’s influence on his sleeves, he seems to be just as wise and charming as his father. He performed a song that discussed Lord of the Rings and how using Gandalf’s wisdom gave him guidance through life. That’s pretty cool. I am excited about his debut since he hasn’t put out a full body of work yet, but I have no doubt in my mind it isn’t going to jam.

Though I dreamed of seeing Tre Burt live and Kelsey Waldon seemed exciting too, I needed to escape Parish and get some fresh air. I grabbed my records and hit the road back to my car. I dropped the records off and caught a breather. As I eventually made it back to the streets of downtown Austin, my legs needed rest, so I cooled off on a park bench and figured out what my next move was. After the exhaustion settled in for a minute, I felt loopy and tired. I had 8 more hours in the tank. I grabbed some food at Chipotle as I watched people wait to get into the premiere of Air at the Paramount Theatre. After, I hobbled my way back to the Central Presbyterian Church to catch a portion of the Plantwave Plant Music Showcase.

Housekeys and Christopher Willits

If I didn’t already have an hour-by-hour schedule planned out, I would have stayed to see ambient legend Laraaji perform with plants, but I did get to catch the first two acts. Housekeys is the moniker for multi-instrumentalist Tiffiny Costello. I don’t know much about her material, but she played over a piano as wires connected to different plants to produce ambient sounds using moving atoms and particles in the leaves. It is more scientific than I can describe, but it was soothing. After all the loud music and insanity. I drifted away on the church pews and fell asleep almost. Christopher Willits did the exact same thing with his guitar. The plants created a beautifully ambient atmosphere that was accompanied by live instrumentation. To me, if the concept behind Mort Garson’s Plantasia was revisited using modern technology, this is the vibe I would want to hear.

TC Superstar

TC Superstar doing a show for SXSW just seemed like an excuse for the Austin-based band to do another regularly scheduled hometown show. TC Superstar does shows quite often in Austin, so to catch them during SXSW was great. One of the best parts of the smaller official SXSW music events is that you can pay a cover entry to catch a show, so a lot of TC Superstar fans paid their fare to catch them. The group’s music and dance performance is one of a kind, and the crowd sang all the words. One of my favorite quotes of the entire night was Connor saying “Thanks for coming out. There are so many better artists you could be seeing tonight.” before the crowd erupted into cheers. Connor paused for a moment and got back on the microphone “TC Superstar is the best band to ever perform at South By Southwest.” The cheers got even louder. Into You is one of the best indie pop songs ever, and I feel honored to get to see the band behind it live. How did the dancers perform for 40 minutes with perfectly synced choreography? I don’t know, but it made for a great show.

Duke Dumont

• 

• 

Just like how SXSW does secret screenings like John Wick 4 or Air, they do the same thing with musical acts announcing Macklemore was going to perform only a few weeks after his studio album BEN dropped or House extraordinaire Duke Dumont would be closing out the music of SXSW with a two-hour DJ set. At the same time, KX5 was burning down the Moody Amphitheater, but as that show ended, more and more piled into the Moody Theater looking for an EDM encore. I didn’t think I would be able to withstand a two-hour rave. Andrew recommended I take a seat on the balcony, but I decided as Lubbock’s worst musical journalist I needed to review the rave the only way I knew how: raving. For two hours, Duke Dumont bounced between some of his best pieces like Ocean Drive, I Got U, The Power, and Red Light Green Light and other bangers like Fred Again..’s Turn On The Lights Again.., Richey Profond’s remix of Gypsy Woman by Crystal Waters, RanchaTek’s This Beat Is, and so many more. I went through the crowd getting in mosh pits and going crazy. It was a huge party and a great way to close out my SXSW experience. I think it’s cool how many shows SXSW does for free including a big-name act like Duke Dumont. You don’t get house music in Lubbock, Texas, so I had to make it count while in Austin.

Conway The Machine, Jae Skeese and 7xethegenius

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I was excited to see one of the big three for the Griselda crew, so I stumbled back to Parish to see him. After a brief intermission between acts, Conway the Machine made his way to the stage as he performed The Alchemist-produced Piano Love off his Shady-debut God Don’t Make Mistakes. He immediately brought out newcomer and Drumwork Music Group signee Jae Skeese to perform their collaboration Metallic 5’s together. I discovered Jae Skeese from Conway’s La Maquina where he stole the show on a few verses. Their collaborative project had just come out a week prior, so seeing them already performing a fresh cut from the project was sick. Next, Conway brought out 7xethegenius to perform with them. This was when I realized that Conway was not using this performance to present himself but to present his new record label. SXSW is an opportunity for small artists to come into the light, so I think it was a great choice for Conway to take time out of his short performance to present some great newcomers off his label and make the performance less about himself and more about his group. There was definite talent, and it is cool to see so much talent in such a small venue.

Samm Henshaw

• 

• 

I found Samm Henshaw back in high school with his songs How Does It Feel?, Broke, Doubt, and Church. Those four songs alone got played ad nauseam, so when Untidy Soul dropped at the start of 2022, I was extremely excited. I didn’t realize Samm was doing shows until I saw a post on his Instagram saying he had one more, and I had to make sure I was there. I rushed over to the Speakeasy as he was just about to walk about. He is such a positive soul and an uplifting guy. My grin was undeniable. He not only played the best songs of Untidy Soul, but touched How Does It Feel?, Broke, and Church as well. The girl next to me and I were going word for word with Samm and I told her that we were carrying the crowd’s energy. I had no more shows after this. I left it all on the floor for this show. After the show, I found he brought a small stack of his UK-pressed vinyl of Untidy Soul that he hand-signed right before the show. I got my hands on a copy, and I was happy. Even more so, he came out right after and the girl and I got to chat with him. I told him how much his music meant to me and we shared our experiences at SXSW. It was a great way to end off one insane week.

I collapsed onto the apartment couch right as I stepped in the door. I used a massage gun to ease the tension in my legs and then slept for 10 hours. I soon enough got back to Lubbock and had to get ready for school the next day.

To go as insane as I did during SXSW might not have been the best idea, especially on foot, but I don’t know when to quit, and I had to be the greatest one-man band I could be. Thanks again to the team at SXSW for letting us at KTXT cover the festival for the first time since COVID, and thank you to all the artists who I got to chat with and speak with during my first South By. I made so many new friends with different college radio stations from the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Florida State University, and so many more plus the people I stood next to in lines and the people who saw some lonely college kid waiting for a show and decided to start a conversation with me. The amount of people I saw at multiple shows just from pure coincidence is crazy. South By Southwest 2023 was a major success, and I cannot wait for the next spring break just to do it all over again.

If you want to read all five parts of my 2023 SXSW recap, click here!