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The sun returns on Sunday, the last day of the festival. The temperature doesn’t rise above the lower sixties and the wind is considerable, so to be comfortable you have to sit in a sheltered sunny spot. And Amelia’s back yard is a fine place to be in the early afternoon. Because of the weather there were no shows in Amelia’s back yard the day before, so they moved the PA to a indoor spot. The PA was still gone, so the scheduled artists had to play acoustically. The young fine new singer-songwriter John Fullbright from Okemah, Oklahoma (also Woody Guthrie’s town of birth) is first and immediately attracts my attention. He is good! Next are Amanda Shires and Rod Picott, followed by Amanda Pearcy (with Tim Lorsch on mandolin and fiddle). Amanda Pearcy is pretty new to the scene too. She has her debut out recently. I reviewed the CD and was moved by her fine songs. It was a pleasure to meet her and watch her play.
LeeAnn’s barn dance, located in her own back yard on 2nd St, is as crowded and amazing as always. You find yourself back in hippieland again. The performing artists are fine, and form a cross section of the artists performing at SXSW. I enjoy performances by Amelia K. Spicer, Erin Harpe (a wonderful blues singer and guitarist in the Delta Blues idiom), Norway’s high lonesome sound of William Hut, the soulful sounds of Shelley King and band and Ray Bonneville again. I end my festival in Opal Divine’s Penn Field to see and hear wonderful Susan Cowsill and her fine band, who play a lot of songs from her forthcoming CD ‘Lighthouse’. After Bill Kirchen’s set (with ace bass player Sarah Brown) I head for home.
After the festival I counted my blessings. During the five full days of the festival I was able to see some sixty different artists and groups, totalling over thirty hours of music and I enjoyed every minute of it! Looking back on Monday I came up with this list of highlights for SXSW 2010. In arbitrarily order: Wanda Jackson, Hot Club of Cowtown, Jim Lauderdale, The Belleville Outfit, John Fullbright, Louise Mosrie, Jimmy Lafave and Shelley King.
The friendliness of the Austinites and the relaxed atmosphere in downtown Austin during the festival days are ever so appealing to me. Many venues are located in or near East 6th street, where all the bars and restaurants have live music from both the official and the Not-SXSW schedule. No traffic is allowed in this part of 6th street on the festival days thus enabling all participants to stroll up and down the street which is done abundantly. You will see many youngsters dressed in about every piece of clothing you can imagine existing
Quite a few older people mix with them, as do musicians of all kinds imaginable. From the bars and restaurants come snatches of music of all sorts. You are likely to hear pop, rock, soul, blues, jazz, country, singer-songwriters, bluegrass, folk, texmex, cajun, zydeco, hip-hop and more. And the weather is nice most of the time, so many windows are open, you won’t miss a lot! The dark side of this is also evident: many venues are close to each other, so when in venue a loud rock or blues or hip-hop is played and next door in venue b they play acoustically you understand who will win.
I could go on for many hours, talking about SXSW 2010. I really hope to be back next year. Thank you, Austin and thank you, SXSW organisation! I love you, Austin and SXSW.
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