photos by Colin Kerrigan
“This is our first-ever day in Austin,” Ellen Kempner of the New York-based band Palehound announced last night to a respectably sized crowd at a tiny, self-proclaimed "steampunk lounge" called Metal and Lace. “This is also the first time we’ve ever played two shows in one day!” This late into the life cycle of SXSW, when each March brings a chorus of people blaming some brand or high-profile pop star for its supposed death (this year it seems to be Doritos and Lady Gaga, respectably) I found Kempner’s newbie enthusiasm charmingly refreshing—and relatable. It’s my first year here too.
And I was still feeling unabashedly psyched about it all—breakfast tacos for dinner! a badge that will get me in to see as much live music as I can stand!—as I watched Palehound’s scrappy, melodic set early last night. The young Kempner is a friend of Speedy Ortiz frontwoman Sadie Dupuis, and she seems to be following a similar trajectory: Make some awesome and eccentric bedroom recordings on your own (for Kempner, this was last year’s EP Bent Nail), and eventually find a full band to amplify the scope of your distortion-driven freak-outs. Like Speedy, it was evident last night that Palehound love the 90s (Kempner was sporting an enviable scrunchie on her wrist): Bent Nail highlight “Psychospeak”, shambled like early Belly; the wooly “Drooler” recalled Kim Deal’s droll wit. Even amidst easy to spot influences, though, Kempner’s own particularly off-kilter melodic sensibility shines through. Which means it’s good news that Palehound’s set was so full of new material. “This song doesn’t really have a name yet,” Kempner said at one point. “So let me know if you have any suggestions.”
Palehound’s show was a bright start to what I naively thought would be a long night of music. “Wide-eyed new bands connecting with people!” I was actually thinking as I skipped to the next venue. “This is what’s SXSW is all about!” Now, a few hours later, I cannot believe I was ever so young. After Palehound, I stood in line for about an hour for the Def Jam 20th anniversary party, which featured 2 Chainz, Pusha T, Method Man and Redman and was billed as SXSW Tech Week’s closing night event. Shortly after I got in line, they split the crowd up between Interactive Badges and Music Badges, which made me feel hopeful, since the Music line was much shorter. Then they proceeded to let most of the Interactive Line (in which, #TechBros, I counted 35 men before I saw a single woman) in. When it became clear that the venue was at capacity and Music line wasn’t going to budge, I let go my dreams of hearing “Feds Watching” that night and decided to line up (what I thought was) absurdly early for Chance the Rapper’s 1 a.m. set at Red 7 Patio.
The line outside Chance the Rapper's impossible-to-get-into-show at Red 7 Patio
When I got in line a little after 11, I chatted with a friendly UT student named Colin, who has been volunteering with the festival since 2012 and said that although it was only Tuesday and the music festival of the portion technically hadn't even started yet, he could already tell this year was going to be "the worst ever." He had spent a staggering 60 hours volunteering for the festival since it started last week—and he hadn’t seen a single note of live music yet on his one night off, because he hadn’t found a single show he could get into. And as an hour and then two ticked by, it became clear his fate wasn’t going to change, because—badges or no badges—we weren’t getting into Chance either. When I told security I was there with my photographer to cover the show, they repeatedly told me there was no press list ("We even turned away the New York Times!"), while they continued to let in people who flashed their exorbitantly expensive “SXXpress Passes”. Our photographer tried his luck around another door, where I had the uncanny and instantly disillusioning experience of learning that security was now bragging to other journalists about having turned me away. “We didn’t even let in that girl from Pitchfork!” one of them said.
So let’s break down SXSW Day 1. The ratio of time I spent standing in lines for shows I didn’t end up getting into to time I spent actually seeing live music: 5:1. The loudest applause I have heard so far at the festival was in the Chance line, where we were so starved for entertainment that everyone cheered uproariously when a feral cat leapt over a tall wall. Volunteers are overworked and underrewarded; overpaid tech dudes essentially pay their way into shows, and the fact that even press are turned away make these higher-profile shows feel even more elitist—if you were turned away from one of these shows last night, good luck even reading about it the next morning. “So this is what SXSW is all about,” I thought as I headed back for the night.
Prove me wrong, Day 2.