After working for the Dallas Morning News for a day and a half at SXSW, it was time to switch clients. I worked for the Austin American-Statesman Fri. and Sat. of SXSW.
The DMN had structured assignments for me to be used with specific stories. The Statesman, being local, wanted me to cover everything I possibly could. I was working with a team of photographers and reporters, and we still couldn’t cover everything.
To give you an idea of how huge this festival is, think about an ocean. Then think about trying to capture every sea creature, every plant, every boat, every person on every beach, and every drop of water and grain of sand that makes up that ocean, and you have 24 hours to do it. It’s impossible.
It was a bit overwhelming to wrap my head around, but I did what I could to try to capture the essence of SXSW, or at least add what I could to the rest of the team’s coverage.
Anyway, I arrived around 4 p.m. on Thurs. (after making an early morning trip down town, but we’ll get to that) and began at city hall with a band called The Beards. They were awesome. Kinda like Tenacious D, but all of their songs were about facial hair.
After The Beards, I wandered over to Sixth Street to take some street features. Musicians and performers who don’t have gigs in bars or restaurants (or even some who do) try to make a little extra money by performing in the street. There’s no shortage of people to photograph.
I wandered in to a few venues and found a couple interesting bands, like Snowball 37 and The Strangers…
After a while it was time for me to head over to by big assignment for the night – Green Day at ACL Live.
This was a big show. To get a ticket, you had to have your name drawn in a lottery. To take photos, you had to be drawn in the lottery, show a valid press ID, have a tag on each of your cameras, have 2 wrist bands (one that got you in and one for photo pit access), and you still had to be on a list and stand in line with everyone else. I picked up the wrist band and ticket Fri. morning, and had to pick up the second wrist band at the box office when I arrived.
Of course, all of hat effort only allowed photographers to take photos during the first two songs. After that, no one was allowed to photograph anything, not even with a cell phone.
That being said, Green Day made the first two songs worth shooting. Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong brought a fan up on stage, kissed her on the mouth, and told her to jump from the stage back in to the crowd.
After Green Day I rushed back to my car to get my laptop and send in photos. The Hilton and Convention Center both had very fast (and free!) wifi connections, which made it easy to transmit.
When I finished around 10 p.m., I headed back out to Sixth to find a few more bands. The Statesman had me until 2 a.m., so I walked around and captured happenings on Sixth.
At midnight I went to Central Presbyterian Church, where Natalie Maines was performing. I saw her on the Wed. night before for the Morning News, but this was a different venue for a different paper. I liked her much better this time. She wasn’t bad before, but something about this atmosphere made her performance better, more intimate.
I had a couple other shows on my schedule, but long lines, bands running late and my stamina slowing made me throw my list out the window and just find what I could find. I kept roaming, but this post is getting long, so I’ll try and wrap this up.
It was 1:30 a.m. and I had about a half hour left before I was supposed to go home. I thought, “I’ll just go to one more show, then call it a night.” While strolling, I heard female voices swooning at The Stage on 6th. There wasn’t a line and it wasn’t packed inside, so I walked in and started taking photos of the band performing.
It was called Twin Falls. Never heard of them. Then someone told me the lead singer is Chris Carrabba, lead singer of Dashboard Confessional. Really? I’ve heard of them! They played a song I remembered from high school and a girl next to me shrieked and said, “this is a song I used to love when I was 15!” It was a fun way to end the night.
After the show, I went home and worked until about 4:30 a.m. to process and transmit photos. Then I went to bed, for there was another long day ahead of me.
Click here to view more photos from Day 2 of my SXSW coverage.
Day 3 of my SXSW coverage will be posted on Fri.
One Comment