Austin Sound

We love the Old Settler’s Fest every year. Even when it gets a little too Austin-hippie jam band for us, there are rarely events that are as chilled out and friendly and that compile such top notch talent in a relatively small area. So we are kind of excited that this year, in addition to the expected roots all-stars like Richard Thompson, Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, and Jim Lauderdale, there is also a pretty nice dose of artists we would typically consider more in the indie-oriented realm. Most notably is the Friday night headliner of the Avett Brothers, which indicates that either the Old Settler’s Fest has finally caught on, or that the North Carolina trio has been supplanted by their British tribute act in the form of those Mumford lads and are now down to lower tier festivals. We kid, we kid - this is a win-win in our books! Also interesting to note are Langhorne Slim and Elliot Brood, and of course a ton of great local artists ranging from the young Ruby Jane to Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The Fest and camping will be going on out at Camp Ben McCulloch and the Salt Lick Pavilion from Thursday, April 14 to Sunday, April 17, 2011, and for tickets and more info, check out their website. The full lineup and schedule are below:

See your bands in this week’s Chronicle. Get your bands here.

For the love of god - can we just get done with one festival in this town before another tries to steal their thunder? We were so close! Fun Fun Fun Fest is only 4 days away. So….very….close! But no, SXSW had to sweep in and go ahead and announce their first round of bands for this March’s fest. Fair enough. It is, after all, a good starter list. Check out the full list below, which we totally just copied and pasted from the awesome folks at donewaiting.com, because the email that SXSW sent out was a mash-up mush of a paragraph. The music part of SXSW goes down March 16-20, and bands, you can still apply for a showcase until this Friday, November 5th! Or you can just play a dayshow. In other SXSW news, they also announced the second round of music panels, which happens to include the panel “Fun Fun Fun? Thirty Years of Chronicling Austin Music” submitted by AustinSound editor Doug Freeman. The panel is in conjunction with the release of The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology, which Freeman and Chronicle columnist Austin Powell edited and that UT Press will unleash upon the world next spring. Good Times! And that just earned this post the Shameless Self-Promotion tag! It’s like retweeting yourself. But you don’t care about any of that, so check below for the first batch of bands at SXSW:

Well, nothing about this sounds like fun at all. Devo guitarist Bob Mothersbaugh cut his hand pretty badly (”to the bone!”) and they’ve had to cancel their headlining slot at Sunday’s Fun Fun Fun Fest. Bummer indeed. Of course, never one to pass up a social media opportunity, @funfunfunfest has been soliciting suggestions for replacements on Twitter. Next year, they should just let fans book the entire festival through Twitter and Facebook! We’re actually pretty excited to see who Transmission comes up with as a replacement - they’ve vowed to dole out the full Devo money in their hunt, and if we were going throw in our chips on anyone being able to pull a pretty awesome act out of their ass at the last minute, it would definitely be the Transmission folks. So the obvious question (other than what the hell are they going to do with all the misprinted posters now) is who do you want to see at take up the headlining banner at Fun Fun Fun Fest? Tix are also still on sale for both the full weekend and individual days, and though we were really excited for Devo, the rest of the lineup still remains damned impressive enough for us. Meanwhile, the countdown to find a replacement is on, as FFFFest deploys next Friday, November 5. Weird Al is going to have to seriously step up his game now, and this totally dashes our hopes of seeing a collaboration on “Dare to Be Stupid.”

Early in 2010, Balmorhea released Constellations with local imprint Western Vinyl, their fourth album in as many years. The quintet’s sold out release show at the Central Presbyterian Church was a testament to how popular the instrumental outfit has become in Austin, inspiring a fervid but reverential fanbase enthralled by Balmorhea’s intricate, classically-based expositions. With Constellations, principle songwriters Rob Lowe and Michael Muller turned to a much more subdued, if no less impressive, stylistic compositions, peeling back the dramatic build that had increasingly crescendoed on their previous works. Yet what still emerges most from Balmorhea’s tunes are vivid imagistic and emotional episodes, fleeting narratives that arise through their subtle constructions spearheaded by guitar and piano. We spoke with Lowe and Muller via email about their recent work, the philosophy behind the band, and their place in the Austin music scene. Balmorhea will be making their Austin City Limits Festival debut on the Austin Ventures Stage on Saturday, October 9 at 11:20am.

Several years ago, Ryan Bingham was kicking around Texas and the Southwest, a former rodeo rider beginning to garner attention for the rough-hewn songwriting of his official debut on Lost Highway, 2007’s Mescalito. Three years and two albums later, including last year’s Roadhouse Sun and newly released Junky Star, and Bingham has shot into the national spotlight, in no small part due to his co-writing (with T Bone Burnett) the Oscar-winning theme song to the movie Crazy Heart. Junky Star capitalizes on Bingham’s screen success with his best album to date, a collection of weary and worn tunes wrought from the road and the dire desperation of hard times. Bingham’s songwriting has matured to the kind of raw and emotional storytelling of early Steve Earle or Bruce Springsteen to establish him as one of the best emerging talents in the broad spectrum of Americana. Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses will be playing the Austin Ventures Stage at the ACL Festival on Friday, Oct. 8 at 7:15pm. They will also be doing an official aftershow that night at Momo’s.

Wow, we really couldn’t be more excited about helping sponsor the first annual “Ditch the Fest” Fest. Set up by Lucy the Poodle productions to be a FREE alternative event for all those people that just couldn’t see shoveling out a huge chunk of money to endure the Eagles at ACL Fest, Ditch the Fest will be taking place all day on Saturday, October 9 at Cheer Up Charlies. No matter how you feel about ACL, though, the DtF Fest has one of the most amazing local lineups that we’ve seen in a long, long time. They have over 40 bands that will be taking over three stages at the East Sixth site, and it’s all ages, and all free. Headlining are Woven Bones and Free Moral Agents (featuring “Ikey” Owens of The Mars Volta), but really it’s the rest of this lineup that blows our minds. It’s a veritable who’s who of some of Austin’s best emerging talent. The party kicks off at noon on Oct. 9 and runs until 2:00am. More information to come, but mark your calendars - and maybe even if you do have tickets to the sold out ACL, you should consider ditching Saturday for this event! Lineup of bands playing below:

Hold your horses there SXSW and Fun Fun Fun Fest, we aren’t done talking about ACL, yet! Today, C3 announced their official after and pre-shows for the early October bash in Zilker Park, and there is some good stuff for those of you that prefer to pass on the heat. We know it will break your hearts to miss those ACL headliners that everyone is so uber-excited about, but hey, here’s your chance to see the Antwoord. For the Thursday pre-shows, you can kick off the weekend with Spoon at the Mohawk (wow!), while Friday our money is split between Emo’s with the Black Lips, Those Darlins, and The Ettes outside, and Givers, Cults, and TV Torso in, while the Black Keys and Foals take on Stubb’s. For Saturday night, we’d probably take Girls with the Soft Pack at Antone’s, but it’s also tempting to see if there might actually be a tune or two that Jimmie Dale Gilmore does with the Monsters of Folk at Stubb’s. Anyway, peruse the schedule below, or here. And tickets for all of these shows will be going on sale August 27 at 10:00am. We suspect that Spoon at the Mohawk will blow out the servers first.

After several weeks of tactical leaks (which apparently has induced us to write in bad rhymes), Fun Fun Fun Fest has finally decided to stop fooling around and dump the full list of bands for their Fifth annual shindig in Waterloo Park this November 6 & 7. We weren’t able to make it down to their press conference (nice touch!), but we really hope that it unfolded like the NBA draft or something. We hear the bloggers were out in full force, and something about fried chicken. Anyway! We have to say, that this lineup is pretty damn astonishing. Bad Religion, Gwar, Devo, Mastodon, Os Mutantes, MGMT, just to name a few. Providing the weather holds and the dust stays settled this year, it should easily serve as the best FFFFest yet, and perhaps we’ll have to quit considering it a little DIY upstart and a full fledged party. Who knows, maybe they’ll actually even make some money this year! Tickets aren’t yet on sale, but you can currently sign up to enter their early bird lotteries. Anyway, here’s list as posted on their website currently.

And, here it is - your weekly Fun Fun Fun Fest band announcements. We think that this came courtesy of Wikileaks, who have obtained the documents and, against the threat of national security, have released the latest round up. Also, Fun Fun Fun Fest apparently wants to have a press conference when they announce the full list, which we find kind of hilarious. Why not? This is clearly press conference worthy. Someone notify Reuters! Will there be an open bar? What’s a press conference without an open bar, we always say. Reporters will also be able to ask their hard hitting questions, if called upon, which means there will be a mad scramble to see who will fill Helen Thomas’ seat in the front. We really feel this press conference needs to happen, because the public needs to know what Transmission Entertainment is doing about shoring up these continued leaks.

Anyway, today we have announced The Hold Steady, with Craig Finn bringing his breathless “oh, kids these days!” ranting to Waterloo Park. Is it just us, or does Finn and the Hold Steady’s songs kinda remind you of that teacher you had in high school who was down with what all the kids were into - you know, the one that wanted to be your buddy, and yeah, knew all about the crazy rave last weekend? It’s ok, we thought he was the coolest back then, too. We’re just waiting for Finn to one day whip out this line. Also on this week’s FFFFest roundup, though: RJD2, Dwarves, and High on Fire. And now you know.