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Austin
No Limits
The
nation's biggest music festival attracts more than 10,000
visitors to Texas's capital city every year.
By
Robert Sullivan
W 's
been out of town a lot lately, trolling for votes in places like
New Hampshire and California instead of the old Lubbock and Luckenbach
stumping grounds. But that doesn't mean the lights have gone out
in Austin. Not hardly. While the governor cat's away, other cats
are at play, for this hot city no longer depends upon its status
as Lone Star State capital for its sense of self. No sir. These
days, Austin is as much about computers (spelled D-E-L-L) and
clubs (jazz, country, rock, hip-hop, you name it) as it is about
politics.
If
you want to find out what's up with the new Austin, you should
go there, as I did last year, during the loud, lively South by
Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival (March 15 to
19 this year). By day, SXSW is a confab for the music biz, with
record label bigwigs mingling at the convention center with hopeful
young bands or attending seminars entitled "Overseas Licensing:
The Inside Track," "Nuts and Bolts of Postmodern Rock Radio,"
and "The Politics of Soundtracks." By night, SXSW is much more
entertaining. It's all over town in more than three dozen clubs,
joints, and dives—not to mention outdoors in Waterloo Park.
Every space in Austin is hopping from happy hour 'til way past
midnight, with hour-long sets from several of the 800 acts that
blow through town during the week.
I was in town as part of the daytime activities,
sitting on a panel called, "Bored of the Chairman? Rethinking
Frank Sinatra." I got that out of the way, then put on my Tony
Lamas and my panelist's badge and hit the street.
That means I hit Sixth Street,
Austin's version of Greenwich Village's Bleecker (circa 1963)
or New Orleans's Bourbon (circa 4 a.m. last night). Not all of
the city's hundred or so stages are on Sixth Street, but a bunch
of them are. I ventured from Babe's to the Flamingo Cantina to
Jazz on Sixth Street and I heard jazz, blues, country, alt country,
alt rock, and Tex-Mex along the way. Artists in town that week
included Leon Russell (hoping to gig alfresco with Willie Nelson
at Liberty Lunch, but the show was rained out), Lucinda Williams
(delivering the SXSW keynote address as well as three or four
sets at various places), Tom Waits, Powderfinger, Patty Griffin,
Waco Brothers, Robert Earl Keen, and Jim Lauderdale. The music
was of wildly varied kind, meter, rhythm, rhyme, and volume, as
well as quality. I dug some of it—not
all—and
after a terrific set by Freakwater at the Jazz Bon Temps Room,
I decided to go out a winner and headed for bed.
Bed was in the historic Driskill
Hotel, a grand old dame of a hotel, recently gussied up in a renovation.
The Driskill calls itself a "Frontier Palace," and that's about
right. A Victorian heap right in the middle of everything, it
opened in 1886, and I'd bet a passel the first guests were packing
six-shooters. When Lyndon Johnson was a local politician, he and
his boys would hole up at the Driskill on election night to count
ballots their way.
Next morning, I rolled out
of my wrought iron bed and went for a jog. I was surprised to
find that I was not the only human being awake in Austin after
the night before. I headed down to the Colorado River, where scores
of young techies were logging their miles before heading for work
at Dell and other firms. It wasn't so long ago that Michael Dell
was a student at the University of Texas, selling used computers
out of his dorm room, and he stayed in town when he started his
company. Dell Computer is now the centerpiece of a local industry,
IBM and Motorola included, that is luring the young and frazzled
away from Silicon Valley's traffic and pressure. More than two-thirds
of Austin's 1.2 million citizens settled here during the last
decade; it's a young person's city, vibrant and alive and up and
running at dawn.
I jogged from the river to
the statehouse, where the blue-suited crowd was already making
its bureaucratic way up from the car park. Whereas down by the
river I passed an immense bronze statue of the ill-starred, still-hot-even-though-he's-dead
blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, up here I was reminded of
the Texas heroes from statehood days. Austin feels like more than
one city—two
or three at least.
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And these towns coexist proudly
in what must be the most liberal-minded place in Texas. Austin
is an open-arms town of opportunity. It is a town of yesterday,
today, and tomorrow. It is the Driskill and LBJ and scotch and
the long past, and also Willie and weed and the near past, and
also the Internet and lattes and the future. Austin is a college
town and a computer town and, increasingly, a commuter town.
For
my money, Austin is best when it's Western. For me, a great day
in Austin would—and did—start
with that jog. Then it proceeded to a mess of eggs and good, rich
coffee at Las Manitas Cafe, a diner on North Congress that serves
cholesterol bombs laden with cheese. Then I went to Sheplers and
bought my wife a belt with a buckle I figured she might hate,
though I thought it was a very nice buckle. Then I took in a set
at the Jazz Bon Temps Room, went to Threadgill's for some ribs,
and attended a concert at Waterloo Park featuring local heroes
Fastball and Joe Ely. Pretty tired, I hit the piano bar at the
Driskill, then the elevator. Tom Waits got in, looking more tired
than me. I had to say something, so I said, "Quite a town."
"That
it is, my friend," Tom said.
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If you're going...
Contact SXSW at (512) 467-7979
or
www.sxsw.com for information.
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Photos by Kelly-Mooney Photography/Corbis, Will Van Overbeek, and Gerald French/Corbis
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This article was first published in March 2000. Some facts
may have aged gracelessly. Please call ahead to verify information.
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