Enjoy bull riding, live music, and more at Rodeo Austin.
Photo courtesy of Rodeo Austin
Festival season is in full swing as SXSW makes its long-awaited return to in-person programming. Here are the top five things to do in Austin this weekend.
Friday, March 11
SXSW Film Festival This year’s SXSW Film Festival will screen 99 feature films, including two U.S. premieres, four North American premieres, four international premieres, 13 Texas premieres, and 76 world premieres. The festival will also screen 111 short films, a slew of music videos, episodic pilots, XR experience projects, and much more. For a full schedule of events, go to the SXSW Film Festival website. Programming is scheduled through March 19.
SXSW Comedy Festival SXSW Comedy Festival is back with five days of laughs in the form of podcast recordings, can’t-miss conversations, comedy showcases, and more. Expect appearances from featured festival participants such as Doug Benson, Dulcé Sloan, Jim Gaffigan, John Cleese, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Mitra Jouhari, Rich Vos, Ricky Velez, Vanessa Gonzalez, Yamaneika Saunders, and others. Visit the festival site for more information.
Saturday, March 12
The Black Hair Experience Pop-Up Selfie Museum Celebrate the legacy, history, and cultural impact of Black hair at a pop-up experience in the heart of Austin. The Black Hair Experience was founded by visual artist Alisha Brooks and photographer Elizabeth Austin-Davis and fuses a traditional art exhibit space with innovative and culture-rich activations, all inspired by Black hair. The venue features 15 unique installations and countless photo opportunities as guests journey through the evolution of Black hair through the decades. Tickets can be purchased here. Following opening weekend, the pop-up will be open through June 12.
Rodeo Austin Giddy-up and head on over to the Travis County Exposition Center for the return of Rodeo Austin. Highlights of this family-friendly experience include a ProRodeo competition, a livestock show, special attractions, Austin’s largest carnival, a beer and wine garden, and much more over the course of 15 days. Rodeo guests can also enjoy live music performed by the likes of Aaron Watson, Walk the Moon, Ryan Bingham, Melissa Etheridge, Ashley McBryde, Scotty McCreery, and Robert Earl Keen. Go to the festival website for a full schedule of events and to purchase tickets.
Sunday, March 13
The Butterfly Bar @ The Vortex 12th annual Garden Party Vortex’s Butterfly Bar opens its doors for a full day of activities and nature-themed fun during its annual garden party. Visitors will take part in replenishing the nationally certified butterfly sanctuary while also enjoying live music, planting opportunities, arts and crafts, and even a petting zoo. The Butterfly Bar will also be serving garden-inspired cocktails for guests 21 and older. Admission to this event is free.
Experience and celebrate the cultural impact of Black hair at The Black Hair Experience pop-up, opening this weekend.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Austin-Davis
Experience and celebrate the cultural impact of Black hair at The Black Hair Experience pop-up, opening this weekend.
Only in Austin does recording in a tin can create excellent sound. Specifically, this "tin can" is a 1955 Spartan Imperial Mansion trailer, a spacious mobile home converted into a relatively cramped studio. But the unconventional setup is no match for producer and engineer James Westley Essary.
Essary and his videographer brother, Brantley, have been using the space to build up their inner circle of musicians, capturing intimate performances in professional recordings available on YouTube. Live From The Tin Can premiered its second season on April 15, 2024, and is looking forward to a long string of diverse performances to come. Right now listeners can enjoy Ron Gallo, David Ramirez, Vondré, John Calvin Abney, Angel White, and more on the YouTube channel.
First up this season was Worn-Tin (an amazing coincidence of a name), performing "Hard Ease," "Bitter," and "Kid Changed," a pleasantly lackadaisical series of alt-rock romps, somehow squeezing in two drum sets. Worn-Tin, like many other artists this season on the YouTube series, performed live at South by Southwest in March. The festival, along with the concurrent Luck Reunion, brought a wealth of artists to the Live Music Capital, so the Tin Can crew took advantage of the easy scheduling.
"South By's website is actually a great way to find out who was coming into town," says Brantley. "So we started thinking about things like, what is what is their sound like? What is their performance like, and will that translate into our space? ... [We] just started contacting managers: 'Hey, do you have a free morning, free afternoon? Want to come by?' The sessions only take about a couple of hours."
Although the Essarys are hoping to get more national acts into the Tin Can to boost views, their hope is that over time they can narrow their focus back to local artists. (The series premiere featured Austin band Kelly Doyle.) Beyond the view counts, these recordings are mutually beneficial; Artists don't just get exposure, but lasting high-quality recordings for free, and the brothers get to build a portfolio. Westley, who just goes by his second name in conversation, appreciates the stylistic challenge.
Producer and engineer James Westley Essary does the auditory impossible.Photo courtesy of Live From The Tin Can
"I get to create a little calling card, [and] they get a way to push their new record when they're rolling through town and on tour," says Westley. "As you put out records you get pigeonholed ... I want to make a punk record, and I want to make a metal record. I want to make a country record. So it allows me to be able to dabble in whatever I want — whatever we book in the studio."
Making these connections was Westley's main goal in creating the series during the pandemic. It'd been a loose idea at the producer's prior studio, with occasional shoots for social media. As we all remember, 2019 was not famous for its sense of urgency. But when the studio was "sold out from under" Westley in October, he got tired of hopping from one rental to another.
He bought the trailer in December 2019 and spent the following year working on it. The end of his work coincided with Brantley's desire to move back to Austin from Seattle, so the returning brother provided the property to park the trailer on. The rest was good, old-fashioned pandemic restlessness.
The Tin Can in all its metallic glory.Photo courtesy of Live From The Tin Can
"When you're on the road all the time, you're meeting new bands every day, because you have a different opener or something," says Westley. "And I was like, 'How can I bring that to me?' It's a lot of fun when there's not really any money involved. You're not dedicating a ton of time, necessarily, to it. Bands come here, they have a really great time, [and] it's really nice to be able to host them."
Of course, recording in such a small space has its challenges. Most of the solution was in arranging; not the music, but the musicians. Placing everyone just right minimizes the bleed of certain instruments into other microphones, and as long as the singer stays relatively still, the drums — the biggest culprit — mostly keep their sound to themselves.
Some issues are also fixed with slightly quieter playing, unintentionally creating a sort of sonic brand for the series. It's not all bedroom pop, but the combination of a cozy recording environment and slightly restrained volume makes for some homey performances. This also works nicely for Westley — isn't that happening a lot? — who says he usually prefers listening at home to watching in a crowd.
Still, live recordings add a certain spice to the music. Many music fans will attribute it to the organic mystery of musicians clicking together, but Westley thinks there's something else at play. There's no substitute for practice, and by the time musicians are making live recordings, they've probably played the song live dozens or even hundreds of times. That allows for improvements on the original ideas — sometimes ones that originated in the studio at the time of the first recording.
Ron Gallo squeezes into the Tin Can.Still from Live From The Tin Can
It's also an easy way to make additional income without writing more, he says. Brantley points out that live music has always been at the core of the business.
"Live music has been at the top for forever," says Brantley. "Now we've got artists selling out huge arenas. They're competing with the NFL; They're not competing with movies or TV as much anymore. ... So I love the opportunity to not just record live music, but also film it. You're getting a full experience of both the really compelling live recording [and] even more compelling video to watch them in their element — really playing it live rather than just in a box in the studio."
The next frontier for the Tin Can crew will be hosting live shows onsite. Westley will be in the trailer recording while the band plays outside, and eventually Brantley might start capturing video, too. Also down the pipeline are audio-only live recordings, so listeners can enjoy the tunes without relying on YouTube.
One episode featuring NOBRO from Montreal, Quebec, is out now, with more to come. Next up is Evangeline from Los Angeles. Follow along with Live From The Tin Can ("Like and subscribe," says Brantley with a smile) on YouTube.