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Apr 01, 2014 Woman’s Hour By Michele Yamamoto

03/11/14
We left our homes in and around East London early in the morning to a luxuriously oversized minibus with designs of taking us, our manager, someone from our label, and our equipment to Heathrow for a midday flight. Unfortunately having taken the best part of two hours travelling and only finding ourselves in the Kings Cross area, we decided to cut our losses and run onto the tube, equipment et al, to get our flight. We made it. Just. Then sat on planes for the rest of the day until arriving in Austin via Chicago at a disorientating time I’m struggling to recall. All I can say is that I preferred Dallas Buyers Club to 12 Years a Slave and I wish I had watched Class Of ‘92.

03/12/14
Our first day proper in Austin. The sun was glaring down and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Our accommodation had been sorted out by SXSW with a local guy exchanging beds for tickets to the festival. We crept into his house at the dead of night so hadn’t had the chance to introduce ourselves to our housemates for the week—a guy called Chad and his beagle Eno. We hung out at the house for a while before heading to the festival for our first show at Palm Door on Sixth Street for our first taste of SXSW. This was going to be fun!

03/13/14
The previous night there had been a terrible accident outside Mohawk on Red River involving a car chase where at least two people had died and dozens had been injured. Our show that day was cancelled so we only had a show in the evening at the British Music Embassy just off Sixth Street for BBC Introducing. We spent the day stumbling through the crowded streets, soaking up the sun and watching some great bands including an intimate Warpaint show at the Spotify house. Needless to say it was stunning. We also caught Royal Blood playing before us and they sounded great.

03/14/14
Early afternoon we played our favourite show (not just saying that) for Under The Radar at the Flamingo Cantina, usually a reggae venue it had been transformed into a cool hangout. Gruff Rhys played after us which was amazing as he is a bit of a hero to us. Plus he had someone out of the Flaming Lips in his band who said he liked our set. Maybe he was just being nice but it made our day. In the evening we played Red Eyed Fly for the Secretly Label Group showcase, despite a late start we had a great show and it was amazing to be playing alongside our label mates Tomas Barfod, Marc Maguire, Angel Olsen, and Gardens & Villas. The venue won the award for the smelliest toilets, but other than that it was perfect, like something straight out of the set of Twin Peaks.

03/15/14
After our show the previous night we went on to a party in a motel on the outskirts of Austin with a swimming pool and typically oversized bottles of whiskey and rum to ensure we started the Saturday slowly. We eventually got downtown and enjoyed a fine burger experience at Jo’s. That evening we actually decided to leave the mayhem of the festival and popped to a bar out of town called Workhorse which had an incredible range of beers. From there we met some locals and ended up on their porch drinking spirits and discussing the finer points of difference between English and American culture.

03/16/14
Sunday was our last full day in Austin and also happened to be our boy Josh’s birthday so we spent it the only way we knew how in Texas… by eating through it. After traipsing round the vintage shops and candy stores on South Congress we made our way back home and went out for frozen margaritas with Chad. The best frozen margaritas.

(Credit: Glen Brown)

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