I have had the craziest last couple of days of my life.  Churchill (that band I am in, if you are new to the blog and don’t know already), was able to play at the Denver South By Southwest stage in Austin, TX.  We left Denver at 11 o’clock in the night-time for a 16-17 hour drive straight through the night to Austin.  The two highlights of the drive down were stopping in the middle of a field in Oklahoma to look at the stars (360 degree of amazing stars), and then stopping off the side of the road in Texas, where there were no rest stops, to use the “facilities” and then do band stretches with Bethany leading them.  Just try to imagine four guys and a girl doing ’80 style stretching in front of a van with palm trees on the side of it, in sunny 75 degree weather, all with skinny jeans on, and one guy with his shirt off…priceless.  It was a great trip down.

Then we got to Austin…It was crazy.  I didn’t really know what to expect from SXSW because I have never been to it and only heard crazy stories that had happened the year previous, but I was stunned at what I saw, smelled, and heard.  We walked up and down 6th street, that they closed down for the festival, and handed out fliers for our show.  We saw hipsters, old people, young people, too many people who looked like they haven’t showered for a month, tattoos, long hair, and huge beards.  We heard bands in every store for more than 10 blocks ranging from folk, to hip-hop, to heavy metal.  The smells, however were those people who haven’t showered for long periods of time.

We played on Friday morning at a restaurant and had a pretty good crowd for playing at 12:20 in the afternoon.  We barely made our time to play though because the police wouldn’t let us get close to our venue because they had closed down the streets and weren’t letting anyone down.  We were finally able to park 3 blocks away and carry our gear to the venue, set up, and have a 1 minute sound check: all of this completed in 20 minutes.  After we played, we were able to chat with other bands and meet people in the music scene in Denver.

We hooked up with a couple of bands who were playing the festival and found ourselves on the 21st floor of a sweet apartment complex in the middle of Austin.  We saw the biggest venue of the festival going on with lights and a humongous crowd.  After hanging out there, we were able to go to Tim’s cousins’ sushi restaurant and eat $250 worth of sushi…it was the best I have ever had.  Then we caught a couple of shows and found a place to stay more towards Dallas because we were playing there the next day.  We got good sleep and good eats after a crazy day.

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