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Rev Jim's SXSW 2009 review
Bart, there was, as always, an incredible lineup
of music for SXSW.
You definitely need to make the trip down here
to the designated liberal zone for Texas.
Friday night though there was a show that really
stood out. Or would have had it been advertised. During SXSW
there are always
unannounced word-of-mouth shows that are usually
sponsored by some magazine or corporate entity. This year there was a
Metallica show that was probably the most notorious
and most sought out of those. (Did
Lars have any Metallica fans arrested? :)
But the best show musically was the Texas Music
Magazine showcase on Friday at Scholtz's Beergarden,outside under the trees.
The lineup started with Shawn Sahm doing a tribute
to his father Doug, who is like the Godfather to the Austin music scene.
Shawn had members from all of Doug's bands such
as The Sir Douglas Quintet & The Texas Tornadoes , along with the West
Side horn section .
It was an incredible set of music with beautiful
Austin weather, everyone was rockin' . After that was an unbelievable all-star
set promoting a CD
for returning troops that need help with PTSD.
The project is called Voices
Of A Grateful Nation, It is a great way of both helping
the vet's
who need it the most, and also promoting music
that truly supports those who have sacrificed the most without getting
into right-wing jingoistic crap.
The band included Carolynn Wonderland, Shelley
King, Jesse Dayton, and my special friend Miss Lavelle White . LaVelle
is a walking treasure,
one of the last of the old school blues legends,
the honest-to-god daughter of a Mississsippi share cropper who ran away
to sing the blues long ago.
Their set was a full of heartfelt songs for the
troops, Shipping Out To Iraq Blues by Jesse Dayton & Everyone
Has Faded by Sally Allen really
stood out, at least until LaVelle took the stage.
Her song We'll Have Peace Someday, a gospel song, just brought down
the house . She had the
crowd out of their chairs and dancing under the
stars. The band was cookin' behind her, they had to bring her back for
a curtain call . I can't say
enough about the entire lineup on this CD , or
for that matter the whole project, I'm hoping all Bartcoppers will go to
their site and buy the CD,
or if it's too much just drop some money on them,there
is no better cause out there right now.
As LaVelle was taking her curtain call & I
looked
out from the side of the stage , I shouted out what I thought was a rhetorical
question .
"Who's going to follow this ? " Then Carolynn
Wonderland just looked at me, grinned, and said just 2 words "Del
Castillo!"
I could only answer " OK, I asked the wrong question......"
Del Castillo of course would be more than up to that job. I've seen
them many times
over the years & they are is all you say
they are on your website and then some. I only wished I could
have stayed and caught their set but I was
escorting Miss LaVelle that night and we had
commited to make another showcase across town . So I got to hear the opening
riffs as we headed
out into the night , but I did think about Ol'
Bart as I was leaving ,wondering if you might have made it down .
To close , I just want to mention again the Voices
Of A Grateful Nation, and ask all BartCoppers to please go to their
website and check out
what they are doing. PTSD is going
to be the top issue a lot of our returning vets are going to be dealing
with . I'm from the Vietnam generation,
so many of our guys then came home and were left
to deal with things on their own.I'm hoping this time around we will all
be more receptive to
this type of personal tragedy & do all we
can to help out.
But that's my (somewhat) mini report from SXSW
.
Everybody should come down and check us out at
least once - it's an experience like no other.
Rev Jim
Austin,Tejas
dfazdf
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