We’d arranged to meet the rest of the gang in Williamsburg for breakfast but me and Al were pretty peckish when we woke so we ate the Whole Foods leftovers from the day before (fried egg in a croissant – it’s not been a health food trip). Then we hopped on the Metro for a short ride over the Williamsburg bridge to Marcy Avenue where we met Kev and Ziggy.

Zig had hung out in this neighbourhood quite a lot last summer when he was over at the Omi music residency, so he lead us to an amazing little place called Egg for a second breakfast. Their menus are online, read them and salivate. I could eat there every day. Alan had the Country Ham Biscuit, Kev the Grafton Cheddar Omelet, Ziggy the Eggs Rothko and I had a bowl of granola and yogurt. I know. I was trying to be healthy. What was I thinking? I sat and looked at everyone with a bad case of breakfast envy. Soon Shea’la, Gav and his friend Davie joined us and we all chowed down.

After breakfast we split up. Gav and Davie went off to check out a friend’s recording studio, reputed to be full of classic analogue gear and old skool drum machines. The rest of us went on a tour of Williamsburg’s best thrift stores and second hand shops including Buffalo Exchange and Beacon’s Closet. Buffalo Exchange is a chain of second hand clothes stores with shops right across the US. It had some nice stuff, but not particularly exciting. Beacon’s on the other hand was intimidatingly large, and full of amazing clothes from the last 50 years. It would be easy to spend a long time and a lot of money there. Unfortunately for us we had neither but I did pick up a few choice items for gifts. Alan peeled off on his own at this point to go check out the sites in Manhattan.

After all that shopping it was time for a drink. We found this great little rock bar on Bedford Avenue called The Charleston who had a happy hour deal offering a free 12″ pizza with every drink. How could we refuse? We drank a pint of Brooklyn Lager and ate cheese and tomato pizza all for only $4. The pizza was freshly made with a rustic hand thrown base. $4. My kind of place. Shea’la had to take off and drive for two and a half hours back to Providence but our gig wasn’t till 1 am so me, Kev and Zig decided there was nothing else to do but drink (it was about 5 pm).

After a sloppy game of pool we went over to Monkia’s place (where Kev and Zig were staying) and drank beers for a few hours. Like much of Brooklyn, the apartment block is a converted warehouse and has a roof garden with incredible 360 views of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens – from up there you really feel like you’re in the city. We’d made a vague plan to walk over to Williamsburg bridge to see the lights of Manhattan turning on at dusk, but we abandoned this after around the third bottle. We opted for the train instead and went to meet a bunch of folk in a small Italian restaurant, Frankies, where Monkia works.

Then on to the Rockwood Music Hall. The name of the place conjures up a spacious, prestigious old building, but in fact it’s tiny and would look packed with around 50 people. Fortunately for our set, we only had 20. Monika’s band played first to a busy room of around 40 people – and were great – a four piece with trombone through fx pedals, upright bass, drums and Monika on electric bass and vocals. They played a kind of off-beat jazz pop with hints of Björk in the vocal melodies. It was their first gig together but you wouldn’t have known it and they gave a confident performance.

Then half the bar kindly emptied out for us. You can’t blame them, it was after 1 am on a Wednesday night. Despite the alcohol we played the tightest set of our US tour. The banter with the crowd was hilarious particularly the man who slept all way through the set. I don’t know how he managed it, as he was right beside Alan who positively batters the drums. Payment for the bands is by a donation in a hat passed round during the set. We earned a respectable $50 which we drank after the show.

After the gig at the British Music Embassy we were dragged off by Muslim (producer for Vic Galloway and Huw Stephens, BBC Radio 1). He wanted to do a little feature with us called ‘Austin Found’ . . . the premise was that we had to scour the streets looking for objects that we could make sounds with and then busk with them on 6th Street.

Muslim reckoned it’d be easy and that the streets were littered with interesting artifacts, I was skeptical but we set off from the venue with our eyes peeled regardless. I don’t know what he expected we’d be able to find, but after much raking through bins and searching down alleyways our final haul included: a small block of wood (woo!) and a large water container (exciting!). As this clearly wasn’t enough to play one of our songs, Gav went and got his melodica and Alan played a metal bin with drum sticks. Junky, but not very interesting. We needed something else to make  it more of a performance. Suddenly a girl walked passed with a megaphone promoting a charity event. Kev ran after her and used all of his timeless Aberdonian charm to woo her.

We played a shonky rendition of When You Fall: Ziggy on vocals, Kev on megaphone beat box, Gav on melodica, Alan on metal bin and block of wood and me on water container bass drum. It actually didn’t sound as crap as you’re all thinking. Pretty crap, but not AS crap. Amazingly a crowd gathered and we even got a round of applause although Gav reckoned he burst a vein in his head from blowing the melodica too hard.

Here’s what it sounded like:

Austin FOUND

We then raced back to the British Music Embassy to try and catch The Pictish Trail’s show but we were too late, he was already finished and standing out in the side alley drinking a beer and shmoosing  with King Creosote’s current manager (and Elton’s ex-manager), Derek. Ziggy and I muscled our way in. Before long we’d been invited to come and drink margarita’s on a rooftop with them, so being the honorable guys that we are, we ditched the rest of the band and went and got very drunk at Elton’s ex-manager’s expense. He also treated us to a fine meal and then more and more drinks. Meanwhile the rest of the gang were back at The Ginger Man pub and Kev managed to spear a beer mat with a dart. If you don’t believe me, here’s a rather disturbing photo of a very enthusiastic Gav.

It began well, with a fantastic Mexican breakfast in a local diner – we all had different variations of huevos rancheros and breakfast tacos washed down with large mugs of Oaxacan coffee. This is where things started to go a little weird. That coffee was STRONG and the waiter just kept refilling our cups. Chris drove us in the back of his white van to collect our gear from our friend Lauren’s apartment and then we were to go on to the British Music Embassy to check in with the sound engineer and stage manager before our gig at 2.45 pm. We had a quick look round the American Apparel thrift yard sale – Kev, Gav and Alan all picked up brightly coloured garms but I really wasn’t feeling it. I was beginning to feel pretty jittery – in fact downright paranoid. The coffee had us all wired and it wasn’t a nice feeling. 

We went round the corner to the venue which was fast filling up. Come On Gang! kicked things off with a flamboyant intro from Mr Vic Galloway who got the crowd to sing happy birthday for the band’s guitarist, Mikey. The venue was now packed out and for the first time in ages I was feeling really nervous about playing – a combination of that crazy Mexican coffee, hangover and now a couple of free beers wasn’t settling my nerves. Come On Gang! stormed through their set and got a great reaction from the capacity crowd, spilling onto the street outside with people queuing to get in. Vic introduced us and we took to the stage to a crowd of at least 250 people. Ziggy was keen that we keep the change overs between songs brief as his banter hasn’t really been going down so well at these odd industry gigs. His patter’s shit anyway, so it’s for the best.

I found it a pretty tough show. I was messing up a fair bit – my bass strap kept on falling and I had to do all kinds of goofy things to try and keep hold of the guitar. Annoyingly for me this has been captured on film – Stuart Thomas from the Scottish Arts Council filmed our set with Alan’s HD camera. Great.

Still, even though I looked like a chump, it was a great gig and the crowd seemed to be loving it. We ended on Let Fidelity Break, which went down a storm. Then we went about the dirty business of meeting and greeting industry folks, handing out business cards, CDs and flyers. We met some good peeps, including a guy from the Dutch Music Centre who’s going to try and get us over to play at one of the London Calling events at Paradiso in Amsterdam – which I’d love to do.

End of part one . . . more later.

The heat’s really intense here so we decided we weren’t going to do too much trekking around with our gear. We rode the bus into town and went straight to Fado’s, the Irish bar we were going to be playing. They have a nice beer garden / yard along the side with a little stage at the back.

The party was a belated St Paddy’s celebration with Irish, Scottish and English acts on the bill, organised by a lovely Austinite called Juliana who took great care of all the bands. The atmosphere was really relaxed and we hung out in the shade drinking free beer and eating from the Irish / Tex Mex menu – an odd combo.

The first act up was a English chap with an extremely croaky voice – a fella who goes by the name of Beans On Toast. I can only describe his music as “Billy Bragg for the chemical generation” (not my cup of tea I’m afraid Mr Toast).

I’d not come across the next band before, but they were definitely my highlight of the day – a power trio from Derry called Fighting With Wire who play grungy rock in a Foo Fighters style. Great drums, in fact great bass, guitar and vocals too.

Glasgow’s Nacional played a super tight and well received set and then it was us. We had a much much better show than Wednesday. There was probably only 50 or so folks there, but the vibe was great and we stormed through the tracks, despite the baking sun.

We’d managed to get our electronics sorted out – turned out all that was wrong was the voltage difference between the UK and US and Juliana’s friend came to the rescue with some Duracell batteries – it’s the only brand that works in Kev’s delay pedal. If you’re reading this, Duracell, go and sponsor us? Kev could be the new Duracell bunny.

The sound was excellent and we were filmed and interviewed for a new New York ‘taste maker’ website. I hate the answers I give in TV interviews and this one was no exception. Cheesy Hawkes.

By this time the sun was so hot that there was no choice but to hide in the shade and drink. No choice. We hung out there until the early evening then started to make our way to an art opening at the gallery that our host Rachel runs. Along the way Kev bought a cowboy hat and me and Al picked up some dodgy chilli dogs, which I’m regretting now.

We’re at the biggest music festival in the world and we go see some art. That’s how we roll. But it was great. Shepard “Obey” Fairey had a bunch of his prints on display and he came down and spun some tunes for half an hour. Outside a break dance comp was going off. There were some awesome dancers. Particularly a guy called Omar. Awesome.

Then more beer until the small hours . . .

We’ve now been in Austin for a full day and are beginning to acclimatise. Our 20 hour journey was surprisingly smooth and we made it through immigration and customs in Newark Liberty airport without the grilling that I’d been fearing . . . except for a light fingering.

It’s going to take a while to get used to this city and festival. It’s hot. It’s been in the high 80s since we arrived, which I think is around 28 degrees, so hotter than the hottest Scottish summer. You cannot move for bands. It’s spray-on-jean city. It’s like the West End of Glasgow, Shoreditch, Hawick (Burnfoot) and the Lower East Side magnified to extreme proportions.

We’re staying out in the ‘burbs with Rachel and Chris - who’ve made us feel right at home. Rachel works for a contemporary art gallery and their house is covered with canvases. Chris is a computer programmer and jazz guitarist. So they’re a good fit with us. We ate some tacos and drank some beers with them then crashed out.

In the morning Chris took us downtown on the bus, right into the heart of SXSW and we got down to business.We played our first gig at a place called Peckerheads. straight after The Proclaimers. They were an excellent opening act for us.  I think we did quite well.  It was busy for us and people seemed to be in to it but it we had a technical nightmare – two of our electronic instruments didn’t work because of the voltage difference.   There was fuck all we could do about it though so we just put our heads down and went for it. I reckon we were pretty nervous but it was still a good show. Casio Kids had been playing earlier in the same venue and I was really chuffed to hear their single, Fot I Hose live.

After the gig we dumped our gear and went to catch a band we know called The Cheek who were fun but so loud that they gave me bad tinnitus, then on to see Come On Gang! and a great Liverpool band called Wave Machine. By this point we’d had enough live music for the day and escaped to a bar called The Ginger Man where Ziggy, Kev and Gav invented a variation of clay pigeon shooting using beer mats, darts and a dart board – you get the idea.  It went on for three hours without any of them pinning a beer mat – although Ziggy came the closest. I think we are supposed to be trying to flyer for our gigs and set up meetings but darts/clay pigeon shooting is pretty addictive. 

We’re going to run our electro gear off batteries today so we should be OK. Also, I think Primal Scream are opening for us.

FOUND are packing our bags for the most exciting gigs of our career and I’ve been invited to blog about it for The Skinny. We’re off to play at the world renowned music industry festival, South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. We leave in a matter of days, at 5 am from Edinburgh airport, but it’s taken us a long time to get to this stage.

I’m used to doing a fair amount of admin in my role as co-manager of the band, but preparing for this trip has been epic. Since October when we found out that we’d been selected to play at the festival there’s been so much to do: accommodation to organise, flights to book, gigs to arrange, money to raise and visa applications to fill out. But I’m forgetting the pain now we have our performers visas in hand and are good to go.

As a small Scottish band on a small Scottish indie label, we’re doing this trip on a small Scottish budget. The moment we heard we’d been accepted by SXSW, I sent off an email to their International Housing Program. It seems there’s a lot of brave, friendly or misguided people in Austin willing to allow entire bands into their homes to stay, for free, for the duration of the festival (which runs from Wednesday 18 March to Sunday 22 March). We have been paired up with two such people, Rachel and Chris, who sound like they’re going to be a great deal of fun. They’re veterans of the music festival. In one email Rachel describes it as ‘the Olympics of Rock N Rock’ – that makes sense to me and not just because our visas were granted in the same category as athletes.

As I see it we’re in training for the Rock Olympics just as if we were athletes but with rehearsals replacing sessions in the gym, Innis & Gunn ales replacing scientific sports drinks and Scottish Arts Council funding instead of Adidas sponsorship.

There’s real camaraderie between Team Scotland bands. We already knew some of the other acts, particularly our good friend and label boss, The Pictish Trail, but we’ve also got to know bands such as Come On Gang! and Nacional and we’re really looking forward to hanging out with them in Texas.

Support from the local scene has been incredible. We’ve had tons of good advice from bands and managers who’ve been to the festival before, plus loads of radio play, great press and the response to our fundraising album has been phenomenal.

Last Saturday we played a Fence Records bash at Old Saint Paul’s in Edinburgh – it was a warm up for the Fence Homegame (17 – 19 April) and our final gig before departing for America. It had been a day of solo acoustic sets with a few full bands playing towards the end and FOUND headlining. I wasn’t sure how the crowd we’re going to react to our more electronic songs but when we played ‘When You Fall’ followed by brand new song ‘Let Fidelities Break’ the space directly in front of the stage erupted into a mass of feverish dancing that kept on growing until the end of the set. We left that night with smiles on our faces and cheers echoing in our ears.

Now for Austin Texas  –  we’ll be letting you know how it goes…

Gav constructed this track on the journey between Hamburg and Bremen in Germany last December while we were over playing our first international dates. Sehr gut Herr Sutherland. Listen to more of Gav’s music on his myspace page. Kev was also working on some gameboy beats but sadly he lost it not long after somehow, somewhere on the journey home. Tragic.