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.

We were set up for the day. Kev, Gav and Zig went off in search of the venues we were going to be playing in. Apparently they were both within 10 – 15 minute walking distance of the hotel. Bonus.

I waited for my friend Shea’la who was going to hang out with us for the next couple of days – she’s from Rhode Island and runs a very cool website called Tiny Showcase who sell limited edition artists prints. She took us round a few nice stores close by, including Giant Robot where gifts for girlfriends and children were purchased. The guy behind the counter was watching an episode of Flight Of The Conchords on his computer. I couldn’t see it but I could hear Murray saying ‘band meeting’, I love that show.

We then preceded to tick off some NY classics: dubious hot dogs next to Central Park and a trip to a public art gallery (although we didn’t go in, it cost $15 each and we needed that money for beer). By now, it was time to grab another quick bite to eat and then head to the venue, Fontanas, for a sound check. This would be the first sound check of our trip. At SXSW there simply wasn’t time so we just made do with quick line checks before playing, and to be honest that suited us just fine. We often find that getting the sound right during sound check bears little relation to how it will sound during the gig. Anyway, the venue was nice – pretty small, probably around 150 capacity and with a slightly grimy atmosphere. We set-up, sound checked and then there was just enough time to grab a quick beer before starting our set.

A couple of friends had come down to see us but if it hadn’t been for the two Icelandic bands playing after us, we would have had a very small audience. Thankfully half of Reykjavik were in the front row and were cheering and clapping in most of the right places. It was a good show and we hung around to watch our new Nordic friends. The two groups were Sprengjuhöllin and Bloodgroop. They were all lovely people although Sprengjuhöllin’s inbetween song banter went on a little long for my liking and I felt they were in danger of losing the crowd with some of their comments. There’s a fine line between good humour and a bad insult.

We didn’t catch the headline act, Australian band Red Riders, as Zig, Kev and Gav were all heading off to Williamsburg in Brooklyn to stay with friends and didn’t want to arrive too late. So it was an early night in the city that never sleeps.

The day started out with breakfast tacos at a renowned establishment called Juan In A Million, each of us opting for the legendary Don Juan Taco with extra tortillas.

After breakfast Chris took all of us for a cruise in his 1967 Pontiac Bonneville, a beautiful blue boat of a car, that easily fit all of the band plus Rachel (three in the front four in the back). Chris turned on the radio, and appropriately a country song called ‘Thank God for the Road’ by Austin country rockers The Flatlanders came pouring out of the speaker:

Thank God for the road
And the hubcaps and the headlights
And the mudflaps and the taillights
And the dim lights and the bright lights

Genius.

But then it really was time to leave and we made our way in boring yellow taxis to the airport. The flight was delayed due to high winds in Newark and so there was a fair bit of hanging around waiting (drinking). In an extremely uncharacteristic move, Kev managed to spill pretty much a whole pint over my shoe and trouser leg – normally the guy doesn’t waste a single drop. But this gave the old couple sat next to us an excuse to start a conversation. They were very intrigued to hear about the band and ‘just knew that we were going to be successful’. They were on their way to LA for a week to visit their daughter who is an aspiring actress. The woman said she knew people at all the big talk shows and would try and get us a slot.

The plane left about an hour late. The inflight snack was, of course, a cheeseburger. We arrived in Newark close to midnight and we’re not prepared for the biting wind. It was a lot colder than we’d anticipated. It took us an hour to get our belongings back from baggage reclaim and we finally got a bus into the city at 1 am. I think the journey takes an hour, but I conked out after about five minutes (I think I slept on Kev’s shoulder, we’re getting close you know). I was woken by the driver shouting that we’d reached our stop – Port Authority. With bleeriy eyes I tried to make sense of where I was: midtown New York at 2 am on a freezing Tuesday morning. We hopped into two more yellow cabs and finally reached our destination, a small hotel called Off Soho Suites in the Lower East Side, at 2.30 am. We all crashed out and I dreamt of the New York breakfast I was going to have the next day . . .

We decide to hang out with our host Rachel and take things a bit slower as the gig itself wasn’t until nightime.  Highlights of this lazy day included

1) visiting a bookshop / art gallery and seeing a funny photo of a guy sucking the snout of a dog

and

2) meeting a stripper called Austin-Lee. 

We needed to head to the venue early as apparently  there is a chance we can get a sound check.  The venue is called Volume and it’s more like a club than a live music venue.  It’s a Clash Magazine party and the line up is looking pretty good – I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Slow Club.  We get to the venue – hang out – wait for a sound check – wait longer for a sound check – wait some more – then don’t get a sound check.  Oh well.  

I was looking forward to the show as the gig we played the previous day was quite incendiary, even by my own admission.  I thought we could top it though as Kev had bought a shiny blue Mexican wrestlers mask to wear on stage. Unfortunately, the vibe of the venue didn’t lend itself our proposed performance. We played quite well but it never really took off, despite Kev. Pictish Trail, Come on Gang! and a few other Scots came down to see us though so it made for a nice evening of drinking and socialising afterwards.  Austin-Lee didn’t come to see us though.

On Sunday we were invited to a ‘crayfish boil’ by some Austinites. They boil up crayfish and veg in loads of tasty spices – you then rip the arse-end off the crayfish and eat it down.  If you’re feeling adventurous you can suck the brains out of the crayfish’s face. I couldn’t do this though as it reminded me too much of the funny ‘man sucks dog snout’ picture. Cajun food is amazing. When it all comes crashing against the rocks we have decided we’re going to open a Cajun food joint in Edinburgh and make a killing.  

snake farm – it just sounds nasty

snake farm – it pretty much is

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.

Rachel, our host out here in Austin, runs an art gallery called Lombardi. On Thursday we went to the opening of a show she’d curated featuring an LA artist called Shepard Fairey.  There was a break dancing competition going on outside. We stood and watched it for a while but then I started to really need a piss.  There was only one small toilet (restroom) in the gallery so, as you can imagine, you had to wait in line.  I was stood there waiting with another guy who looked more like he needed to go than me so when it eventually became free I said

‘nah mate, on ye go, you go first’   

he thanked me and made for the door.  Just then another guy stepped in front of him and said, in an American accent

‘can I go ahead of you – I be real quick – I just need to rinse my big purple lollipop’

We let him go ahead. He literally had a big purple lollipop but I couldn’t help but think it was some kind of euphemism.  I turned to the fellow who I was waiting with and said 

‘I can’t help but think that’s some kind of euphemism – what do you reckon?’

He laughed out loud and we joked about it for a bit. The guy with the purple lollipop had been in there for about 20 seconds and had left the door ajar.  My toilet queue pal had decided to check to see if everything was OK.  He pushed the door open proper and went in to the restroom saying 

‘excuse me sir, are you okay’  

He then came running straight back out and said to me

‘OK, you’re not going to believe this! ………that big purple lollipop guy……….he’s just………disappeared!!!’ 

I replied

‘what are you talking about mate, the purple lollipop guy cannae of just disappeared -he only went in there a minute ago’

‘well come and look if you don’t believe me!’  he snapped back

So I did.  I went in to the toilet looking for the purple lollipop guy and sure enough, there was nobody there.  But how? Surely he just went out another door. I examined the restroom to find this other door that he had clearly left through.  There was no other door. The big purple lollipop guy had literally vanished in to thin air.  I turned to the toilet queue guy and said

‘did this all really happen?’

he assured me that it had all really happened.  A man with a big purple lollipop just jumped the toilet queue and then disappeared off the face of the earth,  right before my very eyes. I’d read about things like this but never believed it could happen to someone like me. Excitedly,  I went outside and told the lads all about it.  Tommy looked concerned and took my beer off me.  

‘it’s alright Ziggy, we’re going home soon.’ 

I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened though – I started telling everyone about the purple lollipop guy  -nobody really believed me though.  

Last night I saw a guy called David Thomas Broughton perform in a hotel lounge. He was fucking amazing.  Johnny (from Fence) had told me he was good and I have a 10″ record of his that I really like so I thought I’d enjoy the show.  It blew me away though.  It was a frenetic performance using looping pedals and strange dances – full of charisma and nervous energy.  He was, at times, more like a performance artist or some kind of mime guy.   I looked around the room and saw that his performance was getting the same kind of reaction that me purple lollipop story was getting.  I met him afterwards but was too scared to tell him my story about the purple lollipop toilet guy in case he thought it was shit.

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.