SXSW Day 3: St. Patrick's Day In Austin

ChartAttack's Steve McLean was in Austin, Texas last week for the South By Southwest Music Festival. He sobered up long enough from Thursday's shenanigans to file this report on Friday's activities.

The day started at 1:15 p.m. at Red Eyed Fly with some enjoyable alt.country from L'il Cap'n Travis. The steel guitar player was excellent and the band threw in a cover of the Glen Campbell hit "Wichita Lineman" with their originals.

Living Things were supposed to play at 2 p.m. but didn't show up, so Austin's Grand Champeen moved their 2:45 p.m. performance up by 20 minutes and relished their longer set. There were occasional Brit.pop harmonies, as the two guitarists and the bassist all sang, but the band specialize in loud three-chord guitar rock. An excellent cover of Elvis Costello's "Radio Radio" fit in well with the band's own material.

I walked over to The Fire House Lounge to see Boston quintet Jake Brennan And The Confidence Men. The band are like Bruce Springsteen meets Elvis Costello and deserve more attention than they've received, especially for the song "Believe Me." Their set was great and the free vodka, chicken wings and spring rolls provided by the club didn't hurt either.

I went around the corner to The Parish to see The Bellrays and caught the end of a white hip-hop duo who weren't that good, but they had a guy with some sort of mascot head walking around with a plate of bacon that he was offering to people.

The Bellrays came on at 4 p.m. and led off with "Revolution Get Down," which you've likely heard on a television commercial for the Nissan Xterra. The band played muscular bluesy garage rock with a heavy dose of soul courtesy of their female singer, Lisa Kekaula.

I stopped by the Australian barbecue since it was en route to my next stop and caught the last couple of songs from a heavy rock band called Gyroscope who did nothing for me.

The free beer and sausage made up for it somewhat until The Grates hit the stage. The group feature a guitarist, drummer, keyboard player and a totally ebullient female singer who couldn't stop smiling and jumping. Their off-kilter pop wasn't that great, but it was fun.

I moved across the street to the convention centre where there was a long lineup to see Ray Davies. The Kinks main man got a standing ovation just for walking into the room. He played the introduction to "Waterloo Sunset" on his acoustic guitar to tease us, but that was the only old song he played during his performance, which included acoustic versions of many of the songs from his new solo album.

The tracks were interspersed with clips from a film that Davies largely shot himself about his experiences in England and the U.S. during the seven-year period that it took to complete the album. He then opened up the floor to take questions from the audience, but I went back across the street to the Australian barbecue to see The Living End.

I saw the band open for Green Day a few years ago and have always liked their records, so it was good to see them up close and hear their blend of punk and rockabilly on songs such as "What's On Your Radio," "Wake Up," "'Til The End" and the anthemic set closer, "Roll On."

The Mendoza Line's Full Of Light And Full Of Fire was one of my 10 favourites of last year, and I was looking forward to hearing some of the songs from it performed live. While "Golden Boy" had lots of energy, the band, for the most part, are a pretty dull live act and I was a bit let down by their alt.country-influenced roots rock set. I was tempted to go across the street and see Brakes again, but there was a big lineup outside the Blender Bar so I stuck it out with The Mendoza Line.

Since it was St. Patrick's Day, I thought that I should see an Irish band, so I went to Friends to see Belfast's (OK, that's Northern Ireland, but they said that they were Irish) Oppenheimer.

The duo featured a singing drummer and guitarist/keyboardist who occasionally used a vocoder. Their set consisted of short alternative pop numbers and the singer's voice was a bit fey, but it fit the material. The highlight was "Breakfast In NYC," but it didn't come across live as well as it does on the studio version.

The Soft Lightes were supposed to follow Oppenheimer on stage, and the next group took a while to set up. When they finally did, they announced that they weren't The Soft Lightes, who had pulled my second no-show of the day.

I high-tailed it down the street to a packed Habana Calle 6 to see Boston's Apollo Sunshine. The talented young trio were louder and rockier than I had expected, but there were still pop melodies underneath the wailing guitar.

They were also one of the most eclectic groups I saw, going so far as to do an entire song with two ukuleles. There was a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic" and an abbreviated but rousing "Today Is The Day" to close the set. A few friends called them their best new discovery of SXSW. I wouldn't go that far, but they were good.

Outside on the patio, The Clutters had two go-go dancers at the front of the stage as they played a set of retro '60s, trashy garage rock. This Nashville band are fun and provided more entertainment than the Clem Snide solo acoustic show did inside.

I was thinking of moving on, but I ran into friends and stuck around for White Ghost Shivers once I discovered that they had a seven-foot-tall, bow tie-wearing banjo player who brought hula hoops on the stage with him. Unfortunately, he didn't use them. Still, if you were to hold a human scavenger hunt, it would be tough to top finding a seven-foot-tall, bow tie-wearing banjo player with hula hoops. Their music was old-time stuff similar to what the Squirrel Nut Zippers played during their 15 minutes of fame in the last decade, but wasn't as good.

Inside, however, The Volebeats delivered a great set of roots rock. Unfortunately, as consistently excellent as their songs are, they're also consistently dull live performers. But they get bonus points for having a singer who's a dead ringer for Brian Wilson.

They seem to take St. Patrick's Day more seriously in Austin than they do in Toronto, as there were drunks dressed in green all over the closed-off Sixth Street (the Austin equivalent of Toronto's Queen Street West, but with a much heavier concentration of clubs and bars).

Luckily, those frat boys and girls didn't know about Neck. The Pecan Street Ale House was almost empty for the 1 a.m. "psycho Ceilidh" set from the London, England band. I went to the balcony and took a front row seat in a much-welcomed comfy couch (your feet really start to hurt after walking around and standing while watching bands for 14 hours every day) to watch the group play an inspiring set of Celtic-infused punk that can best be compared to The Pogues when they're firing on all cylinders.

They did a song about "Julie Andrews' tits" called "Topless Mary Poppins," their current anti-racist U.K. single "Everybody's Welcome To The Hooley" and "The Day The Shamrock Was Drowned." I couldn't think of a better way to cap off St. Patrick's Day.