photos and story by Andrew Norman

Nylon straps run from the heels of Joe's boots to the crash and kick on his backpack drum set. He shuffles a beat while picking his banjo. He pulls its neck forward slightly to tighten the clothesline chord, which swings a small wooden stick to strike a cowbell. He alternates singing, and adding melody through his mouth harp to old-timey folk songs. Next to him, his musical saw leans on his banjo case, opened to catch stray dollars. 

I met Joe at the Holland, Mich., tulip festival in May. And I just ran into him on a corner near the Continental Club on S. Congress Avenue. He's talking to Mike Oberst from The Tillers. They know each other from when Joe busked Cincinnati, The Tillers' hometown. These are the kind of unexpected run-ins that make the South By Southwest Music Festival exciting. Even with attendance up 20 percent over last year, according to organizers, a sort of transplant community exists. You run into the same people over and over.

I encourage Joe and Mike both to come play Nebraska ? this is our message all week at SXSW, in fact. We want bands to remember us when they're planning their Midwest routing. It's going to take more than just a few people spreading the word, though. Lucky for us, one of our ambassadors was about to play on the festival's biggest stage.

We walk 10 or so blocks north to Auditorium Shores Stage by Ladybird Lake, just south of downtown Austin, where Bright Eyes is headlining a free show featuring Man Man, The Felice Brothers and Middle Brother. We buy $7 Miller Lite tallboys and $8 margaritas and sit on trampled-grass dirt behind a trashcan overflowing with carnival-fare rubbish ? cans, bottles, plates, flyers, Texas Lottery koozies. While SXSW so far has felt like coordinated concerts in hundreds of the city's venues ? which it is ? this space feels like a full-on summer festival, complete with barefoot dancers, families laying on blankets, and hippie kids selling pipes out of briefcases.

The Felice Brothers are finishing their set about 150 yards ahead of us. From here, it's easier to just watch the band on the giant video screen to stage left. I've liked just about everything I've heard from the upstate New York folk rock band, but I don't know any of these songs. I try to catch up on some world news ? Libya, Japan ? while I wait for Bright Eyes. As the sun slowly sets, I realize the space ? capacity 20,000 ? has quickly filled. It's packed in here, in fact. 

The Omaha band is a four-piece on this night, with The Mynabirds' Laura Burhenn (keys), Clark Baechle (drums) and Nate Walcott (guitar) flanking Conor Oberst, whom everyone came to see. They band's first SXSW show in a decade starts with “Firewall” from its new album, The People's Key. They follow with four other songs from the new album within the first 10 songs. Even way back where I'm, by now, standing, people around me are singing all the words. This crowd is here for Bright Eyes, and they're getting one helluva concert, complete with an intense light show. The band played for about 105 minutes, culminating with a fireworks display. Not a bad representation of Nebraska music, I'd say.

(Photo by Lauren Turner)

My feet, ankles and calves bitching at me for four days of abuse, I pick up my pace heading back downtown on the way to knock out a couple interviews before catching Rural Alberta Advantage at the Central Presbyterian Church. The Saddle Creek Records indie trio from Toronto is playing this beautiful church to full pews of festival goers. This is the best place to see a show in town, I'm convinced. It's an intimate space where bands can perform their sermon to an attentive congregation. I stay long enough to hear my favorite song by the band, “Don't Haunt This Place,” before heading to meet Omahans Brent Crampton, and Neal Duffy (in town running sound for Provo, Utah synth-poppers Neon Trees), in an upstairs VIP lounge west of Congress. 

Crampton's a Red Bull Music Academy ambassador, so he has hook-ups on these sorts of things. I turn in a free drink ticket for a glass of vodka and  the antifreeze-flavored speed and look over the third-story patio railing onto a debaucherous scene below. DJ Jazzy Jeff is spinning and rapping to parking so full of dancing people it looks alive. There's easily a couple thousand people, with another hundred or so spilling out onto the street. I can't fake enough hip to feel comfortable in this joint, and depart for something a little scuzzier. 

My kind of dive, Barbarella has tallboys and no leather couches. I just missed a solo set from Joey Cape (Lagwagon), one of my favorite songwriters. But I'm here just in time to catch my favorite alt-country band, Drag The River from Fort Collins, featuring Jon Snodgrass and Chad Price. It's two guys on acoustic guitars, voices that sound like they were tied to a truck's rear bumper and drug for a mile on gravel roads, and songs about getting drunk with friends, loneliness and accepting your cards. It's classic roots music, done by aging punks ? right in my wheelhouse.

(Note: SXSW only allows us to show 45 seconds of video)

But Providence R.I.'s Deer Tick is the band I'm most excited to see at this year's festival. The folk band's two Daytrotter sessions are near the top of my iTunes most-played list. They're playing at 1 a.m. ? the last slot at the festival. Drag the River ends at 1 a.m., so I'm not surprised to see a long line by the time I arrive at Lustre Pearl, a house-turned-venue that sits on a residential corner southeast of downtown. At first, I think Deer Tick hasn't started, because I hear what is obviously Nirvana's Nevermind. But it's Deer Tick playing as Deervana, I'm told, featuring an entire set of Nirvana covers. I have to see this.

I assume the line situation is one-in, one-out, but while people are leaving, no one's getting in. Still, after about 45 minutes, the line gets shorter ? people are giving up and leaving. Since I'm not ready for the festival to be over, I stick it out until I'm at the front of the line. 

I ask the door guy what my chances are of getting in.

“Probably 50 people would have to leave,” he says. “We're way over capacity” For the hell of it, I ask if being working press would make a difference. “You have a press pass?” he asks. I do.

The venue is basically a house with no back wall. I navigate through throngs of people straight through the building and into the backyard, where the band is playing “Polly” on a stage at the far end of the property. In front of them is another SXSW mob, packed elbows to assholes and screaming every word. The festival is known for these kinds of shows ? one-of-a-kind performances.

I make my way around the edge of the crowd, along the privacy fence. While there are hundreds of cell phones sticking up through the crowd, no one is taking photos on the side of the stage. 

Nobody stops me as I walk right up a ramp with my cameras and stand behind the guitarist's amp for the rest of the show. Deer Tick frontman John McCauley is channeling Kurt Cobain, thrashing around the stage like he just took a shot of embalming fluid. More impressively, his impression of the rock legend was spot-on. 

(Note: SXSW only allows us to show 45 seconds of video)

With a super moon visible in the sky through the trees, McCauley ends the set by smashing his guitar to bits on the stage. The rest of the band follows suit. Drummer Dennis Ryan dives onto his set, destroying it. And bassist Christopher Ryan Dale swings his bass like an ax onto the floor before tossing the broken instrument like a discus against the back fence. They climb off the stage with their equipment still humming feedback. 

Cobain would have been proud.

Andrew Norman directs and edits HearNebraska.org. He's filing this story in a coffee shop in Corpus Christi, Texas, hoping his videos finish uploading before the shop closes. Contact him at andrewn@hearnebraska.org.