Friday & Saturday Coverage

In his first meeting as a Hear Nebraska board member, after I told him about our 2014 SXSW lodging arrangements, Stephen Pedersen (of Omaha’s Criteria) came up with a slogan for the organization.

“Hear Nebraska: We crash on floors.”

I recalled this exchange early Friday morning of this year’s Austin, Texas festival as I lay on my thin sleeping bag on the tile floor between the bathroom and TV stand in an entirely adequate Motel 6. HN multimedia intern Adam LaRose and I split a room with Omaha hip-hop group Both (Scky Rei and Nate Asad) and their manager John Schmidt. (It was Adam’s turn to spoon with John.) Our other team members, visuals editor Chris Dinan, multimedia intern Lindsey Yoneda and editorial intern Gabriella Parsons stayed elsewhere with friends.

While I hope HN one day has resources to, you know, provide beds for 100% of travelling staff, I think roughing it like a touring band is a crucial experience for our people. It builds character, camaraderie and perspective. Not to mention, a strong back.

Since 2011, Hear Nebraska has sent a small team of staff/interns/contributors to cover the music festival. It’s a great opportunity to: strengthen team bonds; grow reporting chops and portfolio materials; see and support Nebraska bands on a national stage; spread the word about Hear Nebraska and the state’s music community and industry; meet cool people in and out of the music industry; and, of course, to experience Austin’s unique culture. In my view, all of those points directly support Hear Nebraska’s mission and vision.

I’m very proud of the way HN’s team represented this year. It’s such hard work. We get out to shows right around noon and stay out till as late as 2 a.m., shooting photos, writing, interviewing, passing out stickers and telling everyone we speak to about Nebraska music. We get back to our crash pads and either file work that night, or get up early the next morning to do it. Once the photos are up and the story is ready to go, we head back out and do it all again.

If you’ve been following our coverage, either in stories we dropped Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, or via our Instagram and Twitter feeds through the hashtag #NESXSW, you’ve seen how hard our people hustled. As they barrel their way back to Omaha, literally bruised, tired and editing photos along the way, here’s to them.

This week, you’ll see an exciting video feature they produced while at SXSW. Today, see their photos from Friday and Saturday in Austin, featuring All Dogs, Charlie XCX, Yuck, Car Seat Headrest, Bleached, Both, Laughing Falcon and more: