Michigan music hits South by Southwest: Day One

For those who have never visited Austin, 6th Street in the area's downtown is home to venue upon venue, bar upon bar. During South by Southwest, this main drag street is blocked off, you can literally trip over a musician just by walking down the street, and the strains of just about any genre of music you could think of flow from the open windows and doors of each venue. A visitor to the festival is presented with a gluttony of options, and at times it seems folly to even attempt to adhere to any sort of pre-planned schedule. It was under this guise that I attacked Day One of the music festival.

Ann Arbor's Scott Sellwood works the thumbs, text messaging away to arrange a Drunken Barn Dance secret show on 6th Street in Austin, Texas.

Jeremy Peters | AnnArbor.com Contributor

While en route along 6th Street for the first time since getting in to town, my pre-planned schedule ended up needing to be edited. As fate would have it, Drunken Barn Dance's Scott Sellwood, was unexpectedly in town and was on his phone trying to rally the troops for a secret show that he'd managed to arrange. No pictures were allowed at the show, which happened later that evening. However I was allowed capture a bit of him while he was attempting to entice a few fans in the area to come out. By all accounts, he was quite successful (especially considering a lack of advance notice) at getting in contact with people and packing a small out of the way house-turned-venue in South Austin with about 50 of his closest friends for the day, playing songs off of his upcoming album in a solo format.

The evening that followed brought more surprises, with southeast Michigan indie rockers The Silent Years playing a showcase show I wasn't aware of beforehand at Threadgill's in South Austin. Performing on a bill alongside mates from their booking agency, lead singer Josh Epstein and his crew did well to overcome what at first seemed like an uninterested audience.

Ferndale's The Silent Years win over an audience during a showcase for their booking agency Threadgill's in South Austin.

Jeremy Peters | AnnArbor.com Contributor

A potent combination of high-energy songwriting, the willingness to put on a great performance - even given a venue a bit off the beaten path - and the infectiously catchy nature of their being managed to easily pull the crowd around within the span of their first song. Unfortunately, time being of the essence, I was unable to stay for the entirety of their set. In speaking with Epstein before their performance, the band is "very happy to be able to play here while on this leg of their tour." Epstein noted that the tour has treated them well, with growing crowds in cities that they hadn't even performed in previously. As an added bonus, they have a few days off before their next show here, and are looking forward to taking advantage of the time here to catch as much music as possible.

Why so rushed? I needed to make way back to South by Southwest proper to catch what may go down as a highlight of this year's festival for me. As one of the more well known musicians to come out of Ann Arbor, Andrew W.K. means a good deal to many Michigan natives, myself included. Having never had the chance to see him perform live previously, Wednesday's show was a special treat.

Andrew WK performs a sold-out official showcase, his first with his new band and one of his first public performances in years, to an audience packed into 6th Street's Buffalo Billiards.

Jeremy Peters | AnnArbor.com Contributor

Accompanied by a large band, he seemed more than happy to be playing what was his first South by Southwest performance with the new group. They tore through a bevy of singles from "I Get Wet," stopping to promote next week's re-release of his previously Japanese only release "Gundam Rock." As a band leader, Andrew Wilkes-Krier commanded the audience to do as they know best: to "Party hard," as "this isn't a show, it's not a performance, it's a party." Buffalo Billiards was packed to the brim with fans eager to see his return to the stage, and party they did — there was plenty of appropriate head-banging, fist-pumping and crowd surfing to go around. A party, indeed, occurred.

Rounding out the evening was a trip to the patio of Habana Calle 6, to catch what was, unfortunately, a criminally under-attended set by The Hounds Below. Based in Detroit and Ypsilanti, and featuring The Von Bondies' Jason Stollsteimer and Lightning Love's Ben Collins, this new project has a great deal of promise.

Detroit and Ypsilanti-based rock and roll band The Hounds Below finish out their take on a cover amidst a set of fiery originals.

Jeremy Peters | AnnArbor.com Contributor

Though the venue seemed to be only half full, the group lucky enough to catch their performance happened upon what could be a diamond in the rough. Stollsteimer and his cohort performed a set of nearly all originals — stopping only for an inspired cover of Spacehog's gem "In The Meantime." While they could have hoped for a larger audience, this seemed not to matter to the band, evident in the rapt attention to the new direction that Stollsteimer has taken with his group.

Day One: Complete. On to the challenges of a new string of performances and bands to enjoy for day two.

[This article is number two in a series of entries covering local artists traveling to Texas for a large music festival. Coverage follows until Sunday morning.]

Jeremy Peters covers what he likes to call the Underbelly of the Local Arts and Music Scene as a community blogger for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at 734-217-4570 or jeremyjohnpeters@gmail.com.