I can smell the crazy

SXSW 2011 and St. Patty's Day

Originally we were going to stick to a local bar for St. Patty's day but then we found out that our friend Erin's company was hosting a SXSW showcase at the Side Bar. This was my first time at the bar, which seemed pretty cool... decent size inside and a good back yard type patio. We watched a few bands, drank some beer, chatted with friends and had a good time!

Lindsay, Chris, Katie, Jen and Jim

Charlie, Jim, Mike and Chris

Me, Jim, Lindsay and Chris

Excuse the wild eyes...

Doing their best Zoolander

We left The Side Bar in search of more music and fun.

During our search for music we came across this food cart..... Jim got a hot dog and I got a potato pancake. Decent potato pancake... reminded me of hash browns in the shape of a pancake. The fun came with Jim's hot dog

Jim's hot dog was covered in mustard... the guy put it on for Jim and he had a heavy hand. That heavy hand left Jim with mustard fingers. It was every where! We got the case of the giggles watching Jim and his yellow fingers

Because one food cart wasn't enough, we stopped at the Austin Daily Press. We have known about them for awhile thanks to a Food Network TV show. I ordered the ham and jalapeno jack cheese sandwich, and it was damn good. They seemed to have a limited menu, so I'm not sure if that was just a SXSW thing or if that is all they normally have on the menu. I did a HORRIBLE job of taking pictures of our food that night, they all came out blurry. I slightly blame my camera, it has been acting up while talking low light pictures. I think it is time for a new camera... this guy has been around 2 years which is a LONG time for me. :) Not that I am hard on them, they just get a lot of use.

Friday was our big party day. This is our third year of enjoying SXSW music and I hope we continue on with this tradition. We only partake in a very small portion, typically on Friday during the day. We don't want to spend the money on wrist bands so I searched the interwebs for the best free shows during the day. I typically RSVP to about 6 shows so we can have options :) I am slightly worried about the availability of the day show next year because there is talk that SXSW might try to limit the amount of free shows. That is a HUGE bummer because that is the only way we want to experience SXSW--the free show way. I'll do my best to ensure that we can keep our Free Friday SXSW tradition alive!

Each year we started off our SXSW adventure at Counter Cafe, an incredibly cute and delicious sliver of a restaurant off of Lamar, North of 6th street. We haven't strayed from our go to order of Eggs Benedict. They are sooo delicious with the twist of putting the eggs on a biscuit instead of an English Muffin. One of these days I'll try their hamburger, but passing up the Eggs Benedict will be hard!

Our first stop of the day was at Maggie Mae's for the Sonicbid show. We went there a couple of years ago and had a really fun time. They have bands on their patio upstairs as well as downstairs.

View from the Maggie Mae's patio, 6th street

This was our first band of the day, the Seedy Seeds. They had an indie alternative sound to them which was pretty catchy. We listened to the last few songs of their set before going downstairs.

We headed downstairs and waited for this band to set up. Eventually I will figure out their name but they were from the Netherlands. We had really high hopes for their music as they tuned their instruments and got ready.

Musically they were a good band... but I can't really comment on their singing. They did a lot of ooOOOooOOOooOOoo-ing and that wasn't really our thing. Sure it sounded good, but I could only handle about 1.5 songs before we moved on.

We had passes to the show at Stubbs, so we left Maggie Maes to head over there. We walked since the streets were a mad house with random closings and people walking around.

We walked by this venue (aka a parking lot) and stopped in to listen to the music. They were a metal band that had promise, but we only heard about the last half of the last song they were playing. Well damn. We ended up leaving for Stubbs, but we ran into the band later and Jim went up to talk to them. He found out they are an Austin band and once again... totally forgot their name.

On our walk to Stubbs I found myself checking out the 3 people walking in front of us. There was something very photogenic about them walking together... kind of like they just looked like the essence of SXSW.

Once we got to Stubbs we found our friends Sarah and Orly. We had fun afternoon of catching up and listening to music.

Our view of the music.

We had passes to a section of the concert that had shade, access to free booze, and where we could watch bands getting interviewed. Kind of rock star cool! I could get used to being "on the list".