[Dixielandjazz] Why Bands Go to SxSW in AUSTIN

[Steve Barbone]

A look at the business of music and why bands attend SxSW. No doubt why The
Asylum Street Spamkers are around the the town also.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

March 17, 2007 - By JEFF LEEDS - NY TIMES

Auditioning for the World Stage at an Austin Festival

AUSTIN, Tex., March 16 ‹ As a recent favorite among music bloggers, the
earnest indie-rock band Cold War Kids drew a teeming throng of hundreds to
its performance on Thursday night at South by Southwest, the music
industry¹s annual convention and music festival here. Offering a clutch of
hooky riffs and anxious vocals, the band stood a chance to win new fans. But
few are likely to match the influence of Naoki Shimizu, the Japanese music
executive who watched silently from the back of the room, standing with arms
crossed and bouncing on his toes.

Mr. Shimizu runs Creativeman Productions, one of Japan¹s leading concert
promoters, and the band¹s representatives had made a point of inviting him.
As Mr. Shimizu tells it, he has all but committed to adding Cold War Kids to
the bill at Summer Sonic, his multistage music festival in Tokyo and Osaka,
and Thursday night¹s performance could seal the deal.

³It¹s incredibly important for me to have them there, so we can all have the
same perspective on the band,² said Brett Williams, manager of the group,
which is from Los Angeles. ³What we¹re about is reaching more people.² And
the international contacts, he added, ³are going to help us get there.²

Mr. Shimuzu represents a little-noticed undercurrent in the surge of
international visitors attending the festival, which runs through Sunday.
Performers from countries like Australia and Norway have long added an
international flair to this tastemaking festival, which is regarded as a
supermarket for talent scouts to shop for new acts aiming to break through
in America. But in a twist, the growing number of international players like
Creativeman at the festival have reversed some of the traffic ‹ many artists
from North America now visit Austin to pursue overseas opportunities, like
releasing their music in Germany or booking a show in Japan.

As a result, the festival, which started as a small regional music showcase,
and where conventiongoers still gorge on barbecue and beer, has become a
passage to the global marketplace. In the age of instant messaging and
MySpace, an enterprising artist could hobnob with prospective foreign
business partners, share music and even negotiate a deal from a computer ‹
and many do. But for those who prefer promoting themselves live, the
festival has become a crucial destination.

³As things have changed, obviously music is so much easier to discover
online, which breaks down traditional boundaries,² said Matt Lunsford, head
of Polyvinyl Records, an independent label from Champaign, Ill., that is
home to acts like Of Montreal and Saturday Looks Good to Me. ³It¹s a lot
easier to get people interested in our records in other countries. In Austin
you can just walk around and run into people² from the global industry. ³The
proximity has created a really unusual situation,² he added.

Mr. Lunsford said he had come to meet with business partners from Australia
and Canada, but independent labels have also been making business deals to
market artists in countries where English is not predominant. Gogol
Bordello, a Gypsy music-inspired punk band from New York, signed to the
independent label Side One Dummy and hammered out a deal to license its
album for Japanese release after performing at the Austin club Emo¹s two
years ago for an audience that included foreign distributors, said Thomas
Dreux, the label¹s director of international sales and marketing. The band
will tour Japan for the first time next month, he said. Another band,
Bedouin Soundclash, of Toronto, found a publicist to promote its music in
Britain after playing here in 2005.

But meeting in person still invites the occasionally awkward moment, owing
to the cultural divide between the visitors and the Americans hoping to
export their music. ³Have I seen people bow badly?² asked Rob Kelso, who
represents Creativeman, the Japanese promoter, in the United States. ³Yes.²

Some of the exchanges would not be possible, if not for the fact that
several foreign governments, from France to New Zealand, provide grants or
subsidies for their music executives and artists to travel, part of efforts
to generate export revenue and promote their native cultures.

The rising role of the international visitors ‹ who have surged in the last
five years to roughly 20 percent of the more than 10,000 registered
conventiongoers ‹ does coincide with a shift in how artists view the surest
route to success, or at least survival, in the slumping recording industry.
Years ago the ideal for a band coming to SXSW, as the festival is called for
short, might have been a record contract with a major label, which would
promise a coordinated push behind the band¹s recordings with the assistance
of a family of corporate affiliates.

But these days the more independent-minded performers are aiming to preserve
control by striking separate deals to sell their music through different
distributors in various territories and online.

³It breaks down the monster,² said Mr. Williams, the Cold War Kids¹ manager.

In addition, as sales of CDs plunge, artists who come here to seek their
fortunes are taking a wider view of foreign opportunities. Jeffrey Remedios,
co-owner of the Toronto-based Arts & Crafts label, said he had not
necessarily come looking for international labels to handle his releases but
had rather sought out festival and club promoters and merchandise marketers
to boost his bands¹ opportunities abroad.

It was a showcase at SXSW, he recalled, that enabled one of his label¹s
acts, Broken Social Scene, to secure a European representative. ³You never
know how far things will echo,² he said.