Austin Kiddie Limits (ACL Music Festival) 2010: Day 2 Report

Waking up for Day 2 of the 2010 Austin City Limits Music Festival, I was really sore, stiff from the large amount of walking I did on Day 1. I mean, I normally walk a lot at ACL, but Friday's walking seemed... longer. Maybe it was the crowds, who knows, but that's advice number #1 for parents at ACL: stretch.

Anyway, my primary goal on Day 2 at the Austin Kiddie Limits stage was to get there in time to see Elizabeth Mitchell and Frances England. We caught the very last song of the Jellydots' set, then settled in. The kids, having been fortified with Cheetos at the media area, angled for the kefir at the Lifeway Kefir booth (because for them, flavored kefir = flavored yogurt = treat). And we were eager to hear Mitchell, whom we'd never seen in concert before and who'd been a part of our family's lives since Miss Mary Mack was still crawling around on the floor.

Elizabeth Mitchell's set was reasonably mellow, but not overly so. The crowd, which seemed reasonably full on Friday, was more so on Day 2 as people brought their kids on the weekend, and it brought an energy to artists' sets on the weekend.

I hadn't appreciated how much Mitchell's and husband Daniel Littleton's daughter Storey is now a part of the set. She sang on most (all?) of the songs, sometime taking lead. I wouldn't call her a pro -- that's actually praise from my perspective -- but she was poised. Ella Childs joined them for the Japanese song "The Chestnut Tree," and as I looked around, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many parents were joining along with their kids on the hand motions Mitchell, Storey, and Ella led them in or how many were attempting the Spanish-language version of "John the Rabbit" Mitchell tried out.

We had to miss Tom Freund's set on Friday, so after grabbing some lunch at the food court, we dashed back to see him play. He was a nice fit between Mitchell and England -- his fun Hug Trees album is a low-key disk for the most part. He was joined here in Austin by Abra Moore, who appeared with Freund on his album as well.

Moore had by far the most distinctive performance outfit of the AKL stage (sorry Verve Pipe guys all wearing ties) -- leis, big glasses, and a whole bunch of purple balloons, which she sported while bouncing on a big ol' pink exercise ball. By comparison, Freund (also sporting a collared shirt and tie) looked positively restrained. There was nothing revelatory about the set, but like I said, Hug Trees is fun, and so I enjoyed getting to hear the roots-pop songs live.

Next up Frances England. England (as well as Mitchell and her family) hung out a lot at the AKL stage for the weekend, seeing the other performers. In fact, generally, it was a much greater social gathering than I recall previous AKL stages being. For whatever reason, it just seemed like the performers hung out a lot more front stage (as opposed to backstage) listening to the other acts -- the Okee Dokee Brothers wanted to see Elizabeth Mitchell, for example, while Mitchell wanted to catch England's set. It was a very family vibe.

England's set was a little less of a surprise for me because I'd seen her in Brooklyn and so I knew she and her band would deliver a solid indie-folk set. England's husband, bassist John Funke, got down from the stage to lead the kids in some movement activities on one of the quieter songs, and by this point there were a fair number of kids to be led.

The special guest for Saturday was Peter DiStefano playing with AKL producer Tor Hyams. DiStefano was the guitarist with Perry Farrell in Porno for Pyros, and so, as he'd done in guest sets at Kidzapalooza, DiStefano and Tor played PFP's big hit "Pets" as well as "Sympathy for the Devil." While the renditions definitely rocked from an adult perspective, it's not entirely clear what kids get out of those songs -- between "Sympathy" and the School of Rock kids, sometimes it feels like the AKL stage is both the youngest and oldest stage at ACL. But they did do the undeniably cool thing of having a bunch of kids get up on stage to strum DiStefano's guitar and then hang out on stage while they were playing. It was fun to see a bit of the controlled chaos of the crowd/AKL area make it up there.

The final act of the day was Sugar Free Allstars. Again, I'd seen them in Brooklyn, but of course my kids hadn't, so it was a chance for my kids (or at least Little Boy Blue) to get up and dance. Perhaps more than any other AKL act, SFA worked hard at trying to get the kids in the crowd to interact -- not that the other acts ignored the kids, just that Chris Wiser and Dr. Rock have a lot of energy on stage that they're trying to transfer to the audience.

We went offsite for dinner, and the kids went back home, but I was determined to come back and see LCD Soundsystem who I also saw here back in 2007 (and who also had one of my favorite all-time quotations). I saw about 75% of James Murphy et al's set back then and the last 25% in 2010. Maybe one of these days I'll see a complete set. While his new album This Is Happening doesn't hit me quite as much as its predecessor Sound of Silver, it's still pretty darn good. And I can't stress how great they are live.

After that I sampled from various acts -- Ozomatli had a party going on under the Clear 4G tent, while Matt and Kim were incredibly hyper (which I gather is normal for them in their sets). Also, I've never seen a band pander as much to the crowd the duo did -- really, it's OK, just chill a bit. Still, they were on fire -- Kim is a toddler, energy-wise, on the drums. And I wrapped it up with 3 songs from Muse (my neighbor would have been very disappointed in me if I hadn't seen just a little bit of their act). I totally get why their live show is sometimes called the best rock show in the world right now. It had lasers, a video show, bombasticity -- like U2, except if that band had a dystopian rather than utopian bent.

But after another full day of music, it was time to head back home to recover and see my kids. So I made my way back through the Muse crowds, waited for what seemed way too long at 8:45 to catch the shuttle bus back to Republic Square, and headed home.

SXSW 2010 (Music) Report: Day 2

You might be wondering... uh, what happened to my Day 1 report of SXSW 2010 Music? The answer is that the conference started Wednesday and I didn't get into town 'til Thursday. Hence, Day 2.

Anyway, I thought I'd give you a day-by-day report of my SXSW experiences. Not because it's relevant to kids' music (it's not, for the most part), but because I figure a lot of you readers (fans and musicians alike) are big music geeks and would find impressions of a weekend entirely focused on music of no small interest. But I'll give you some kids music equivalents for a few of the folks. Oh, and there are details on a contest giving away a kids' music CD. So here we go...

Our flight arrived in Austin about 1 or so, and after getting the rental car, we (that is, myself and Miss Mary Mack and Little Boy Blue, both on spring break) drove up to my mom's house. Because we were having dinner with friends and family, I decided to go pick up my badge and headed downtown in the meantime.

Badge pickup was easy (far easier than parking at 4 pm on a SXSW Thursday -- I found the last $10 spot at a surface lot about 8 blocks away from the Convention Center), so having already spent the $10 on parking, I decided to explore a bit. After visiting the trade show (which was kinda small, actually), I got my first taste of SXSW music at the Day Stage/"Blogger's Lounge," which despite being dimly lit and furnished with large beanbags, was still in a cavernous convention center. It was like being in your friend's basement, if your friend lived in an airplane hangar.
Anyway, the band playing on the stage was Dr. Dog, a band whose few songs I'd heard on disk never moved me. But live, they were pretty good. As Jeff commented to me during the show, "hometown heroes... never sounded as good on disk as they do live" (or words to that effect). Anyway, download their new single from their upcoming album Shame here.

After heading home (rush hour traffic on Mopac and 183 - woo!) and having dinner, I plunged back into downtown and wandered the streets of downtown Austin, which during SXSW are significantly blocked off. Thousands of people milled the streets, with lines snaking out some of the doors. I'd spent a lot of time planning out potential acts far in advance, and it didn't take me long to figure out that proximity of venues was a strong (and in many cases, deciding) point in favor of certain shows.

The first show I saw was the last part of the Besnard Lakes gig at Stubb's (site of a Ralph's World gig, incidentally, later this spring), which has a big outdoor stage and a sloping plain in front of it. I'd heard lots of good things about them and their latest album, but for whatever reason, the song or two I caught left me bored. Maybe if I'd caught them from the beginning...

I wandered down then to Club Deville, where I heard the last 3 or 4 songs of a band I couldn't identify. The five guys on stage had a bit of a Pavement vibe to them, but rocked much harder (and tighter). They also had one of the lyrics of the festival for me -- "We were workin' part time / All of the time." Turns out they were the Henry Clay People out of LA, who I enjoyed and who made me ask myself, "Why did I forget my earplugs?" (Don't worry, I found a couple pairs in my registration bag of schwag.) Anyway, this is a clip of them doing one of their songs at Club Deville...

After that was the real reason I was hanging out at Club Deville, The Lonely Forest, a quartet out of the Seattle area whose song "We Sing in Time" is the sole reason I attended and which you should immediately download. I guess I expected something a little, well, wimpier, but the band, still early in the week, thrashed furiously. (I love watching drummers play drums just this side of "Animal.") They've signed to the new major-label-affiliated boutique label of Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla, so I'm thinking their next album could be big. Think of them as the non-kids-music equivalent of The Hipwaders. (But a lot less sunny.)

Listen to their 2009 album We Sing the Body Electric! here. Here's them doing a song from another gig earlier that day.

Following the Lonely Forest's set, I dashed over to the Beauty Bar/Palm Door to see the Low Anthem, who had a very Tom Waits-like thing going on. The music was a little odd and hushed and while I think I probably would've enjoyed the set if I'd seen it from the beginning, coming over after the rush of the Lonely Forest set, it felt jarring to me.

I then walked a fair bit to Copa on Congress just north of Town Lake to see Atash, a global music ensemble based in Austin. I knew the violinist Roberto Riggio from a Longhorn Music Camp dating back to the Reagan presidency, so this was my one chance to see someone I actually knew play a SXSW gig. My chief recollection of the evening, besides that I liked the music (even though I don't necessarily listen to a lot of "world music") was that when I walked in as the band had just started playing, much of the audience was sitting down cross-legged on the floor. And by the time the set was over, lots of folks were actually dancing -- meaning, honest-to-goodness dancing rather than the shifting of weight from one foot to another and heads bouncing up and down that passed for dancing most of the weekend (myself included).

By then it was after midnight, but I pressed onward to the Billboard.com Bungalow to check out Man Man, whose live show Bill had described as "INSANE. But in a good way." I could go on and attempt to describe them, but, yeah:

There is absolutely no kids' music equivalent, but I tweeted at the time: "I think Man Man have the world's best (or worst) kids album in them." I stand by that...

Well, it was nearly 1 AM, but I wanted to see Tom Freund at St. David's Episcopal Church and its very nicely ordered set of chairs and wi-fi access in Bethel Hall. There was a delay getting started, which is a bad thing to have happen for a 1 AM set time, but Freund did cover for part of that time by plunking out a sweet little tune solo on ukulele. And then he brought in a full band, including a couple backup singers. If it hadn't been 1:30 AM, I'd've stayed longer, because the band really grooved. But that's a SXSW lesson, of course -- you can't see everything you want to, because eventually, everyone needs to sleep.

The kids' music artist most closely resembling Freund is, well, Tom Freund, of course. He put out a sweet little kids' disk, Hug Trees way back in 2007 (review), a relaxed shuffle through kids tunes new and original. And I happen to have a brand new copy for one lucky reader, courtesy of Tom himself. Just put your name and your e-mail address (it's visible only to me and won't be used for any other purpose than to notify the winner) in the comments below, and I'll pick a winner randomly by midnight east coast time Sunday night.

More stuff from the rest of the weekend to come...

Review in Brief: Hug Trees - Tom Freund and Friends

Southern California-based singer-songwriter Tom Freund released Hug Trees in late 2007, and I'm sort of surprised it's gone under everyone's radar (including mine) until just recently. In many ways, the album, inspired by his preschool-aged daughter, is a typical "kids' music" CD -- it's got a "freeze dance" song, there's a rendition of "The Cat Came Back," there's a song about baking a cake.

But there's a relaxed and playful attitude to the whole affair that makes it more compelling than you would think from the description above. Take "Freezedance," for example, which has a very funky '70s sound (Freund mentions James Brown as a particular inspiration for the track) and doesn't just involve Freund occasionally yelling "Freeze!" but also has him encouraging listeners to emulate animals and throwing out musical adlibs. "The Cat Came Back" is an admittedly hard song to screw up, but I quite liked his mellow approach on the song. "Party in the Yard" was actually written by Brett Dennen (who appears on this and one other track), and it's a soulful, funky tune (think Jack Johnson) about playing outside. (If you get a bit of a Ben Harper vibe, too, well, Freund's played with him quite a bit.)

Freund's roots-rock vibe on some tracks ("Hug Trees" or "Bump Bump Bump") will remind listeners of Brady Rymer, while on the closing "Go To Sleep (Fais Do-Do)" or "Seashells" (the former with Abra Moore, the latter with Victoria Williams), Freund sounds a little bit like a West Coast Elizabeth Mitchell. (And on "I Walk the Dog," Freund just sounds like a tired guy who knows how important it is to walk your dog, if you've got one.)

The 33-minute album will appeal mostly to listeners ages 3 through 6. You can hear four tracks at the album's Myspace page, or hear selections from more tracks at its CDBaby page.

The biggest strength of Hug Trees is its overall vibe, which turns what might have been a collection of typical kids songs into a fun little disk, something beyond ordinary. Fans of Brady Rymer or Elizabeth Mitchell I think will respond well to the musicianship and playfulness from Freund and friends here. Recommended.