My good friend J.J. Cole and I went to Austin, TX yesterday for SXSW. We drove in from Houston together, and got to town at about 3pm.
This was J.J.'s first SXSW, and my 5th or 6th. We parked on 6th street just east of 35.
We had no real plan. It was sunny and beautiful weather, so we walked around town a bit to take in the amazing sensory overload of Austin during SXSW. Like my previous SXSW experiences, we ran into some friends, and tripped up on some pretty good shows.
At around 6 or 7pm, we decided to grab some food. We checked Stubbs BBQ but they had a long wait. So we went right across the street for pizza. We ate sitting on the curb in the street (many downtown streets are blocked off for SXSW)
After eating, we went into the bar at Stubbs to hang out and grab some drinks. We spent about an hour there, striking up conversation with some pretty interesting people and exchanging stories with strangers. It was while we were at the bar that we realized the Sound City Players would be performing at Stubbs that night.
The Sound City Players is a Dave Grohl concoction. He recently directed a movie called Sound City about a recording studio of the same name. The movie documents the history of this studio, and the amazing music made there (Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham Nicks, Nirvana, Tom Petty, NIN, Rage Against the Machine, and many more). The band (Sound City Players) is made up of Dave Grohl, Stevie Nicks, all of the Foo Fighters, Rick Springfield, Cheap Trick, members of Rage Against the Machine, and many other star musicians.
J.J. and I didn't have tickets or passes to this show (or any other), but it was clear to me that this show was the place to be. Almost everyone at SXSW last night wanted to be attending this show. I met a couple VPs of well known music industry businesses (like Rhapsody) at the bar who were trying to find a way into this show.
At some point J.J. must have gone outside to make a call. I lost him for about 10 min. I went downstairs to the restroom. When I did, I realized the side stage door was right next to the restroom. And no one was guarding it. As I walked out of the restroom I thought, "what the heck, I'll give it a shot".
So I walked through the door and just tried to act like I belonged back there. I found a little spot next to the guy mixing the monitors and just stayed. It was incredible. I was 15 feet away from the stage, and had the best seat in the house!
After enjoying the show from my amazing vantage point for about 30-40 minutes, I decided to try to take my shenanigans to the next level.
I realized that the real backstage area was directly across from me on the other side of the stage. I knew that to get there, I would have to actually cross the stage. Once the idea popped into my head, I couldn't let myself wimp out.
--Do you see those clean, white towels draped right next to the stage in my picture? Those come into play in a second.--
I kept waiting for a set change, or for the lights to go down, but there just was never a great time. My phone was dying, and I knew if it totally died I wouldn't be able to get back in touch with J.J.
It was now or never.
Dave Grohl and Rick Springfield had just ended a song together. I took a deep breath, and walked confidently toward the stage behind a guitar tech. I grabbed a handful of towels and draped them over my shoulder. The guitar tech went to hand Pat Smear (Nirvana and Foo Fighters guitar player) his guitar and I went straight up on stage to the middle of the stage. I knelt down at Dave Grohl's wedge monitor and acted like I was "fixing" something. I was onstage with the Foo Fighters + Rick Springfield...right at Dave Grohl's feet!
I stood up and quickly walked to the other side of the stage. I ducked back into the hall leading to the backstage lounge. I passed the guitar player from Cheap Trick. At the end of the hall was the door leading to the lounge. I went in.
It was a small room with 2 couches and a table full of booze. There were about 6 people in the room, including me. One of them was Krist Novoselic (Nirvana bass player).
I was trying to find a way to be as inconspicuous as possible, but the room was too small to find a place to blend in. After I was in the room for about a minute, a rather large security guard came to ask me to see my pass. I was busted.
He escorted me out of the room. We paused for a second outside of the room to wait for some of his buddies. He said, "You got on the stage. That's not cool". I said to him, "Eh...c'mon. It's a little cool". I think he might've grinned.
The other security guards calmly escorted me out to the street behind Stubbs and warned me that if I tried to get back on the property they'd have me arrested blah, blah, blah... I said "thanks" and went to find J.J.
Overall it was a pretty wild night, and I'm still buzzing a little bit from the adrenaline rush.
SXSW 2013 was fun.
-Ty
