3/15/13

They pulled me back in.

Somewhere around lunch time the day before I got a text from $3 Bill saying I was needed for a Casters set at the Dog and Duck. There was a cancellation and he got the call.

I quit the Casters six months ago. But that's how things work here, welcome to Austin.

We only did about six songs. I remembered most of them. Fortunately when there are that many people on stage (not to mention the mamarian force field!) 95% of the audience will not notice when I correct my wrong note. I'm sure the amount of beer consumed and the level of exhaustion of most people at this point in the festival helps with that too.

RIP Brent Grulke

Brent Grulke died the other day. There are a bunch of well written obituaries all over the web, you can find them here, here, and here and on the SXSW site. This is not an obit, I just wanted to say a little something about the passing of a really cool guy.

Every time I'd see him I knew I was in for a good story. Over the years I've heard stories about all kinds of places he'd been and about the ton of cool people he'd met. Seeing the global reaction to his death, I know he was like that with everyone, everywhere.

About a year ago I was doing my usual Sunday thing and went to the Dog and Duck. It was a little after midnight and Brent happened to be there and as usual we had some great conversations over a few pints of Guinness. He mentioned he was on a committee (or panel or board) with some folks in NYC who were involved in distributing largesse to worthy musicians. Brent said the people he nominated never made the cut because they weren't Musicians. He nominated musicians. The differences in the capitol and the lowercase m were huge to him.

Brent wasn't complaining, you could tell he really liked being involved with the program. But, he thought the capitol M musicians were going to get money from any number of other places and the lower case ones wouldn't.

Brent nominated the underdog. He wanted to help the musicians with shitty day jobs.

That was the mindset of the creative director for the largest music conference in the world. That is a rare and beautiful thing.