Gold of The Five One and Killah Priest
One fourth of band The Five One, Gold blogs from the SXSW festival in Austin, TX! Download The Five One’s Road to SXSW at thefiveone.bandcamp.com.
What’s up everybody.. I’m blogging from Austin’s SXSW Festival, the night before our show at Opal Divine’s Freehouse. I injured my foot somehow and rolled it awkwardly a couple of days ago. I’ve taken breaks in walking by taking these bike taxis, which is a huge relief considering how much distance we cover in one day. It’s a beautiful concept that I hear they have all over Europe, so it’s great to see it at this Festival. Your ride is all about what you work out with the bike rider, sometimes they’ll treat the whole charge as a tip, while others they’ll set a price for you to meet. My buddy Billy Carranza from Reston, came to kick with us from a suburb of San Antonio. Here’s a picture of Billy with GREEN rockin’ the Colorpillar Tee:
First stop was Nice Kicks, a street shop that sells modern/pop-culture/hipster/hip-hop influenced tees, shoes, watches, etc. GREEN wanted to stop by and pick up these GREEN Supras, but they had an orange color incorporated that made him less interested. I thought they looked like Miami Hurricane shoes, but the owner of the store insisted that they were St. Pattys-themed. While we were there, I managed to snag this sweet watch:
Basically, this event is a huge conference. Every venue has a line-up of bands with some sort of theme. One of the events we attended consisted solely of “Duos,” one of which were El Ten Eleven, who wrote the original song for “Stuntin’ Like Mufasa” (Don’t ask me the name of the real song, only GREEN knows as far as the colors are concerned). Each day, we’ve been hopping from place to place and networking with folks representing anything and everything aligned with the art/music industry. We’ve met hired musicians that are between the ages of 18-20, to a Columbian punk rock bands, to musicians part of a touring act signed to Sony Japan. It’s been all over the place, and it’s clear as day that any artist/musician or whatever you call yourself that is interested should definitely be EVERYWHERE. I saw a dude rockin’ a Wizards tee, so I approached and met a writer for the Washington Post. Today, outside of the Muse show (which I did not see), this camera man for Myspace approaches me and asks what I think of the show. Obviously, I said I loved it and said that they should come out to DC, other colors chimed in, and we signed release forms to be in this Myspace video.
A couple of days ago, we were at the Austin Convention Center, where we picked up our artist wrist bands, which gives us freedom to get into most of the events for free, and we attended a conference that show-cased all kinds of different companies and organizations. I met someone who is in charge of Miami Music Festival and exchanged information. Turns out that the gentleman occasionally visits The Five One’s hometown of Reston for business. It was great to meet him and he said that he would love to have The Five One support the event. Miami has a great music scene and we have yet to play in that area, so this was one of the first booths I had to approach. We also approached Blackberry, who were more than happy to play our single, Mandatory for all the attendees approaching. The Starkey Hearing Foundation had a booth that gave hearing tests to anybody interested. We got these sweet ear plugs with cases, I’ve been taking them out all over the place since the music is BLARING everywhere. At some point, we were chatting with an acoustic group (can’t remember the name for the life of me) that gets a lot of attention on the blogosphere, when Erik Estrada rolls in. I met him and we got footage. It’s hilarious, it came completely out of nowhere:
Mini-Me was also there, which was awesome. We also met Morgan Currie, who is the violinist for the Canadian group The Tom Fun Orchestra. Morgan is a computer wiz who created Marcato, a software that bands can use to get organized. It is completely free and he explained to us how to use it. One of the highlights would have to be chatting it up with some folks that run a record label based out of Scotland. Love the accent and culture/music, so it’s always a pleasure for me to link with them. I explained our band and the concept and they loved the idea. It’s really important to me that The Five One is heard around the world, and not just the states. Scotland is a place I have to see and experience one day, why not have them already know who we are when we come through to perform!
In going through the West-side of the Downtown area, we checked out the venue that we are performing at tomorrow. In doing so, we met this dude Miles, who is in the band,Outernational. It was crazy to run into this guy because just the other night, RED and I saw this guy perform a song with Tom Morello’s latest project. Apparently, Outernational’s album was produced by Tom Morello, which is crazy! The song that they performed with Tom Morello’s band SSSC had a heavy gypsy influence. It’s always interesting for me to hear that Eastern European-esque sound, coming from Romania, home to one of the highest gypsy populations. I took this shot from the rooftop venue that they performed, it gave me a Miami vibe:
On the way to checking out Union Park, the venue that Outernational rocked, I spotted myself a GOLD beauty on the way:
Did I mention that I miss New Orleans? I didn’t want to leave that place, I liked it so much.
By the way, we definitely set up our instruments and performed on the street today. This cop pulled up, we thought he was going to have us cut everything out. He told us to play a song for him, which was pretty sweet. He then took off and we continued to rock. The highlight was jamming on this DC Gogo tune. Gives me a great deal of pride to play some hometown music in Austin. Folks stopped to hear Gogo, as I’m sure most, if not all, aren’t familiar with that DC sound. It was beautiful!
Tomorrow, we’re going to try to use power from one of the venues or stores and perform on that main 6th street strip, where EVERYBODY walks through. Wish us luck! I’m exhausted, time to get a few hours of sleep in time for more craziness.
PACE SI PRIETENIE (PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP)
GOLD
[All photos courtesy of The Five One]
