This Year, the Acts Had More to Weather

Strumming his guitar, Steve Earle looked out on a shivering and soggy audience and offered the most encouraging words he could muster. “You know what they say about the weather in Texas: If you don’t like it, wait five minutes.”

To the horror of organizers, that was indeed the case during much of this year’s South by Southwest Music Conference, a sprawling annual convention and festival that showcases 1,000 music acts in five days and draws record and radio executives, journalists and fans from around the country.

The event takes over much of the state capital’s downtown district as hordes of conference attendees shuttle between nightclubs, music halls and restaurants featuring music that ranges from mariachi to speed metal. This year’s conference, which ended Sunday, also featured rain, hail, fog, sunny days, freezing nights and a tornado sighting.

“It’s absolutely the worst thing that can happen,” said Brent Grulke, creative director of the confab, which drew about 7,000 registrants. “But the show must go on.”

The shows this year included veteran artists such as Earle and Patti Smith, but the focus of the event is on unsigned and newer acts. About 30% of the featured performers are looking for record contracts, and another 30% are on independent labels but have an eye toward a major label deal.

Some of the highlights this year included a rousing, aggressive set from Alabama-based singer Shelby Lynne at a packed Austin Music Hall, and a high-energy performance by the British band Gomez that drew an overflow crowd to La Zona Rosa. The same venue was packed again for Elliott Smith, who has won critical acclaim for his song craft and lilting, evocative vocals.

The famously intense Smith gave a show at Waterloo Park that had audience members marveling at her giddy stage mien, while L.A. rappers Cypress Hill fought through technical glitches enough to convince the industry crowd that the group is primed for a commercial comeback.

Country veteran Ray Price is also hoping for a comeback. The 74-year-old singer, who has a new album coming out in May, played with a 37-piece orchestra and shared the stage with young honky-tonk rocker Hank Williams III--whose famous grandfather was once Price’s roommate.

*

“It’s really something to be back doing this at my age, and I thought for a time that it wasn’t going to happen,” Price said before the show. The singer had gone close to two decades without a record contract before signing with rock-oriented Buddha Records. “It’s wonderful, though, and I hope people enjoy it.”

One of the warmest moments of the bleary week came beneath the corrugated plastic roof of the porch behind the Las Manitas restaurant, where Joe Ely, Ruben Ramos and Rick Trevino where joined by Cesar Rosas and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos for an acoustic Tex-Mex show. Earle showed up as well, drawing cheers from the crowd sitting on rickety wooden benches and backed into the kitchen.

The clubs and halls along 6th Street are the conference playground, but its headquarters are the downtown convention center, where a huge trade show and a slate of seminars clearly showed that the emerging trend in the industry is the Internet and the promise it holds.

While digital download sales of music are a minute part of the overall market today, some forecasters predict it will be a billion-dollar business within a few years. That potential drew about 70 “dot com” companies to the trade show floor this year, up from fewer than a dozen last year, Grulke said.