SXSW Turns 25: Celebrating a Quarter Century of Bands, Beer and BBQ

Stroll through downtown Austin, Texas, during South by Southwest and you'll be bombarded by cowboy hats and neon wristbands; drunken hipsters and sunburned executives; lineups snaking down sidewalks and songs blaring out of any space musicians can squeeze gear into. Often dubbed "indie rock spring break" or compared to like-minded film fests like Sundance or TIFF, SXSW is really more of a musical Mecca where musicians, media, industry folks and rabid fans make an annual pilgrimage to Austin to pray together before the holy trinity of bands, beer and BBQ.

2011 is the 25th anniversary of SXSW's five-day music festival and conference, which boasts about 1,500 acts -- ranging from indie up-and-comers to full-blown superstars to living legends -- playing more than 100 venues between March 16 and 20 (film and interactive segments begin March 11).

While SXSW nights are filled with artist showcases and after-parties, there's not much more rest during daylight hours, which feature conference panels, famous speakers (Bob Geldof delivers this year's keynote) and countless free concerts. Rather than click cruise-control, SXSW is clearly approaching its quarter-century anniversary at full-throttle.

"The first year, we didn't really have an office. And the second year, we had one room and a big table and everybody sat around the table with, like, three telephones," SXSW co-founder and managing director Rolland Swenson tells Spinner. "That was probably the last time I knew everything that was going on at SXSW."

Though Swenson's team is now too large to sit around a conference table -- 100 people work year-round for SXSW, with more than 50 during the festival run-up -- Swenson hasn't lost sight of the original vision behind the mega-event.

Watch SXSW Time-Lapse


"We wanted to bring the regional scene together in one place so that everyone could meet each other and start to do business together -- that was really our initial impulse," he says. "As it grew, we just kept reaching further and further out. Now it's an international event with acts from around the world."

"A lot of people have the idea that [SXSW] was supposed to be 'American Idol' for unknown artists who get signed to a major label deal for a million bucks," Swenson adds. "That was the impression we had to fight against for a long time before people got the idea of what we wanted to do."

Though turning the festival into an A&R hotbed wasn't necessarily the intention, SXSW has helped launch heavy hitters like the Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and Broken Social Scene.

"I remember we had a band called Uncle Tupelo," recalls Swenson. "They later split up and became Wilco and Son Volt. At the time, it was very exciting to get an act that everyone was talking about and writers were writing about. That was right when the 'buzz band' thing started for us."

SXSW creative director Brent Grulke acknowledges the "buzz band" phenomenon but takes a more pragmatic approach when it comes to the lore of six-figure handshakes at SXSW.

"One of the things you count on at an event like this -- because there are so many people here -- is maybe something serendipitous will happen," he says. "You may meet somebody that you build some sort of career relationship with that you didn't anticipate."

Metric frontwoman Emily Haines would have to agree. "Our show with Muse at Stubb's did land us a US stadium tour with them," she says. "We discovered Bear in Heaven at SXSW and took them on tour straightaway. It's more about meeting people than thinking about 'business.'"

Watch Metric @ Stubbs During SXSW 2010
SXSW offers a similar rush for music fans as attendees sniff out secret gigs or stumble upon the next big thing, an experience Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne had with the White Stripes.

"Although they were already being talked about, seeing the White Stripes play down there was a big deal, you know?" says Coyne. "After you see them, and everybody is there together and experiences it together, your mind is sort of made up: 'They are as cool as I've read about, they are as cool as I thought.'"

It's that communal thrill which has made the mid-March bonanza downright addictive for its patrons.

"When I first started going, people were just getting cell phones, so texting wasn't even a thing." recalls Steve Jordan, founder of Canada's Polaris Music Prize and former Warner A&R exec, who's attended SXSW since the mid-'90s. "As far as the discovery process of the bands, you had to do a lot of research before you went down or rely on actual phones and talking on them.

"And the day parties," he adds, "you could go to all of them because there weren't that many. Exploring and discovering was part of the charm of it."

As SXSW continues to grow, so do the number of early adopters who balk at the SXSW newbies who lack the hipster cred that comes from having seen Modest Mouse or Polyphonic Spree perform back in, you know, "the day." Naysayers might be the inevitable byproduct of a homegrown venture reaching such great heights (SXSW is the highest revenue-producing special event for the Austin economy, bringing in at least $110 million in 2008), but Grulke has little patience for elitist handwringing.

"I don't find nostalgia particularly interesting," he says. "The present is what matters. Memory isn't terribly reliable, anyway."

Tokyo Police Club's Graham Wright admits that Gulke has a point, especially when it comes to Austin. "The magic of SXSW keeps building in my mind to the point where I remember it more as a magic fairy land full of barbecue and free jeans than as a music festival."

Watch Amy Winehouse Perform 'Back in Black' at SXSW 2007


The 25th Anniversary -- commemorated with the release of a special retrospective 'SXSW Scrapbook' -- has prompted Gulke and Swenson to reflect on those early years, but both admit their gaze typically resides on the clock, counting down to the next one.

"We've always approached SXSW the same way: If we screw this up, we might not get to do this again," says Swenson. "So we're definitely not relaxed and smiling and comfortable; we're always worried about making the event work better and coming up with new features that keep it interesting for people. That's one of the reasons we've lasted 25 years, because we've never gotten to the point where we've said, 'Well, we've made it. Now we can relax.'"

And indeed, relaxing has been harder to do with the effects of the 2008 economic meltdown still looming, but SXSW has gone through a series of boom-and-bust cycles. In fact, the now-legendary event may never have gotten off the ground had it not been for economic hardship.

"When we started in '87, Texas was sort of on the leading edge of that bust -- which was sort of triggered by the Savings and Loans collapse and the real estate market -- and that was part of the reason we were able to do SXSW," says Swenson. "Everyone was so broke they were willing to try anything. The nightclubs downtown were like, 'OK, sure, you can have our stages for the weekend if you can get some bodies in here. Great; we don't have much to lose.'

The irony of that first year is not lost on Swenson or Gulke, nor is the importance of SXSW for the legion of artists, music lovers and industry players who make the trek each spring to the Lone Star State.

"There are so many people that have been here for the event so many times now," says Gulke. "I've met three people who've met future spouses at SXSW. So it's stuff like that, that makes you aware. It's had a real impact on other people's lives. It makes me feel good when the event has been something positive."

Watch Flaming Lips Perform 'Bohemian Rhapsody' at SXSW 2006'

And it indeed has, providing musicians and fans alike with indelible memories year after year.

"We've had some pinnacle moments at SXSW," says Coyne. "We did a parking lot experiment in 1996, I think. People would come up to me and say, 'I've seen you before, but this experience I had here at SXSW, with you doing this bizarre thing in a parking garage with, like, 2,000 people jammed into this thing, this was, wow.' It had an air of magic about it, the excitement and the uniqueness of it that could only happen at SXSW."

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