Notes from Austin City Limits

Writing this weekend from Austin during the famed Austin City Limits festival. This is our last night in Texas after making a solid interstate loop (Lubbock, Austin, Houston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, back to Austin). I came upon a free ticket by luck and/or karma today and had a great time dancing to Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, among some other artists I got the chance to check out. N.E.R.D was energetic hip-hop (a little generic for me) and the always inventive Mars Volta could only be described as loud. Our group joked that we had actually found the loudest spot in the entire festival.

Austin is a fantastic setting for a festival in the fall, and a good scene for people-watching year 'round. When we come down on tour, we stay with some good friends near the UT campus. UT is filled with a state university's typical mix of frat/sorority types, athletes and intellectuals. But for me, the most interesting archetype walking around this town are the hipsters. Characterized by their tight t-shirts, even tighter jeans, over-sized sunglasses and the occasional lack of hygiene (not to be confused with hippies), they make up in ardent apathy what they miss in shower time. A hipster's favorite pastimes include passing judgment on others, shopping for ironic t-shirts at the local vintage shop, and passing judgment on people who are wearing less ironic t-shirts than they are at said shop.

The term hipster has not always applied to the unshaven dude staring at you under his aviators while you stand in line for your morning java. In the 40's, many people referred to what would become known as the "beat generation", as hipsters. Jack Kerouac, one of my literary heroes, used the term to describe the beat youth he saw around him, hopped up on benzedrine and bebop, anxiously rushing around the country during the newly born atomic era. I would like to research how a label that Kerouac used for people separate from the mainstream has come to represent what the dictionary lists as "a person who follows the latest fashions and trends". Vintage t-shirts are vintage for a reason, they are hardly the latest fashion! Or are they? I guess I just can't figure out whether all the hipsters I see around Austin are following a trend, or creating one by their complete apathy toward any given fashion...

There is an irony that I don't even think the hipsters would understand as I watch them pump their fists in the air to driving hip-hop beats at Austin City Limits.

Maybe I'm just bitter because Frogs Gone Fishin' received our very first short, mediocre album review this week, deep in a Denver paper. You can check it out here: Westword Review. Our reviewer wrote in a style which people tell me we can get used to from critics. While not overtly harsh, his comments were over-generalized and insidious towards hippies and jam fans in Colorado (I happen to enjoy twisting like "over-cooked vermicelli" at shows). But it's alright, the guy is probably just angry he has to sit in an office all day and can only write about people who have fun traveling around the country playing music.

And maybe my above description of the hipsters seemed harsh. I really do appreciate their individual, artistic approach to life. I will not be unfair to them, as the Westword critic was to hippies. It would be better if we had a hipster attitude about what the critic said about hippies... who cares!

I also wanted to take a hot-minute and answer some good questions a reader asked about songwriting in my last post.

-When I write songs, I typically start with a rhythm or simple melody. Rhythm forms the skeleton of music and the most basic element of music that humans perceive (after all, the first thing you hear in life is your mother's heartbeat).
-You never know if someone will enjoy a song or not until you perform it. But chances are, if you think you wrote a bad-ass tune and believe in your efforts, other people probably will, too. You might continue playing a tune you don't enjoy, if your audience digs it... but you will probably modify it in some way so it is bearable to play night after night. A song is never done/complete.
-As for this question: "Do you hear a song and then create it? Or, do you create a song first in order to hear it?"... Good question! You are asking the musical equivalent of "If a tree falls in the forest..." and I'm not sure I can answer such an esoteric query. Many musicians think they are merely channeling musical elements from an outside force and create songs so they can hear it later. I like to think I'm channeling human issues and need to listen hard for what the world is saying before I can produce a song, to then create for my listening.

Tomorrow we travel to Lake Charles, LA to play a pub-crawl, and then on to one of the most beautiful places in the world, New Orleans.

* Photo by the superb Sari Blum. Frogs Gone Fishin' @ Herman's Hideaway in Denver, CO 8/27/08. The shirt I am wearing was bought for $7 at a vintage shop where no hipsters were present. No hipsters were harmed in the making of this blog. Copyright Trevor Jones Music 2008.