FOUND's SXSW Tour Diary: Day Three, Part Two

After the gig at the British Music Embassy we were dragged off by Muslim (producer for Vic Galloway and Huw Stephens, BBC Radio 1). He wanted to do a little feature with us called 'Austin Found' . . . the premise was that we had to scour the streets looking for objects that we could make sounds with and then busk with them on 6th Street.

Muslim reckoned it'd be easy and that the streets were littered with interesting artifacts, I was skeptical but we set off from the venue with our eyes peeled regardless. I don't know what he expected we'd be able to find, but after much raking through bins and searching down alleyways our final haul included: a small block of wood (woo!) and a large water container (exciting!). As this clearly wasn't enough to play one of our songs, Gav went and got his melodica and Alan played a metal bin with drum sticks. Junky, but not very interesting. We needed something else to make it more of a performance. Suddenly a girl walked passed with a megaphone promoting a charity event. Kev ran after her and used all of his timeless Aberdonian charm to woo her.

We played a shonky rendition of When You Fall: Ziggy on vocals, Kev on megaphone beat box, Gav on melodica, Alan on metal bin and block of wood and me on water container bass drum. It actually didn’t sound as crap as you’re all thinking. Pretty crap, but not AS crap. It should be aired on Vic’s show tonight (Monday 23 March) I think – I’ll post a link soon. Amazingly a crowd gathered and we even got a round of applause although Gav reckoned he burst a vein in his head from blowing the melodica too hard.

We then raced back to the British Music Embassy to try and catch The Pictish Trail’s show but we were too late, he was already finished and standing out in the side alley drinking a beer and shmoosing with King Creosote’s current manager (and Elton’s ex-manager), Derek. Ziggy and I muscled our way in. Before long we’d been invited to come and drink margarita’s on a rooftop with them, so being the honorable guys that we are, we ditched the rest of the band and went and got very drunk at Elton’s ex-manager’s expense. He also treated us to a fine meal and
then more and more drinks. Meanwhile the rest of the gang were back at The Ginger Man pub and Kev managed to spear a beer mat with a dart. If you don’t believe me, here’s a rather disturbing photo of a very enthusiastic Gav.