Scenes of SXSW in the 2000s

Patti Smith, Polyphonic Spree, Amy Winehouse, Van Morrison, Mumford and Sons

PATTI SMITH 2000

They say you shouldn’t meet your idols because they just can’t live up to your expectations. But Leslie Uppinghouse, whose 20-year run handling production at SXSW ended in March 2016, became an even bigger fan of Patti Smith after working with the high priestess of punk at SXSW 2000. This was back when the big free concerts were at Waterloo Park, not Auditorium Shores. Patti, Lenny and the gang made their first stop in Austin in 20 years to promote new CD Gung Ho.

“Every little dealing with Patti and her people was just a pleasure,” says Uppinghouse. They asked if they could get their equipment down to Austin in one of the trucks SXSW orders from New York and it turned out to be just a small set of drums and a guitar amp. No stacks or backdrop. “It was a big stage and I kept asking them to tell me what they needed,” she recalls. “They said all they needed was a riser for their drums.” Uppinghouse met her idol the day of the show, when Smith was held up at registration because she didn’t have a photo ID on her. “That was a proud moment,” says Uppinghouse, “getting to vouch for Patti Smith.” The pair chatted for a few minutes as her badge was made, then Patti was off to Waterloo.

Gung Ho was inspired by Ho Chi Minh, and Smith read a poem by the former North Vietnamese leader before launching into “People Have the Power.” The Austin Chronicle wrote that the show “left the crowd dazed and still, witnesses to something that seemed not of this world,” which pretty much sums it up for Uppinghouse. But being a production chief she noticed the stage set-up first of all. “I’m glad I got the biggest riser because it turned out that the entire band stood on it. They had this whole, big stage to roam and they were all up there on the drum riser!” Mark down 2000 as the year the Patti Smith Group brought CBGB’s to an Austin park next to the hospital.

POLYPHONIC SPREE 2002

When a new, unknown act plays SXSW for the first time, they feel lucky if a handful of critics catch their performance. But as the opener for 2002 keynote speaker Robbie Robertson, 28-member choral rock band Polyphonic Spree thrilled a packed ballroom full of music scribes from all over the world. “They told us it was going to be an industry event in a huge, ballroom at 10 a.m., and nobody was going to be there to see us,” recalls Spree leader Tim Delaughter.

But at the end of 30-minute performance by the robe-wearing aggregation from Dallas “a bunch of people made a beeline for us and the first one introduced himself as Jon Pareles of the New York Times,” Delaughter recalls. “He said, ‘Do you realize what you just did? You got every music critic in the country on their feet!’ We ended up getting our picture in all these newspapers covering South By Southwest.” Pareles wrote a feature on the group.

Also in the audience were reps for David Bowie, who was curating London’s Meltdown Festival, and three weeks later Polyphonic Spree was playing Britain’s Royal Festival Hall. Polyphonic later opened for Bowie for the entire “Reality” tour.

SXSW has employed keynote musical preludes since the beginning, when octogenarian blues man the Grey Ghost played stride piano and the Golden Echoes sang gospel, but it was staffer Craig Stewart’s idea to go over-the-top in 2002 with the Spree choir. Delaughter’s ambitious post-Tripping Daisy outfit had played only three or four gigs up to that point, but Stewart was at one of them.

“We had three rooms at the La Quinta the night before, so we were sleeping 9 and 10 to a room,” Delaughter laughs. “It was hectic and we were out of our minds. But we all got together before we went on and said ‘OK, this gig is awkward as hell, but let’s just blow these people’s minds’ and that’s what happened.”

By 10:30 in the morning, a band nobody had heard of at 9:59 was the talk of SXSW.

AMY WINEHOUSE 2007

You heard this name Amy Winehouse, which belonged to some sort of British jazz singer, and you didn’t expect a tattooed danger doll in a girl group bouffant, who just sang like she felt.

March 2007 was in like a lamb and out like a lion for Winehouse, whose single  “Rehab” had been released about two months before SXSW and was on its way to becoming the song of the year. SXSW also solidified La Amy’s rep as an unrepentant party girl. Scheduled to play 10 day parties in addition to her official La Zona Rosa showcase, Winehouse wasn’t having that and played just three or four, including Fader Fort. One night, she and some of her Dap Kings bandmates were whisked into the Stax Records 50th anniversary show at Antone’s.

With her every movement being studied, Winehouse mostly kept to herself at the Radisson or at the white house on Red River that C3 keeps for real VIPs. Everybody wanted to know what this Amy Winehouse chanteuse was all about and she just wanted to know if there was any more whiskey.

Those who were on hand for the La Zona Rosa show got the full range of that troubled musical genius, with a set high in drama. Winehouse seemed out of place when she walked onstage in wobbly heels, but by about the fourth song she was in a groove with her band. The love from the audience was intense and Amy seemed genuinely moved. Nobody who was there will ever forget the time they saw a legend who was jaded before her time.

VAN MORRISON 2008

Celtic soul lion Van Morrison kicked off a short U.S. tour in 2008 with two shows in Austin on March 11 and 12, the first a private concert at the Austin Music Hall with tickets sold and the second an official SXSW showcase at La Zona Rosa. Morrison was promoting the new album Keep It Simple and why not stay another day and play for the industry? But according to gossip hound Perez Hilton, Van didn’t keep his room service order simple enough and when it was delivered all wrong, the room service tray went flying. (The Driskill issued an immediate and emphatic denial after the Perez post.)

Former Direct Events production manager Kyle Nelson, who handled both the Austin Music Hall and La Zona Rosa that SXSW, didn’t need to hear any more Van Morrison horror stories. The singer’s repute was as a tempermental perfectionist, nicknamed “Van the Man” because “Van the Tyrant” didn’t rhyme. “His management came in a couple weeks earlier to walk through the venues and they freaked out,” Nelson recalls. “(Morrison) was used to playing these beautiful theaters and the Music Hall and La Zona Rosa were the opposites of that. They told us ‘He’s gonna take one look at these clubs and turn around and walk out!’”

Nelson says Direct Events spent “a fortune, as much as $30,000” renting drapes, red carpet, nice furniture, paintings, plants, lamps, etc. for the green room and onstage. “We were just so terrified that he was going to cancel that we overdid it,” recalls Nelson, who even ordered faux landscaping for the La Zona Rosa perimeter. “I kept hearing the last thing Van’s people had said: ‘This had better be right!’” It was a lot of pressure for a 28-year-old from Kansas.

So here comes the the night of the Music Hall show and Morrison, who didn’t come to soundcheck, stepped from his limo to the walkway onto the stage, never even going inside the opulently-decorated dressing room and backstage area. After the show, he went straight back to the limo. “We did all that just for him, all that for nothing,” exclaims Nelson, who termed that opening night set “a debacle.” Morrison did only new material, refusing to play any of his hits for the crowd which had paid big bucks. “People were walking out, pissed off about spending their money on that show.” Nelson and his crew spent several hours that night moving all the backstage furnishings two blocks over to La Zona Rosa, which would host an early Morrison set, at 7 p.m. the first day of SXSW Music.

Maybe the word got out about the poorly-received tour opener or maybe everyone figured the 1200-capacity La Zona Rosa would be too jam packed and the lines too long to get in, but the Wednesday night show was not even close to being sold out. The crowd numbered only about 700, but the icon bounced around backstage like he couldn’t wait to get up there. He was overheard telling his agent it reminded him of the old days, and his set list was similarly nostalgic. “He played a couple new songs, but after that it was just one big hit after the next,” says Nelson, who was finally able to relax a bit when the show started. “He gave those people an amazing concert. It was one of those times when you felt sorry for the people who were missing it.”

MUMFORD AND SONS 2009

The stories of huge headlining acts playing SXSW when they were nobody are well-told, with Billy Ray Cyrus (year two) leading a breakout army that includes Green Day, White Stripes, John Mayer, the Strokes, Uncle Tupelo, Florence + the Machine, Gary Clark Jr. and so on.

Then there was a folk-rock band from England that played a day party at Red House Pizza in front of a couple dozen people in March 2009, then were headlining Glastonbury a couple years later.

Here’s how Mumford & Sons were booked to play SXSW before they had a record deal or any press in the States: New Zealand native Cary Caldwell, who works for SXSW Planning Dept. and has been part of the artist submission review process for a number of years, was living in Brighton UK in 2008 and had popped into a bar called Prince Albert on his way home from dinner. Mumford and Sons were playing to a packed house of 150 and, quite simply, blew Caldwell away.

He gave Marcus Mumford his SXSW card, got in touch with management and emailed Brent Grulke telling him SXSW had to book this act. “I told Brent that unless he wanted me hassling him every day about this act, he may as well just book them and be done with it,” Caldwell says.

It’s important to note that the Mumfords were on the rise in the UK and had strong management from the team that also handled Keane and Laura Marling, who had already been accepted to SXSW. Since “and Sons” were in her backing band, they were all coming to Austin anyway.

The first Mumford set, at the Dart International showcase on a Tuesday, found the band performing without keyboardist Ben Lovett, who had to hastily exit the band’s plane at Heathrow because peanuts were being and he has an extreme nut allergy. Lovett arrived the next day, in time for two SXSW day stage performances- at the Convention Center and the Hilton Hotel lobby. That latter set was in front of about 30 people, but one was the person who went on to become their booking agent in the U.S. “They played their official showcase at Maggie Mae’s and the place was rammed, mainly with UK industry,” Caldwell recalls. Mumford and Sons left Austin on a mountain of buzz.

When they returned to England, Cary Caldwell became their tour manager. His first assignment was to drive Mumford and Sons to the Universal building in London, where they signed their recording contract with Island Records.