LOCAL rockers Liftoff have no illusions about what it takes to break into the U.S. market.
It's a tough challenge no matter how you approach it. After an initial nationwide American radio campaign earlier this year the Vancouver band booked themselves into the RedGorilla Music Festival last month - the "free" side of South By Southwest (SXSW), a set of film, interactive and music festivals and conferences that take place every spring in Austin, Texas.
More than 10,000 bands applied to play on SXSW's 90-plus stages and 3,000 members of the media were on hand to check out the 24/7 action which included shows by Jack White and Fiona Apple as well as Bruce Springsteen giving the keynote speech to open the music portion of the festival on March 15. Unlike the main festival - where the massive popularity of the ever-expanding SXSW brand makes long lineups the norm - all shows at RedGorilla events are free to attend and open to the general public.
There's nothing new about entrepreneurial groups working alongside an "official" festival to catch the spillover business. William F. Cody brought his Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World extravaganza featuring Sitting Bull, to Chicago in 1893 and set up shop right across the street from the World's Fair. RedGorilla calling itself "the largest festival within a festival" hosts hundreds of bands in venues along Austin's Sixth Street during the run of SXSW. You don't get to see Fiona Apple or Kanye West every night but you may just be checking out the future of music.
North Vancouver's Gord Gemmell, Liftoff's lead guitarist, is a veteran of many tours but even he wasn't prepared for the onslaught of continuous mayhem the band experienced in Texas. It didn't help that Frontier Airlines lost one of his guitars on the trip down. When they landed in Austin in the late afternoon of March 13 the airport was full of bands hailing from all around the world. "All of the special baggage comes out of this one place," says Gemmell. "I sat there and watched five million guitars come down. And not mine. By that time I had travelled for something like 22 hours. There was no way I was going to leave that airport without my guitar. It just totally messes your head up. You go back and think, 'Oh, I've got to play a show tomorrow, got to get the other one ready to go.' They did find it the next day, it had gone on to Philadelphia. On the flip side Frontier were very concerned about it and compassionate. They know it's your instrument. I had the guitar back at 3 o'clock and we did our first show at five. One of the guitars I have is a 1972 Strat and I'd hate to see it just get lost like that but what are you going to do? If you're going to travel I'm sure you're going to lose them eventually. If they mean something to you you should probably leave them at home. It just added to the whole craziness."
The RedGorilla Music Festival operates within a six-block area of Sixth Street in historic downtown Austin, the capital of Texas since 1839 when as the Republic of Texas it won independence from Mexico. Today the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metropolitan area has a population of more than 1.7 million people making it the 35th-largest metropolitan area in the United States.
Even though the city's official slogan "The Live Music Capital of the World" was probably dreamt up by a PR firm in Dallas, Austinites back it up with a long history of supporting a strong scene where musicians such as Janis Joplin, Delbert McClinton, Doug Sahm, Lucinda Williams and Stevie Ray Vaughan, to name just a few, got their start. It's a hotbed and always has been with much of the action historically centred around the Sixth Street bars.
The area between Lavaca Street to the west and Interstate 35 to the east is recognized as the Sixth Street Historic District with most of the two and threestorey Victorian limestone structures dating back before the 1880s. "You could call it the Gastown of that part of the world," says Gemmell. "Old historic limestone buildings, white brick buildings, not red brick. Six full blocks and every single doorway is a club. They have open wooden shutters because it's so warm all the time. Some stages are on the roof, some are at the back of the bar with speakers that face the street. I call them clubs but they're not really clubs, they're like Western watering holes. The only thing missing on the street are horses tied up out front."
The first night Liftoff played at the Rooftop Bar on Sixth Street. "It was a 7 o'clock start, very early in the festival, and we were up on the third floor of
a roofless bar," says Gemmell. "It was a honky tonk not a rock show bar. The roof has been taken off - people can see you performing through the (glassless) windows and you can shout at people down on the street. We watched the band before us from Portland and unfortunately by the time they were done they'd chased everybody out of the bar. So here we are, we're playing these little combo amps and there's nobody there."
Liftoff's lead singer Carmon Leeson took matters into his own hands and got on a pole platform in the middle of the room to perform. By the end of the 40-minute set everybody in the room was dancing on the platform with Leeson. "It was like a Rolling Stones moment," says Gemmell. "Everyone was going crazy and word got around. We walked out of that show feeling amazing - even though no one saw it."
Before their next scheduled gig at the RedGorilla festival Liftoff packed up and travelled four hours to Arlington, where they played three 45minute sets at the Six Flags over Texas amusement park for people waiting to go on rides. "We got into our hotel late and woke up early the next day to play in the hot, hot sun. Six Flags is so massive you could put Disneyland inside it. We were in a very difficult situation as far as performing goes - we were outside and you've got people of all ages lined up to get into these rides. You're left with two choices, you can either sink or swim. Luckily we connected with the audience. It was a massive learning experience. We sold tons of T-shirts and CDs."
Back in Austin the band played a Friday night date at the Dizzy Rooster. "We rolled in there for a six o'clock show. It had a long narrow bar. The video machines are in exactly the same spots. This was a honky tonk again, it wasn't a rock show, so it was back to these crazy little amps and a general lack of stuff. And once again the group before us chased every single person out of the bar."
The amount of bands performing in Austin during a short period of time means everything moves at a lightning pace. "You've got to set up fast," says Gemmell. "You've got to be on stage in 10 minutes or they cut your time, right? We got it going, we go into our thing and we had no one in that bar. Zero. We had a producer from Nashville that had come out to watch us and the sound guy. By the time we had finished our 45-minute set the bar was full. The sound man came up to me and said, 'You've made my week, you've totally made my week.' We were on the main floor with a speaker out on the street and it climaxed out with hooting and hollering and they wanted us to keep playing."
The final night of the festival the band played Darwin's Pub, a more traditional rock'n'roll venue on Sixth Street. "It had a larger stage with proper amplifiers and stuff to play through and we were on a bill with bands that fit with us. We had an 8 o'clock spot so it was actually going to be dark. We played with bands that had travelled from New York and Los Angeles and it was just an amazing show. The energy of that night was unmatched."
For their final show in Austin Liftoff hosted a gig at the Thirsty Nickel to thank all the people who had helped them with the logistics for their trip. "That was sort of our payback show for the people that assisted us," says Gemmell. "Charities that we'd played for, bands that had lent us equipment. It was a slightly calmer night because the festival was over and you could drive on the street. The battle was over and it was just a nice night to spend with the people we'd met. That finished us off on the Sunday night and we packed up and tried to leave Austin the next day but tornadoes came and changed our plans - we missed our connecting flight out of Denver, although we did get out of Austin. That was a rock'n'roll plane ride for sure.
"It was well worth it. The connections that we made are incredible."
- Liftoff's next local show is Thursday, May 17 at Venue on a bill with Pardon My Striptease, DJ Matthew 1626 and The Faceplants. For more information on the band visit www.liftoffband.com.
If you go:
For more information on the RedGorilla Festival visit www.redgorillamusic.com. For further details on travelling to Austin, Texas visit www. austintexas.org. One essential bit of information you will need for your trip is where to park - go to park.6thstreetinaustin. com for a Sixth Street parking app courtesy of www.facebook. com/6thStreetInAustin.
