One car. Five people. Eighteen hours. Local band You, You’re Awesome and friends embarked on their maiden voyage to Austin’s South By Southwest music festival around 3 a.m. Sunday morning and arrived Monday night at midnight. Aside from holding keyboards in laps and not being able to see out of the back window of good friend Mike Baker’s Hyundai Elantra Touring, the trip was surprisingly seamless with one exception: Arkansas. It sucks.—-
As a warning to other Cincinnati bands traveling over the next few days, watch out for Arkansas’ highways. The state’s backwards method of filling potholes consists of “pothole trolls” who wait by a truck filled with asphalt with shovel in hand and dodge oncoming traffic that's bolting down the highway at 70 mph. Arkansas, seriously. All we ask is that you at least put up cones or some sort of traffic sign so that we don’t have to drive through unfinished fillings and have asphalt explode all over our car.
Now that we've slept horizontally and taken over the apartment floor of Cincinnati native and WOXY employee Brian Niesz, bandmates Kevin Bayer and Yusef Quotah of YYA prepare for their 2 p.m. WOXY lounge act.
This year’s SXSW festival marks the first for many Cincinnati bands and artists. Other bands playing this week include Bad Veins, The Seedy Seeds, Pomegranates and The Harlequins. Stay tuned for updates and photos throughout the week as the live music capital of the world gets a sampling of Cincinnati's diverse music scene.
