Coyote Broad Music Stuff

In the late 1990s, I lived in Austin, Texas, with my two wonderful doggies. While I lived there, I oriented my life around the music I loved. I went to hear live music almost every week - at the Continental Club or the Carousel Lounge or the Broken Spoke or Liberty Lunch or Stubb's or the Cactus Cafe on the UT campus or just in someone's backyard or living room. And I used to write about it a LOT in emails to friends.

I was not in a good place personally when I moved to Austin in October 1996, and in those following months, going to see live music, including going to my first South By Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival, in 1997, and meeting other people in the years I lived in Austin who loved the music as much, even more, than I did - it healed me. I'll always love Austin for restoring my soul and giving me a grounding that's carried me through the decades.

I'd love to have something like Austin then even a little bit now... I fear that places like what that city used to be are gone forever.

I tried to keep up my devotion to live music when I later moved to Germany, but it was really hard to do so, for a variety of reasons, mostly involving lack of bands that played what I loved (though I did manage to see a few).

Back when I lived in Austin, I cobbled together the emails I sent to friends during SXSW and made them into essays for my web site - blogs before we called them blogs - thinking someone out there might care. I also wrote about some other music festivals I attended. I also would make an annual list of my favorite alternative country CDs released that year. All of this materials were on my web site for about a decade. But then, after moving back to the USA, I took all those pages down: they were so outdated, so many of the venues I talked about were long gone, some of the bands were long gone, and I was still getting emails from alt country bands wanting to know what would be the best venues to book for various cities in Europe. I decided those pages had outlived their usefulness.

In 2022, I realized it had been 25 years since my first SXSW. I tried to remember the bands I saw at my first SXSW, back in 1997, and I couldn't. I also couldn't find a list of who played then, not even on the archived version of the SXSW site on archive.org. So I looked at my own archived pages, on my hard drive, and it was wonderful to relive all that in my essays. And I also realized that they really capture a particular place and time, and maybe some folks out there might like to relive it too.

Here's how the Austin Chronicle described SXSW in March 1997:

Okay, take a deep breath. Hold it. Exhale. Again. There. Feel better? Look, just calm down. So what if there are over 700 bands playing this year's South by Southwest conference? You are only one person, with two legs, three days, and four nights. You couldn't possibly see every act you want to, so you're gonna have to make some hard decisions...

Yup, that's what it was like. But not just during SXSW. It could be like that on just one night in Austin back in the late 1990s: someone I loved was playing at the Continental Club but someone else was playing at La Zona Rosa and still some other awesome person was at Ginny's Little Longhorn, and someone else was playing all the way down in Gruene Hall. Which show to see?

It was a magical time, and I hope these essays capture that.

Sadly, so many of the Austin venues where I saw music are no more, torn down to make room for apartments and office buildings. Also sad is that I didn't save those emails talking about those evening shows that weren't a part of any festival - because I would love to relive those days and nights as well.

Here are my music festival blogs from a million years ago:

• SXSW 1997: A Day-By-Day Account by An Austin Newcomer
  My first SXSW. Absolutely magical. I can't believe how many bands I saw.
  

• SXSW 1998: Who Needs Sleep?
  My second SXSW and as good as the first one - maybe even better.

• A Review of Lilith Fair 1998 in Austin, Texas
  Reading this is more interesting than actually going.

• SXSW 1999: Rain Nor Flu Can Stop the Madness
  Three's a charm! My daily accounts from the wettest SXSW ever.

• Twangfest 99: Share the Love
  St.Louis, Missouri: 15 bands over three days... a compilation CD... the whole thang put together via the Internet by eight people from six different cities... 1999 was the third year for this event, and I was there...

• SXSW2000: Is the Thrill Gone?
  Very brief. Things were changing drastically. And this turned out to be my last one.

• Twangfest 2000: It just keeps getting better
  A list of highlights, rather than a full essay.
  

• How to Survive SXSW
  All the things I wish I'd known before I went to my first one, updated each year with new advice while I lived in Austin - and it's now completely outdated, because SXSW isn't at all what it used to be when I was there back in the late 1990s. In addition, there is NO parking in Austin and I5 traffic is wall-to-wall. But maybe this will give you an idea of just how wonderful it used to be. 

If you're bored, you can listen to me and my Mamaw sing "Farther Along."

Also see:

My travel essays.
My travelogues are about my road trips in the USA, about my time living in Germany and traveling throughout Europe and beyond. These aren't to brag about what an awesome person I am (I'm not) or "hey, look at me!!" pieces. These travelogues are meant to inspire YOU to travel too (and to help my memory in my old age). I also put what doesn't work out on my trips here - the challenges are a part of the trip, and get left out of most people's "hey, look at me!" accounts.
 

General travel info & advice to help get novice women travelers from the USA planning and traveling ASAP.
With advice on how to choose where to go, your options regarding group travel or DIY, and your options regarding transportation and accommodations. The advice is applicable to women in other countries as well, but I fully acknowledge that women from other countries and cultures will need and want to approach travel in different ways - what I feel is appropriate won't be for everyone, what I feel isn't that much of a concern will be a big concern to someone else, etc. Plus, I know that I have a passport that gives me a great deal of privilege.

transire benefaciendo: "to travel along while doing good."
This is extensive advice for those wanting to make their travel much more than only sight-seeing of the most famous places and shopping, whether in your own country or abroad, and how to make your sight-seeing an activity that educates you and benefits local people and not harm local environments. I was the first person on the Internet to use this term, transire benefaciendo, in association with traveling and doing good (or, at least, not doing bad / being harmful). This page strongly discourages vanity volunteering / voluntourism.
 

My advice for women who want to travel by motorcycle.
This is my favorite way to travel, and I would LOVE to see more women all over the world traveling this way. Traveling by motorcycle is affordable, it's oh-so-much fun, and it gives you a unique perspective on everything you are seeing and experiencing.
 

My page of advice for camping with your dogs in the USA.
So that you, your dogs, and people that will be camping near you will have a great time camping, this page has advice on the preparations you should make before you travel and things to keep in mind during your adventure together. This used to be the most popular page on my web site! I first published it back in the late 1990s and I update it regularly (but not frequently, I admit).

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