Generationals' SXSW Blog: Part One

New Orleans' gutsy rock duo Generationals, the team of Grant Widmer and Ted Joyner, release their sophomore album Actor Caster on March 29 and they're debuting much of that terrific new material at SXSW this week, including two gigs tonight, March 18 and another on Saturday, March 19. We're pretty pleased that they're blogging about their Austin adventures for The Alternate Side too. 

If you happen to be in Austin, check out the Generationals tonight at Cedar Door at 9 p.m. and then later, early Saturday morning, at the Park the Van Records showcase at Mi Casa Cantina at 1 a.m. On Saturday, they'll be at the KUT Cactus Cafe showcase at 12 noon.

We started our tour in Denton, Texas, at a festival called 35 Conferette. Over the past few years we have noticed some newer festivals popping up in towns that are on the way to Austin and this is one of the better ones we've been to. The snow was fun, we were lucky to have an opening slot for Local Natives who drew a huge crowd. After the show we got a little motel room at a Howard Johnson in McKinney, Texas, where we hung out and watched cable in a lair-like situation for the next three days until we came south to Austin. With the exception of a Sunday night show in Dallas with Lost in the Trees, we barely left the hotel.

On Tuesday we made the trip to San Marcos for a show at the Triple Crown which is about 30 minutes south of Austin. We didn't hit the stage until 1 a.m. which gave us plenty of time to hang out with our friend Dante Alejandro from Hacienda, who stopped in to hang out with us on his way home to San Antonio. Hacienda is one of the best rock bands in the land and they're excellent dudes. The show in San Marcos was cool, the bar was full of drunk college kids on spring break. We all barfed together in unison and moved on. We rented an apartment in South Austin to serve as our official headquarters for SXSW, so we drove back there after the show and crashed.

Wednesday morning brought us into "the s**t." We showed up in downtown Austin with eight shows and three recording sessions on our agenda for the four-days of SXSW. Last year we had a much lighter schedule but we still ended up getting pretty tired (even our hometown paper railed us for looking exhausted onstage) so we knew we had to conserve our energy. Luckily the first party we played was the Forcefield/Terrorbird dayparty at Red 7. The crowd was so huge and so many good bands were playing that it was really easy to get excited for our show. We took the stage right  (see below) after Braids (see above!) and Cloud Nothings.

Thursday was equally fun; we started the day out with a taping for our friends at Radio K at the EAR Studios in East Austin. The station manager Jon Schober is a friend of ours and we had a good time hanging out with him and our friend Shivvy who came to hang out with us at EAR. After that we headed straight to Waterloo Records downtown where we had a really great slot for the day party (see below) right between the Greenhornes (see above), Toro y Moi and Jessica Lea Mayfield. It was cool to see our new record Actor-Caster for sale at the store since it doesn't come out for another week and it's not on sale anywhere else yet. Waterloo is our favorite record store.

After another day party on the rooftop patio at Cheers on 6th Street, we called it a day. Tonight, March 18, includes four more shows including our showcases for The Orchard at Cedar Door at 9 p.m. and also for our label, Park the Van, at Mi Casa Cantina at 1 a.m. We'll play one more SXSW show in Austin at KUT's Cactus Cafe on Saturday, March 19, then we head to Laredo for our second year in a row to play at Old No. 2 [Café and Grill], which was one of the funnest events of the year for us last year. Will report back more soon!

- Grant and Ted