The following editorial was written in response to an experience our own Marketing Manager, James Shotwell, had while attending SXSW in Austin, TX last week.
You wouldn’t be wrong to assume there is a significant lack of new music discovery taking place at South By Southwest. Having attended the world’s largest annual music conference nearly ten years in a row I have witnessed a slow, but steady growth in the number of already established acts taking center stage in Austin during the one week everyone is supposedly setting aside to find out what is next for our industry. From Deftones and Drake, to Future, Erykah Badu, and even country icon Loretta Lynn, SXSW 2016 might have been the most star-studded installment of the now thirty-year old event to ever be held. Still, for those willing to skip the headliners performing more or less for free on every block, there is a lot of great music waiting to be heard, and late last week I stumbled across an artist who almost immediately turned my world upside down.
The Parish is a small, but beautiful venue nestled above a pizza place on Austin’s world renowned Sixth Street strip that boasts a capacity of just 450. When I arrived at the base of the venue on Thursday night the sun had just begun to set and the St. Patrick’s Day crowd on the streets was becoming increasingly inebriated. A pair of friends in music PR had told me to catch a set from Julien Baker, a young female singer-songwriter signed to 6131 Records, because they had seen her performing in a church the night before and had claimed to be moved to tears by her voice. I was skeptical, not to mention as sober as the day I was born, but I figured there must be something to this largely unknown talent if she could have made such an emotional impact on people who spend their lives seeking out new talent.
In the minutes before Julien took the stage I surveyed the room and found a healthy mix of young and old people from all walks of life staring intently at their phones from various corners of the venue. The crowd near the stage was sparse, or at least it was until the lights began to fade, but the energy amongst them was palpable. These were people who had waited hours, if not days, for a chance to see Julien perform. I, however, had no idea what the fuss was all about. Singer-songwriters are a dime a dozen after all, so how could one woman with no accompaniment other than her electric Fender six-string and a looping pedal demand such reverence in a place where everyone had spent at least one or two days being fueled by free drinks and cheap tacos?
Julien’s arrival on stage was met with the kind of applause that can only come from people who are expecting the person on stage to move them on an emotional level. The excitement was clear, though just a bit restrained, as if those cheering were simultaneously shuffling the items around in the backpack, fanny pack, or purse to find that one small package of travel tissues their mother or significant other had suggested they take on this trip. I didn’t have such items on me, and as I observed several people pulling the sleeves of their hooded sweatshirts over their hands I realized others were facing the same dilemma as myself. We had all come to see this artist who was unquestionably gaining buzz, but none of us were entirely sure what to expect from her performance.
If I told you I knew the songs Julien opened with I would be lying, but by the time the second song in her set was complete I felt a familiar shiver run down my spine. In the span of what couldn’t have been more than five or six minutes the crowd near the staged had swelled to the point that the venue felt packed. No one was pushing and no one was shoving, but something was clearly making a very meaningful impact. I swiveled my head from left to right as the third song began and my jaw slowly became unhinged as I witnessed men and women, from teens to grey-haired adults, trying their hardest to not bring attention to the fact their faces were soaked with tears. Every now and then I would catch someone wipe their eyes with my peripheral vision, but most let their emotions flow. They didn’t sing, they didn’t dance, and they definitely didn’t try to engage with Baker from the crowd. They, and by they I mean more than ¾ of the audience I could see, seemingly wanted nothing more than to live in the moment. It didn’t matter what song was being played or what was happening outside the Parish walls because for a short amount of time they and I were able to co-exist in a moment made special by one woman, a guitar, and a voice that must be heard to be believed.
By the time Julien reached “Everybody Does,” a song that details the feeling of believing no one will want you if they know the real you, something in me began to shift. The best way I can describe the rush of what felt like fresh blood through my veins is to say it was like the first time you realized music was more than something that played in the background while the rest of life was taking place. It was slow and gradual at first, starting at the tips of my fingers and moving up my arms like the worst case of goosebumps you have ever known, and as the sensation reached my heart I could feel my chest swell with a sense of knowing that something had struck a chord deep within my soul. The melody coming from Julien’s soft-spoken voice had touched on something even I didn’t know I was avoiding, and within a matter of moments the recognition of that fact became too much for my small frame to contain. Like those around me, I too began to cry, but not necessarily because I was sad. I cried because, for once, I felt as if someone got me in a way few people ever could, and it was clear from the lack of dry eyes in the room that others felt the same.
That old adage about how when music hits you feel no pain is a lie. The best music is the stuff that crawls under your skin and into your bloodstream, submerging itself within your DNA strands, and through doing so exposes secrets you’ve kept locked away from everyone, including yourself. As Julien Baker strummed ever-so-softly on her faded yellow guitar I could feel her music seeping into my pores. Her angelic voice bounced off the walls of the crowded venue where everyone had gathered to see her perform and she took it all in with a level of grace and humbleness rarely found in alternative music today. I don’t know if she could see everyone who had come to see her perform, but she could certainly see far enough to grasp the impact she was having on the audience. As her voice rose to hit the highest notes her eyes gazed upwards as if to beg the heavens for relief from the weights that seem to be shackled to her heart’s every desire. I looked up too, though not in hopes of relief, but rather of thankfulness for the moment I was able to experience. As the chaos of a week-long music festival roared outside there was a calm in the room that is hard to describe. The people in that room, myself included, were not concerned with anything on the planet other than the person standing on stage, and for the entirety of her set Julien Baker maintained that unshakable hold on our collective attention spans until time demanded she release us back into the madness of the outside world. We didn’t want to go, and in a way I think she didn’t want to either. We had all just been a part of something special, and the memory of that time will continue to inspire me every day of my life moving forward.
James Shotwell is the Digital Marketing Manager for Haulix, as well as the host of the Inside Music Podcast. He is also the Film Editor for Substream Magazine and co-founder of Antique Records. Whenever free, James tends to spend his time watching Law & Order reruns while playing with his two fat cats, Chub E Chubs and Paws Von Trier, in his tiny Minneapolis apartment. If you like the article you just read you should probably follow James on Twitter.
