ScratchAudio.com SXSW Day Party!

I am pleased to announce that I am helping produce the ScratchAudio.com Day Party at SXSW. The party is on Wednesday March 16th at the Jackalope starting at noon and going to 7:00.

The Gay Blades, Meg And Dia, Fake Problems, Gospel Claws, Kinch and Candy Claws will be preforming. The show is FREE to those 21+ and does have FREE BEER.

Scratch Audio is a collaborative online recording studio. Record a song and invite your friends to add tracks. Or, find a song by someone you’ve never met and remix it. Oh, and did we mention Scratch Audio is free?

There are 62 million amateur musicians in the US and every one of them will tell you that it’s more fun to make music with other musicians than by yourself. The problem is that it can be really hard to find a time and place to get together. For some musicians it’s difficult just to find other musicians that have similar tastes in music. That’s why we created ScratchAudio.com, a collaborative music recording community.

Watch the video: http://scratchaudio.com/make

6:00 PM

The Gay Blades are a two piece from New York City who play an acerbic brand of Trash Pop. What is Trash Pop, you ask? Trash pop is what happens when two keenly observant wanna-be hipsters write and record songs the same pair couldn’t possibly pull off live, and make up for their missing bass player with consistently explosive performances and a heaping spoonful of swagger. Clark Westfield plays the guitar and Puppy Mills plays the drums. They met while volunteering in a traveling sideshow, Clark juggling and Puppy taking tickets. Afterwards, back in NYC, the duo formed The Gay Blades.

5:00 PM

Born in 2004, from that moment on, life for Meg and Dia became a blur of tour buses and recording studios. They have just about checked off every state on the map, playing in sold-out theaters, opening for punk-rock super stars such as Angel and Airwaves and Saves the Day.  Meg and Dia became veterans of Warped Tour, the nation-wide, steamy summer festival. Their harmonious melodies have also floated in and out of ears of patrons in far off lands such as Germany, Switzerland, Amsterdam and London to name a few.  With complete creative and artistic control they created a record which will be released in 2011 that is truly inherent of the band. The band will tour this Spring in support of their new record and hit cities across the country to share their shining new sound.

4:00 PM

There’s nothing predictable about Fake Problems sonic journey from underground heroes to indie rock trailblazers. Since forming in Naples, Florida, five years ago the group have released two critically acclaimed full-lengths, won over countless fans all over the world and toured and played shows with everyone from The Hold Steady to Frank Turner. However with their sophomore release on Side One Dummy Records, Real Ghosts Caught on Tape, Fake Problems have exceeded even their own lofty expectations by creating a cerebral masterpiece that sees the band fully reconciling all of their seemingly disparate influences and proving it’s finally their time to step into the spotlight.

3:00 PM

Gospel Claws are an American rock band based in Tempe, Arizona. Their music has been described as “rambling desert-pop”, “uber-catchy indie pop”, and even “Jan & Dean on cough syrup”. But no matter how one chooses to describe this band, the fact is that singer “Joel Marquard…always delivers.” Admittedly, that last quote is simultaneously referencing Marquard’s music and his day job as a FedEx driver.  After leaving Dear and the Headlights in 2007, he hooked up with longtime friend Sloan Walters. The two songwriters eventually recruited some other friends, John Mulhern and Scott Hall, for a rhythm section. Wesley Hilsabeck, who Marquard hooked up with via his delivery route one day, rounds out the lineup on second guitar.

2:00 PM

Kinch, an indie-pop band from Phoenix, AZ, who for the past few years have felt at home writing sharp, angular rock songs that burrow into the listener’s ear and refuse to leave, while at the same time penning songs full of warmth, maybe a little bit of naiveté, and — dare we say? — even a touch of earnestness. Advances, Kinch’s self-released 2008 debut, was named best Arizona Record of 2008 by the Phoenix New Times, a Village Voice alt-weekly. They have officially showcased at New York’s CMJ Music Marathon, Austin’s SXSW, Milwaukee’s Summerfest, San Francisco’s NoisePop, and dates on Van’s Warped Tour.

1:00 PM

Ryan Hover and Kay Bertholf, composers, arrangers, and principle songwriters of Candy Claws, wrote Hidden Lands on keyboard because they don’t know how to play keyboard. They had to rely completely on what sounded right, rather than rely on techniques they had learned. Strange chords and melodies arose that might sound “wrong” to the trained musician, but sound mysterious and exciting to them.