The Austin Art of Performance Shows in the live music capital of the world By C Scott
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ustin, Texas, the live music capital of the world. Musicians from all around come to play shows here; at the Saxon Pub, the Broken Spoke, and Antone’s, just to name a few. The scene is competitive and diverse, with all kinds of genres and all kinds of people. They perform for all kinds of reasons, for money, for fun, or something entirely different. Some of them are locals who know the city and its venues like the back of their hand, others are from out of state, looking for a new place to share their sound. “You’ll find that there’s very few cities that are like this,” said Chris Melas, a local guitar player and music teacher. He goes on to say that it’s rare to find cities with as many good venues as Austin, and that he hopes it stays that way. Melas plays with several bluegrass bands at different venues around the city, and he also has a couple of his students play with him at open mictype shows at places like the Butterfly The Austin Arpeggio - 5
Bar, a venue with an outdoor stage in East Austin. He says that his goal as a teacher is to get his students to a level where they can play in bands and be able to perform live shows. “You’re in the business of selling parties,” Melas explained. There’s a process to finding the venues you want to play at, “you need to be interesting to a booker. You need to have a good video that shows you playing well, that the audio is good, the image is nice and crisp, all that.” He said that, though getting to play at venues may be a bit of work, it’s worth it. Playing for an audience adds to a musician’s playing, to a band’s spontaneity. The audience and the band are reacting to each other, “so you’ve got feedback right away as to what they find exciting, so that you do more of it.” Playing for an audience lets you know what works and what doesn’t about your music and your performance. Todd Thompson, a keyboard player and singer-songwriter who runs a
recording studio in Austin, describes the experience of performing as “an energy, which is hard to define. But it’s really thrilling when it goes well.” He compared playing live to just being in the studio, saying that there’s a control while recording and being without an audience that you lose entirely when you play for an audience, when nothing can be redone. “The kind of chaos of playing on stage, you never quite know how it’s going to work.” He has good nights and bad nights, “but it’s always exciting.” He says he prefers performing live to being in the studio now. Thompson is a songwriter, and he plays his songs with his band at shows. He said his favorite part of performing was, “When they’re singing your music back to you. That’s, in general, probably the best feeling I can have on stage.” Melas said that the best thing for him was just having fun playing music with his friends. Live shows appeal differently
