Because Music Matters

I have thought quite a bit lately about the music business' transition through the upheavels caused by new technology. The band/cooperative "driftwood" has committed to promoting its' music on the web, rather than traditional media. We rarely perform due to its costliness. We refuse "pay-for-play," and we don't kiss ass. Along the way, we have met great people like Delphine Gunning, who had the idea of hosting performances in a listening room with no bar and a no shoes policy. For a nominal cover folks can hear the best music available in near perfect conditions.

According to the SA Current:

About three weeks ago, Delphine Gunning and Robin Lambaria received a letter from South By Southwest. It wasn't one of those friendly "Hey, just wanted to let you know that Pete Townshend is this year's keynote speaker" kind of letters. It was a stern warning that Gunning and Lambaria better change the name of their new musical festival, which they'd dubbed SXSA, or risk a copyright-infringement suit from SXSW.

The cease-and-desist letter sent Gunning and Lambaria into crisis mode. With their festival only three weeks away and 20,000 flyers already printed, it was hardly a convenient time for a name change. But it says something about the challenges faced by the festival's organizers that the possibility of getting sued by the most powerful multimedia confab on the planet doesn't even rank among their biggest obstacles.

Gunning, a French-born music lover who runs the singer-songwriter haven the Red Room, and Lambaria, a young filmmaker and indie-rock devotee, have been friends since they met at a Buttercup show three years ago. But Gunning, who concedes that her passion often leads her to be overbearing, says that the pressure of building a week-long festival from scratch occasionally put a strain on that friendship.

"There was no way to separate the business partnership with the friendship partnership," Gunning says. "So things can get very personal, especially with me, because I'm a stubborn, self-made person. I always do everything alone. That has been a crash course. But I'm learning. It's teaching me how to work with people, and shut up when I have to. It's hard, but I hope to come out of this a better person."

Gunning and Lambaria have adopted the no-risk, no-reward mindset with their undertaking, which they renamed SA Indie Fest, deciding to blow it up into a seven-day music celebration. They've struggled to attract sponsors (winning a coveted commitment from Dos Equis), to recruit volunteers (they still need 20 more), and to overcome backbiting among some local musicians. But they've received invaluable support from Celeste Diaz Ferraro, a Trinity grad who recently returned to the city after spending six years in Washington, D.C. Ferraro has handled marketing for La Quinta and World Bank, and served as communications director for the governor of Puerto Rico. Her business acumen and calm demeanor brought a sense of organization to Gunning and Lambaria's grand experiment. While Ferraro is officially the festival's marketing director, Lambaria has dubbed her Indie Fest's "voice of sanity."

"I'm not a music-scene person, which is why this is such an odd connection," Ferraro says. "But it's been fantastic, and I've been so glad to meet them.

"San Antonio has changed a lot since I used to live here, and there's more acceptance. People are looking for more sophistication in the types of activities that they participate in, and they're looking for something different. You don't often get to hear this kind of music in San Antonio, unless you go to Austin. And San Antonio shouldn't have to play second fiddle to Austin all the time."

With that in mind, the organizers of Indie Fest shed few tears about having to change the festival's name from SXSA. In Gunning's mind, the festival was always meant to be an anti-SXSW, a warm, inviting, relatively inexpensive, listener-friendly event that treated musicians as artists rather than cattle.

This type of stuff is springing up all over. Not to be outdone, Dan Electro's in Houston once again is hosting 70 bands in March (www.danelctrosguitarbar.com) at South by Due East or SXDE.
This should get him good and sued.

There is plenty of music in Texas to celebrate. People should join the revolution against the oppression of the MSM and search out the good stuff. Because music matters.