SXSWORLD

From left: John Hiatt and Ry Cooder perform as Little Village at SXSW 1992. The first step, in the summer of 1991, was finding a new place to do business after the fire. "The whole building had been filled with smoke, and there was a layer of soot over everything in the office," Swenson recounted. "Not having anywhere else to go, we cleaned up as best we could and went back to work. Who knows how long we would have stayed there smelling the fire damage every day, and going home with our clothes stinking from the smoke? But we got an eviction notice from the landlord, who was going to remodel the building with the insurance proceeds. The Chronicle was getting booted out as well, so the hunt was on for a new office. "After looking around at some pretty odd choices, Nick [Barbaro, initially, to scale things back a little bit. "Last year, the biggest com- plaint we heard was just too many bands and crowding in the clubs," reads the '92 program guide's "Welcome to SXSW" message, which went on to reveal that there were actually 100 fewer bands on the showcase schedule. Needless to say, this trend did not last, though it may have made for a kinder, gentler SXSW in George H.W. Bush's last year as president. The ups and downs of the SXSW experience (or in this case, the downs and ups) were neatly encapsulated within the full stretch of 1992's opening day. It began with disaster, when Willie Nelson's bus failed to return to Austin from a distant gig in time for his 10:30 a.m. keynote address. Swenson fielded the bad-news phone call at 8 a.m. that morning. "This was the scenario I'd always feared: a keynote speaker dropping out at the last minute," he recalled. "I tried hard not to panic, and decided to keep the information to myself." Plan B was to let Michelle Shocked, who was booked to give the opening remarks before Willie's keynote, Chronicle publisher] settled on buying the old Butler Brick Company building in Hyde Park on East 40th Street for the Chronicle. It included a tract of land with five lots, and on the last one was a model home built by Butler Brick in 1940. So SXSW moved into the three-bedroom, one-bath, 1200-square-foot house, and after the fire, we were happy to be in a place built out of brick. Out back was a ramshackle detached two car garage, which [SXSW co-director] Louis Jay Meyers remodeled and turned into the Music Festival office." The response to the overflow spring-break crowds of 1991 was, Willie Nelson makes it to Auditorium Shores in 1992 after missing his keynote address. speak for a little longer. "I chatted with Michelle for a few minutes, and asked her how long she planned to speak, and managed to not show any surprise when she said, 'Oh, I guess about 45 minutes.' I thought, 'Great, this buys me some time to figure out what to do!'" Shocked's speech is best remembered by those who were there as meandering and interminable. Swenson recalls that it had been written by her boyfriend, "a rock critic who had profound confidence in his brilliance. It seemed to be a running leap at describing the development of American music starting with black-face minstrel shows, carrying it forward to the new folk music. The audience was growing restless, and after playing a few tunes with her mandolin, Michelle finally left the stage." Meanwhile, Swenson had managed to wrangle a surprise appearance by Willie at a Columbia Records showcase on Auditorium Shores that evening, one of the first large outdoor shows SXSW had staged. The bill featured up-and-coming locals Darden Smith and James McMurtry and producer-songwriter T Bone Burnett, and was headlined by local sensation Poi Dog Pondering. Nelson ended up providing the crowning touch to the evening. "Willie went out by himself and did short great set of songs as the sun was setting, including a favorite of mine, 'Crazy,'" Swenson recalls. All's well that ends well at SXSW, sometimes. Of course, the rest of the weekend would bring other trials — most memorably a Friday night show by Little Village (a supergroup con- sisting of John Hiatt, Nick Lowe, Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner) at the thousand-plus-capacity Terrace venue. "They were the hottest band in our segment of the music business that year," SXSW co-director Louis Black recalled. "Everyone I spoke to talked about the one show they knew they were going to attend was the Little Village show. I was freaking about capacity, worried about turn-away crowds." Apparently nearly everyone else was worried about that too, and Little Village ended up playing to a half-capacity crowd. Meanwhile, back at the Hyatt, some strange left-turns were taking shape in the panel schedules. Out of left field in 1991 had been a forum titled, "Who Killed JFK?" It had nothing to do with the music industry but proved popular enough to warrant a follow-up panel in '92, and led to SXSW putting on a JFK symposium in Dallas, though this proved a short-lived diversion. SXSW ORLD / F EBRUAR Y 2011 19 MARTHA GRENON GREG SELLS

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