A tale of two SXSW festivals

Taiwanese metal band Flesh Juicer performs at Hotel Vegas during SXSW. Credit: Elena Savastano

Austin multimedia festival SXSW has long been a maelstrom of chaos, but this tendency was amplified with its 40th installment, which started March 12 and ends this Wednesday.

At least in part, this year’s confusion can be chalked up to the even more nebulous nature of the festival. The official event is even more decentralized than in years past because it’s no longer held at the city’s convention center, now a crater in the ground.

And while SXSW retains its position as a hub of tech innovation, its musical component continues to be upstaged by unofficial performances courtesy of riff raff on its fringes — who seem to be looking to our halcyon past.

The official experience

SXSW’s official schedule has always been about excess, and this year it’s even more condensed. While festivals past have lasted nearly two weeks, this time it ran just seven days with film, tech and music overlapping, rather than giving music its own second weekend. So many choices happening at once made the options overwhelming.

Topics at official, badged symposia ranged from the applications and advances of AI to a conversation led by Algerian-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil to film screenings, pop-ups and more.

To be sure the topics covered were as wide-ranging as the weather, which swung hard from the 90s on Sunday to the 40s on Monday. A joke circulated that people who visit SXSW and decide to move to Austin while the March weather is mild will have changed their minds after seeing how extreme Texas weather can be.

But, for all its variety, the official SXSW experience is largely inaccessible to most people other than tech bros and industry insiders. A platinum badge, which gets you full access to the festival, runs $2,000.

Adding to the confusion, some official SXSW music showcases were a hybrid of badged and ticketed, opening them up to industry insiders and the public alike. These included the three-night Rolling Stone magazine “Future of Music” showcase, which largely featured up-and-coming pop stars and eschewed rock ‘n’ roll.

However, like every installment of SXSW, the true party was at the unofficial showcases.

Slash Need performs during SXSW 2026. Credit: Elena Savastano

Rock ‘n’ roll whirlwind

Thursday kicked things off strong with the Hotel Vegas 15-year anniversary party, featuring high-energy psychedelic garage rock band the Osees, bratty New York punks Surfbort and Austin acts such as catchy noise-rap duo Haha Laughing, costumed purveyors of insanity J’cuuzi, gimp-masked madmen Tear Dungeon and Amplified Heat, who sound something like a psychedelic Motörhead.

Friday brought more jam-packed showcases throughout town, including “doom wop” trio Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol and intoxicating Western wranglers Rattlesnake Milk at Sagebrush, a honky tonk on Austin’s South Side.

Bad Larry’s Burger Club served up a solid lineup of high energy performances by Austin bands at High Noon Saloon, such as Fuck Money (Austin’s best punk band, according to the Austin Music Awards), political art-rock band Big Bill, female-fronted hardcore band Mugger, chicha band (with fun bonus theremin!) Zona Mutantes and others.

Almost Heaven performs at Hotel Vegas during SXSW. Credit: Elena Savastano

San Antonio bands were featured heavily at SXSW this year, especially at a San Antonio-only showcase called “Ay 35 Fiesta Eterno” at White Horse on Saturday afternoon. The event was booked by Lonesome Rose proprietor and cosmic cowboy Garrett T. Capps, who also performed with his band NASA Country. Headliner Girl in a Coma play to a packed house inside after Lonely Horse brought hard-charging blues-rock in an outside tent.

After the White Horse San Antonio showcase, it was time to take a brief stroll to nearby Hotel Vegas — yet again — for a lineup of punk legends. Those included ’80s Illinois band the Didjits, whose frontman Rick Sims stalked the Hotel Vegas patio stage, simulating pleasuring himself with his guitar and peppering the crowd with bon mots and antagonistic jabs between songs.

“Anybody out there got a wooden leg?” Sims asked in his best Dr. Rockso voice.

The Didjits were joined on that lineup by legacy California punk bands The Mummies and Rocket From the Crypt along with eye-catching Taiwanese metal band Flesh Juicer, whose singer wore an elaborate pig mask.

Sunday brought an international flavor with Middle Eastern-inspired music by The Shams inside at Hotel Vegas and several fusion bands at a charity crawfish boil at Sagebrush, including Austin acts The Point and Los Animeros and San Antonio-based indie Tejano group Los Juanos.

On Monday, the party kept rolling, despite the sharp cold snap. The official Marshall Showcase at Mohawk offered more of a focus on up-and-coming rock bands than the Rolling Stone showcase, since it was meant to showcase the venerable brand’s amplifiers as well as bands who play them. Meanwhile, Shannon Shaw of Shannon and the Clams performed across the highway at Hotel Vegas.

And, despite its condensed schedule, SXSW isn’t even done yet as of this writing. Indeed, its tail end promises to blend seamlessly into Austin’s spring break, which brings its own series of events.

Shannon Shaw of Shannon and the Clams performs Hotel Vegas on Monday, March 16 during SXSW. Credit: Elena Savastano

Days of future past

“I don’t even understand when SXSW is anymore,” Croy, frontman of class-conscious Austin honky tonkers Croy and the Boys posted on Instagram last week.

Honestly, same.

Maybe at this point, 40 years in, SXSW is more a feeling — exhaustion — than a specific time, place or cultural construct.

It’s an “exclusive festival” for “insiders” that is utterly cannibalized by an avalanche of parasitic public events (mostly free) that are actually way more fun than the event itself.

The truth is tech seems to increasingly be the most innovative aspect of the official festival — to a scary SkyNet degree. Meanwhile, the music side is mostly pushing what major labels want to present as the Next Big Thing. Otherwise, up-and-coming artists get to be background noise at juice bar activations.

How can something so mainstream and so “industry” be the source of innovation in music? How can an event that platforms Spotify, which has gutted music-making as a career option, claim to support music?

Or am I a dinosaur for preferring rock ‘n’ roll to backing-track pop? Or thinking physical media made by humans is still relevant and worth investing in as vinyl sales surpass $1 billion for the first time since 1983?

While the official SXSW pays artists somewhere between peanuts and zilch, money can still be made by mid-tier and local bands at the unofficial shows surrounding the event.

For example, one punk band told me they sold out of merch and vinyl and pocketed tens of thousands of dollars at unofficial performances. Turns out, I’m not the only one who prefers physical media — and ye olde tyme rock ‘n’ roll — in this Brave New World.

Increasingly, this seems to be a tale of two South Bys — one for the future and one for the past.

“When is” SXSW, indeed.

For example, I had a hard time paying cash in restaurants, parking garages and venue bars that ended up being cashless throughout Austin all weekend long. I guess I’ll need to upload my prediction market crypto earnings to my Neuralink next year and order food telepathically via DoorDash drone.

But while robots roam downtown Austin, let’s be glad music is still being made by humans at all … and it still rocks.

A tale of two SXSW festivals

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