Geek Weekly #9

We tried, we really did, to get another rock critic interview for the issue, but as you have already read, were unsuccessful. Fortunately, the Creative Director of SXSW, Brent Grulke, was more than happy to go off on Austin, the behavior of rock musicians, andother [and other] topics at Opal Divine's this February.

I want to mention before we begin that you volunteered for this interview.

Absolutely. As a Geek Weekly fan, I wanted to be subjected to the rigors of your interviewing

I'd like to apologize for the absence of Jennifer LaSuprema tonight.

That is too bad.

You don't really get the full treatment. But then again, I had to do the Rob Patterson interview by myself as well. Not that I'm comparing these two. But I wanted to ask you why you volunteered.

Honestly, I just – the interviews with Rob and Margaret, and the general take that you have on things, it sounded fun and challenging, both. You get a lot out of people that otherwise – I've never seen anything like with Michael Corcoran – all of those people I never have seen be quite so frank and I thought that was impressive.

We always like to start put at the beginning, and as far as I know you started as a Cornhusker.

I'm originally from Nebraska. I was born in Nebraska and spent most of my first 13 years in Nebraska. I moved to Texas just before I entered high school, I moved to Houston. I went to school at UT, so I'm not actually a Cornhusker. I never went to the University of Nebraska, but I grew up with the University of Nebraska in my heart.

And you root for Big Red?

Oh yeah. Unless they're playing Texas, and then I get conflicted. The only surety is that I will never ever root for Oklahoma in anything.

So, everyone talks about how great Austin was back in the day, but I want to know what was horrible back in the old days.

Well, the most horrible thing about Austin in the old days was that it was really hard to find a job. As a consquence, it was really hard for anybody to make any money at all. It was just really hard to make money – job or pursuit of art. It was really cheap, but it was really hard to find any work.

So, you were a journalism major?

I was an RTF major.

And there was no student radio – did you get to work at KUT?

No.

How the hell did they teach you radio when ther was no student radio station? Not very well. The thing that was great about it was that I was around a lot of like-minded people, including many of the people I work with today. Louis Black was a TA of mine originally, and his roommate at the time, Ed Lowry, was one of the founders of the Chronicle. Es was the one that said, "Hey, Brent, you need to come write at the Daily Texan." When I first came to school, some of the best shows in town would be at the Union and pitchers were something like two dollars and they had these parties that would last all night and sell pitchers all night to 18 year olds. It just seems so improbable, given today's political climate. Prop an 18-year-old down on the University of Texas campus, give him a bunch of crazy rock and roll bands, and really cheap beer and all night parties. Ultimately paid for by Texas taxpayers' dollars. That's great. So there were no jobs, what else was bad about Austin? Thi is something I really want to pursue.

decided I didn't want to do it anymore. Obviously everybody knows a band's life on the road is really hard. I at any point was not only a sound man but was a tour manager and a road manager, and a road manager's job generally means that you're the first one up and the last one to bed. I'd gotten to the point where I could make some money doing it, which was nice. I'd never done it to make money. I'd done it with my friends, and that was the fun of it.

What kinds of bands were you working with? I went out with a whole lot of Austin bands, the bands that were dubbed the New Sincerity bands, virtually all of them at one point or another. Doctor's Mob, the Wild Seeds, the True Believers, the Reivers, and I went out with the reggae band the Killers Bees, and went out with the Prime Movers from Boston - they were a really, really good band.

So what was it like touring in the Reagan era? It was great fun. There was a big live music audience around the country. There wasn't much money to keep being able to do it. And it was cheap enough for me to keep living in Austin - I remember when I first went out with Doctor's Mob and they promised me. I wanna say $400 for the month, but my rent was $182 and my bills were next to nothing. I got free beer and food, so it seemed like a good deal to me. I had so much fun.

And that's not feasible unless you're with a successful touring band these days. And it was a lucky thing and something that's really different and does concern me about Austin now in terms of musicians. I had all these friends that were musicians and you could make a little monty on the road and play a few shows in Austin. It would be enough money to encourange you to continue doing it to where you might be good enough to make some kind of living at it. Or at lease make some kind of creative statement, even it you didn't make a living at it, at least be able to make a good record or two. And it was inexpensive enough to

live in Austin to be able to do that. Now I can't imagine anyone being able to do that. I can't imagine that being possible. A lot of writer friends of mine and musician friends of mine and were allowed to think of ourselves as these creative types, because we could survive with a part- time job or a relatively low- paying job, something that didn't demand all of our attention. We could still write or play music or mix sound or paint or whatever we wanted to do, and do it long enough to where we might have some semblance of a career. I don't know that it really made for better art- certainly people have made great art, lasting art, under much more difficult circumstances, but it did allow a lot of people to think of being a musician or a creative person as a viable way to live your life. So, you've been around Austin bands for going on 20 years now, so you must get a certain amount of harassment in your position at the conference. Surprisingly little. Some, but there's a fine line between harassment and someone saying, "Pay attention to me," even if that sometimes is a "Fuck you." I'm not so thin-sinned that somebody- if somebody won't demand that they be recognized, it's hard for me to think that anybody else is going to pay attention to them anyway. It requires a certain degree of belief in oneself and I think connected to that is if you've got something to say you want to make sure people hear it. There's a line there, but somebody bitching or being a bit of a pain- I respect that. What are some good examples of crossing the line? There's this sense among certain creative people, musicians that I've encountered, that you hold their ticket to success. If you would give them something, the world would recognize their obvious talent. You can't tell somebody, "Hey, everybody knows who you are, it's just that your audience is limited," Or that you lack something creatively that engages more people. A lot of people think that if they don't have an audience or they don't have the recognition that they beleive that they're due, it's somebody else's fault. So when they think it's your fault, what form does it take? Sometimes I get nasty emails and sometimes I get verbally- Feel free to name names. They know who they are. And truthfully, and this is a bit patronizing, but in cases like that, I kind of feel sorry for them. If your presupposition is, "This guy is fucking me over, if I can just yell at him for a while, something better is going to happen," or whatever sort of response they expect- like I said, I feel sorry for them. I understand people at the Chronicle take a lot of that because they're seen as the only venue- Well, the thing that's really funny is that the Chronicle was largely founded by fans and like-minded people. I think there's probably room in town for something else. Do it yourself! At this point the editors are 50, they're not out in clubs

Spring 2001

every night. I wouldn't expect them to be. And the political coverage now, and in terms of what it means to the city politically is really valuable. Things change over time, and if people think there are cultural gaps, well, there not doubt are and there would be in anything. But, do it yourself. But I think that as the arts paper of record in Austin there is a certain responsibility- As a former editor, I will say this. "Hey, I wanna write." Jason had an agenda of things he wanted to do. Things got covered, he already knew. I didn't have to say, "Oh, this needs to get covered." If you have talented people that want to work, it's an easy thing to make sure that things get covered. I love the stuff that Greg Beets writes, and Kelly Petrash when she wrote about music, but for whatever reason it seems to have been difficult to retain people. Obviously some people go off to do other things. Tim- Tim [Stegall] went off to be a rock star. Tim also walked into the office, too. When I was there, I was lucky, Tim walks in, Jason walks in- Wait a minute, somebody else claimed to have 'discovered' Tim Stegall. I would never claim to 'discover' somebody. That's an ego trip, anyways. I mean, for Christ's sake, the man had been writing for years. That's nuts. Anybody who'd been sitting at the desk would have said, "Oh, great! Here's a talented professional journalist who wants to do things!" I would love an Austin where there were terrific, inspired writers that wanted to be heard, and I'm sure that some of them exist and I'm sure that some of them don't have their voice heard- They all write for us. Annually. Back in the old days, the difference was that there were a lot of fanzines where people wrote about their friends and wrote about the bands that they loved. It wasn't someone saying, "You need to write about these bands," it was the same people that were a part of the audience. It was a scene, it was a community. Truth be told, if I went and wrote about a bunch of punk bands right now, they might be really energetic and really good. I saw it 20 years ago and I'm too old now to where their concerns- I'd be, "Well, what do you know, a bunch of pissed- off kids." Great, I'm glad, but I'm not going to identify with them the way that I would if I were 20. Greil Marcus can identify with Sleater-Kinney. Identify- I don't know if that's exactly right. Instead he can analyze them and decide why they're culturally significant, but that's an entirely different proccess. I can do that too, don't get me wrong. I like snotty 20-year-old punk bands as much as anybody. I'm glad they're around. That's sort of the difference now- I'm glad they exist more than, "Boy, this does something for me!" Have you experienced phases of burnout?

Geeek Weekly #9