OK. It's 11:15 AM Sunday, and I'm in the press tent. I am -- of course -- sweating like a really sweaty dog. The kid-band We Go To 11 start in about 15 minutes, and I'm probably about a 14-minute walk from the AKL stage, so, uh, I'm going to be brief. (Well, probably not, but briefer than I otherwise would be.)
Miss Mary Mack and I had a leisurely morning on Saturday. Since the Bummkinn Band and Jambo were playing the first two sets on Saturday and we'd seen 'em on Friday, we took a pass. (The fact that we'd be watching music until 9 PM thanks to the Family Music Meltdown also, uh, played a role in the decision here.) So we got to the Austin Kiddie Limits stage a little into the Sippy Cups' first set of the day.
The Sippys had the most impressive stage setup of the day. Banners on the side and bright day-glo costumes to rival Bjork's for long-distance visibility. The crowd was definitely bigger today than on Friday. Must be something about that whole school is on Friday thing. Their first set was mostly covers, finishing with their reworking of "I Wanna Be Sedated," changed into "I Wanna Be Elated." Can you call it a mosh pit if nobody's actually bouncing off one another, just bouncing up and down?
For their second set, the Sippys mostly did their original songs off their latest album. The band sounded really good, but I need to highlight the Sippy Whose Name Escapes Me who does all the juggling, unicycle riding, costume-wearing, and rhythmic gymastic flag-waving. The Sippys sound good on disk, but their live show has a visual component that makes it lots of fun to see. By this time, the crowd had definitely grown even further, including a fair number of young PWOKs, or, as lead singer Sippy Paul defined them, "People Without Kids." They seemed to be on the youngish side, as if they weren't too far removed from the Sippys' target demographic. And they were to be disappointed as Austin Kiddie Limits producer and MC Tor Hyams had to make no less than 3 announcements telling them that Ben Kweller, scheduled to the special guest, had a sore throat and had to cancel.
The 3:30 set was from Farmer Jason, who rocked the crowd solo-style. Jason, "twin brother" of Jason Ringenberg from Jason and the Scorchers, was probably the most interactive of the performers, turning his "Forest Rhymes" into a 20-minute song where the kids were encouraged to tell him animals (in secret) he then turned into a rhyme (where kids have to guess the animal. Yes, he did indeed have to use the word "peyote" as the key rhyme for "coyote." (After that marathon song, he played an old Jason and the Scorchers song as penance for making the adults sit through a 20-minute-long song.)
Andrea Echeverri came up and played a guest set at the end of Farmer Jason's set (bringing along a good 100 fans to hear some Colombian folksongs, but by that time Miss Mary Mack had had enough of the heat and humidity, which, believe it or not, was even worse than the day before. And we had a Family Music Meltdown to get to.
Gotta run. More music to hear today (including the Jellydots!), then a drive back to Dallas and a flight home and a wife and son to reconnect with...
