Showcase info: Duquette Johnston performs at 10 p.m. on Wednesday, March 18 @ The Tap Room on 6th (311 Colorado St)
Other appearances: Birmingham Goes to SXSW, 1:20 p.m. , Saturday, March 21 @ The Creekside Lounge (606 E.7th St.)
I still think of the first Verbena record – Souls for Sale – as one of the greatest raw, garage rock records of the ’90s. It swaggers like a Stones record that was recorded in Alabama. It was full of piss and sweat, of late night jams recorded after a night of drinking, brawling, and crying. Bassist Daniel Duquette Johnston ducked out of the band before they made the jump to Capitol Records and before singer Scott AA Bondy started dating rock stars (Juliana Hatfield) and hanging out with one of rock’s elite (Dave Grohl). Though he wasn’t out of the music biz for good, Johnston was a hard man to track down unless you lived in Alabama where he was fronting a band called Cutgrass. This was in the infancy of the Internet and to this day there are no traces of any Cutgrass songs that can be found by searching deep enough on Google (believe me, I’ve tried).
In 2006, Johnston released his debut solo album, Etowah, full of twangy, southern rock balladry which kind of reminds me of Neil Young’s stuff (though I own no Young records so maybe I’m way off in my comparison).
As a music fan, I can’t imagine anything greater than SXSW – 4 days of non-stop good music, nice weather, and beer drinking. Is it all it’s cracked up to be when you’re an artist playing it and having to compete with 30 other bands during your allotted time slot?
Sure it is. Who would not want to come play and hang out with so many bands. If a band views it as a competition maybe they should be playing some battle of the band thing back home. Yeah, the music industry is filled with competition, but I’ve adopted the mindset that we’re all trying to make our art. I’m not worried about the other 30 bands playing the same time slot as I am. Whether it’s three people or 300 that end up at my show, they’re all where they’re supposed to be in the moment. Maybe it helps that my wife and I are both huge music fans so we look forward to all the craziness that is SXSW. The great thing about SXSW is that you never know just what to expect.
