SXSW Field Report: The Boxing Lesson 03/18/09 (pt 2) and 3/19/09

Since I couldn't go to SXSW this year I invited a handful of bands to submit "field reports" of their SXSW experience. Here's our second report from The Boxing Lesson, written by drummer Kevin Sparks. (Read part 1 here)

The Boxing Lesson press photo.

Wednesday, March 18th

"Started the day off right, with the bus running behind schedule, and missing the 11:00am load-in at Maggie Mae's. I don't drive. Long story. Not really. Thank God there's a backline drum kit, so the gang only had to load-in my snare drum and cymbals. Upstairs. Sorry guys, wish I could have gotten there earlier. Fuck, looks like the show is running right on schedule. I'm still half asleep. I think I played a good show, despite feeling like I'm Jean Claude Van Damme training underwater in Kickboxer.

"Somehow, we had scheduled two post-show interviews for the same time, so Paul and Jaylinn took one while I 'handled' the other. When I say 'handled', I really mean 'gave Latinworks a bunch of meandering responses that didn't really answer any of their questions, because I don't normally do the interviews.' I'm ready to run for public office now. I hope they show my interview online or something. I'm quite the handsome devil.

"After all that business, we grab some food at Guero's and get ready for Round 2 downtown: trying to snag a radio interview. Paul and I wormed our way into a brief spot on KLBJ right after Alex Jones. I think it went well, mostly because I only said two words the whole time. I still feel bad about it though, because the poor Hot Dog King waited for more than an hour or so, only to give up at the last minute to go back to managing His Royal Highness's awesome hotdog stand. We stole his slot.

"After the interview, KLBJ had Paul and I sign a guitar up for grabs in a raffle. I'm the drummer for The Boxing Lesson. I can see the lucky contestant: 'Kevin Sparks signed my guitar. Awesome! No, wait. Who the hell is that? He's not a guitarist. And he's certainly not a celebrity. Oh well, it was free.'

"We finally get over to Cedar Door, and they have a whole goddamn fleet of people ready to haul our gear all over the place. I like this place already. We get our sound check, sounds phenomenal. And, if I do say so myself, we played a great show to a good sized crowd, and I'm feeling like the God of Thunder right now. We stuck around for Built By Snow (my new best friends) and some crazy Italian band, before deciding we really wanted to Party Hard.

"After I lead the gear convoy to our truck, we hoofed it over to The Side Bar to get drunk, and yeah, that didn't happen. We were so tired by the time we got there, we just sat and complained about how tired we were while forcing ourselves to drink like some miserable old farts. Way to go rock stars!

"On to the negative part of the day (aside from the traffic). I hate to complain about free stuff, but ATTN Bars Everywhere: You can cut our beer ticket distribution in half if that means we can have only 2 good beers, instead of 4 crappy beers. I still love you and your armada of roadies, Cedar Door."


Thursday, March 19th

"FREE PANTS! Free pants are awesome, if you didn't already know this. We had an appointment at the Levi's Fader Fort thing to get fitted for free pants and stuff. We had to be there at 1:00pm. We managed to get it pushed back to 1:30 and we barely made it. Ryan, our manager and I got there with a couple of minutes to spare. Paul and Jaylinn got in by the skin of their teeth. Giving away free pants is serious business and you don't want to be late.

"When we get into the free pants room, we thought we were at Chuck E Cheese. After a few beers and several consultations with the fashion adviser who was wearing awesome boots with skulls on it, I took some pants and a sweet jacket that makes me look like Joe Strummer. After we picked out our prizes, they did a brief photo shoot with us, and we had a great time. If Paul and Jaylinn had not made it on time, the photos would have featured only yours truly and our rough and tumble manager. That might have been a little weird, to say the least. While we were there, there was a very successful band also receiving free pants, and they couldn't have been more miserable if you had just killed their parents. Moving on.

"This was our day off, so Ryan and I mostly just wandered around downtown all day, trying to find free drinks and figure out where the hell Viva Voce were playing. Never figured it out. We ended up at the Fader Fort at least four times, I'm sure of it. We ended up seeing Janelle Monae, The Steps, Speak, Tricky and The Warlocks. Three of these bands killed, while two did not fare so well. I'm not much of a trash talker, by the way.

"We attempted to go the Zenith Fuzzbomb, but flaked out because we were so tired from carrying around our bags of FREE PANTS all day long. Since I linked to a video in the last post, I guess I'll put one here as well. It's from the episode of G.I. Joe where Cobra started up a heavy metal band to brainwash teenagers into siding with Cobra. We will be using a similar technique on our next album! Enjoy!"

--Kevin Sparks, The Boxing Lesson