2011

Now that we’re back and fully recovered from the largest music convention in the country, its time to reflect on exactly what happened to Three Grown Men during their first assignment on the road at SXSW Music in Austin.

Kevin Smallwood

When we decided to do SXSW, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew there would be a lot of skinny jeans and flannel -which is not exactly my scene – but most of my apprehension was due to the fact that I didn’t know 97% of the 2,000 bands.

With a cumulative sleep total of 17 hours in over four days, I can honestly say that SXSW is by and far the best music “festival” in the country. First of all the venue is actually the city of Austin. I have never been anywhere where I’ve literally been…everywhere. Indoor venues, outdoor venues, parks, lakes, rivers, monuments, crosswalks; if there was a free space and an open ear, someone was bound to be playing music there.  Overall I’d say we covered about 5 miles per day – and we rarely went to the same place twice.

• 3GM @ SXSW: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4

I can’t say for sure how many bands we saw, but I know which ones gave me that “oh wow” feeling. You know the one – it’s that moment where your sense of hearing is so profoundly pleasured by something new that it fires off synapses that would otherwise lay dormant in the comfort of your musical bubble.

READ ON from Three Grown Men on their SXSW experience…

Denver based quartet DeVotchKa released their fifth studio album 100 Lovers on ANTI-records earlier this month. The worldly romantics retreated to the Arizona desert with producer Craig Schumacher to record 15 original

We’re saddened to report that a 19-year-old man died early this morning from injuries sustained after falling through a fourth-floor window of the Petersen Events Center on the campus of

Well, we started with 32 covers, 29 of which had won a Cover Wars over the past year and three that gained entry into the tournament via our Play-In Game, and we are down to our Final Four in the third annual Cover Wars March Madness. Voting ends on Friday at midnight EDT, so take a look at the remaining contestants and be sure to make your vote count.

Matchup #1:

Ramble On (Led Zeppelin)

Phish debuted this cover at Alpine Valley in the Summer of 1998. As most Phish fans know, there has been one other performance ever and it was the following week at Vernon Downs where the band paired Ramble On with their own Slave To The Traffic Light to close the first set. There are some killer Ramble On Teases in the Slave jam. Source: 8-1-1998

[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/phramble.mp3]

UPDATE: The text in all the descriptions for Cover Wars March Madness are taken from the original editions which at times – are out of date. As one of our readers pointed out in the previous round – Phish has since performed one more partial performance of Ramble On, and yes – it was pretty terrible.

VS.

Perpetual Groove – Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney) – A Play-In Selection

Perpetual Groove performing Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney from 10-30-2010

[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/pgroovemadness.mp3]

READ ON to place your vote and to check out the other match…

Words: Pete Mason

In 1991, Jon Trafton and Reid Genauer met at the University of Vermont and began playing guitar together. They soon formed Strangefolk, a staple of the early 1990’s East Coast jamband scene and a band that would go on to tour the country, regularly performing at festivals and even founding a fest of their own.

[Strangefolk Family Photo, Circa 1996 – via Jon Trafton]

Their initial incarnation fractured in 2000 as Genauer left and the band continued without him. Now with the twentieth anniversary of the band upon us we look back at their career with reflections from the band members past and present.

Strangefolk started out in Burlington, Vt. in 1991 when Reid Genauer and Jon Trafton met as freshman while Jon was playing guitar on the school’s campus. Trafton was playing with the band Wide Whale and invited Reid to join them in some jam sessions. They quickly formed a musical bond and decided to form a band together. Their first practice as a duo was in the basement of Slade Hall at UVM in the fall of 1991.

Genauer: The first two songs Jon and I collaborated on were Two Boys and Things That Fly. I had written Two Boys and Jon spruced it up musically and Jon had written the music to Things That Fly and I added lyrics. I recall weeks later we performed those two songs at an open mic night and blew the doors off the place or at least we felt like we did. Whether it was actual or perceived is almost irrelevant, the point is that it was after that open mic, the performance of those two songs and the crowd response, that we knew we were on to something good. In my mind that was the start of Strangefolk that night – that moment.

Trafton: When I ended up with a double and no roommate, it became our first space to play together.

READ ON for more of The Strangefolk Story…

Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bob Weir as well as former GD managers Rock Scully and Sam Cutler as well as roadie Steve Parish share remembrances of