Photos by Claire L. Evans. Concert photo by Jaclyn Campanaro.
YACHT
Free booze, glad-handling suits, and hot tub nights — no it’s not a Bret Easton Ellis novel, it’s the one-man Portland band on the road at SXSW
By Claire Evans
Published: April 2nd, 2007 | 2:46pm
We're in Austin, at the most important conference in the music business, and Jona Bechtolt has just kicked his microphone.
Actually, three bars into "So Post All 'Em," his set's opener, he's thrown his microphone haplessly into the air, caught it, executed a couple of worrisome "skip-it" moves over the swinging mic cord, then kicked it across the ground. The sound guy seems visibly shaken: this must be his first encounter with the leapfrogging blitzkrieg that is a YACHT show.
Bechtolt — the longtime Portlander that is the force behind YACHT, The Blow, and more crunk remixes than you can shake an audio cable at — seems unfazed. He screws the microphone back together and the crowd morphs into a bobbing, courteous arc around his dance moves. We're on a miserable-looking patio behind a Mexican restaurant, but kids and enlightened industry suits are glad-handling Lone Star beers, squatting on cars in the parking lot, and whooping. We've only been in Texas for a couple of hours.
Following this one-man band, as Bechtolt trolls around the tradeshow booths and packed venues of SXSW, is an unorthodox experience. Ironically, he doesn't love live music or relish crowds. The festival's hyper-commercial vibe doesn't sit well with him, either. "SXSW seems to be mostly about wasting paper, plastic, and money," he announces, waving a handful of flyers and freebies in the air, "from the giant bag of useless and ineffective promotional materials every band receives, to the handbills covering the streets, to the oceans of energy drinks, to the mega-sponsorship of every event. It's gross and I've heard that this year was the grossest yet." He has a point: as we walk, we’re hit with a barrage of flyers and lanyards from the freebie-toters trawling the street.
Consequently, we take large absences from the festivities to seek the asylum of a decent vegetarian restaurant, and even longer breaks to marinate in the hotel hot tub ("I expected there to be less pool and hot tub time," he tells me, visibly pleased with the change of plans). On Friday night, he throws the towel in entirely and we end up watching The Bodyguard in the relatively safe haven of the Sheraton Hotel.
On the evening of the microphone kick, however, we have plenty to do; The Fader Magazine has asked Bechtolt to DJ a party — the Meat Puppets reunion show, no less — at their "fort," which is actually just a courtyard soaked in spilled beers, Levi's ads, and empty cans of energy soda.
We have fun with it, snacking on Baked Lays chips while slamming Beyoncé tracks right into Calvin Johnson b-sides, Descendents angst-opuses, and Atlanta snap cuts, while bands — Swedish teenagers Lo-Fi-Fnk and the Norwegian INXS-apers, New Violators, for example — pour on and off the stage in a regimented schedule. The crowd is pretty sparse and although no one is dancing, we're busting moves behind the decks. Meat Puppets take the stage and we crawl down from the DJ booth to relive the ’90s and double-fist the free beer. This, except for an aborted opening slot for the Good, the Bad, and the Queen; is our closest brush with SXSW legitimacy.
Bechtolt’s second show at the festival is also unofficial, the SXSW equivalent of off-off-Broadway; this one begins inauspiciously at 4:30 p.m. in an empty, otherwise luxurious bar called the Lucky Lounge, slightly off Austin's main drag.
One song into the show, however, a quickly converted YACHT crowd metabolizes out of nowhere, spazzing and weaving between Bechtolt’s erratic leaps. In one fluid movement, Bechtolt jumps up onto the bar, Coyote Ugly–style, sending hanging lamps swinging and paper napkins aflutter. The crowd goes ape shit, and for a moment, the whole paper-wasting, corporate-sponsored, Austin palaver seems worthwhile.
It’s his before-last show of the festival, and we’ve just gotten into the swing of things. After his set, beaming and sweaty, Bechtolt enthuses, "I feel like my best shows are when the odds are against me."
Watch YACHT in action at SXSW.
When she’s not following musicians around, Claire L. Evans freelances and tries to understand String Theory from her home in Portland, OR.
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more