We are hittin our stride here in Austin. Isaac and our drummer have discovered the beauty of screwdrivers and Michael just wants people to let him live. After breakfast here at Kerbey Lane Cafe we are playing a BBQ at 32nd and Red River at 4pm. Then we are playing an evening show at Beauty Bar.
Here is our official SXSW artist page.

Evening Showcase details:
Friday, March 19th @ 8:00 PM
Beauty Bar
617 East 7th Street
Austin, TX

We made it to Austin, TX. Finally, it’s 5AM. I’m reaching my breaking point. Isaac, the true road warrior, is beginning to hallucinate, experiencing rips in space and time. Michael almost puked on the hotel attendant. Now we have to get our gear up to the 3rd floor.

Our first show is today, Thursday March 18 – The Brooklyn Vegan/AnSo Day Party @ Spider House in Austin TX w/Kid Congo Powers, DM Stith @2:00PM. Here a look at the flyer & lineup.

We’re leaving the Bay Area behind tonight and headed to Austin, TX for a bevy of shows with the full 5-piece band. In anticipation for the festival Tapscott was interviewed by Spinner/AOL.

Odawas started out with a grand idea — combining classical music with gritty folk songwriting a la Neil Young. Over the course of five albums the band has perfected the mix and expanded it with dizzying layers of surreality and sensuality. Spinner recently chatted with singer and keyboardist Michael Tapscott about his band’s upcoming SXSW performances, Phil Collins, and organic trail mix.

Describe your sound in your own words.
The design or great idea of our band was to combine classical music and classically pop production with gritty folk songwriting. Whether we have achieved that, I don’t know (laughs).

How did your band form?
Isaac and I met when we were both working at a student paper. The first thing we ever made together was supposed to a soundtrack for a short film he was making.

What are your musical influences?
Certainly Neil Young, which gets said a lot. Richard Wagner, Mercury Rev, Grandaddy.

How did you come up with your band name?
Odawa is the name of an Indian tribe in Northern Michigan. Every summer when I was a kid I would go to a place called Goodheart, and there was an island near there called Beaver Island where the Indians still lived. As a kid it seemed like a magical place, but the first time I went there it was really depressing. A lot of the people were just standing around drinking in the middle of the day. And then I learned the island is sinking into Lake Michigan. I think it represents the distortion of childhood memories and dreams.

What’s your biggest vice?
Diet soda — Diet Pepsi in particular. I drink, like, six a day, and they give me stomachaches, but I still drink them.

What’s in your festival survival kit?
Probably a good book to read. Right now I am pretty into silent movies, so maybe something by Fritz Lang to watch on the laptop. Diet soda, of course, and since I work for an organic food company, a large bag of organic trail mix.

What do you think about playing about SXSW?
Played last year for the first time. Our experience was not so great because it was not an official showcase. This year we are playing as part of the official festival, and think we are playing on some good shows. Also excited because we will playing as a full band, which we did not do last year.

What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
Phil Collins ‘Face Value.’ That record is a huge influence on our latest record. Although it doesn’t seem to be a guilty pleasure. I like the idea of Jimmy Buffett being a guilty pleasure, but when I listen to it, I just don’t like the music.

Beatles or Stones?
The Beatles. When I was in college I was a teaching assistant for a Beatles course, so I was sold.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen or experienced while on tour?
On our last tour we were in Phoenix, staying with a girl we met. She lived in a one-room studio. She and a band member (who will remain nameless) got very drunk and had sex while we were all in the room. I just put on my headphones, as I didn’t need to hear that. But the funny thing was that he left his shoes on the whole time.

The Future!

this is our scene, clearly

certainly not above Bob Dylan – much less anybody – to steal from good sources – I just had a dream that I wrote a novel of the parallel occurrences of the drab life of a 60s teenager with the extraordinary and ordinary events of John, Paul, George and Ringo before they hit the big time, circa 1960-1 – in the dream this was basically Don DeLillo’s Underworld. Good story right?

But an interesting source and one that makes more sense the more one thinks about it – check out the trailer for Rebel Without a Cause, which I just watched this week – tell me you don’t hear “It Ain’t Me Babe” in the main theme, try not to hear it and finish it with, “to open each and every door…”

The new Joanna Newsom song in the upper right corner here is sounding quite good -

We saw her play with the Chicago Symphony a couple years back and though it was thoroughly impressive, the strings seemed muted. Maybe it is just me wanted to see a woman being overpowered by my own Wagnerian dreams, but perhaps there is a personality con job going on here. The new songs she played, which I can only assume will be on this new record, seemed to reach back more to an Appalachian (well maybe Rocky Mountain) folk – but this aint John Denver.  They maybe bordered on becoming too far gone down the path of long epic ballading – but maybe that’s because I’ve yet to draw my own life’s breath from these new stories – for length and the absence of brevity seems that it could be an issue for Have One on Me. I’ve always assumed it was correct that people were made to digest music as an artistic experience in 20 to 30 minute chunks.

I’m simply trying to say this is fascinating listening here, and this is from somebody who found The Milk-Eyed Mender unlistenable. J Newsom is far above us all, which is sort of unfair to say because she is clearly playing a different game, and what the hell, a triple-LP for $25 – I’ve already pre-ordered mine.