“Anybody hungover?” asked Newcastle upon Tyne singer-songwriter Andrew Cushin (not to be confused with the similarly named Andrew Cashen, who was also an official artist at this year’s SXSW) at the outset of his Monday afternoon showcase at the British Music Embassy. “I’ll fight anyone who says they’ve got a worse hangover than me. SouthBy’s absolutely ruined me.”
It’s a fact that during SXSW, the booze can flow pretty freely, and if you’re not careful, it can, in fact, ruin you. Luckily, Cushin was a consummate pro and held it together for a fairly impressive set highlighted by his strong voice and tunes like “Catch Me If You Can” and “Waiting For the Rain,” which he introduced as the first song he wrote back when he was just 16. Noting that the song helped him get a record deal and he’s got a lot of respect for it accordingly, he added that he hoped we enjoyed it. And if we didn’t? “The bar’s over there.”
A couple of hours earlier, Liverpool’s MT Jones (I later overheard another concertgoer humorously refer to him, in error, as “Mount Jones”) took to the same stage to deliver a set of unabashedly retro-sounding soul drawn from his debut album Joy, which, at the time of this performance, was still a few days away from its release.
Standout track “Nothing I Can’t Do” saw him drawing direct inspiration not from the expected soul influences, but from fellow Liverpudlian John Lennon—specifically Lennon’s distinctive rhythm guitar style. Jones noted that he had always admired Lennon’s playing and wanted to incorporate something similar into one of his own tunes.
While Jones’s throwback grooves and Cushin’s bleary-eyed banter made for memorable performances, perhaps the best stage banter of the day came from Old Crow Medicine Show frontman Ketch Secor, who offered up a running commentary on Austin, SXSW, and how times have changed. Playing a little further east on Sixth Street, at Inn Cahoots, alongside his OCMS bandmate “Critter” Fuqua, Secor offered up plenty of local references (HEB and Whataburger came up more than once, essentially becoming running jokes), sarcastic jabs at how much Austin’s changed over the years, and humorous reminiscences of playing SXSW in days long gone by – you know, “back when you could still get a record deal.”
His stories ranged from playing South Congress alongside Norah Jones (and Fuqua awkwardly asking about her father, Ravi Shankar) to a Waterloo Records gig with Daniel Johnston, who Secor claimed was drinking a Slurpee as big as the fiddle he was holding. But the set wasn’t all laughs – Secor had more serious matters on his mind as well.
Secor and Fuqua were playing as part of the showcase put on by Artist For Action, a coalition of musicians dedicated to gun violence prevention. And as an artist for action, Secor was more than willing to get a little political, most notably in his performance of OCMS’s “I Hear Them All, played as a medley with Woodie Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” The duo also threw in a few Texas-appropriate covers from the likes of Willie Nelson and Lefty Frizzell before finally closing things out with their big hit, “Wagon Wheel.” And though Darius Rucker and innumerable buskers have made that song ubiquitous enough that I never need to hear it again, once you hear it live, sung by the guys who wrote it, it’s pretty hard to deny.
