Virtually Home

I was on my way down to Dallas, having scheduled an interview and three days of non-stop rock'n'roll in Austin, which I was unwilling to be deterred from, despite the onset of a horrendous upper respiratory infection. Luckily for me, Bright Eyes was also on their way to the festival and stopped through Dallas to play a Thursday night show at the Palladium on the last night First Aid Kit was sharing their stage. First Aid Kit is a Swedish folk duo made up of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg. They're 21 and 18 respectively, and have been recording for four years already. Their music is harmony-heavy and their lyrics thoughtful (and in English, in case you were wondering where I'd picked up Swedish). Johanna sings the main vocals and plays a guitar while Klara usually takes the harmonies and accompanies Johanna with a harp or a keyboard. They played the show in nearly-matching black 'N Sync and Spice Girls t-shirts, circa '99, which you shouldn't take as a...

On Friday, after a little bit of scrambling to print concert tickets on account of complications involving multiple malfunctioning printers, non-access to computer labs and missing ID cards, Zack and I picked Jacob up and, after a brief stop to add fluid to Zack's power steering system, we headed south on I-35 to Dallas. The weather was happy and sunny, and we basically had a sing-along all the way down. We ate some really terrible wings at a Church's Chicken attached to a gas station and headed to House of Blues. (Prepare yourself -- all of my photos from this show were taken on my poor iPhone, whose camera lens is scratched.) Finding the line proved to be kind of difficult, as there wasn't much of one, but we ended up inside behind three OU students (they were the extent of the line) who'd come down for the show and who informed us that, unless we spent $15 dollars at the bar or in the gift shop, we might not end up so close to the front as we would expect. A fift...