AUSTIN, Tex. - As the South by Southwest Music Festival got underway on Tuesday, Panache Booking, a Brooklyn agency, held a party at the Tillery Street Plant Company, letting their clients and a few friends fill the normally quiet and meditative nursery with raucous rock. For many bands on the bill it was the start of a long week.
Mac DeMarco, the Canadian rocker, and his quartet struggled through a tough set. Mr. DeMarco’s vocals were mixed too low in the monitors and he couldn’t hear them. One of the strings broke in the middle of a song and he had to sit crosslegged onstage and change it himself, while his bandmates played “The Girl from Ipanema†and made feeble attempts at humor.
Then he cut his picking hand badly while strumming and started to bleed all over his guitar. He took a swig of beer from a 24-ounce Heineken can, smiled winningly and told the crowd of 150 people he was sorry for the interruptions.
“Weare playing about 500 more times in the week so maybe we can hang out again,†he said.
He exaggerated only slightly. Mr. DeMarco and his band are doing 11 shows over the five-day music festival. And they are not alone. Earlier in the day at the Panache party, Hunters, a Brooklyn indie punk rock band, also did the first of 11 planned shows this week.
With more than 2,200 band vying for attention from journalists, agents, labels and other music industry figures, many groups who are still in the early stages of their careers turn the SXSW festival into a marathon of appearances, hoping to raise their profiles, attract the attention of critics and sell recordings. The proliferation of unofficial live-music parties piggybacking on the festival’s official showcases makes it possible for an industrious band to do three or four shows in a day.
This year is no different. Robert DeLong, an alternative rock musician from California who recently signed with! Glassnote Records, is doing a dozen shows, trying to promote the album he released last month called “Just Movement.â€
Charli XCX, a 20-year-old British pop singer and songwriter who has been trying to conquer the American scene, is doing a series of eight shows here, hoping to promote her debut album “True Romance,†which comes out on April 26. “The Lone Bellow,†an Americana trio from Brooklyn promoting their debut album, is also blitzing SXSW, doing a dozen shows.
Despite the obstacles, Mr. DeMarco pushed through his set in good cheer, offering up his lighthearted rock songs and throwing in a few tongue-in-cheek diversions (the band broke into Dave Brubeck’s Take 5 during one jam and transformed another riff into “Taking Care of Business.â€) He finished with a lounge-singer-tyle torch song “for the ladies.â€
After the set, he professed to not know why he was doing so many shows this year. In October, the band put out its second album, “Mac DeMarco 2,†on Captured Tracks.
“It’s weird because we are coming down to play about a million shows, and I kind of get the impression South-By is for meeting agents and meeting labels, but we already have booking agents and a label, so I guess we are just playing,†he said. “Maybe we’ll meet some cool people.â€
He acknowledged another motive was a desire for vindication. Four years ago, the festival declined his application for a showcase spot. “I played house shows and slept in my car the whole time,†he said.
Hunters â€" guitarist Derek Watson, vocalist Isabel Almeida, bassist Thomas Martin and drummer Gregg Giuffre â€" have a more pressing need to generate buzz among tastemakers. The band recently acquired a manager, signed a deal with a label and are putting the finishing touches on! a debut ! album to release later this year. Good reviews at the festival could give the album a lift. So they spent the money for four people to travel from New York to Austin and are sleeping at a friend’s house.
“It’s fun to play a bunch of shows and see everyone,†Mr. Watson said.
