Swervedriver live at Red 7, SXSW 2015
There are bands, who seem to have disappeared, yet never lost their fan base. Then they come back, and are (still) so incredibly good that it blows your mind. Swervedriver is one of these bands with not having released an album in 15 years and then putting out a gem like I Wasn’t Born to Lose You.
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve known Swervedriver from the 80s or if you just got drawn recently into their beautiful, guitar driven, lush sound – going to a show of theirs is a no-brainer!
I was lucky that night in Austin (03/20/15), having secured myself a stage front and center place during the set of The Twilight Sad, and waited in anticipation for Swervedriver to take the seemingly small stage of Red 7. Shortly after Midnight, Adam Franklin (vocals, guitar) appeared and announced that their bass player Steve George couldn’t go on tour with them but that Mick Quinn of Supergrass would fill in. Meanwhile the other band members, Jimmy Hartridge (guitar) and Mikey Jones (drums), took to the stage too.
Red 7 set-list which my concert buddy Greg took home…
We got treated to five songs from the new album (Autodidact, For A Day Like Tomorrow, Lone Star, Everso, Red Queens Arms Race) as well as old(er) material. From what fellow fans, who’ve seen the afternoon show and the one the day before told me, each show seems to feature a slightly different set. Standing so close, the sound was loud but that’s what good earplugs are for! On the flip side though, I could admire great guitar play and got an idea of how to have fun with more than half a dozen pedals. That’s also the reason why I decided on the pedal-centric photo as the visual to go with for this post. It’s by all means no disrespect for the band but quite the opposite!
To stay current, follow Swervedriver on Facebook and/or Twitter, check out the following photo gallery and enjoy a recent KEXP live session, a few scrolls down…
== All concert photos by glamglare.com – Elke Nominikat and Oliver Bouchard ==
Enjoy the recently uploaded life performance: Published on Apr 2, 2015 – http://KEXP.ORG presents Swervedriver performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded March 8, 2015.
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