Foreign Speakers

Deerhoof is not only one of my favorite bands, they put on one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen. (I took that photo of them at SXSW 2013.)

Fed up with a recent NYTimes piece about bands that seem to have no business plan playing SXSW, guitarist Ed Rodriguez outlined how Deerhoof has managed to make a living without day jobs for over a decade: they tour 4-6 months out of the year, they split up managerial duties, and they practice what the Minutemen called “jamming econo”:

We tour in a minivan carrying the band, a sound-person, equipment and merchandise. We wanted to use a small vehicle so we sculpted our gear around that idea. John and I bring one guitar each. We use single-speaker guitar cabinets and Greg plays a tiny drum set. We rarely pay airline baggage fees. People are still shocked when they see us working our own merch table. Our SXSW story is boring. When we decided to play the festival, a tour was planned around it. We rented a minivan for three weeks for $1,600. When we knew what dates we were playing I booked a good Austin hotel back in December when they were still less than $80 a room. We were in Texas, so we ate tacos. If you didn’t eat tacos you made a mistake — it’s Texas! Including our five shows in Austin we played 21 shows in 20 days. The logistics are dull but the shows themselves will be tales of glory passed from generation to generation.

Read the rest of the interview here.

If you don’t know their music, here’s a SoundCloud playlist of some of their stuff, and here’s a full concert: