My Vancouver SXSW

by Anna · Published April 2, 2015 · Updated April 2, 2015

Above is a photo gallery featuring the band Needs.

Every year at South by Southwest, I seem to have a theme that runs through the event, a theme which I can never pick up until the event is over. This year my SXSW turned out to be far more Western Canadian than I’d expected.

My 2015 SXSW houseguest Jason Whyte is Canadian, and has now gone home to Canada. Over the years of staying with me he has gifted me with Canadian sea salt, DVD’s of Canadian movies and television programs and a very soft T-Shirt reading “Canada.”

As Whyte has stayed with me multiple times over several film festivals, he has made a point of telling me that he had travel insurance covering him during his visit to the US. He has even told me that travel insurance for Canadian citizens is both cheap and super easy to purchase online.

Killing time while standing in line at Fader Fort, I ended up talking to the Canadian dude standing behind me in line about travel health insurance for visiting Canadians, and the need for it while in the US.

I was surprised that the random Canadian waiting in line with me turned out to also be from Vancouver Island in British Columbia like my SXSW houseguest Whyte. And the random Canadian even went a bit pale when I mentioned Whyte’s name, as he knew who he was from Whyte having spots on some radio shows in Canada.

Turns out that the random Canadian that I was talking to in line was Matt from the band Viet Cong, a band I had totally meant to see at SXSW, before reality got in the way. Even more randomly, Viet Cong had played the Fader Fort earlier in the week with Austin drummer Thor Harris helping them out on drums, as their drummer had an injured hand during SXSW.

Since we were talking about health care and drummers, I’m glad I suppressed an urge to rather randomly ask Matt if he’d met Thor (who is from the same small Texas town as me) during the festival, as that might have been a bit much for Matt. Of course, it turns out that maybe I should have done just that.

Below is video of Viet Cong (with added Thor) at The Fader Fort Presented by Converse. I’m so sad I wasn’t there, as this clip looks AMAZING. But one can’t be everywhere.

One of the other bands that I liked during SXSW was the newly created yet old school punk band Needs. Their show was amazing, and they should be booked for Fun Fun Fun Fest pronto! Read their Stereogum interview here. Needs has NPR taking notice of their music as well!