In 2014 we went to see Dick Dale in Austin at the Red-Eyed Fly. (It was a great show!) Being a guy who makes Hawaiian-style shirts, I took particular notice of a guy wearing one with the central motif of Hawaiian shirts! That's my kind of meta! So I introduced myself to him and he introduced his friends to us. So that's how I met The Mighty Landshark, which would before long change their name to the Boss Jaguars! Now they've been with us every year fom then-on.

Here are Cedar and I at the Dick Dale show.

This was our very first SXSE. I'm amazed that even then I managed to have 7 bands play. The Arts Market up to that point had been assembling in the parking lot of The VORTEX / Butterfly Bar, so as to be visible to foot-traffic along Manor Rd. We held our events every Saturday, and up to that point had just had one or two singer-songwriters on the bill. Even at the first SXSE, it was more than just Austin bands (two of the bands were from San Antonio). This was inside the backyard complex of the venue. It was well attended and successful for the venue, the artists, the bands, and the attendees (From day one we have always striven for the win-win for all participants). Ernest Hernandez of King Pelican remarked "I like your style. Lets do this again". So we did.

Resi Murray of Abstract Expressions by Resi.

Even in the middle of the first year, I was creating other Surf Rock based events for the market. This poster expressed not only our land-locked status, but also the hot and dry conditions of the Texas summer.

The Really Rottens throw it down!

Los SuperAvengers take a knee!

The Del-Vipers, with the ever-present Cedar hooping down front!

...King Pelican...

...The Nematoads...

Our 2nd annual event was the first to take place in two venues. This one was extremely well attended, the best of any I had managed to put together so far, and I also managed to have 50 hand-made vendors! The problem (which I had tried unsuccessfully to solve) was that most of the vendors were setup in the parking lot just outside the fence, while the music could only be put on within the compound of the VORTEX / Butterfly bar. So even though folks had to pass them to get inside and the gates were wide open, most attendees just hung out inside and did not really peruse the rows of pop-up tents set up on their behalf. I did my best on every mic break to encourage folks to explore outside, to no avail. Vendors groused on social media and one stole a brand-new stool that I had lent them. It took a while for the trust in the arts market to return, and I would never again accept a situation where the vendors were not completely included at a venue in the same general space, even going so far as to have two different stages to get the crowd to move around (something I had pitched to The VORTEX but they felt it was not feasible to run electricity out there, and a generator was not an option either).

Daikaiju melted everyone's faces, as they do.

I was able to add go-go dancers in 2015, Clara and Abra. Here they are dancing for The Del-Vipers...

...and The Sandworms.

Around this time I started to add a UFO as a regular fixture on all the posters. Consciously, it was because of the motif used in the dystopian Statue-of-Liberty-poster above, but perhaps subconsciously it was because we had become somewhat nomadic in our quest for the right venues to host our events.

By now we had moved the market out of The VORTEX in order to make sure there was no distinction between the "stage area" and where the vendors would be, to be more inclusive of everyone involved.

One year we had a wealthy benefactor who swept into town with his own surf-themed clothing line and he wanted to make a big splash, so he told me he wanted to sponsor my event. He was talking big budget, money is no object, etc. and he wanted to get some big names at the top of the bill. So I enlisted Cedar to help with this since she was the one who had gotten me into Surf Rock in the first place and we contacted the Mermen, Man Or Astroman, and Dick Dale. The formers told me what they needed to be paid and said if we could bring that budget then they were in, and Cedar was in negotiations with DD's wife, who was handling his bookings, and things started to get down to where the rubber meets the road. So we told our "benefactor" that before we could go any further (taking up about two weeks of our full time work at this point, scouting locations, etc.) that we needed to get paid what he'd promised for this amount of time so far. (I had had a gut feeling we were going to get fucked out of the gig we had been setting up.) Then he demanded that we give him all of the contact info and copies of our emails we had exchanged with those we'd been in negotiations with, which we were not so naive as to give him, and then he started getting really weird, hedging and being evasive. I finally called him on his bullshit and then he started saying he had spent more on wine bottles over the weekend than what he owed us, so we should just shut up and be grateful, and we'd get paid down the line. And at that point the guy started trying to edge me out of the equation altogether to just deal with Cedar (thinking she was easier to manipulate).

We both walked away, but he left something like 30 messages on Cedar's phone over the next two days. Sadly DD passed within about a year. Later, some of the bands in town did take some small amount of his money to throw a small show, and it was moderately attended (because it had no real marketing budget). I attended and the guy he'd worked with in putting this together was embarrassed, like I had busted them (because I had warned them to stay clear of this guy). And the "benefactor" came up to shake my hand and say he hoped there were no hard feelings. And sure, I shook his hand. I don't hold onto that shit, but I don't forget it either. I think they pressed one compilation CD in the name of his clothing company, then the guy faded away to his next ill-fated venture, thankfully leaving the Austin Surf scene behind.

They say on the road to lasting success you will meet every kind of possible obstacle that can get in your way. I'm glad I can check that one off of the list.

A year or so later I was able to go backstage at Utopia Fest where Man Or Astroman were playing and in the "green room" I was finally able to tell them the whole story. They found it amusing and were glad to have dodged the bullet. They also said that if I did ever come up with the budget, they'd still be down. I still hope that can happen someday.

So we moved just down the street to this little triangle of grass where Dean Keaton and Manor Rd diverge. There was a little former gas station there that had become a restaurant called El Sapo. They were glad to host us for a while, but then the place got sold. So we combined our location for SXSE that year at The Nomad Bar instead of having it in two places.

Wax Animals bringing it to the strip.

Ok, I know it's a snowboard and not a surfboard, but we couldn't use a silver spacefaring surfer because we didn't want the full might of Marvel coming at us.

Los SuperAvengers tear it up again!

Cedar hoops while The Spoils set up.

King Pelican rock the pseudo-wharf.

This was the year where we had the event at a surf park so people could actually surf, and it was also our first time to have an international artist (The Blind Suns, from France) but the people who ran the park were ridiculously controlling (which is why we ended up competing with SXSW, albeit outside of town so we only had like 5 vendors). So it was no surprise that the place went under not too long after. (No pun intended).

But we had a good time. And surfing turned out to be too expensive for anyone to undertake, but I managed to talk the venue into letting me and the folks from France stroll out onto the dock for free to get the lay of the park. And they gave me and the bands beer tickets. The beer brewed onsite was the one thing they had got right.

The Boss Jaguars, in suits no less.

Cedar again, with her Laika & The Cosmonauts t-shirt from their very last performance ever (which was in Austin!)