For Trevor Anderson, drummer for Edmonton-based marching band dance rockers the Wet Secrets, to go to Austin to see the South by Southwest festival was a treat. Partying down with Priestess was even more exciting. Usually only going to Austin as a visitor and not as a musician playing at SXSW, he was ecstatic about the showcase that the band found themselves rocking way down in Texas.
“We were lucky enough to be on the NXNE showcase, so we were given an intervention by NXNE by being on a great bill,” says Anderson. “[We played with] bands like Two Hours Traffic, King Khan and the Shrines and Priestess. We were lucky enough to be playing with these Canadian bands at the showcase. Oh, we were very pleased.”
SXSW is renowned as a networking destination for indie artists. At any one show you can see lo-fi shoegaze, the Wet Secrets’ style of idiosyncratic dance rock and doom metal. Anderson says that after the NXNE showcase, he had made some new friends in Montreal hard-rockers Priestess, whom he had never met before.
“Most of the rest of my band had met Priestess and the ladies [Kim Deal and Donna] knew them and Lyle [Bell] but I had never met them,” says Anderson. “I got to see their show, meet them and hang out with them. They said, ‘Hey, let’s go to this Norwegian black metal show, do you want to go?’ and I didn’t know anything about that kind of music, so I agreed to go. So I got to see the really good stuff that Priestess wanted to see, so that was cool.”
After moseying down the packed streets of Austin, Priestess — with Anderson in tow — came to their destination. With the black metal band playing on stage, Anderson explains that he soon found out the particular choice of venue for the show to be an “interesting combination of things.”
“All the bars out there are set out for live music,” says Anderson. “I walked into this one bar and I saw a gay dude and a lesbian working the door, saw gay dudes behind the bar and saw some lesbians and I realized, I was in a gay bar watching a Norwegian black metal band with Priestess!”