SAT AUG 7 at SUGARCANE for HPMA

Today we played over at Sugarcane for the Houston Press Music Awards showcase. For the uninitiated, every year the Houston Press (weekly alternative newspaper for Houston) has has a process were first in the spring people can nominate their favorite local bands, local songs, singers, musicians, etc. etc. They have a series of categories, and the top 5 nomination vote getters are "up" for a respective award. There is a month where the greater Houston populace can vote on his/her favorite band, etc., all culminating in the Houston Press Music Awards showcase--wherein 60 of the nominated bands play at about 10 music venues (and also represents the last day of voting). 5 days later, the winners are announce. This year, PLUMP was up for Best Funk/R&B and also Jason Jackson was nominated for Best Miscellaneous Instrumentalist.

In past years, the showcase was held in the late afternoon early evening in downtown Houston, where all the venues were in walking distance. This year, the showcase was held on Washington Avenue--which over the last year has become the extremely popular strip of bars and lounges (nonebut 1-2 are music venues). The showcase was from 1-6 pm and we played at 3 pm. Not all of the venues were walking distance (basically two clusters of 5 bars that wereabout 1.5 miles apart. Though shuttle service was available) Plus, August Houston temperatures in the hottest part of the day madethe walk ridiculous. I thought logistically that it wasn't as good as holding the festival downtown--but some people in the "know" said it was WAY cheaper for the Houston Press to hold this showcase outside of downtown.

All that being said, this is a great service that the Houston Press does, in that they have a fest that celebrates Houston local music--for which there are a lot of good bands--of tons of different genres and they mix them together. Plus, the showcases are generally well attended by the locals. It rained like hell when we showed up, but it didn't last long.

We played about 40 minutes. The venue Sugarcane was pretty cool--in that it has organic liquor. Not a music venue. The sound was extremely loud in there, and for us on stage the sound was WAY worse than it was for the audience. It was hard for us to hear anything. We played Buddy Boo, Via Satellite, Pain My Masterpiece (which sounded really good). We had a very very nice crowd in there. The following day, we were mentioned in about 3 articles in the on-line version of the Houston Press--so once again it went very well.

We didn't win. We never do. Such is life.