BD Rileys Irish Bar on 6th Street, Austin, Texas. We have arrived at last. Saint cousin of Saint Paul has just dropped us off at the venue where we soon meet up with the Guggenhiem Grotto, Iain Archer, The Amazing Pilots and Angela Dorgan, the patron saint of Irish bands, who is putting on the gig. People are just beginning to wake up and venture out and about in Austin after a late night, but with the streets quiet and just Irish voices around it's hard to shake the feeling of being in the eye of some sort of Irish musical conspiracy or invasion! It feels good thinking that. It's half ten in the morning and the Guinness has started, people start arriving, some familiar faces, some delegates with badges haning round their necks, some local people from Austin. We are on stage at half eleven in the morning straight after the Guggenheim Grotto.

Before I went to SXSW I benefitted from people who had been previously who told me not to expect too from it as there would be about 1500 bands playing there, the sound would be ropey and just to try and enjoy the experience. It's a humbling thought that 1500 other bands and artists are in town all hoping for some amazing opportunity and all with the same burning ambitions and dreams. Nevertheless I am full of hope and just so happy to be here. I am told most of the shows will happen along 6th street and there are literally dozens of music bars, cafes converted into venues and restaurants with a small crappy PA all advertising live music. Later there will be bands loading in and loading out of every one of these venues, many of the acts signed, many others just hoping.......

I returned from Austin in Texas just over a week ago but if you would oblige me by wobbling your body and arms and making your eyes go out of focus in a having a flashback kind of way I will talk you through my experiences there!

Things started relatively smoothly with manager Steve collecting me at some ungodly hour from my house in East Belfast, though having slept for 45 minutes downstairs on the floor because of last minute packing and fear of sleeping in, I had definitely felt better! So our journey was to be as follows: Belfast City to Gatwick, London where we would meet up with Temperence Society Chip Bailey (hereafter to be known as TB), London to Houston, Texas and then onto Austin, the Mecca of signed and unsigned bands alike. When Chip scraped onto the flight at Gatwick by the skin of his teeth it was then that the first inkling that something might go amiss began to nag at my otherwise optimistic view of the trip.

After a pleasant sleep on the plane (for me anyway), a half decent Eugene Levy movie and some aeroplane food (Yippee! after a thousand low cost flights I'd been on I was very excited by the prospect of plane food!), we arrived in Houston. Well, to cut a very long story short, immigration took umbridge to us having visas and letters expaining our trip and held us in a waiting room for 3 hours causing us to miss our connecting flight to Austin. We were put on standby for the next flight.... and the next and finally on a flight to San Antonio, not Austin where we were to catch a taxi to Austin for $150 where we would have nowhere to stay as we would be so late to arrive. Then things began to look up again. As we boarded this last flight, frustrated, disheveled and with manager Steve never walking the same way again, a friendly face waved at us from the back. It was Paul Clegg, a tour manager from Northern Ireland who happened to be going to San Antonio to stay with his cousin! Happy days! He kindly allowed us to cadge a lift with one cousin to his other cousin's house who put us up for the night in a beautiful house with an outdoor jacuzi on the edge of a private lake. We had arrived in the USA! Tomorrow we play our first showcase at BD Rileys, on the Irish Breakfast Bill.