[road to sxsw] Day 1, Friday 03.11.11: Quilt in Philly

After a Chinatown bus ride on Friday morning (spent reading horoscopes, eating adzuki sprouts, talking Boston DIY), QUILT guitarist/vocalist Anna Rochinski and I shuffled equipment, merch, and bags from Manhattan to Brooklyn to meet up with their new drummer John Andrews and guitarist/vocalist Shane Butler, down the block from Shane’s apartment.

During our two-hour drive from Brooklyn to Philly (we’re taking John’s grandparents’ minivan), I quickly realized the amount of incredible new music I will learn about through the mixtapes these three made for the trip. (One favorite so far has been Laminated Cats, a band that used to frequent the Boston DIY scene but has since moved south to Athens, GA.)

In Philly, Quilt played at “The Dream Oven”, a new-ish DIY basement venue in Philly’s Fishtown neighborhood, an area that seems to be filled with artist spaces and creative types. Located underneath what will soon be VWVOFFKA Gallery, I immediately noticed how awesome it is this type of house venue could also function as a gallery/show space with a visible storefront. Through the entrance, the small in-the-works gallery space is filled by unfinished wood and bricks, an exposed sink, bike, a piano, and two cats; a few feet back are a living room and kitchen, inhabited by the kids who run the space.

The first three bands to later play in the basement – which was dark, lit by a few strands of Christmas lights, filled with a laid-back crowd and the scent of incense – had all been on tour together for a while. Members of Viking Moses, Assateague, and The Wooly Moon all rotated instruments and played on each others sets – all variations of gritty, psyched-out folk sounds. Quilt closed the show with mostly tracks from their newly recorded yet-to-be-released tape, Gome Home. Check out the vid above of “Penobska Oakwalk.”

Saturday morning we had coffee and bagels with Anna’s cousin, visited my friends at Weathervane Music HQ (an awesome organization that supports sustainable careers for young musicians), then made a stop at Whole Foods to fill our cooler with fruits and vegetables, and hit the road for Fredericksburg, VA. Deetz on that ASAP!