Mojo - The Music Magazine

There's 1700-plus artists at SXSW 2008 and your MOJO correspondent is one of them. I'm booked to play at one of the first parties (Florida Bandango) on the first day (Weds 12th) inbetween Ed Harcourt (UK singer-writer extraordinaire) and Ronny Elliott (Florida cult star). The party's in the back garden of the Yard Dog, Austin's coolest art gallery. The sun's out, the beer's free and, with the festival only about an hour and a half old, everyone's in a good mood, no-one smells yet and there's no buzz band backlash since there's no buzz bands.

It's in this Edenic state of innocence that I walk out on-stage in front of a sizeable crowd with my little ukulele in my hand.

Ukes, you might have noticed, are everywhere these days; every newspaper you open seems to have a feature with 'uke' in the same sentence as 'zeitgeist'. Yet the uke cult doesn't appear to have hit Texas. Of those 1700 acts, I can find just two others boasting ukuleles - Japanese duo Petty Booka and Canadian pop-folkie Basia Bulat's band. Making me the sole, solo, uke-playing singer-songwriter at SXSW 2008; one small step for MOJO, one mighty step for musickind.

By the time I plug in much, of the crowd has dispersed to other parties or the bar, leaving a handful or two of curious onlookers, plus the MOJO team, journalist and musician friends, and someone who brought his granddad because his granddad liked ukuleles. And there's a lot to like. A uke is light (mine's 60 cm and weighs one pound) but not lightweight. Its four strings aren't designed for the heights of passion or the depths of pain, more a gentle strum or quiet plink, yet it's expressive, intimate and wonderfully ambiguous, sad and happy, sweet and ludicrous all at the same time. People smile when they see ukuleles. There's less of the 'okay, impress me' you'd get with a guitar or piano. Audiences tend to cheer a ukulele on like the little engine that could.

The downside is volume. So the day before leaving for Texas I bought a stick-on pick-up from an instrument store. When I tried it out with a swift Stairway To Heaven, the proprietor pointed grimly at the sign above the guitars saying 'No Stairway To Heaven'. I used the same song onstage to test the sound, then played a few new songs I've written, none of them cheerier than bittersweet, therefore perfect for the uke.

For country duet A Thousand Years (Before I Met You) - I've written about Americana long enough to know country songs require brackets - I borrowed Ronny Elliott, an artist who's made several appearances in MOJO over the years. If I was reviewing us, I'd say we sounded more heartfelt than slick (it was our first time singing the song), but it was good having company onstage. Making your solo debut at the world's biggest music festival is definitely nerve-wracking but, with enough tequila, fun.

PS. Robert Plant plays a ukulele. Percy's got a big one - a baritone; mine's a concert, second from smallest. And James Hetfield has a tenor uke. I've promised him the tabs for Stairway To Heaven.

Listen to a demo version of Sylvie's Blues, produced by Eric Drew Feldman (PJ Harvey, Captain Beefheart) at his San Francisco apartment a couple of days before the festival.

And then click below for an exclusive look back at Sylvie's performance from SXSW 2008.