So it appears that my site is working again… at least a little bit. Evidently some huge website was hot linking a bunch of zombie photos of mine and just ruining my bandwidth. I just deleted all the photos. No more zombies for you bro. Anyway, we got two more Austin galleries to go and first up is the MtvU Woodie Awards.

The Woodie Awards are some sort of awards that MTVU gives out during SXSW every year. I am sure a quick google search would explain their exact premise but I am not the sort of journalist that cares about anything. Instead I will just tell you the story of how I ended up at the Woodie Awards.

When I was in Austin I ran into a flyer for the Woodie Awards. The headlining acts were Steve Aoki, Santigold and Childish Gambino. I’ve known Aoki for ages and I have been trying to shoot Santigold for a minute since we have a bunch of mutual friends. Childish aka Donald Glover I met when the Village Voice was doing a cover story on him at last years SXSW and he and I have hung out a few times since then. So when I saw the flyer I was like, this is a thing I should be at. It just so happened I had a break in my Sailor Jerry schedule during the awards so I applied for a press pass. Unfortunately Childish Gambino broke his leg and couldn’t make it, but they had Mac Miller fill in for him.

When I got to the awards I went to look for the press area but all there was was a riser that was about 100 yards away from the stage so that we could shoot the bands. I tried to go back stage with my press pass to no avail. I ran into the Wire Image guy trying to get back there too so I grabbed a press guy and talked him into letting us backstage to get some shots. They weren’t doing an official red carpet but they had a mini one set up for MTV to film on. They told the Wire guy and I that we could shoot on it. Since there were only two still photographers I asked them if instead I could pull them off the carpet so they let me do some quick portraits of people like Skrillex, Dillion Francis, Zedd and A-Trak.

I had seen Aoki backstage before I talked my way in but he was no where to be found. The Wire guy asked one of the PR people if he could get shots of Steve and she walked him over to the trailer. I went with them and the Wire guy got all in my face about it so when he came out of Steve’s trailer I got the PR person’s attention and introduced myself. Turns out we have had many exchanges over email and she let me in. I said hey to Steve and took a few shots of him and Lil Jon and the other DJ’s in there with him and then I mentioned to Lil Jon that I had photographed him at the Gathering of the Juggalos. As soon as I said that everyone in the room just looked at us like “Why the fuck were you at the Gathering of the Juggalos?”  So in what was pretty much the highlight of my SXSW trip I got to talk to Lil Jon about juggalos for like 20 minutes. Lil Jon also was hilarious congratulating Skrillex on his Grammy Awards “Welcome to the club. I only got one of ’em.”

At some point I tried to shoot Santigold but we were so far away from the stage I didn’t see the point so I just took about 10 photos and then headed back stage. I got a few more red carpet type shots of Machine Gun Kelly and Mac Miller with their awards and then I peaced the fuck out. The whole thing was a pretty fun diversion from all the branding work I did all week… now if only I could find out what the hell a Woodie Awards is…

Click here to see all my photos from backstage at the 2012 MTV Woodie Awards.

I want to put all these Fun Fun Fun Fest posts to bed today so we are combining artists. In this post we group our two remaining hip hop artists together, G Side and Childish Gambino.

G Side came into the Sailor Jerry trailer to get tattoo appointments before their set so I decided it would be a good idea to check them out. I think it’s pretty hard for a rap group to put on a decent set during the day time but these guys got the crowd going and dropped an amazingly impressive 90 second a capella on the crowd. I bounced back to the trailer after that and the guys came in soon and got inked.

Childish Gambino AKA Donald Glover I have known for a while. We met back at SXSW and I have kept in touch with the guy. He’s good people, on one of the funniest shows on TV and I am a big fan of his music. When most comedians try to put out a rap album you can’t take it seriously but Childish Gambino isn’t telling jokes. He is fucking shit up. His new album Camp dropped yesterday and you should get that shit right away.

My Gambino shots kinda suck because they pulled me on stage to shoot which while it seemed awesome at the time was probably not the best place to shoot from. I ended up getting a bunch of shots of the back of Donald and some decent shots of his band, but it’s all good. I will get better ones next time.

Click here to see all my shots of G Side at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, Tx.

Click here to see all my shots of Childish Gambino @ Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, Tx.

Just like on Halloween Weekend at Voodoo Fest Sailor Jerry set up one of their airstream trailers in the artist area of Fun Fun Fun. They gave out rum drinks and actual tattoos to artists, media and festival staff. The airstream also became a place to hang out. There were benches out front and the airstream was one of the only dust storm proof place at the fest.

This star studded gallery is a collection of photos taken in and just outside of the airstream. Lot of rad bands and cute girls stopped by and you clearly need to look at these pictures. I will be back tomorrow with a sequel of sorts to this gallery when I show you all the Sailor Jerry tattoos that were given out at the airstream. Get excited.

Click here to see the party inside a party that was the Sailor Jerry Airstream at the 2011 Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin Texas.

This is post one of a series of photo posts from the Fun Fun Fun music fest in Austin Texas that was held last weekend. I was asked to cover the crazy three day party for Sailor Jerry who seemed really happy with my work at the Voodoo fest the previous weekend. They did tattoos and passed out free drinks and I documented at all but I also got to have fun fun fun at the fest and I shot a bunch of bands and a bunch fun times and a bunch of Ryan Gosling.

This first intro post is just full of the crowd shots I took that don’t fit into any specific galleries. These photos are from all over the fest but most of them were taken in the artist/media area that I spent most of my time in because I needed to stay close to the Sailor Jerry trailer. Plus most of my friends are pretentious VIP types and they don’t like to pay for drinks or venture out into public with the unwashed masses.

Also since this is the intro post of Fun Fun Fun I should mention the Ryan Gosling thing.  He was filming a Terrence Malick film called Lawless during the fest and he was there all damn weekend and then he was at all the after parties. I ran into the guy 50 times and EVERYONE was talking about it constantly. Yesterday when I was in Chicago I felt like there was a hole in my life and I didn’t know what it was… I realized that no one had mentioned Ryan Gosling to me in the last twelve hours. So in the next three galleries will be full of “RyGo” as people kept calling him (seemingly just to intentionally make my skin crawl). After that we will move into band photos and this website will once again be a Gosling free zone. So enjoy your Gosling while you have it ladies.

Anyway, I am about to get on a plane so let’s get it on.

Click here to see all the crowd shots from the 2011 Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, Texas.

I met Childish Gambino aka the comedian Donald Glover at SXSW this year when the web editor of Village Voice Media was writing a story on him for the Village Voice. The Voice ended up having enough time to get Donald into a studio for the cover shoot but they had me shoot some images at SXSW just incase they weren’t able to more shots later. I met Donald again a few days later backstage at the Village Voice / Frank 151 SXSW showcase.  He and Community co-star Danny Pudi spent some time looking though my photos on my iPad before they (with me in tow) got pulled back to Wu Tang’s dressing room. I ran into Donald one other time at SXSW and since then he and I have kept in touch.

Since meeting him I have been listening to his rap EP under the name Childish Gambino and I really love it.  He was playing two shows in NYC in May, one in Manhattan on the 10th and the second in Brooklyn on the 14th. I missed the show on the 10th but I went to the after party with a few friends. He freestyled for over an hour and Questlove filled in for him on drums. It was pretty impressive.  After that he invited us back to his penthouse at the Thompson hotel for an after party. It was a pretty good time so I figured I needed to pay him back by getting my ass to his Brooklyn show and taking some pictures.

On Saturday I showed up to the Williamsburg Hall of Music with several hundred other people ready to see the IAMDONALD tour in action.  Donald came out and did 20 minutes or so of stand up and then played a video that closely resembled one of the old Derrick Comedy sketches.  The video led the audience to his live Childish Gambino performance.  He brought out a full band and did at least an hour set of hip hop jams that rocked the crowd silly.  On one song the band takes a break and a video is played of one of my favorite comedians Reggie Watts crafting a beat for Donald which he raps over live. It was pretty legit.

The whole show was being taped for something and one of my favorite moments of the night was when, before he played his encore, the lights shined on the crowd and it turned out that The Soup host and Community star Joel McHale was one of the camera man and was filming the show from the crowd. The kids all around him went nuts.  Childish came back on, and fucked the crowd up with a killer encore and then I went home and tried to get some fucking sleep.  Good times.

Click here to see all the shots from the Donald Glover/Childish Gambino IAMDONALD tour at the Williamsburg Hall of Music.

Well, the end of my coverage anyway.  I have finally finished all my South By Southwest posts! And just two weeks later! Luckily I have figured out a better system to deal with shit on the road so hopefully next time I go on a long trip I will be able to be updating much more on the road.  But yeah, this is pretty much the end of my SXSW photos.  In truth I have some portraits of Donald Glover and a mini photo essay on a trip to IHOP with Rocky Business but we will save those for another time. For now I just bring you everything else that didn’t fit into any of the other galleries!

As exciting as that sounds this gallery actually has some pretty cool stuff in it. It’s got celebrities and some nice natural light night time street photography and even a photo of three comedians Permanent Resident ID cards! Pretty exciting stuff. Let’s break this thing down for you a little more even. This gallery starts with a shot of Conan O’Brian in a PRB shirt and ends with a photo of Rainn Wilson jokingly giving me shit for taking his photo.  In the middle are random party photos, street shots, photos from a taping of John Oliver’s New York Stand Up Show, a lot of New Yorkers, shots of Matthew Lesco and a midget Mike Tyson at the convention center, pics from the FourSquare four square court, random pics from the IFC Crossroads House, a portrait of the writer, director and star of Attack The Block and a few photos of Community’s Danny Pudi that I just turned into a hilarious animated Gif.  Good times.

So now that you know what this gallery is all about, you need to fucking click right here to check it the fuck out.

This is now the 5th post about the epic Village Voice/ Frank 151 SXSW Showcase and it’s finally the last one.  I covered the crowd shots and the two stand out performances of the night the surprising Rocky Business and the headliners Wu-Tang, but now I am gonna give you a quick run down of all the other fantastic sets from the night. And since I broke this down into a bunch of smaller galleries we are going to do this a bit differently.

I got to the show a little late so I missed Ume and Wild Flag.  (I did catch Wild Flag at the Mog party a few days later but I will get to that next week. I got a lot more SXSW shots to get up.) I came in right before Trouble Andrew’s set.  I had just shot Trouble Andrew when they opened for Rocky Business at the Rocky Business mix tape release party (Rocky Business repaid the favor by opening Trouble Andrew’s release party on Thursday) and thought the guys were a lot of fun.  Prince Terrance drummed for them at the SXSW show and I got some great shots of the band. These dudes are killing it.

Click here to see all the shots of Trouble Andrew.

Next up was Rocky Business which I already covered.  Following them was the stunning Marz Lovejoy.  This girl was fucking awesome. She can sing, she can rap and she is unreasonably adorable.  I just wanna take her picture all day. She is totally muse worthy.  Plus after killing it at the VVM/Frank showcase I saw her the next day with her (also babelicious) mom putting up stickers all over the place. That is the type of commitment I appreciate coming from a dude who gets up everywhere. I feel like you are going to be hearing a lot more from Marz Lovejoy in the future.

Click here to see all the shots of Marz Lovejoy.

Next up was Trea Tha Truth.  This Houston rapper came out with about a dozen dudes, half of which were just hype men. One guy was actually just video taping the whole thing. It was pretty intense.  I had never heard of him but clearly in Texas they know who the fuck he has. The almost local crowd got completely live when he performed and they got one hell of a show from the dozen guys on stage. Also according to his Wikipedia Trea once got into a fight with Mike Jones at something called the Ozone Awards which I find hilarious.

Click here to see all the shots of Trea Tha Truth.

One of the acts I was really excited to see was Yelawolf. I actually haven’t heard a lot of his music before but there was an amazing photo essay on Yelawolf in the October ‘1o Fader photo issue. I had never really picked up a Fader before but I shot an event they did and the photography blew me away but the cover story on Yelawolf was really something. The photographer spent a lot of time just hanging out rural Alabama with Yelawolf and his friends and family and came away with some amazing shots. It was like an old Life magazine story and made me really want to shoot for Fader. I was not really prepared for the show that Yelawolf put on. He came out full blast and just destroyed the crowd at 100 miles an hour. He moved so fast that he was actually really hard to photograph. He got progressively more naked as the show went on and Bam Margera came out in the middle of his set. It was a pretty epic performance. I need to catch him again ASAP so I can do a better job shooting him.

Click here to see all the shots of Yelawolf.

Right before Fishbone went on comedian Donald Glover AKA Childish Gambino made a surprise appearance. The Village Voice was working on a story on Donald and I guess they asked him to do a quick set before the headliners. I had met him the day before to get some shots for the story and I had quickly listened to his free EP but I gotta say I was not expecting him to be as good as he was. He killed it both as a rapper an as a performer. I love his TV show Community, but now I am a fan of the dudes music and just a fan of the guy himself. He is a rad dude, funny as hell and great fucking rapper. Plus he really digs my photography so I am in full support of the guy. I think you should be too.

Click here to see all the shots of Childish Gambino.

Lastly we had your co-headliners Fishbone.  Honestly I had no idea that Fishbone was even still around.  I saw their frontman back stage doing like somersaults and shit and was just sort of wondering who the hell the 50 year old in the wig just completely losing it was.  I probably should have guessed. For a bunch of kinda old dudes they had so much fucking energy and intensity. I saw Bad Brains a few days earlier and they are sort of from the same era and they just sort of stood there. I mean Bad Brains rocked my face off but Fishbone were electric. People were knocking over the barricades during their set. At this point in the night I realized that if I left the back stage area I might not get back in so I only shot them from the side of the stage so the shots aren’t as good as some of my others, but I think you can get a good idea of the show these guys put on.  Plus they covered Sublime’s “Date Rape” which was pretty hilarious and one of the guys was wearing a 9:30 Club T-shirt. The 9:30 Club is a legendary spot in DC that I grew up with so that was pretty great for me.  Afte Fishbone Wu-Tang fucked everyone’s life up and Erykah Badu DJ’d to end the set. It was truly and epic fucking show.

Click here to see all the shots of Fishbone.

As I mentioned before the Village Voice and Frank 151 showcase at Austin Music Hall was one of the best shows at South By Southwest. With headliners Wu-Tang, Fishbone and Yelawolf with a stand out performance by Rocky Business and a surprise performance by Childish Gambino this was the show to beat of the festival.  I took 1100 photos at the event so I am going to be breaking this down into four posts and ten galleries. WuTang and Rocky Business are going to get their own posts and then all the rest of the photos are going to be broken up into two posts, this being the first.

This first post we are going to focus on the party photos and not so much the bands.  I shot a bunch of random crowd shots earlier in the night, but at some point I convinced the bouncers that it was a good idea that I had backstage access despite me not having any legitimate credentials.  So I broke that stuff down into two galleries, crowd shots and backstage photos.  The crowd shots are pretty self explanitory although I guess I should remind you that it was St. Patricks Day which might explain some of the drunks wearing green.  The back stage shots probably require some commentary.

Ultimately I probably should have had backstage credentials since I was working for the Village Voice at their showcase, but my editor told me I couldn’t get them.  Fortunately for me I am pretty good at getting past bouncers and after showing him my Village Voice SXSW badge and pointing up to the big Village Voice banner I was let back stage. I hung out mostly in Rocky Business dressing room and used my access to shoot the bands from on stage. But right before Childish Gambino played I left the back stage area and was told that since the headliners were going on they were kicking everyone out of the back stage area and I couldn’t get back in. Meanwhile I watched someone bribe a bouncer as he was telling me to fuck off.  I quickly ran up two flights and convinced another bouncer to let me onto the VIP side balcony and then I worked my way down to the back stage area.

By this time Childish Gambino AKA comedian Donald Glover was off stage and hanging out. I had met him a day or two earlier because my editor was working on a story on Donald/Childish for the Voice. I took a few photos of him, but while I was setting up he checked out a bunch of my photos on my iPad. He loved the shots and told me he might want to buy one of them. So when I saw him back stage we started talking and I broke out my iPad again. Donald was with his Community co-star Danny Pudi and the two of them just sat there checking out my photos for about 20 minutes.  While they were looking at the photos one of Wu-Tang’s entourage told them he was a big Community fan and brought the back to the Wu-Tang dressing room.  Donald still had my iPad so I went with them.  The whole thing was pretty surreal.  Later I got stuck in a small stairwell for about 10 minutes with Erykah Badu while security tried to lock shit down before Wu-Tang. On top of that Bam Margera was back stage and there was an insane amount of weed being smoked back there. It was a pretty good party back there.

So yeah, you should take a look at all these pictures.  Start by checking out the general crowd shots from the VV Media/Frank 151 SXSW showcase by clicking here. And then if you want to take a look at all the back stage happenings from the party you should probably click here.  And then come back soon for more pics from the event.

Last night the Village Voice threw their second party of SXSW. This time during music week and at the Austin Music Hall and they partnered with Frank 151 to do it. The Interactive party was fun but low key.  The music party fucking blew shit up. It might have been the best party I have been to in 8 years of coming to SXSW. I got there a bit late but in time to check out Brooklyn natives Trouble Andrew and Rocky Business.  Rocky Business played a set that is sure to blow those kids up.  They were just insanely good and the crowd lost it.  After them one of the most stunning girls I have ever seen named Mars Lovejoy did her thing and made half of Austin fall in love (well, at least me).  Texas native Trea The Truth brought a dozen guys on stage with him and fucked shit up for the nearly local crowd.  After that shit got really serious with performances by Yellawolf, Fishbone and the fucking Wu-Tang Clan. The night ended with a DJ set from Erykah Badu.

I managed to get back stage even though I didn’t have any legit credentials for that. I just kept showing people my Village Voice press pass and pointing to our banner and hoping they would let me in. It seemed to work. I shot from the stage and back stage and had an insane amount of fun.  I ran into Comunnity star Donald Glover who I had met the day before backstage. He and his co-star Danny Pudi spent about 15 minutes looking at my photos on my iPad until one of Wu-Tang’s entourage brought us over to Wu-Tang’s dressing room.  Bam Margera was also back there and at some point I got stuck in some room with Erykah Badu and her entourage. It was all pretty surreal.

I don’t have time to upload pictures and all that shit today and when I do upload pictures I am going to do a much more indepth write up of every thing. I shot 1100 photos at the party so I will be breaking it all down into a number of posts. But today I am going to leave you with just a link to the Village Voice slideshow that only features a small percentage of the pictures I shot.

Click here for the Village Voice slideshow.

Click here for the Village Voice blog post.

And click here to see the Miami New Times write up featuring my shots.