by Helen Grant
If you listen to an obscene amount of music and perhaps frequent a lot of shows, you may be wondering what else there is to catch around Austin. Well, there’s this Ditch the Fest event (DTF4 and DTF5 for each weekend Austin City Limits Festival is held this year), which seems like an interesting alternative to Zilker Park. Honestly, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but on Saturday I think we’re going to go off the reservation and check this out for a little bit. They’ve held this alternative music and art festival for 3 years at least, so they likely have their act together. Also I think it’s pretty cool they printed a bunch of full-color zines to check out.
Ditch the Fest is described as “Two days of homegrown music and art. 35+ rad local and regional bands. Only $5! [per day]” Seems reasonable enough, right? I guess when I go places, sure, there’s the allure of the establishment with all its trappings, but for some reason the hunt for off the beaten path gems is much too tempting. It’s like you caught a sparkly flash in the shadows and now you have to explore.
I haven’t check out all the bands, time is limited and there is much to do, but I like the ones I found and created an el cheapo mix. Don’t even need a Spotify account to listen to this.
On this mix you’ll find: The Baker Family, Holiday Mountain, Caddywhompus, SIP SIP, The Happen-Ins, Native America, Boy + Kite, and The Gorgeous Hands. There are more, but you know, time constraints.
Not listed is Sam Chown’s (Zorch) solo project Shmu. Again free to stream.
Hey there! Thank you for the write up about Ditch the Fest Fest. Its rad!
Just so you know, DTFFest is only happening on Saturday 10/5 and Saturday 10/12, so a Sunday visit would not be possible, though we wish we were doing 4 days of music. But ya know, time constraints.
Look forward to seeing you there!
Talib
Noted! We’ll have to adjust that.