It's mid-afternoon at The Tiniest Bar in Texas, and Dear and the Headlights have just finished playing the fourth and final show they're cramming into four days at South by Southwest, a music industry circle jerk that's a make-or-break week for up-and-coming bands.
Jamie Peachey
Dear and the Headlights (from left): Mark Kulvinskas, Robert Cissell, Chuckie Duff,
P.J. Waxman, and Ian Metzger.
Jamie Peachey
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Onstage, bearded singer Ian Metzger draws the attention of people sipping canned beer, trying to stay cool on the dusty front patio of the shack-like bar on a humid March day that hints at Austin's stewy summers. The demure Metzger is no showman — in fact, he spends much of the performance singing with his eyes closed or staring at the Texas dirt — but he projects an intriguing blend of emotion and confidence that's slowly gathering the crowd's attention, one person at a time, in the workmanlike way a waitress cleans up pieces of a shattered plate.
Tons of people from Phoenix's tight-knit indie scene are here. Most of the bands that made the pilgrimage to Austin have sent at least one representative, and there are a few scenester types in town for the copious free booze and ass-kissery. They've made their way to this bar on the edge of downtown, 16 long blocks from the heart of the party, partly because Dear and the Headlights put on an impressive live show. But, for these people, who've seen them dozens of times and are missing other hip acts at the massive festival, it's also because they want to support the vanguard of the city's scene. And Dear and the Headlights are, indisputably, that vanguard. In fact, they're the most important band in Arizona.
First, they're good. Their music is a layered blend of moody and poppy indie rock, built around Metzger's assured yet warbling vocals and topped with wonderfully scratchy riffs. It'd be hard for anyone in Phoenix to leave the band off his or her list of the best bands in town. Second, and more important, they're as savvy an act as you'll find at this level. In the super-weird music climate that's developed in the decade since Napster started siphoning profits from the Big Four major labels' money-printing operation, this band has a better handle on how to succeed than anyone in the state.
They're playing by the game's new rules — and winning.
In fact, they often seem to be the only local band that's figured out how to maneuver the levers and pulleys needed to elevate a band above the noise of fly-by-night blog bands and the classic rockers whom today's kids still fawn over. They're self-sufficient, signed, and playing shows most local bands can only dream about. Other Phoenix bands have noticed, too, proclaiming their intention to follow the Dear and the Headlights model.
The formula seems simple enough: Tour all the time, be nice to everyone, and operate in a business-minded manner. Simple but effective. It is how they got signed to a legit indie label, Equal Vision Records. It is how they became the first Arizona band to ever play America's marquee music festival, Coachella, in April. This is how they got booked to play this month at Bonnaroo, the East Coast's version of Coachella, in Tennessee. It is why they're about to embark on the lucrative Warped Tour, despite their sounding nothing like the punk bands who make up most of the teen-friendly lineup.
You get a glimpse of their process as the band wraps up the SxSW show with a performance of their best song to date, a smoldering indie ballad titled "I'm Not Crying. You're Not Crying, Are You?" that leads off Dear and the Headlights' latest album, Drunk Like Bible Times. The song's lyrics — bouncy in an understated way, like the best of the band's offerings — are poignant, even if they're clearly about being in a band, typically an uninspiring topic for top songwriters:
And now some local loser with a tape and a badge
Wants you to answer from the list of pointless questions to ask
And, no, he's not sincere. You're not sincere, are you?
Then the howls and moans pour from the black and it's a sea of blank faces straight to the back
Aggressively mediocre in every single way
Yet you're the only reason that they came
Dear and the Headlights play a pretty standard form of indie rock, with acoustic guitars bringing the music low for triumphant choruses and a few cutting riffs to add some edge to the verses. They're simple pop songs, the band says.
Then there's what happens after they're done playing.
Rather than becoming absorbed in the amp- and instrument-related tasks of the load-out process or yukking it up with their buddies, the band stands dutifully talking, smiling, shaking hands. They're making one fan at a time, like Springsteen did. It is, they say, the only way to break through the white noise of home-studio bands releasing full-length records before they've even had a gig, and the only way to get the attention of industry insiders in an era when major labels' talent-development departments have been slashed by as much as three-quarters in the past three years.
