In which we ate epic BBQ and saw an epic headline set by Muse…

Every year at SXSW I make time for a trip down to the Salt Lick. It’s never easy; at 45 minutes outside the city limits it turns into a 3+ hour adventure, and the tricky part is getting a ride. Thankfully this year the dudes in East of the Wall and Goes Cube hooked it up big time and by noon me, Kip, and Rob from Metal Injection were on our way to Driftwood.

I know there are other great BBQ places, even inside Austin itself, but the Salt Lick is so fucking good I just can’t NOT go there. By the time we rolled up to the Salt Lick parking lot with Goes Cube, East of the Wall were ready and waiting with a case of beer (Salt Lick is BYOB). We quickly sucked down the two joints we’d rolled that morning and put our names on the list, and within 20 minutes we were sitting at a table ready to gorge ourselves on meat.

Salt Lick offers “all you can eat” meat platters for $15 per person. They include brisket, ribs and sausage, and they’ll just keep bringing you more platters until you say stop. Stoned, drunk and jubilated we tore into the meat as soon as our waiter set it down on the table. For some reason the question “Another round of meat, guys?” elicited constant laughs… there’s something about the concept of being able to order rounds of meat that tickled us silly.

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I’ve indulged in enough posts about the crazy and random shit we did on the road, so now it’s time for what we were all traveling for in the first place: SXSW. The magnitude of SXSW is inconceivable to anyone who’s never been; every orifice of downtown Austin is literally oozing live music. As MS commenter Joel Bailey said yesterday, “Half the shows at SXSW are in the store room of some coffee house or the smoking patio at an Ihop.” While this is true it’s not for lack of real music venues — in fact, the venues in Austin are all top-notch and blow NYC’s rooms out of the water — but there’s just so much going on that even smaller places that normally have nothing to do with music want to get in on the action. For a glimpse of what the scene looks like, check out Metal Injection’s SXSW wrap-up video.

Kip and I decided months back that this year we’d splurge on a hotel room Downtown. Trying to crash with local friends in years past was economical but a pain in the ass; getting a cab at 2am at SXSW is nearly impossible, and hiking a mile or two just to get home (and not having the option of a mid-day stop-in, or even better a clean place to take a shit!) can be really tiring, or worse, result in injury (just ask Kip). Though the option of staying on the SlayRV for the duration of SXSW later presented itself, we opted for the space and comfort of the Omni Hotel and it ended up being well worth it.

After settling into our room we headed over to the Mohawk to get set up for the Prosthetic Records showcase we were sponsoring. With a killer lineup of Prosthetic bands playing inside and the Action PR showcase going on outside (feat. High on Fire, Priestess, NAAM and others) — all in the same venue for one price of admission — the night was off to a great start before it even began.

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Part of being on the road is the constant struggle to find a suitable place to take a dump. Even when you’re in a bus with a bathroom, as we were, there’s a strict no-pooping policy. Trust me, you do NOT want to be on a bus where a smelly dude who’s been on the road for days or weeks ingesting nothing but fast food and booze has let it all out of their system… X6. You respect your fellow travelers even in dire situations and they respect you — NO pooping on the bus, no exceptions. So what does that leave, then? Well, there are always gas station and fast food joint bathrooms which vary in degrees of cleanliness and comfort. If you’re lucky you can pinch a loaf when you’re stopping at a friend’s house somewhere (pity that poor fool, though). But when it comes to comfortable places to poop nothing beats a Walmart — they’re open 24/7, the stalls are big and no one cares. Plus, you can usually park a bus in the back of a Walmart parking lot and sleep there over night meaning you can poop when you arrive at night AND in the morning before you leave. Gold mine!

One goal of this road trip was to take advantage of all the quintessential experiences each city had to offer. What more quintessential experience is there than getting BBQ in Memphis? That one’s a no-brainer… but what exactly has Little Rock, AR got to offer? Walmart. Lots of ‘em. The company is based there. The only way our experience in Little Rock could’ve been any more quintessential was if we’d gotten blowjobs from Bill Clinton.

But first, Memphis…

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With little to do in lame-o Columbus, OH, Kip and I sat around our hotel lobby with our shvantzes in our hands until 2pm when The Beast aka The SlayRV — the piece de resistance –  arrived to pick us up… and so the party began. Anton OyVey, Rich Hallford, The Rev of Burger Conquest fame and Mark Lafay pulled that baby right into the parking lot, beers and whiskey in hand, and much rejoicing and drinking immediately ensued. The SlayRV is a classy fucking affair with enough room to sleep 8, a fridge, a front lounge, a toilet (but no pooping allowed on the bus!) and a shower. STYLE, bitches. Whichever bands end up taking this thing on tour are going to have a hell of a time.

From there it was off to the Thurman Cafe, the home of what is supposedly the best burger in Columbus.

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Oh man. This is gonna be such a complete shitshow. Earlier today Kip posted about our pending Midwest / Southern adventure… and yeah, shit’s gonna be nuts. Here’s how it’s gonna go down! (Kip… you taking notes?)

This afternoon, Kip Wingerschmidt and I will fly to Columbus, OH. We’ll have one night of relative calm before the shitstorm really hits at tomorrow’s Scion Rock Fest (download a nifty one-page printable schedule here), featuring Cannibal Corpse, Shrinebuilder, Voivod, Absu, Brutal Truth and a ton more brutality. Sometime tomorrow Anton Oyvey, Rich Hallford and friend O’ MetalSucks Mark Lafayowitz will arrive from Indianapolis, where they’ll have just stopped in to pick up The Beast (pictured), a truck that’s been retrofitted as a tour bus. On Sunday morning we’ll start our road trip down to Austin, TX for SXSW. On the way we’ll be stopping/drinking/bourboning/steaking/grilling/partying in the following cities:

Sunday: Bardstown, KY + Nashville, TN
Monday: Memphis, TN, Little Rock, AR
Tuesday: Dallas, TX
Wednesday-Sunday: Austin, TX (SXSW)

We’ll be Twittering, Flipcamming and updating from the road. Be sure to holler at us if you have any recommendations for places to eat, beverages to drink, herbal supplements to supply or sites to see. Kip & I will be holding it down for MetalSucks in SXSW at both MetalSucks-sponsored events — Full Metal Texas and the Prosthetic Records Showcase — so look for us there and, of course, at tons of other shows as well (MetalSucks-approved SXSW schedule here!).

After the jump…. the tour bus’s fortress of solitude…

-VN

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