The great thing about the South by Southwest festival in Austin every year is the sheer number of bands and shows over the five days of the music festivall. Of course, with so many bands and so many shows, it’s hard to know where you want to go, and pretty much impossible to see all the bands you want to see. Fortunately, many of the bands play multiple daytime shows in addition to the official showcase shows, and even better, most of these day shows are free. So even if you don’t have a pass or tickets for any of the official SXSW shows, you can still see plenty of great music.
Of course, while most of the music venues hosting day parties in Austin are within walking distance of each other, there’s something to be said for finding one location and staying there for a while. With the thousands of people crowding a few square blocks, and so much competition for popular shows, getting in someplace that has a few bands you want to see, and free beer to boot, seems a pretty attractive proposition. And that’s how I ended up at the Paste Magazine party at the Galaxy Room on Wednesday, and on the beginning of Thursday.

A quick perusal of the lineup of Paste’s Wednesday day party revealed quite a few interesting bands among the 11 acts on 2 stages: Frightened Rabbit, Freelance Whales, and Roky Erikcson backed by Okkervil River. The inside area was fairly crowded when I arrived around 1, but it was positively packed by the time Freelance Whales went on around 3. Given that the crowd was already overflowing to the outside area, I decided the outdoor stage was a better bet. There, I saw Brooklyn band Suckers play a pretty good set, before settling in for two Austin entities joining forces- Roky Erickson, frontman of psychedelic rock pioneers the 13th Floor Elevators, and current indie-rock favs Okkervil River.

Okkervil River served as Erickson’s backing band, and looked thrilled to be doing so. After years of dealing with mental illness, Erickson has only recently begun playing music again. At points, Okkervil frontman Will Sheff had to prompt Erickson on lyrics. Still, he seemed genuinely excited to be on stage, as he and Okkervil tore through old favorites like “I Walked With a Zombie,” as well as tracks from their upcoming album “True Love Cast Out All Evil.”

On Thursday, I again found myself at the Paste party, this time specifically to see Miles Kurosky, formerly the lead singer of the late band Beulah, one of the last-bands-standing of the revered Elephant 6 Collective. Seeing as how the last Beulah show was five and a half years ago, and that Kurosky took six years between albums to deal with various medical problems, the chance to see one of his first solo shows was too much to pass up.

While he played a short set, he didn’t disappoint the noon-time crowd, inviting two audience members to sing along to the two Beulah songs he played. He claimed to forget the lyrics, but this “karaoke,” as he called it, was somewhat common at many of the later Beulah shows. And it’d be hard to ignore Beulah entirely, since two of the other five his members of his band -guitarist Pat Abernathy and bassist Eli Crews- are holdovers from Beulah. So it made sense that two of the five songs he played were Beulah songs.

Photos below: Freelance Whales, Suckers, Rocky Erickson with Okkervil River, and Miles Kurosky.