Sound Tribe Sector 9 - An experiment in fusion

I was all set to spend a responsible Saturday evening at home, a night of refining resumes with no intake of alcohol or drugs. But then my phone rang and a foxy redheaded voice on the other end promised me the exact opposite. Sound Tribe Sector 9, a band I had never heard, was playing at Stubb’s Barbeque (stubbsaustin.com), a venue I hadn’t visited after nearly a year of living in Austin. All vows of social celibacy were quite eagerly broken as I left the cursor blinking for a night of music and barbeque.

Sound Tribe Sector 9 is a five-piece band from Santa Cruz, technically trip-hop to the discerning DJ, but easily classified as a jam band based on their audience—hordes of crunchy shirtless hippies. Their website describes them as “an electronic jam band fusing live instruments with electronica,” but the only accurate term for it is fusion, for the sound of this tribe bites a little from everything to create a lot of something. Every song is a relentless marathon of funk, seasoned with hip hop and sometimes even a little salsa. Whatever it was, the crowd ate it up and begged for more—after two epic sets they performed an encore. If the crowd wasn’t going home, why should they?

For anyone familiar with the story of infantryman Stubbs and his lifelong dedication to barbeque and live music, this backyard bar-laden barbeque pit was a perfect venue for a night of fused fun. Even the crowd fused the regular hat-wearing Texas partyheads with meat-hating hippies; everyone was just there to have a good time. Music, sausage and Tecate—it could not have been a more complete Saturday night.

Whatever. I’ve got the rest of my life to work.

Contributed by BH Shepherd. Check out more of his writing on Myspace!