Paper Lions uncaged

Starting over is a bitch. During a successful 2003 that saw the release of its debut album on the Athens indie label Kindercore, Paper Lions toured relentlessly, becoming one of Athens/Atlanta’s premier indie-rock bands. But upon returning from a showcase at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City, Kindercore had been usurped and closed by its creditors, which meant the Lions were free agents.

This year opens a new chapter for the band. Some members of the Kindercore fold, such as I Am the World Trade Center, have moved on and found new homes. Others — Maserati, Jet By Day, Paper Lions — wait to be picked up.

The quartet has spent a year building friendships and contacts, many of whom they will encounter in Austin at the annual South by Southwest Festival series of industry showcases, an event the group envisions will facilitate a return to solvency. Paper Lions is in the midst of a U.S. tour that passes through Austin at just the right time.

Tues., March 16, Houston, Texas

Houston just isn’t their town. Sitting in front of their merch at the rock club Proletariat, Paper Lions bassist Chris McNeal and guitarist Justin Snyder are accosted by a former Augusta, Ga., resident. The former record store clerk interrogates the pair — and eventually frontman Jesse Smith, too — about their former bands Some Soviet Station and Kossabone Red. He is more interested in the musicians’ past than their present (or future). But for Paper Lions, this tour is about the here and now and the hear us now.

When the Lions take the stage in Houston, however, a crowd of only 30 has gathered. The small throng includes the band’s touring partners, Amy Dykes and Dan Geller of I Am the World Trade Center, their booking agent, Erik Carter, and his wife, Virginia. Most indie-rock fans are down the street at New York buzz band the Walkmen’s show. The night before, Paper Lions played with the Walkmen, which meant a bigger crowd and more money. But tonight, the bands are competing.

Paper Lions’ set eschews the angular D.C. post-punk of the group’s 2003 release, The Symptom and the Sick, for heavily rhythmic, Wire/Public Image Ltd.-influenced material like “Mission Statement,” “Line Up” and “When You Were Tied to My Life” — the contents of a tour demo the band has been handing out for a couple of weeks. Dykes gives Smith’s frayed vocals a rest — he’s been nursing a sore throat for two days — on the song “Everytime,” as the audience, mostly electro-pop fans there to see Trade Center, focuses in more intently.

Outside of the venue after the show, the Lions load gear into the group’s van — drummer Josh Lott’s primary vehicle, a gigantic white Ford with the last two bench seats removed to allow for storage. Smith hacks and spits up phlegm. Lott, exhausted, lies down on the sidewalk to call his girlfriend. Meanwhile, the effortlessly proficient Trade Center loads two suitcases of gear into a fuel-efficient Honda CRV. Both vehicles head to the Carters’ house, the bands’ crash pad for the night.

Paper Lions’ take for Houston is $100, which includes a share of the door and a couple of CDs sold — offering none of the songs played that night — and a couple of shirts. This will be added to the “band fund” — money used for food, gas, rent back home, etc. — which will have to tide the Lions over through the trip to Austin.

Wed., March 17, Houston and Austin, Texas

The next morning, Paper Lions awake to the sounds of cartoonish punk/queer-core outfit Gravy Train!!!!, another band booked by Carter’s Kork Agency and a band that will share a bill, but probably not an audience, with Paper Lions later in the tour.

“Apparently, this is the band that’s going to sell out our Seattle show,” says the Trade Center’s Geller as he packs up, getting ready for the three-hour drive to Austin.

Erik Carter is making bacon, eggs and bagels. The band is ravenous. The Lions wait patiently for Smith — a huge music geek who spends most of his personal disposable income, saved from being a barista and living with his parents, on old post-punk and hardcore LPs — to dig through the Carters’ extensive record collection. Then they get ready for the day’s drive. Lott and McNeal use the Carters’ laundry facilities, while Smith plops down $15 for a rare LP by Nick Cave-led no-wavers Boys Next Door.

Once in the car — with Lott driving — some chattering begins:

“I challenge you to move a little bit on stage tonight, Justin,” says Lott.

“I challenge myself to play my guitar parts right,” says Snyder, sheepishly.

“I’d rather you just get drunk before the show than stand there like a totem pole,” says McNeal.

Despite having nothing to gamble but an Elvis keychain he bought in Memphis a few days earlier, Snyder accepts Lott’s challenge to play Texas Hold’em — Paper Lions’ current favorite pastime and perhaps a metaphor for the next four days. With McNeal as dealer and Smith sleeping and still hacking in the back, it takes 30 minutes for Elvis to change hands from Snyder to Lott.

At a pit stop at a desolate Texaco an hour outside of Austin, the band breaks out its cooler, squatting on the grass to make lunch. The Texaco convenience store is a sorry sight — half-barren shelves, poor lighting and grime. The guys mix tuna and mayo to make a basic tuna salad for sandwiches. Forget Atkins or Trimspa — if you really want to shed pounds quick, start an indie-rock band and go touring.

An hour later, the van pulls into the Holiday Inn Town Lake in Austin — not quite stumbling distance from the busy rock club avenue of Sixth Street. The band is due at the Elysium on Red River Street in an hour to unload for its hour-long showcase. A contingent from Athens shows up to greet the band — including the Weight’s Joseph Plunket and Ryan Lewis, formerly of the Agenda.

Inside the club waiting for their turn to play, the Lions find a write-up of themselves in the alt-weekly Austin Chronicle as one of the night’s “SXSW Picks,” which compares them to D.C. post-punk legends Fugazi and British dance-punk act/current fashionable influence Gang of Four.

“I’m starting to think no one has ever heard anything but Fugazi and Gang of Four,” says Smith.

After British press darlings the Magnificents play a 40-minute spastic ode to Joy Division, the Lions take the stage and storm through a set that includes “He Commands Commandments” from the group’s album. “This is the only song we are going to play off our album,” says Smith to a crowd of 200-plus attendees before plunging into the song’s alarm-call opening riffs. The near-hardcore immediacy of Paper Lions’ sound completely erases the derivative leanings of the not-so- magnificent Magnificents.

Lott precisely pounds his kit, Snyder nails his feverish guitar washes, McNeal’s bass shakes the ground while his backup vocals are crisp. Smith, between shots of throat spray, whips out menacing riffs while the extra gruff in his voice makes his singing more emphatic. Twenty-eight minutes later, it’s all over. Trade Center, who can set up in five minutes, has 32 to do it.

A rep from MTV2 Europe approaches Smith after the band moves its gear, and expresses an interest in interviewing the Lions and playing a video for a spot on the channel’s “Spankin’ New Music” week in April. Smith then meets an A&R rep from Domino Records, a boutique U.K. label home to divergent yet intrinsically jittery “it bands” such as Clinic, Franz Ferdinand and the Notwist. Both the MTV2 and Domino reps are there to see the Magnificents, but they end up favoring the Lions. A scout for the Orchard, an entertainment enterprise that manages Danish shoe-gaze rockers the Raveonettes, also speaks to the band. Even the clerk from a record store in Oklahoma City comes by to see them.

“I was so overwhelmed ‘cause nobody ever talks to me after our set,” says Snyder, before he and the band discuss immediately shooting a video for “Mission Statement.”

Thurs., March 18, Austin, Texas



On the way to Sixth Street on an expedition for free music, free beer and free food, the van pulls into the local post office. Snyder sends a copy of the Lions’ demo to his brother, Nick, who shot the band’s last video for “Money Blanket” off of Symptom.

Later, wandering aimlessly around Austin, the band stumbles upon a day party with free barbecue and beer. Not digging the barroom Dave Matthews Band playing, and not a full-fledged carnivore (he eats fish, but no other meat), Smith decides to look for sustenance elsewhere. The other three decide to be “critters” — a term Smith and Lott coined to describe McNeal and Snyder’s scavenging, begging and scheming for food and drink on the band’s first tour.

After a half-hour trek, Smith spies a sign for free tacos at the Touch & Go/Merge Records day party. There are no tacos around, but Smith briefly speaks to employees from both indie labels. Unfortunately, he’s the only member of the band not outfitted with demos, so he has nothing to give them. It’s lucky the band’s showcase went well, because at times the Lions don’t appear to be the most proactive band.

Meanwhile, for the other Lions, the cheap beer has flowed like wine, and the guys are up to mischief: Snyder finds a Sharpie in his pocket and has whomever he can find sign his shirt. He crashes a television interview with the Stills, a current Canadian phenomenon, for an autograph, and eventually tracks down head “Jackass” Johnny Knoxville. The trio spends some of the band fund on a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and is part of a rickshaw race through the streets of Austin with members of the Weight and Trade Center.

By 7 p.m., all three end up sleeping in the van and eventually back at the hotel. Smith lone wolfs it across town to La Zona Rosa to see seminal ’80s post-punk band Mission of Burma. At the venue, he chats with art-punk band Les Savy Fav’s Syd Butler, who runs the label Frenchkiss. Butler — who originally wanted to put out Some Soviet Station’s only full-length — promises to attend the Lions’ show in New York City on April 22. (Jetset Records also plans to attend.)

Fri., March 19, Austin, Texas

Friday morning, Smith is irked about his bandmates’ behavior on Thursday. Everyone had expressed an interest in seeing Burma — whose enveloping but rhythmic dissonance definitely informs Paper Lions’ style — but the previous afternoon’s drinking curtailed those plans.

“All I know is that I saw history in the making,” he says about an appearance by Penelope Houston, of the L.A. punk band the Avengers, at the end of the Burma show.

Lott, the band’s de facto manager, rallies the troops for their 12:45 p.m. interview with MTV2 Europe. On the way to the interview, Snyder calls his brother about the band’s video. They agree that Nick will fly out to film the band at their show in Tucson, Ariz., on March 24.

When asked about SXSW so far, Snyder sighs and says, “I really got really wasted. I did a lot of stupid things. It might take a long time to tell you.”

One traffic ticket later — to Lott for driving without a seat belt — and the band heads to its interview at Buffalo Billiards on Sixth Street. Soon they find themselves on the establishment’s deck overlooking the street. MTV2 “Gonzo” show host Zane Lowe pulls up a seat between the band members. Once the cameras are rolling, he introduces the band and asks them to tell a little bit of the Lions’ story. Lott assumes most of the speaking duties, with help from Smith, explaining the band’s history and situation. The whole process takes about 10 minutes, and the snippet is scheduled to air in April.

An afternoon, evening and night of bar hopping looking for free booze and good music ensues. Snyder and McNeal attempt to empty the free barbecue buffet at the Spin party, while a trip to the Hard Rock Cafe includes a shirtless moshing incident where McNeal climbs on Snyder’s shoulders and bangs away to the band Razorlight.

On the way home from an after-hours party featuring performances from Har Mar Superstar and the Walkmen on the outskirts of Austin, Dykes and the Lions talk about tiredness and the Walkmen’s skill. Smith takes a sharp left turn just before the hotel’s garage, causing Dykes to hit her head on the window frame with a loud “thwap.” Trying to play it tough, she laughs and says she is fine.

Thirty seconds later when the van pulls into the hotel, Lott, assuming everything is OK, heads to bed. Smith, who is squeamish about blood, notices that Dykes face is bloody. Covering his mouth and beginning to dry heave, he removes himself from the situation, leaving Snyder and McNeal to deal with the injury.

Fortunately, the hospital is the next exit down and easily accessible. Dykes is quickly admitted — bleeders usually are. She gets eight stitches over her left eye and is discharged.

Sat., March 20, Austin, Texas



At 10:30 a.m., the band took its gear down to the Green Mesquite for the “Athens in Austin” party, but Snyder and McNeal were spent from the night before. As with the MTV2 interview, the band was once again split in half.

“It’s always the critters versus the ‘fancy boys,’” says Snyder emphatically, the latter term referring to Smith and Lott.

While the “fancy boys” are the musical and business faces of the band, they know better than to leave home without their “critters.” McNeal’s basslines are the lynchpin of the band’s sound. His prowess has been recognized by Josh McKay of Athens-based indie royalty Macha, who has invited McNeal to play on Macha’s upcoming tour.

Snyder is the glue that keeps the band together. His general wackiness keeps everything light, a necessity for four people in constant interaction for two months.

After sets by Clay Leverett, the Weight, Phosphorescent, Ishues and Summer Hymns, Paper Lions churn out a six-song set that hints at collective exhaustion. It’s one last burst before the Lions sleep that night. A scout from Wind-up Records buys two CDs after the show. Dykes, ever the trooper, again joins the Lions. Smith introduces her by announcing: “We sent Amy to the hospital yesterday. Sorry, Amy.”

When it all ends — just as Smith’s voice dies — the Lions load their things in the van and pass out at the hotel.

Like it does to so many attendees, SXSW has wiped out the four hopefuls. The band in limbo has almost accidentally made the trip to Texas a success. For all bands, the difference between hope and dismay can depend on who’s in the crowd when you play, and the odds that someone influential will watch increase if you play Austin in the spring. And Austin is Paper Lions’ town.

nikhil.swaminathan@creativeloafing.com