ACL Fest Sunday Interviews

Scott Biram

12:50pm, Austin Ventures stage

Austin's Scott Biram is a road hog in the best sense of the word.

"I've been to Europe seven times in the past two years," barks the feral, lo-fi punk bluesman, who recently returned from a grueling summer tour with Bob Log III. "I'm tired, and I hate airplanes now, but this was 45 shows with no days off for the most part."

How did his voice handle it? "I don't know man," he pauses. "Jameson."

Tour highlights for The Dirty Old One Man Band included spending $121 for three-quarters of a tank of gas; a stranger named Robyn, who settled into selling his merch for a few weeks; and a riot in Rhode Island. "The club was being shitty," recalls Biram in his trademark growl. "I was really mad. They cut Bob's set short after 20 minutes, and then the crowd pretty much destroyed the place."

In serious need of some downtime, Biram plans to stay local for a while and make a new album. "I was working on it around Christmas, but I'm so overcritical that it took me two weeks to record two songs," he admits. "I've been building my own studio for the past few years, so I have a lot more options now. I'm pretty good at making things up at the last second, which is how my songs get written anyway, screwing around and trying to make people laugh.

"We listened to the comedy channel on the radio pretty much the whole tour, so I always had some good jokes."