Tough day. I was in a van with several other SXSW staff, on our way to hear President Obama’s keynote address, when we got the totally unexpected news that Louis Jay Meyers had just passed away in a hospital in South Austin. I had just heard the night before that he had been admitted with “extremely low blood pressure,” and had been trying to find out more, and make plans to see him, maybe tomorrow, when today’s madness was over. Now …
Louis was one of the founders and instigators of SXSW, back in 1987 (and before). He was the Music Festival Director for the first, seminal period for the event; it fit well with his previous and ongoing career as a talent manager (Killer Bees, Grains of Faith, many others) and music promoter (notably at the late, much-lamented Liberty Lunch). He left in 1994 – memorably explaining that he was “tired of being the most hated man in Austin music” because of all the acts he had to turn down – and went on to a successful series of other musical gigs, living in Amsterdam for a while, settling in Kansas City to run Folk Alliance International for over a decade, and, always, playing his beloved banjo and pedal steel guitar.
He was a big sports fan as well – baseball mostly – and the fact that he grew up a Giants fan, and me a Dodgers fan, only augmented our friendship. His hamster, Mookie Wilson, beat mine in the challenge hamster race we held in the long hallway of the original SXSW office, but I won a good share of our regular weekly tennis doubles games, which went on before and after he left SXSW.
He never stopped coming back to SXSW every year, if only to catch up with old friends and captain his beloved Agents/Managers softball team in the closing softball tournament and barbecue, which was as dear to Louis’ heart as it has been to mine. My other most memorable LJM quote came from the first year’s tournament, when we staggered out to the fields Sunday morning, largely hung over, and without half the necessary equipment or our rental agreement, only to find a pickup game going on where we were supposed to be hosting our event. The interlopers were unwilling to depart without an argument, and asked (not unreasonably), if we could prove we had the fields reserved. Where was our paperwork, for example? I can still picture Louis standing in the pitcher’s circle, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Paperwork? We’re musicians! We don’t have any fucking paperwork!” They were very frightened, and left quietly. Somewhere there’s a photo of him from later in the day, standing in the same spot, captioned, “A man out standing in his field.”
His final project, I guess, was something he’d been thinking about for a long time, an adaptation of the Who’s magnum opus, known as “Tommy, the Bluegrass Opry,” performed live by Missouri’s the HillBenders, and recorded with his longtime friend and collaborator Mike Stewart. I haven’t heard it yet, but I need to, now.
This piece originally ran online at www.sxsw.com.
This article appears in March 18 • 2016.