Cognitive dissonance is a terrible affliction, especially this deep into a festival. So after a SXSW that saw Julian Assange and Edward Snowden Skyping in to talk about freedom, it was a 540 spin when Homeland Security Committee Chair Mike McCaul turned up to talk music.

You may not recognize the name Dave Bartholomew, but you surely know his music. The song “Blueberry Hill,” which he produced for Fats Domino in 1956, continues to sell today. And sell, and sell, and sell. “Fifty million copies and counting,” his son Don B pointed out.

Laura Jane Grace, frontwoman of Against Me!, wears a lot of hats these days. Already a punk rock stalwart, her journey as a trans woman has put her firmly on the frontlines of LGBTQ rights, awareness, and education.

Few people have contributed more to the indie-rock songbook than Stuart Murdoch. Belle & Sebastian’s entire career, beginning in the mid Nineties, couldn’t be more celebrated, but he’s never been especially public.

“It’s been more than a job,” CeeLo said of his music career in conversation with NPR Music’s Frannie Kelley on Saturday morning. “It’s been such a civil service and a matter of of missionary work. It’s been an adventure.”

The average age of those showcasing for the Americana Music Association Friday night hovered around 47, but everybody playing deviated far from that mean. Disparate as each may have been from their bill mates, like American music, together all managed to find that sweet spot in the middle.

Introduced as the godfathers of desert blues and the group that brought Tuareg music to the international stage, Tinariwen melted minds with 45 minutes of swirling guitar grooves and percussion Friday night.

While a galaxy of stars were paying tribute to Lou Reed a few blocks away at the Paramount Theatre, Reed’s former college classmate and fellow urban poet Garland Jeffreys, who had performed at the Reed show earlier, was back in club mode, delivering a lean, mean showcase set with the grace and class that one has come to expect from him.

Butler Park, the green space adjacent to the Long Center, teemed with humanity on Friday evening, with young couples toting newborns and sorority girls chugging $10 cans of Fosters beer to confused grandpas and bros buying fistfuls of enormous plastic syringes filled with green Jell-O shots.