Adapting “Weirdness” at SXSW 2025

The exterior of the São Paulo House at SXSW 2025 (photo by Carys Anderson)

In the Austin lexicon, perhaps the most prized phrase is: “It isn’t what it used to be.”

I haven’t yet earned the right to speak this holy maxim, as a new Austinite, but I am well within my rights to hear it. Gearing up for my first South by Southwest and my first Music & Culture column, I set about pestering Austin residents for advice – musicians outside of shows, people in lines, fellow journalists, fellow drinkers in bars.

After sighing and sharing that timeless truth, most folks offered a tip or two before inevitably asking me – in words or, more often, in tone – why I moved to such a rapidly changing city. Since arriving in Austin in September, my motives have been lovingly cross-examined, as if the city and I have just started dating and her friends are concerned about her taste, her susceptibility to influence. Being new to Austin, to the Chronicle, to SXSW, and, relatively speaking, the world, I am accustomed to being naive. Though skeptical, I can be a bit of a Pollyanna – an attitude that doesn’t exactly fare well against the refrain: “It isn’t what it used to be.”

The facts, however, are hard to deny. SXSW has grown since its 1987 inception, just as the city itself has. Stories of old SXSW are all around me here in 2025. The past five have been turbulent: two years of online streaming, a shift in the musician compensation model, and the severing of military ties in response to protests. Before COVID, over 2,000 musical acts performed annually at SXSW. Since then, the number has hovered between 1,200 and 1,500. This year, as of this writing, there are 1,013. It’s tempting to see this drop as a reflection of Greater Austin Music Census reports that indicate musicians are leaving the city as rapid growth shrinks affordability. Chatting on the ground, SXSW veterans note fewer official venues and mourn the loss of a strong South Congress presence. Others lament the bigger acts, bemoaning a drop in, well, weirdness.

Taking in the sights and sounds of SXSW with a touch of a fighting spirit, I’ve glimpsed two efforts to maintain and support diversity and creativity in the city.

This year’s lineup contains more international acts than ever before, with 35% of the lineup coming from outside the United States, according to the Austin American-Statesman. You can hear the festival’s global influence in the multilingual conversations filling the streets of Downtown Austin and in the eclectic music showcases. Brazilian shoegazers terraplana, Australian post-punk ensemble Radio Free Alice, and budding Austrian-Iranian pop star Sofie Royer are just three of the international bands sharing bills with local Austin artists.

Austin’s reputation as a tech hub has forged a new connection with São Paulo, Brazil’s own tech hub, a Brazilian actress and psychologist explains to me, gesturing to the packed São Paulo House near the Convention Center. Meanwhile, in the La French Touch Courtyard lounge, panelists propose innovative ways for Austin to create accessible art through immersive technology. These international relationships are possible because of Austin’s growth and increased hosting capacity. It may not resemble the Austin of old, but the blending of cultures and influences may represent the new kind of weirdness Austin is headed toward as it barrels closer to major-city status.

“It also depends on what that weird looks like,” Austin musician, DJ, and sound engineer Mark Lopez tells me in the ACL Artist Lounge. “Musicwise, there is still a lot of music coming out [in Austin] that has weird lyrics and weird instrumentation. We’re not making regular pop songs or regular rock songs. There’s some kind of consciousness, some kind of healing, some kind of cipher, some kind of meaning.”

As the city and music scene shifts, Austin’s historic venues are essential to maintaining its legacy. Michael Winningham, an Austin musician who came up on those very stages, reflected on how affordable spaces can help preserve Austin’s legacy in a panel dubbed Music Urbanism in Motion on Saturday.

“When I started playing in Austin I used to always think about the stages I was on – like, who’s played here before,” he said. “I always reference that kind of historical aspect, but you know, some of those musicians [he pointed to Townes Van Zandt, Janis Joplin, and Bob Schneider] weren’t born in Austin. They came to Austin because there was an audience that was thriving.”

Winningham calls himself a “noisemaker,” and, in recent years, he has directed that noise toward maintaining Austin’s musical identity and creating new spaces that adapt to musicians’ needs in a changing city. Winningham brought together Jacksonville placemaker Kady Yellow and Philadelphia architect Brain Phillips to discuss their efforts to preserve creative culture in cities both younger and older than Austin. Winningham, who works by day in affordable housing, is applying his expertise to ensure Austin’s music scene stays noisy.

“Cities need to be grown responsibly and inclusively with our creative communities,” Winningham explained. “As a noisemaker living in a place that’s becoming less noisy, that frustration started to build.”

This frustration led Winningham to start his nonprofit, Junkyard. Using a fleet of retired buses, Junkyard aims to preserve Austin’s DIY spirit by converting the vehicles into mobile stages and rehearsal spaces that can adapt to Austin’s evolving landscape.

“I was a little nervous about being in the world of development and uncertain about what my place was going to be,” Winningham said, but through conversations with Yellow and Phillips and other like-minded urban developers, he found a way to align his work with efforts to support Austin’s music community.

“That became the real conversation: What can I do? How can I make an impact adjacent to affordable housing efforts that would benefit specifically the music community so that we could make some more noise?”

Junkyard is one answer to that question. Its buses embrace Austin’s DIY aesthetic, and their mobile, multifunctional nature aspires to meet a changing Austin where it is, rising to the challenge of keeping the city weird.

“We’re always going to be a music-centric town thanks to our predecessors,” outlaw country musician Rikki Todd assures me, back in the artist lounge. “Austin still has that hippie spirit, you just have to know where to find it.”

I might add: You also have to live it.