The relationship between Libby and the Loveless and Austin two-steppers begins before the music even starts. It’s in the way partners gather near the stage, in the unspoken excitement of knowing your favorite band is about to play some of your favorite songs to dance to. At the Highball, the dancers don’t just listen – they respond, turning melody into movement.
The latest installment of People To Wave To – the docu-concert series spotlighting Austin artists through live performance and intimate conversation – captures the honky-tonk band in two complementary settings: a buzzing Highball performance from Nov. 6, and an intimate back-porch interview. Seated on front person Libby Hallett’s porch alongside drummer and singer Selena Rosanbalm and fiddle player Rebecca Patek, the band reflects on how they found each other – and why the dance floor remains at the center of everything they do.
“Both Selena and I, we both started as dancers in the two-step scene and then graduated into being on the other side of the coin,” Hallett explains.
They aren’t performing for dancers in the abstract. They are dancers – or at least they were, long before they were musicians. They know what works, what moves bodies, and what makes a floor feel welcoming.
“When we were dancing 15 years ago, the scene was solid,” Rosanbalm says. “But it is freaking huge now.”
That growth hasn’t just been numerical. The band describes today’s honky-tonk scene as young, queer, and surprisingly expansive.
“It feels like a very safe and loving space for all types of people,” Hallett notes.
The band itself mirrors that safe and loving space. Hallett explains the band started as a joke until guitarist Schley Barrack booked them a gig and they had to get a band together fast.
“Selena just jumped in and said, ‘Can I play drums?’… as a person who didn’t play drums yet,” Hallett laughs.
Hallett doesn’t consider herself much of a musician. Songwriting isn’t about precision so much as surrender. “My writing style is so rudimentary that I have no control,” she laughs. “Your brain is doing the thing now and you better just take it.” That intuitive approach mirrors the band’s origin story: less polish, more trust.
What ultimately comes through most clearly in this installment of People To Wave To isn’t aspiration or strategy, but gratitude. “The fact that I get to do this with literally some of my favorite people on the planet,” Hallett says, “[is] a privilege.”
The Austin Chronicle Presents: People To Wave To is a docu-concert series produced by Kyra Bruce. Find more on YouTube.