While many students spent their spring break bathing in the sun in a tropical paradise or in their hometown working so they can earn enough money for the rest of the year’s rent, Eric Yarwood and Boonie opted to head to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest multimedia festival.

South by Southwest, or SXSW for short, is one of the largest multimedia festivals in the country. Not only does it have 1,000 bands playing at 50 different venues, but there are also panels, parties and a film festival.

M-Shop director Boonie and the venue’s coordinator Yarwood chose to attend just the music part of the festival, which ran from March 14-17.

Signed and unsigned artists make up the 1,000 bands that played at SXSW. Bigger name groups like the Black Crowes, Matthew Sweet and hip-hoppers Jurassic 5 were just some of the nationally known acts that played the festival.

“The breakdown in bands varies big time – everyone from big time bands down to little unheard of bands and everything in between,” Yarwood says. “You name it, it was covered. Every style of music was covered in that thing.”

According to Yarwood, venue sizes ranged from clubs with capacities of 50 to 100 people to sites such as the Austin Music Hall which Yarwood estimates held 1,000 to 1,200 people.

This was Yarwood’s second consecutive trip to SXSW, which is in its 15th year of existence. This time around, though, he noticed a couple things that differed from last year’s event.

“Last year there was a lot of emphasis on computer and MP3 stuff . [it] wasn’t there this year,” Yarwood says. “I noticed that was missing big time. Last year Napster was featured, and of course they weren’t around this year.”

The other thing that stuck out in Yarwood’s mind was the rising number of artists that were releasing material on their own labels. According to Yarwood, major labels were sort of fading into the background at this year’s SXSW.

“I went to the Ricky Skaggs show and noticed that someone who was a country music entertainer of the year three times over back in the `80s has his own record label now,” he explains.

“There wasn’t as much of the major label, there was a lot more of the smaller labels,” Yarwood continues. “Quite a few of them are doing their own record labels, that way they have artistic control and they’re making more money that way.”

A few of the bands that Yarwood was extremely impressed with were The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash and Idlewild.

Yarwood described Idlewild as a “simple rock band” from England.

“They’ve been around about four or five years and they were fantastic, very good,” Yarwood says.

At last year’s festival Yarwood drank beer with ZZ Top and chatted with members of Prince’s band. And although he didn’t get to rub elbows with the stars this year, the 32 hours of driving were still worth it.

“It’s just fun,” he says. “This year I was just a good innocent bystander. Hopefully next year we’ll have some different stories.”