Ready for a five-day jamboree of scripted comedy from funny people both local and across the U.S.?

ATX Sketch Fest is back for round three with a stellar line-up of out of town acts and the best of Austin sketch comedy. Sketch Fest will feature 12 acts in nine shows over five days in three venues (May 22nd-27th).

Organized by ColdTowne Theater, the previous festivals were both big-time successes, with sell out shows all weekend and talent including funny people like… actually we’ll let the lineup speak for itself, IN ALL CAPS: SUPEREGO, PAUL F. TOMPKINS, ENNIS AND KAYE, BEIGE, LANCELIFE, MASTER PANCAKE, STAG, YOUR TERRIFIC NEIGHBORS and many, many more! And since last December the Earth didn’t blow up, ATX Sketch Fest intends to up the ante this year and party like its Ford Truck Month– YOLO!

Headlining the cracking-wise, Superego w/ special guest Paul F. Tompkins will be performing at ColdTowne Theater Friday, May 24th. This super group, SUPEREGO, began in 2006 when Matt Gourley and Jeremy Carter finally decided to record some of the stupid things they had been saying. Luckily, Podcasts were just starting to emerge as form of media that no one was listening to. Soon after, Superego prayed to the comedy gods and their podcast grew, and now boasting over a million downloads. The 3rd ATX Sketch Fest will also mark the return of Paul F. Tompkins, a comedy jedi of sorts.

Also holding down the fort that weekend, STAG Comedy manifested from the dusty BBQ-stained streets of Austin, Texas. Founded by former members of movie-mockers, Master Pancake Theater, STAG has since assimilated a sort of justice league of ridiculously hilarious and surprising sketch groups locally and nationally. All of this promises to be a weekend of killer talent!

And don’t worry if you’re not funny, the ATX Sketch Fest will be holding comedy workshops for those “less funny.” ColdTowne classes are fun, relaxed, and open to people of all comedy backgrounds. It doesn’t matter if you suck or bring down the house – the ColdTowne Conservatory will take care of you.

Anyhow, now you know what’s up. Go check out ATX Sketch Fest’s website for details and tickets (take our advice, get “The Fest Pass”).

And as always, stay tuned to us, the True OG’s in comedy.

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Time to get fanciful, frilly and foxy for another fun CharityBash Benefit Concert! This month Citizen Generation is hosting another cocktail party to benefit a great and local cause known as the Groundwork Music Project. Their mission is “to provide free and low cost music lessons to young children with limited means.” With your contributions, this Austin non-profit can help create the next music legend or simply bring joy to a child in desperate need of the glory that is music.

As you can see below this CharityBash is pulling out all the stops starting with the most prestigious venue-The Allan House. Oh it’s gorgeous ya’ll; people get married there. While your enjoying the beautiful architecture of this Victorian mansion built in 1883 you can sip on special Deep Eddy cocktails featuring the latest addition-Ruby Red! Also, to entertain your ears and mind LiveVibe Collective will be there to feature live music by Nano Whitman, Reed Turner, and The Roosevelts. It’s going to be a fun night to remember and be proud of as you help benefit your community in style.

Tickets and/or donations can be purchased here for the May 23rd CharityBash at The Allan House. A $20 contribution is suggested to enjoy complimentary cocktails, bites, and live music.

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Toad the Wet Sprocket are an American band, but they arguably owe their mid-career, multi-tracked guitar sound to The Smiths, rather than stateside contemporaries R.E.M. At their 1991 breakthrough peak, they excelled in quietly powerful guitar pop; and quickly attained mainstream success. It’s hard to tell (and still debated among music nerds) if Toad the Wet Sprocket were emulating Britpop, or merely coming to the same musical conclusions as our friends across the pond. Regardless, they made a sizeable splash in both of the land masses in question. After all, it’s pretty hard to find fault in a song like “Walking on the Ocean Floor”, even if you’re a person that obsesses about authenticity in music. Ahhh, relax and let the warm haze of nostalgia and dated video production envelope you.

And what’s with the name, Toad the Wet Sprocket? Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. What you have to remember is that they formed in 1986, a time in the world when Frankie Goes to Hollywood & Huey Lewis and the News were considered reasonable things to call your music act. Of course, those two bands were on a totally opposite sphere of the music scene, but the point remains. For those of you who are truly curious about the origin of the group’s name, we’ll spoil the mystery and tell you that it’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to a Monty Python sketch.

The thing to remember is that quality of music will always outshine a goofy band name, and Toad the Wet Sprocket have that, in abundance. Their 1991 album, Fear, dominated the charts and shot Toad the Wet Sprocket to Top 40 prominence. It also afforded them the chance to bring their music to coveted TV spots like The Tonight Show. This is around the time their album went certified double platinum. For a couple of guys that knew each other from high school and decided to start playing music together, it was an ideal career trajectory.

In 1997, they released Coil, which performed less than amicably due to lackluster promotion by Columbia Records. Soon after, they decided to call it quits. Call it in-band fighting, the stress of a demanding touring schedule or plain old exhaustion; the result was the same. The guys had had enough. Lead singer Glen Phillips went on to find some solo success, but for the most part things were quiet.

To the excitement of fans, Toad the Wet Sprocket reunited several times in the late 90′s and mid aught’s, but no new album announcements came until March of this year. Presently, the guys are in the midst of a U.S. tour that thankfully rolls through Austin. They’ll be playing your favorite old tracks, the ones that catapulted them to stardom, as well as cuts off their as-yet untitled new album to be release sometime within the year.

The guys play at Antoine’s May 19th with opener Jonathon Kingham. Tickets available here.

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Can we have a suggestion from the audience; name a place you would go on your honeymoon?

…David Bowie’s house!

Then hilarity ensues because no answer can be wrong on Whose Live Anyway?

Sounds a lot like Whose line is it anyway? right?! Well it’s because it’s the same thing with the added bonus of live-ness! Ryan, Greg, Chip and Jeff are coming to Austin to make you laugh as they improv their way into your hearts with fun games & suggestions you shout out. To prepare for this event you may want to change your wallpaper to the faces of the cast so you can be reminded of their talent as you stalk people on Facebook! Then you can count the days till you get to be apart of the audience as you prep your brain with suggestions.

Have you guys heard Greg Proops on the comedy station ya’ll? He is the definition of witty! This show is guaranteed to make you Proops your pants! The cast will leave you gasping for air in your lungs; you may die of laughter which is a pretty good way to go if you ask us.

The Long Center will be hosting this fun event on May 17th at 8:00pm and you can get your tickets here. Also, make sure you click “I like it” for the chance to win a free pair of tickets! The show runs 90 minutes long and everyone is invited!

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Running a business isn’t easy; Vess Consulting knows that. While Austin emerged from the country’s economic woes relatively unscathed, many local businesses still felt the burn. Maintaining a small business is difficult, even in a good economic climate. Branding is an integral part of making any enterprising venture successful, and can be exceedingly difficult to do. Creating a lasting image in a customers head isn’t an exact science, and can require a great deal of finesse to establish a meaningful impression.

Vess Consulting are the people who can do that for you. As their website proudly states, they deal in creative marketing solutions. Working with businesses is their raison d’être, their reason for being. They’ve had success working with a wide variety of Austin employers, meticulously restructuring problem areas with surgeon-grade precision.

Currently, Vess Consulting is offering three months of professional services at no charge to a local business that could benefit from what they do. At a $6000 dollar value, this is a highly valuable chance for a local business to receive a helping hand. Vess Consulting has a time-tested three point system for working with businesses:

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We’re all familiar with the Make A Wish Foundation, an organization which dedicates itself to fulfilling the wishes of terminally ill children. It’s a world renowned organization, with chapters in Central and South Texas.

More than 350 children in central and south Texas are diagnosed each year with a life-threatening medical condition. Last year, Make a Wish Central & South Texas granted 216 wishes out of 350. Not bad, but not quite 100%. Help strengthen the hopes and spirits of ill children by making their wishes a reality, and register today for Over the Edge:

Here’s the thing. Donating to a good cause is fun. Especially when it comes to Make A Wish, which challenges us to take the opportunity to rappel down a 32 story building. Make A Wish wants you to face your fears and step up to the edge for a good cause – physically and monetarily! The first 300 fundraisers to raise a minimum of $1,500 will earn a spot to go Over the Edge for Make-A-Wish – an astounding feat of vertigo in the name of awareness.

Better… if you aren’t prepared to face a debilitating fear of heights just yet, volunteer your boss! After day in and day out of mind numbing drudgery induced by the supreme overlord of your office, let off some steam by making them walk the plank… of a building! Precisely: the One American Center building in downtown Austin.

Tossing your boss over the edge is also a more affordable feat, as your coworkers are likely to split the contributions to equal the $1,500 necessary to get the dictator in the running for a tossing.

So there you have it. Toss your boss over a building, fundraise some money, help make a sick child’s day.

Event Details:

·         Over the Edge presented by W Austin benefitting Make-A-Wish

·         Saturday and Sunday June 15th and 16th

·         Rappel 32 stories in downtown Austin

·         Participants must raise a minimum of $1,500

·         Create and collect donations on your own fundraising page

·        Space is limited, so act now. To register or find out more, visit www.AustinOverTheEdge.com.

All the money raised by Make-A-Wish rappellers goes towards granting the wishes of these local children. Register today to start raising money for a great cause!

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Hot on the tails of a big city expansion that includes relevant on-the-map wonders such as Formula 1, two weekends of ACL action, and even more South Congress condos, the 5th annual Austin Fashion Week is growing right along with it all. A new addition this year was the open to the public Gilt City Market in the LZR courtyard. Gilt is always a deal but being able to see the online retailer’s goods in person was a rare treat.

Photo by: Rachel Daily

Austin is indeed fast becoming an internationally renowned city for our job market, technology talent pool, and as any city slicker knows – no city is internationally recognized without an exclusive week long affair of fashion.

The 5th annual Austin Fashion Week, held at La Zona Rosa in its first run away from the Driskill, exceeded expectation. With a dash of chic and a sprinkle of vogue, the undertaking was a produced exercise in class.

Photo by: Rachel Daily

Photo by: Rachel Daily

Quality littered the runway and the market, as glitz and pageantry paraded the venue. Allow us to enumerate upon the stand out designers of the week:

Gwen Stefani’s L.A.M.B. line made an appearance, putting a feminine mystique and je ne sais quois back into the modern working woman. The looks glided effortlessly with work-to-bar appeal, maintaining a refined, yet edgy, sexiness. L.A.M.B. portrays a strong, independent, and capable woman who is not afraid to mix leather with texture.

The real stand outs of AFW, however, were the local Texas designers. Two favorites were RaggDahl and Katherine Michael. RaggDahl’s (by Christine Porter) futuristic avante garde numbers were essential pairings of femme fatale and daring kitsch. Metal spikes, bright splashes of color, and a fearless boldness all dominated this line.

As for the Katehrine Michael line, be still our heart! Her romantic line was laced with a vintage nostalgia versus a modern, albeit bohemian mindset. Refined impressionist elegance was met with Gatsby party-girl posh. Sheers, laces, and tulles were prevalent among draping backless swoop cuts and daring necklines.

Photo by Rachel Daily

Thursday’s Crowned Bird (by Priscilla Barroso) was another lovely attraction, portraying attitude and sexy effortlessness. Color blocking was the name of the game with this line. A sliver of midrift through a crop top and a high waist, stockings with minis, flowy kimonos that yield bare bellies paired with wide pants… If the fabulousness of 60′s mod culture got together with Clueless and hung out on the weekends with Kate Spade, Crowned Bird would be the end result.

There was one strange point when the questionable playing of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” during a runway collection made me grimace;  I’m still unsure if the magnitude of irony escaped people or if no one cared. Perhaps it was a strange attempt to reach out toward the “trendy indie” Austin demographic. Regardless, a forgivable slight when compared with the entirety of the production… and let’s face it, by now 60% of Macklemore’s wardrobe is probably sponsored by now.

It’s worth noting that AFW is not only very family friendly but also demographically reflective of our fair city as well, as all attendees were united in a pure and shared love of fashion.  Each year gets better and better so if you’re looking to explore Austin outside of the music and bar scene, we encourage you to hit up next year’s serious of chic week events. Additional photos from the 2013 Runway shows are available here.

Photo by: Rachel Daily

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Ah, Spring time: a time when flowers begin to bloom, that winter chill begins to fade, and consumption of copious amounts of beer is highly encouraged… just like how it is in Germany!

Time to strap on your lederhosen and wear your finest dirndl, on May 18th at Austin Saengerrunde Halle with 10 different fine German biers. Accompanying the “bier” drinking will be Grammy Award-winning polka rebels Brave Combo, and a Dinner Dance party with food by Scholz Garden, music by Cloverleaf at 6pm and special guests: beer, and beer.

Brave Combo is by far one of the hardest-rocking groups in all of popular music. Think of them as the Led Zeppelin of horn-and-accordion-based ensembles or a kind of Rage Against the Accordion. This North Texas polka dance jam band promises to put all that drinking you’ll be doing to good use–on the dancefloor, of course.

Be sure to get out there and consider yourself lucky since you won’t need your passport to be part of this German-style throwdown. The doors open at 2pm with the bier tasting lasting until 6pm when the dinner party kicks off. And as always, remember to click “I like it” for the chance to win a pair of VIP or Bier Tasting Passes!

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Ready for a night of bar stools, 18 wheelers, whiskey drinkin’, hounddogs, small dusty towns, endless highways and regret?

The Turnpike Troubadours are set to play Stubb’s outdoor stage Friday, May 24th. With the recent release of their third studio album Goodbye Normal Street, the band plans to do exactly what the album name implies. There is not a single track on Goodbye Normal Street that misfires or falls flat. The boys of Turnpike have honed in on their rowdy, quick-witted country-western sound and turned it into something that sets them apart while giving  their music refreshing authenticity.

Their sound is pure, country-western music that benefits heavily from its diverse influences seen through their songwriting and musical styles. The band is truly living proof that screaming guitar solos and overpowering vocals are not necessary to elicit powerful and emotional reactions from music these days. That being said, this gives the band a timeless aesthetic and harkens back to the deep roots of country-western.

Also joining the Turnpike boys at Stubbs is Slaid Cleaves. The singer-songwriter’s lyrical and melodic consistency will give you a refreshing glimpse into the blue-collar American life, so if you were expecting breezy country folk–stop there. Cleaves’s music is all about the everyday American man with everyday American failures. The singer-songwriter’s smooth vocals carve out a sort of blue-collar romanticism with songs about car-obsessed grease monkeys, old men reflecting on glory days and recovering alcoholics paying for mistakes.

And finally rounding out the night is Austin, TX, four-piece Crooks. The band’s frontman Josh Mazour’s vocals has that twang that perfectly anchors in multi-instrumentalist Sam Alberts’s soaring and forlorn harmonies.

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HOLD UP.

Face facts. Chances are, you spend too much on coffee in a work week. Yeah, you might own a coffee maker. You may even find time to squeeze out some sips during the hasty morning routine which inevitably began with a belated snooze-button induced wake up.

The reality is this. Your coffee maker remains largely unused and the majority of your coffee is bought from the Starbucks drive-thru on your mad dash to work.

Stop spending that money. Do you want free coffee for a year?

Yeah, free. Free. Free…. Freeeeeeee.  

Then hit the RSVP button here to be entered into a raffle for just that. 

(*must be present at time of drawing to claim prize)

Now that we’ve got your attention, we have some more things to say. The BuzzMill, possibly your favorite new 24 hour coffeeshop-bar combo, is hosting a pretty bangin’ jamboree tonight.

Food. Games. Drinks. Add a dash of sun and you’ve got yourself the trifecta to a good time. With music by Portland folk rockers the Builders & Butchers and a raffle for a bunch of cool prizes like a tattoo gift certificate from Black Gold or a red rabbit specialty made big jamboree doughnut… whatever that is, it sounds delicious.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, without a hint of sarcasm of irony because we are true advocates and believers in the power of blissful unadulterated caffeination – the launch of the Bootleg Growler program! What the hell is that? It’s your new favorite thing in life.

Essentially, it’s 64 ounces of cold brewed coffee concentrate… and it’s deliverable. Each growler equals about 14 glasses of iced coffee.

This party kicks off at 4 PM today. Don’t miss your chance to win a year’s supply of free coffee… if we don’t beat you out for it. Hey, we could use a one year supply. All’s fair in coffee and war.

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