Girl on the Scene: Lenay’s Backstage Look at SXSW

Not long ago, we introduced you to our new Girl on the Scene, Lenay Dunn, as your special source for all the behind-the-scenes action from photoshoots and music festivals throughout the year. Most recently, we took over Austin, TX as part of SXSW, and Lenay was there to get all the exclusive backstage highlights. Check out her personal blog and video below, and stay tuned for for the full interviews she scored there!

Straight from Lenay:

Aloha! Hi guys, I’m Lenay Dunn. I host ‘10 on Top’ on MTV, and I just became the new face of Macy’s American Rag! Which means I’ll be backstage all summer at festivals, bringing you all along for the ride through my blog & videos! So think of me as your backstage pass… ever since I was little I’ve carried a video camera around with me, and this last weekend at SXSW was no exception   I just left Austin a few hours ago, so now I’m writing this on a plane going back home to Nashville. Here are some of my fav pics and highlights from my adventures!

It was a whirlwind of a trip to Austin, I got in 1am Saturday morning, and left today… Sunday. So much can happen in 35 hours though! (I just did that math; yay me!) Side note: last time I was in Austin my BFFs and I got matching star tattoos on our left feet. I still have that tattoo. Obviously. THIS time in Austin I got the chance to meet and interview some sweet artists, make new Twitter friends, and get some new music on my iPod… no new tattoos   I hung out at FILTER Magazine’s Showdown at Cedar Street, presented by American Rag, all day Saturday, introducing artists on stage (Picture 7 in my collage below), dancing to their tunes, loving on caffeine to recover from my 1am flight, interviewing/hanging with bands backstage, and running my fingers over my new purse because it was shiny and felt cool. It was so fun!! 

The first band I interviewed was Now, Now (Picture 11). They are from Minnesota like me so I was super excited to meet them! I love their latest music video (see it HERE). They told this crazy story about how they were in their touring van on a snowy mountainous cliff, and a semi-truck slid into them and was smashing them into a guard rail with the deadly drop-off on the other side! Then the semi driver got out and HE was mad at THEM. Which makes no sense dude. 

Another fun band was Go Radio (Picture 10). We talked about their music video for one of my new favorite songs, “Goodnight Moon.” The song is seriously so cool, raw and heartfelt, but the music video is so random and funny, with two wedding parties tackling each other in a field with fake blood everywhere. It’s pretty great. Watch it HERE.

SXSW FASHION
Go Radio’s lead singer Jason’s earlobes have large holes in them because he said he used to have plugs but now he will probably have to get them sewn up! Plugs can be cool. Once I met a guy who could fit two cans of Red Bull in his ears as plugs. Of course, I made a VIDEO of it. 

A lot of the bands with cool fashion said some of their favorite places to shop are thrift stores. They joked about it being because they are “poor musicians,” but also just because of the vintage and unique selection you can find there. When I asked Brad Oberhofer (Picture 2) where he got his clothes, he joked he wears his grandmothers’ blouses. Well I guess I thought he was joking. Maybe his grandma dresses like a rockstar, and he really does raid her closet. 

Some other SXSW fashion trends I noticed were… 1. Anything green. (...it happened to be St. Patty’s day :p)  2. As many festival wrist-bands as you could cram on on hand… I think some peoples’ hands were turning purple from the trend (Picture 15. photo credit republicofaustin.com).  3. Red nail polish! (Girls admiring each others’ red nails in Picture 12.) 

NIGHT LIFE
After a long, awesome day at SXSW, I went back to my hotel and took a long, awesome nap. My mom called and woke me up at 10:30pm or else I may have accidentally slept through the SXSW Night Life! Thanks for the wake up call, mom   I ventured out to meet my friend Jazzy (@DJJazzy) at a Candlebox concert. I stopped to take a picture of the green street lasers lighting up the night clouds (Picture 3), and these random guys were like, “Take a picture of me too! Take a picture of me too!!” Hence Picture 13. lol. It was such a fun night! People were partying in the streets and every venue seemed to have live music. I heard Austin is the music capital of the world and now I know why. My night ended with some 2am spaghetti while dancing in my hotel room to my new fav tunes by Imagine Dragons who I heard for the first time at the festival, and who I am definitely jamming to right now a I write this.

Can’t wait for Lollapalooza Brazil

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posted by Staff