AUSTIN, Texas — South by Southwest (SXSW) musicians are getting ready for another year of the festival.
Adam Dodson got in some practice on Wednesday before the event. He's called Austin home for more than a decade and has been playing guitar more than 15 years.
He describes his music's vibe as ambient.
"If you want to give yourself a music soundtrack to your life, and it's instrumental – it's very calm, usually slow, often minimal," Dodson said.
He loves SXSW, where his style is welcome. Over the years, he said he has seen a lot of changes, including the festival adding more genres of music.
"More ingredients are getting added to the stew," he said. "I don't think things are necessarily going away; we are just adding more, and people adding their own sound."
He will be playing on Tuesday at the Driskill. He said another change he has seen at SXSW is the expansion to a wider variety of venues.
"It would [be] a very different experience to hear ambient music in a Sixth Street bar versus the Driskill Hotel. The environment plays a very key role in how people are consuming music," Dodson told KVUE.
While he does enjoy many changes, he said there has been one that's not been made yet: artist pay. Currently, bands get $250 to perform at the festival and solo artists are paid $100.
"Artists deserve to get paid, and Austin has long thrived on that narrative of the Music Capital [of the World]. I think if we want to continue to own that title, we need to make sure we are supporting musicians," Dodson said.
Despite that. he said cannot wait until next week for the opportunity to play when he joins musicians from all around the world.
"It's what every musician does this for," he said. "That's the moment, you know."